As published in Victoria, British Columbia’s Monday Magazine — City Life Section — June 26, 1997
by Ross Crockford
This is not a good time for a hangover. Here it is, the Saturday night of the solstice, and I’m standing before a carpet of hot coals, pulsing with demonic light like a tide of molten lava. Beneath the full moon, a crowd of strangers is huddled around me, egging me on, urging me to walk up the flaming path. My skull rings as they clap and shout in unison, Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Of all the ancient practices to make it into 1990s North America, one of the strangest has got to be firewalking. For centuries, Sufi mystics, Fijians, Kalahari bushmen and dozens of other sects and tribes have performed sacred rituals around fire. But in the 1980s, the self-help movement got hold of the firewalk, and thanks to TV guru Anthony Robbins, it’s become a full-blown trend. Now every year, thousands of people part with their cash for an experience they hope will change their lives.
So this particular Saturday, I venture out to a leafy retreat in far-flung Saanich to meet Fred Shadian, a Victoria martial arts teacher. As we pad around the grounds, he tells me that throughout time, people have used fire in ceremonies, believing that if they raise their spiritual energy to match the flames, they will emerge unscathed. He teaches ordinary people to do the same thing.
“We’ve been taught at if you touch something that’s hot, you’re going to get burned,” says Shadian.
“To a certain degree it’s true — but not completely. If you touch it with the right strategy, you can touch it successfully.”
Shadian first read about firewalking in the late 1980s; intrigued, he went to California to study from Tolly Burkan, the magician credited for bringing the ritual to this continent in 1977. “When I did the firewalk, a whole world opened up to me,” says Shadian. “I thought, ‘What’s next? What else can I do?” Testing his self-control, he mastered other metaphors bending metal bars across his throat, plunging needles through his hands.
Then he started running firewalks himself. Shadian estimates he’s walked the coals 500 times, and conducted about 40 seminars — many of them in hotel parking lots for realtors and other A-types, looking to hone a competitive edge.
Skeptics say there’s nothing magical about firewalking. The coals are so light and porous that they don’t conduct much heat, if a firewalker steps quickly, her feet will touch the coals for a fraction of a second at a time, not long enough to cause a burn.
But Shadian says it’s no gimmick: over the years he’s seen several people scorch their feet; he has, too. These people weren’t mentally ready — and that’s more important than thermodynamics. When someone ventures across a fire, they summon courage, and that’s when the big lessons are learned.
“It’s a pretty amazing experience,” says Shadian. “And then you take that same experience and you apply it to your everyday life.” Whenever people take on new challenges, he says, whether it’s a relationship or a job, they’re afraid of getting “burned.” But if they’ve firewalked, they know they can do things they never thought possible.
“I don’t hold anybody’s hand and pull them through the fire,” he says. “It’s their walk — it’s their life — and I’m there just to support them.”
It seems that’s why a lot of people have ponied up $95 to meet Shadian to use the ritual of firewalking to break through a personal impasse. One woman tells me she wants to learn how to control pain she suffers after two car accidents. A teacher confides that she wants to start a business, her only problem is a nagging voice telling her it won’t succeed. “If I can shut it up for five seconds,” she says, “I can shut it up forever.”
To prepare us, in a nearby tent Shadian leads us through a smorgasbord of exercises. He shows us how to ‘channel our vital energy’ into our arms and feet, using the Chinese practice of qi gong. He trains us to meditate. He asks some of my fellow travellers what they are seeking.
“I want to learn how to be centered,” says a shaved-headed guy, as weathered as a castaway.
“Why?”
“To achieve freedom.”
Freedom. A magical word, and one that keeps coming up as the afternoon passes into night. Maureen Freeman, an articulate woman with a cascade of red hair who’s organized the gathering, doesn’t find this strange.
“People are tired of being told they can’t do this and that, and what they can do is being taken away from them,” she says. “People want to take back their own power.”
So to convince ourselves of that power, Shadian tells us to scrawl our magic words on three-quarter-inch slabs of pine. Freedom. Abundance. Prosperity. Health. Shadian whips up the excitement in the room, encouraging a chant. Yes! Then he shows us how to drive the heel of an open palm through the plank.
The first time I try it, I’m calculating disability pensions in my head; I end up with a stinging slap against the board. Shadian tells me to focus past the wood, as if it’s merely an obstacle to my energy. CRACK! It works. Yes!
We are ready for the firewalk. A bonfire of cedar and alder has been raging for several hours; now Shadian shovels up its coals and spreads them out on a 12-foot sod runway. He winds us up — Yes!— and I get caught up in the hysteria and start clapping and whooping. A young woman strides across the glowing carpet and we all cheer.
Then it’s my turn. The coals crunch under me feet like popcorn; I smother them with each step. But they’re still hot, and I stride off the far end and yell with relief. No burns. It hurts more to walk barefoot on the woodchip path.
The firewalk’s clearly had an effect; back in the tent, everyone is chatting excitedly. A kid freshly graduated from high school dances around the room. “I’m so pumped!”
We all are. I catch a ride back into town with Judy, a medical secretary. On the way, she rattles off incredible stories from her distant youth, about her grandmother practising telekinesis at the kitchen table, her mom scolding her childhood experiments with out-of-body travel.