Firewalking

Firewalking 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 currently used in modern motivational seminars. In modern times it is a contentious issue that the mental or spiritual state of participants is of crucial importance for them not to be burned .

Application

Firewalking is practiced

• by fakirs and similar persons,
• in management seminars and motivational seminars, such as those conducted by Anthony Robbins, Tolly Burkan, and Dale Beaumont
• 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. 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."

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.

Therefore, while firewalking is explained with simple physics, there are still hazards. Notably in 2002, 20 managers of the KFC fast food chicken in Australia received treatment for burns caused by firewalking.

Andrew Weil, a noted physician believes there is more than simple physics determining whether or not someone is burned. Weil says, "my experience has convinced me that the only variable is the mind set of the firewalker." However, others, such as David Willey professor of physics argues that there is nothing supernatural. Notably, in 1998 Willey and John Stossel took part in the the "world's longest firewalk" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at 150 feet, and was aired on The Power of Belief (TV).

Records

Previously, the "world's longest firewalk" record was held by Sarah Raintree (120'), David Willey (150'), Gary Shawkey (167'), Amanda Dennison (220'). Currently, Scott Bell holds the record at 340', set in China in 2007.

See also

• Fire eating

External links

• Firewalking from Skeptic's Dictionary
• howstuffworks.com on firewalking
• Can you walk on hot coals in bare feet and not get burned? from The Straight Dope
• The Physics and Fantasy of Firewalking - by Robert Novella
• Firewalking site with FAQs, history, photo gallery