FIREWALKING

HISTORY

Firewalking is an ancient ritual that has practiced in numerous cultures around the world. There are indications that firewalking was practiced as much as 4,000 years ago, and there are references to firewalking dating to 1200 BCE.

The two major initiators of firewalking in the U.S. have been Tolly Burkan and Tony Robbins.

1948 – Tolly Burkan was born May 14 in New York City.

Tolly Burkan
• Suffered from suicidal urges during his early life and later staged a suicide,
moved to Los Angeles and assumed a new identity.
• He ultimately resumed his prior life but attempted suicide on two subsequent occasions.
• He began leading workshops in the human potential movement and reports healing himself of a tumor and then dedicating himself to healing others.
• He later encountered an old acquaintance and discovered firewalking serendipitously one evening when she removed her shoes and walked through the coals of a fire they had built.

1960 - Tony Robbins was born on February 29 in North Hollywood, CA.
Tony Robbins
• Tony Robbins began working for Jim Rohn, a motivational and business coach, when he was 18.
• He later learned and began teaching a controversial theraphy, neuro-linguistic programming, which he learned from its co-founder, John Grinder.

2001 - Robbins married Bonnie Humphrey (Sage Robbins) and fathered four children.

1977 - Scientific American printed a “how to” article on firewalking.

1978 - Organized firewalking in the U.S. was originated by Tolly Burkan

1979 - Burkan began incorporating firewalking into his personal growth seminars.

1982-1983 Burkan began to advertise his firewalking classes on a larger scale and refer to his movement as “The Global Firewalking Movement.”

1983 - Burkan taught Tony Robbins how to firewalk.. Robbins then decided to teach and spread the movement. Burkan begins leading seminars designed to teach others to lead firewalking movements.

1980s - Tolly Burkan established the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education. Entrepreneur Charles Horton, envisioned a “F.I.R.E. Certified Master Firewalk Instructors” after meeting Tolly Burkan to train and certify firewalking instructors.

1990-2000 - Firewalking caught the attention of large corporations as a way to empower visions in their employees, and Tony Robbins began to teach in corporate settings. Corporations such as Microsoft, American Express and Met-Life have included firewalking in their executive empowerment seminars.

2006 - The military contacted Tolly Burkan about teaching fire walking as part of basic training.

2008 - Dallas, Texas became the official location of the Firewalking Movement.

2008 - Tolly Burkan retired at age 61.

MYTH

Firewalking became fashionable in the New Age movement as one means of carrying out the project of self empowerment.

New Age mythology asserts that there is a higher, true self that exists beyond the currently existing self that individuals experience as their reality. A repressive, regimented social order is identified as obstructing individuals from realizing their true selfhood. The movement is concerned with transcending the apparent limits of human capacity.

New Age movement practitioners are drawn disproportionately from the white, urban dwelling, professional-managerial class.

Tolly Burkan
• Offers a physiologically based theory that postulates that the thought process releases “neuro-peptides” that alter brain chemistry.
• Positive and negative thoughts change brain chemistry, and hence body chemistry, in different ways.
If firewalk candidates believe they will be burned, he reasons, they will not step onto the coals. When firewalkers do take their first step, they must have already decided they will not be injured.
• Positive thought instantly alters practitioners’ body chemistry and physically protects them from the fire’s heat.
• The firewalk represents “a metaphor for all the challenges we usually shrink from.”

Tony Robbins
• Fear is the primary impediment to achieving personal goals.
• People are unable to express their full potential due to social and cultural constraints that translate into doubts and fears at an individual level.
• F.E.A.R. is nothing more than False Evidence Appearing Real.
• Getting past that fear and demonstrating that truth opens up new possibilities as individuals confront the “fires of everyday life.”
• Fear can be defeated through “neuro-linguistic programming,” which involves “embedded commands” that create a synergistic relationship between the conscious and unconscious. Embedded commands are used to eliminate anything limiting the individuals so that total personal power can be mobilized. Embedding commands can transform feelings and ideas virtually instantly.
• The basic premise of NLP is that the words we use reflect an inner, subconscious perception of our problems. If these words and perceptions are inaccurate, they will create an underlying problem as long as we continue to use and to think them. Our attitudes are, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

• When all aspects of the self are aligned, then an individual is in a “totally focused state” that he refers to as “congruency.”

RITUAL

The focus of Burkan’s workshops therefore becomes creating the confidence in participants to take that first step. Empowerment requires unleashing personal power and taking action.

Practitioners experience the danger that fire presents as a fire is built hours ahead of the firewalk and allowed to slowly dissolve into a bed of hot coals and ash that usually is raked out into a navigable surface.

Participant move into and begin to experience what they understand to be a state of empowerment that will allow them to transcend the danger that they confront.

In the case of Robbins firewalking seminars this involves training in “neuro-linguistic programming,” which will allow them to protect themselves from the fire.
• Participants look into one another’s eyes and embed commands asserting that they can be successful
• Participants continuously repeat to themselves that their bodies will do whatever is necessary to make the walk on fire possible.
• Participants motivate themselves by identifying the conditions that they wish to change in their lives.

Robbins increases the drama when he informs participants that he knows personally of a number of cases of severe burns and three cases of death in firewalks, although he also reassures them that these did not occur at his workshops.

Over the course of the preparation period practitioners move individually and collectively away from everyday reality and toward a state of focused attention on the moment that awaits them.

The momentum builds toward the moment when practitioners step onto the firebed. The tension is built on the recognition of danger presented by the fire and the sense of certainty that they are protected against that danger.

About 20 percent of participants decide not to make the firewalk.

CONTROVERSY

1995 - Robbins Research International (RRI) responded to charges by the Federal Trade Commission that it had misrepresented the potential earnings to franchise investors by agreeing to pay $221,260 in consumer compensation.

1998 - Wade Cook, who runs financial seminars sued Robbins for copyright infringement from his book, Wall Street Money Machine. He was awarded 651,000 in damages, but the order was later withdrawn.

The explanations that Burkan and Robbins have offered for firewalking ability have been contested by scientists who offer naturalistic explanations for the practice.