At a Firewalk Workshop

I’m writing this in a state of absolute and radical bliss. How did I get here? Well, I just walked over forty feet of red hot coals, without getting burned, and the experience... let’s just say that the experience was nothing short of amazing. My brain is literally flooded with endorphins right now, and I am in a profound state of peace – everything feels like it clicks, I’m in love with life, colors even look more saturated than normal. I can attest that the psycho-spiritual state you enter when you confront and overcome such a deeply rooted fear is indescribable. In fact, I’m writing all of this to make this state more concrete, so I can remember and cherish it.

But maybe I should start at the beginning, so I don’t sound like a complete loon. Earlier this week, I arrived at this “certification workshop” to become a firewalk instructor. Normally, someone would attend in a public firewalk event just to look, maybe try it once to see for themselves that it’s possible to walk over fire, and finally, after some mental preparation, take some sort of initiation or workshop, after rationally weighing the costs and benefits of what they were getting into. Not me. I decided to jump in at the deep end … signing up for the advanced instructor’s certification course with absolutely no preparation and never having seen a firewalk in person. Talk about taking the leap!

So here I am, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, in this rustic little town called Twain Harte. I’m sitting in a backjack on the floor of the clubhouse of the Lazy Z Ranch, which is adorned with the biggest moose head I’ve ever seen. Must have been eight or ten feet tall when he was alive, an impressive animal. During the summer, the Lazy Z is some sort of dude ranch, or maybe a hunting lodge. But during the off season, it becomes the opposite of a dude ranch – sort of a bliss farm, when it hosts a number of firewalk workshops. For me, it’s a new age summer camp – only it’s winter, and instead of relay races and archery, we’re learning how to break arrows, walk on broken glass, and walk on fire. Well, it isn’t all new age machismo... there’s the vegetarian food, and the morning yoga and tai chi session.

The workshop I’ve signed up for is taught by Peggy Dylan, who pretty much invented the art of modern firewalk in the 1980s. She’s a living legend in the New Age biz, having founded one of the leading educational resources for learning firewalk, Sundoor. Peggy and her legion of instructors have led hundreds of thousands of people through firewalks all over the globe, she’s appeared on shows like Good Morning America, and the school taught pretty much everyone in the firewalk business... like, for example, Tony Robbins. Soft spoken and unassuming, Peggy seemed at first like a suburban housewife, but twenty minutes into the first day of the workshop, it was clear that she was both a major figure in the personal transformation business, as well as a remarkable human being of extraordinary clarity, wisdom and depth.

So here I am, sitting in a half lotus, listening to her talk about the history of firewalk. She’s an adept speaker, easily switching from ethnographic studies by anthropologists to Mayan mythology to the neurophysiology of emotion. But everyone listening has something else in mind... yep, we’re pretty much scared stiff. You know, it doesn’t help when she tells us that the coals have been measured to be anywhere between 900 and 1200 degrees Fahrenheit. The only thing we can think is “what? with our bare feet?” Intuitively, Peggy gauges the tension in the room and reminds everyone to breathe. She continues to explain that it’s all about num (pronounced “noom”) – a word from the Kalahari Kung language similar to qi in Chinese and baraka in Arabic. If we can only “raise our num”, then it will protect us from that scorching heat. She then talks about how firewalking has been around for four thousand years, from Eastern Orthodox Christians in parts of Greece and Bulgaria during some religious feasts, to fakirs in India who live by begging and performance of extraordinary feats of physical endurance, to the Kung bushmen in the African Kalahari desert who use fire in their healing ceremonies, to young girls in Bali in a ceremony called Sanghyang Dedari – in which the girls are said to be possessed by beneficent spirits, to the Yamabushi sect in Japan – practitioners of Shugendo - an interesting mix of shamanism, Taoism and Buddhism, to Vikings who used to walk over red hot chains, to Hawaiian shamans who walk over molten lava. It’s one of the most prevalent phenomena throughout the world, and now it’s arrived in America and taught by motivational speakers!


[This is me, walking on fire.]

Suddenly, she changes the subject and brings out an arrow. It’s an arrow from your typical archery set, with a metal tip and plastic feathers. Asking us to watch carefully, she places the nock of the arrow in a board held by an assistant, and the sharp point of the arrow in the hollow of her throat, or in medical terms, “the last place you’d ever want to put the tip of an arrow”. She breathes, and then steps forward and the arrow shatters. Whoa, now that’s impressive. I’ve seen something similar done by qigong masters, but Peggy claims that just about any average person, with the right intention and focus, after “building up a little num”, can break the arrow. She then offers to let us try, and we do. And you know, once I get past the fear of being the first participant to die in her workshop of a skewered throat, I go for it, and bam! the arrow shatters and I get this blast of energy. It’s more than just adrenaline, I actually feel that num rising. The entire room feels the num rising.

Next, she brings out the steel rebar and... and... okay, let’s get something straight here. I’m not going to spoil the ending for you, just in case you take this workshop or do this work. Let’s just say that she brings out a length of steel rebar and does something with it and her trachea that seems to defy the laws of physics, or at least common sense. Once the rest of us are bending rebar, the energy is at a fever pitch, and Peggy starts giving us instructions for the firewalk. “Tell the truth about your fear! Walk like someone with a purpose! Keep your focus, keep that num flowing!” With those words, we walk down to the blazing remains of a third of a cord of wood, just down the hill.

Man, I gotta tell ya... standing in front of those red hot coals is one of those moments you’ll remember forever. It’s like an a guy with fear of heights, standing on a rooftop and looking over. Another moment you’ll never forget is the second you reach the other side. The fear is transformed into this amazing explosion of joy the moment you complete the walk, when something inside of you realizes that anything is possible.

Anything is possible. That was my goal, to teach my subconscious that anything is possible. The difference between a common and an uncommon life is courage and vision. What keeps us from doing the impossible, is simply the acceptance that the impossible is actually impossible. If every human being believed that flight is impossible, then the possibility of flight would not exist. You need to push beyond your limits, to see that the thing that stop us from achieving our goals is actually within ourselves. Like the idea that you can’t break an arrow with your throat, or you can’t walk on broken glass without getting cut, or you can’t walk on fire. And so, I took this workshop as a way to teach my deeper self how to transcend my deepest fears – the ones buried in my medulla oblongata, the deeply held limitations lodged deeply within my primal subconscious. I took this workshop to understand the technology of human miracles and to program and encode the fundamental blueprint of breakthrough into my body, into my bones, into my genes.

So when you’re made it to the other side… or in my case a half dozen times… you start asking yourself, “how the heck does this work?” I mean, I used to be a physicist – and one trained at Caltech, so I know all the theories – heat conductivity rates for ash versus water, the Leidenfrost effect, what have you... well, all I can say is that about half the class suffered burns as we pushed our limits, so it's definitely not a trick. In fact, one famous physicist a decade ago set out to prove that it was a trick, but ended up burning his feet quite badly.

My guess is that the answer isn’t black or white. My guess is that all of the physics are actually right, to an extent. But when you watch a Hawaiian shaman walk across molten lava, it’s hard to believe that it’s just a trick. I believe that firewalking is a skill, a skill for entering an altered state of consciousness. And as a skill, beginners are not as good at it as advanced practitioners. It requires an expert firewalker to walk on hot glowing metal, just like it requires an expert martial artist to break a dozen bricks or boards. So a beginner’s firewalk is explainable by physicists, but not the expert firewalk.

Anyway, back to the workshop. This was only the first evening. Over the rest of the weeklong process, we confronted a series of escalating challenges, from breaking arrows and bending steel rebar with our throats, to breaking boards and walking over about 15 feet broken glass, to a series of firewalks. For me, breaking boards held great meaning. I’ve studied martial arts for about thirty years, and one of my teacher’s teacher was Bruce Lee. He once said this great line in his film Enter the Dragon... “Boards don’t hit back.” Anyway, when I shifted broadened my study of arts like Wing Chun to internal systems like Tai Chi Ch’uan and qigong, the practice of board and brick breaking was discouraged because it “inhibited” qi flow. I can remember my teacher admonishing me, “Breaking boards is stupid. And your qi gets blocked. Will cause problems later.”

And so, it was with great relish that I broke my first board. It was like… coming home. The entire room felt the energy as we all took turns breaking pine boards like karate teachers at a karate convention. You just breathe, and visual that the board is made of peanut brickle, not wood. And it breaks pretty easily, yielding a delicious sense of accomplishment. I'll definitely put arrow breaking and board breaking in my innovation workshops in the future.

Walking on broken glass deserves a special discussion. Instead of lifting the energy, it’s a meditation. The simple truth is that it looks dangerous, but if you approach it with the right mindset, not only is it possible, but it’s an amazing meditative experience as well. The reality is that our feet, through millions of years of evolution, are pretty good at avoiding and withstanding cuts. When you do the glass walk, you simply place your foot on some glass... and feel. If you feel something sharp, you don’t put your weight on it. You lift it and place it somewhere else that isn’t sharp. If it feels safe, you put on your weight on it, and move onto your next foot. Once you take a couple of steps into the bed of broken glass and shards, this amazing wave of focus quietly overtakes you.

For me, the glass walk felt like an episode of Kung Fu... you know, the David Carradine television show from the 70s? I could hear, in my mind’s ear, a small boy asking the blind abbot, “Master, how is it that you can walk over broken glass?” And the master replies, “Ah, grasshopper, how is it that you cannot?” Like walking on rice paper and leaving no mark, walking on glass requires great sensitivity and concentration. And you have to teach yourself to trust your intuition. Walking on broken glass is so good for creating mindfulness that one of Peggy’s students built a 30 foot glasswalk in his home and walks it every morning as a meditation. It occurred to me that I mountain bike for the same reason – it requires focus, because the instant you lose focus, you fall off and hurt yourself. Gravity is a wise and effective teacher.


[This is me, walking over a bed of broken glass.]

After my first walk, for some reason, I realized that I run my business like I do a glass walk. I put some energy into a particular product or market, and then I feel it. The better I can be in tune to make adjustments, the easier it is to avoid getting cut. And I do it slowly, one step at a time, with what may seem like infinite patience. Several months ago, I felt the U.S. economy weaken and we began to focus on international sales ahead of the competition. As a result, I was keynoting at a major global conference ahead of the competition and grabbed the limelight just as our domestic accounts started announcing cutbacks and layoffs. All you can do is focus, place, feel, adjust, move forward. One step at a time – with grace and ease and perfect mindfulness.

Back to firewalking. One evening during the workshop, we were instructed to spend some time alone with fire, and I realized that it was – for me – the missing fifth element. Many years ago, an acupuncturist told me that I had an excess of water energy, and that it would be good for me to live in the desert, because I needed more fire energy. I realized that I deeply enjoyed my relationship with other elements, like air, water, earth and metal. In my qigong practice, I regularly do qigong at the ocean. Usually, when I start, a stiff ocean wind will begin, and I meditate as the air heals and cleanses me. And once I get in a hot tub, I can’t help but allow the water to nourish and heal me. And don’t get me started around metal! Technology is metal energy, and I’ve learned how to relate to it and use it and create miracles with it. But fire… I simply haven’t had much of a relationship with fire. And then it dawned on me that our civilization, since the Industrial Revolution, has lost connection to fire. Fire used to keep us warm, protect us from the dark or night, taught us how to cook… Human beings used to gather around the fire to share stories and relate the details of the hunt and comfort us through a long chilly night. But when we moved into cities, we lost our connection to fire. So during this week, I learned how to draw energy from fire as a qigong practice, to balance and heal.

In fact, during the event, some light was shed on the potential of firewalk for healing. Remember I was telling you about photo night? It’s the one night that photos are encouraged. And sure enough, the instant the flashes starting happening, I lost focus and zap! (When you get a blister, Peggy calls it a fire kiss.) So the next day, when the questions turn to the subject of burns, Peggy hands out a reflexology chart. She explains that the energy that protects our feet, like an electromagnetic field, is stronger at certain points and weaker at others. She invited us to examine our blisters and burns in this context.

What you have to know is that a few weeks before this workshop, I was in Cairo, Egypt to see the pyramids, and picked up a case of amoebic dysentery. I was floored by that little protozoa for a couple of weeks, as it tried to turn me into a mummy – slowly dehydrating me and attacking my intestines. No wonder they call it the Pharoah’s Revenge. I eventually needed some antibiotics to kill this bug, but my energy was depleted, especially around my intestines and solar plexus. And sure enough, my one blister correlated to the reflexology point for the intestinal system and solar plexus. It wasn’t just me, the other students were saying this was true for them as well. I then realized that firewalking is similar to moxabustion, the Chinese art of healing with heat. What’s more, the blister is actually part of the healing process, providing a means for releasing the “bad qi” and absorbing the heat of the fire into the meridians.

Anyway, back to the firewalk. After the photo shoot walk and the private time walk, Peggy provides a true challenge. Don’t get me wrong, every firewalk is a fresh challenge, but the Sundoor school does know how to up the stakes. Again, I don’t want to spoil the surprise for anyone who is planning to take a Sundoor workshop… so stop reading now if you intend to take one of Peggy’s workshops someday. For everyone else, I’ll simply let the cat out of the bag, and tell you that the “graduation” ceremony for instructors is a forty foot firewalk. By midweek, I’d gotten my fire legs – sort of like sea legs, but on a fire – by walking over a normal firepit of about ten or twelve feet over twenty or so times. But a forty foot bed of red hot coals is another matter entirely.

There are only a couple of times I remember being that anxious. One particularly memorable instance was when I foolishly agreed to go biking with a professional mountain biker. It isn’t until you ride with a pro that you realize just how chickenshit you really are and just how insane he is. Anyway, he takes me on this trail that consists of several hair-raising cascades of loose rocks that you have to ride at full speed to keep from falling, which ended with cliffs that you have to brake hard or you go over. And die. I found that the only thing you could do while flying down these hills at 30-40 mph was scream in joy. Anyway, standing at the top of that particular mountain and looking down was roughly equivalent to a forty foot firewalk.

I was at the Sundance Film Festival once – I’m trying to break into the film business as a director – and I heading for this posh Hollywood party one night. It’s very cold in Park City, and I was slogging my way through three feet of snow toward the front door, when a limo parks in front of me and an actress pops out in nothing but an LBD… that’s a little black dress. So I ask her how the hell she can handle the freezing cold in that sliver of a dress, delicious as it may be, and she looks at me with perfect focus as she points her forefingers at her temples and chants to me, “Mind over matter. Mind over matter!”

Yep, that first step over into the forty foot fire walk required true faith and drew every bit of potential out of me for mind over matter. All the adrenaline channels into num, and then I walk. It’s funny... you just walk. During those moments, there is nothing but walking. Even if you get burned, you can’t imagine jumping off your track, because there is nothing but the goal, the destination, the end of the walk. There isn’t any fire anymore. No fire. No worry. No thoughts about the physics. No you. And suddenly, you’re there. Once you arrive at the end of the walk, once you step off the firepit… you know in your bones that anything is possible. Really. Annnnnnything.

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I’m indebted to the Peggy Dylan and her team of instructors, as well as my terrific team mates who are the Class of 2008 Sundoor Firewalk Instructors, for their support and energy in what has been one of the greatest inner adventures of my life.