Fire-walking

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Fire-walking is the act of walking barefoot over a bed of hot coals, without being harmed. It has a long history in many cultures as a test or proof of faith and is used in modern motivational seminars for similar reasons. In modern times it has become contentious as to whether there is a legitimate scientific basis for participants not being burned regardless of their mental state, or whether their apparent invulnerability is the result of an extraordinary mental state or spiritual power.

1 Application
2 Physical explanation
3 Supernatural explanation
4 External links

[edit] Application

Fire-walking is practiced

by fakirs and similar persons,
in management seminars and motivational seminars, such as those conducted by Anthony Robbins, Alan Lowis, Peggy Dylan, Tolly Burkan, Dale Beaumont & Brent Williams, Tomorrow's Youth, Empower U, David Moore Sleight of Mind [1] & [2]Richard Pape
by Eastern Orthodox Christians in parts of Greece, (see Anastenaria), and Bulgaria (see nestinarstvo), during some popular religious feasts.
the African-born Hindus walk on fire regularly as part of important religious festivals
!Kung Bushmen of the African Kalahari desert have firewalked since their tribal beginnings. The !Kung use fire in their healing ceremonies.
by Japanese Taoists and Buddhists
as a rite of purification, healing, initiation and transcendence.

Organizers of firewalking ceremonies sometimes claim that in order to prevent one's feet from burning, meditation, calling on spirits or gods or other supernatural intervention is necessary.

The oldest recorded firewalk occurred over 4,000 years ago in India. Two Brahmin priests were competing to see who could walk farther over hot coals. The victor's triumph was recorded in writing surviving to this day.^{[citation needed]} In a 17th century letter, Father Le Jeune, a Jesuit priest, wrote to his superior, telling of a healing firewalk he witnessed among the North American Indians. He reports of a sick woman walking through two or three hundred fires with bare legs and feet, not only without burning, but all the while commenting on that she could feel no uncomfortable heat. Some 30 years later, Father Marquette reported similar firewalks among the Ottawa Indians and Jonathan Carver writes in his 1802 book, Travels in North America that one of the most astounding sights he saw was the parade of warriors who would "walk naked through a fire...with apparent immunity."

[edit] Physical explanation

When two bodies of different temperatures meet, the hotter body will cool off, and the cooler body will heat up, until they are separated or until they meet at a temperature in between. What that temperature is, and how quickly it is reached, depends on the thermodynamic properties of the two bodies. The important properties are temperature, mass, specific heat capacity, and thermal conductivity.

The product of mass and specific heat capacity is called heat capacity and tells us how much heat energy the body needs to heat it up by one degree. Since the heat taken in by the cooler body must be the same as the heat given by the hotter one, the end temperature will lie closer to the temperature of the body with the greater heat capacity.

The bodies in question here are human feet, which mainly consist of water, and burning coals.

Several factors act together to prevent the foot from burning:

Water has a very high heat specific capacity (4.18 kJ/K kg), whereas coals have a very low one. Therefore the foot's temperature will change considerably less than the coal's.
Water also has a high thermal conductivity, and on top of that, the blood in the foot will carry away the heat and spread it. So effectively the mass of the cooler body is increased. On the other hand, coal has a poor thermal conductivity, so the hotter body consists only of the parts of the coal which is close to the foot.
When the coal cools down, its temperature sinks below the flash point, so it stops burning, and no new heat is generated.
The coals are often covered with ash, which is a poor heat conductor.
The coals are a very uneven surface, and the actual surface area of foot touching the coals is very small.
Firewalkers do not spend very much time on the coals, and they keep moving.

There are risks when doing fire-walking improperly:

People have burned their feet when they remained in the fire for too long, enabling the thermal conductivity of the coals to catch up.
Foreign objects in the coals may result in burns. Metal is especially dangerous since it has a high thermal conductivity.
Coals which have not burned long enough can burn feet more quickly. Coals contain water, which increases their heat capacity as well as their thermal conductivity. The water must be evaporated already when the firewalk starts.
Wet feet can cause coals to cling to them, increasing the exposure time.

It has been claimed that the Leidenfrost effect, which is based on a layer of water vapor between the hot and cold body, is involved in firewalking.^{[citation needed]} This claim remains controversial. Some detractors state that if the Leidenfrost effect was operating the effect would create greatly reduced friction, making the coals slippery to the feel, which has not been observed.

[edit] Supernatural explanation

There have been reports of people suffering 3rd degree burns from treading on hot coals accidentally while not being in a special mental "state";^{[citation needed]} and any child knows that touching something so hot that it glows red like a burning coal, will result in a burn.^{[citation needed]} Enthusiasts claim that during a firewalk they have a heightened sense of faith, power and mental focus and that a type of energy that is latent in the body comes forth to protect them.^{[citation needed]} Some compare this to Chi, Ki or Pranha spiritual energy in the Japanese, Chinese and Indian traditions. Not only coals can be walked on. In medieval Europe hot chains, ploughshares and other metallic objects were reportedly heated up to a red hot temperature and employed.^{[citation needed]} More recently at a Tony Burkan seminar hundreds of people reportedly walked over a hot iron grate and their combined bodyweight permanently deformed the soft metal.^{[citation needed]} Tony Robbins also relates a similar experience in his seminars.

Although some skeptics have firewalked successfully claiming that they were not in a special mental state, upon closer inspection it appears that they actually did have an unusually strong sense of faith in the scientific method to the point that they were willing to risk a severe burn to "prove" it; which is a very similar mental state to the non-skeptics.^{[citation needed]} At most modern firewalking events, the great majority of participants pass over unscathed after spending some hours or days in mental preparation. Those that suffer injuries often put these down to losing concentration, focus, or a sudden lapse of faith.^{[citation needed]}