Firewalking

The following is an article written by a participant after attending the August 4, 2006 firewalk.

OUT OF THE PAN AND INTO THE FIRE

For reasons ever to remain a mystery, I can vividly recall the day's weather of each memorable event in my life. As such, damp winter mornings invariably remind me of my father's funeral. Overcast summer days take me back to my wedding. The hottest of summer nights put me squarely at 14 years old, fishing for bullhead on Saratoga Lake. Most poignantly, breezy autumn afternoons force me to recall the coincidental fluke that every heartbreak I ever suffered occurred during fall's twilight hours when the leaves were all ablaze. Perhaps correlating my life's chapters to the cyclical patterns of our natural world is my memory's way of assisting itself. At any rate, of that which I am blessed/cursed with retaining, I can tell you with absolute certainty what the physical conditions were and whether the sun, stars and/or moon chose to witness the folly.

And so, on the evening of August 4th the moon was a waxing gibbous, and looked magnificent as it began to creep over the horizon like an eager spectator for the event I am to describe. A more perfect summer evening you could not have summoned. Just a tickle of a breeze, the humidity was not overly oppressive, and only a few clouds to sparsely adorn the sky with a pink and orange hue. I remember the weather and the moon; for this was to be no ordinary day.

I was one of 25 brave souls who gathered at a location in southwestern Vermont to participate in a fire walk. But the bravery of which I speak had nothing to do with the actual strolling over a bed of red embers, as much as it had to do with examining and changing how you see yourself and the situations life gives you. Driving out, I tried to imagine what walking across fire would feel like. It came as quite a surprise that the personal reflection you bring to the experience would turn out to be the real scorcher. Sounds easy? Think again.

Once arriving at the specified location, I am required to sign a liability waiver, reminding me that we're "playing with fire." Trying not to think too much about it, I quickly throw my signature down and make an effort to mingle with other participants who emanated both nervousness and excitement.

The workshop was presented by Stephanie Foy, a certified Sundoor fire walk instructor. Stephanie also provides a variety of other physical and spiritual services . Her relentlessly positive and cheerful attitude went a long way to put people at ease, many of whom were wondering just what exactly they were about to get themselves into.

Once everyone arrived, we gathered into a building to begin the 4 hour session. We sat in a circle as candles illuminated the center; a simple yet elegant atmosphere and a constant symbolic reminder of what we were to be about that evening. We listened intently as Stephanie told us about the many cultures that participated in this ancient practice; recognizing fire's symbolic and literal ability to transform anything with which it comes in contact.

We sang a couple songs to get us in the spirit, and proceeded to walk down a torchlight path to a grassy lawn where the fire would be assembled. At this point, we were told to go off by ourselves for a few moments to give some reflection to what we sought to change in ourselves as a course of doing this. So now, we're sitting alone in a garden, listening to the birds as we deal with the rather surprising and uncomfortable aspect of having to take this internal inventory. Each of us knows where our skeleton's are buried, and we usually do a pretty good job of surviving the day by keeping them hidden; even to ourselves. But now they are being summoned to forefront of our mind.

We re-convene and began to assemble the logs in a required pattern under Stephanie's watchful eyes. When complete, the structure stood approximately three foot high and the diameter of two king-size beds. We lit the blaze with small torches, and in seconds the fire was raging as was our intimidation level. The gibbous was now well above the trees in order to get a better view; no doubt looking down with much more than idle curiosity.

Returning to our building, we paired up for a bit speaking with each other about the various obstacles in our lives, and what we might be like without them. While this is hardly the thing you would share with a stranger on a subway, the commonality of our purpose made the interaction easy. By this time, it was quite evident that "we weren't in Kansas anymore;" and found ourselves in the midst of a rare opportunity to effect some change in our life; if we had the moxy to set it in motion. A subsequent meditation period put each of us squarely at that crossroads.

Word came from outside that the fire was ready, and for us to make our way to the blaze. The fire tenders had done their job well, as they danced around what now looked to be a scene straight out of Dante's "Inferno", raking it down in the intense heat. A glowing bed of red lay before us. Were we really ready to let the old definitions of ourselves "go up in flames?"

"Shiva Shiva Shiva Shambo, Maha Deva Shambo" was a phrase from a song we would sing as we circled the fire for the next 40 minutes to the accompaniment of several drummers who dutifully kept the energy's rhythm going. We were instructed not to walk until we really felt the time was right. We were also given some "other things" to keep in our mind while we crossed (and you'll have to go do this for yourself if you want to find out what they are). Like the first bird in a flock that decides that it's time to head south for the winter, a woman in the group sensed it was her time to cross over. She calmly approached the fire bed and walked across with the look of purpose and intention to the celebration and applause of everyone else.

Five minutes later, I too heard something whispering to me, "Go now." As I walked across the bed, I found myself less concerned with the physical realities as I was envisioning that the person I wanted to be was just on the other side. The beauty of the practice, I discovered, lie in letting the fire become more than merely a symbolic catalyst for change; but actually permitting yourself to believe that you can use that moment to redefine yourself.

My "normal self" was screaming, "what in God's name are you doing walking into that fire barefoot?" But looking back after I had crossed, I was pleasantly stunned that I had not been burned. The seemingly impossible was just that - seemingly! The celebration over the next 40 minutes was tremendous; as we repeatedly crossed over and over alone, together with friends, families, partners, sometimes skipping and even dancing. Each pass shattered the million rationalizations behind the words "I can't." I was also able to leave some less desirable parts of me in those coals, like someone watching a town fade away in their rear-view mirror as they leave it for the last time - in search of their future.

After the ceremony I realized that I did manage to get one tiny burn -- "a kiss" as it's called, behind the ball of my right foot, but by the time I woke up the next morning it was gone. I felt like I had joined a fraternity/sorority that shared a wonderful knowledge. If you bring the right intention to it, fire walking can truly be a "baptism of fire".

You'll never ever believe you can do it until you actually walk across it for yourself. Read all the self-help books you want, and intellectualize notions until you're blue in the face. But I'm tellin' you - if you really want to redefine what's possible in your life, go find Stephanie Foy and do a fire walk. But know this well ahead of time - you won't be the same afterward. And you'll not soon forget the weather that day, or if the moon and the stars chose to get a glimpse of your transition

Women on fire

The women of the Appenzel area of Switzerland getting their right to vote in 1991 .

The dark clouds rend apart like gossamer fabric being torn by an invisible hand, allowing the full moon to paint silver on the alpine glaciers. One hundred fifty women gathered, circled, drums beating like hearts, breath steaming in the midnight air.

The fire burned in our midst, a big fire, a strong fire, red like our blood, strong like our desire for healing, our desire for a world where our children could walk in safety and beauty.
The first firewalk in Switzerland. Swiss women standing in a circle, hearts on fire, on a meadow in the Alps, held by a larger circle of mountains all around us. I began to rake out the coals. Sparks flew, joining the stars in a swirling symphony of movement.

Stopped and looked at the faces, features so distinct in the firelight, mirroring disbelief, hope, anticipation and, running through all of it, an open trusting in the possibility of the miraculous. It brought tears to my eyes. I was raised in Switzerland when women did not have the right to vote. The last area, a mountainous region called the Appenzel, finally surrendered in 1991 when thirty women sued for the right to have a voice in their own destiny.

To stand in that circle of women was a gift for me, to be able to give back to the country of my youth, to be able to empower the feminine here in these mountains which inspired me, nourished, comforted and challenged me.

Many major shifts in the collective conception of spirituality occurred in Switzerland. Calvinism and Lutheranism, the first major breaks with the Catholic Church, began here in the Middle Ages. Carl Jung lived in the same town I did and his dream analysis changed our perception of our relationship to our unconscious. I had my first experience of self-realization while living here, which fueled my exploration of consciousness and my teaching, and finally led me to firewalking in 1982.

Despite my previous experiences of illumination, my work with Western teachers and mystics in India, and my forages into shamanism in both North and South America, when I walked on fire for the first time I felt such a shift, an opening of a door to unexplored possibilities, that I knew I had to make it more widely available. I began a partnership, which was the catalyst for spreading the firewalk in the West. We began an incredible journey with the fire, learning about its healing capacities and its demand for respect and focus. We also began training instructors in order to make the firewalk as widely available as possible.

"People who have that spiritual connection, especially women, now need to embrace this world and bring our tenderness and our perspective to it. The firewalk teaches us how."

In Peruvian shamanism the spiritual path is symbolized by three animals: the snake, the puma and the condor. The snake stands for shedding our past, the puma for physical plane mastery and, in the stage of the condor, we spread our spiritual wings. The firewalk is the best puma practice I've found, teaching us to use our untapped energy with previously unimagined results.
I have continued my adventure with the fire through my trainings, as I see that the focus of the puma is missing in many wanderers on this Path of spirit. People who have that spiritual connection, especially women, now need to embrace this world and bring our tenderness and our perspectives to it. The firewalk teaches us how.

I feel deeply honored to be credited with being the originator of the Western firewalking movement, and at all times want to acknowledge the richness of its heritage. This ancient ritual has been used for thousands of years, in intense healing rituals accompanied by wild drumming under African skies, to soft droning chants in the Himalayas as monks walk 108 times across the glowing coals. In Fiji the girls walked supported by their clan as initiation rights to womanhood, here in North America both the Zuni and Cherokee walked on coals in secret rituals and the Kahunas, the mystics of the Hawaiian Islands, walked on lava affirming their love for Pele, the Goddess of the land and fire.

"Firewalking has always been practiced in the context of spiritual, emotional or physical healing. It is as powerful and inexplicable today as it was in pre-history."

Science has attempted to explain it with varied success. They've come up with answers both plausible and absurd: from calluses and sweat on the bottom of the feet to the lack of conductivity of the coals. The best explanation I've heard comes from the !Kung, the Bush people of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, whom I consider master firewalkers. At the conclusion of their all night rituals, which include circle-dances around the fire and chanting, walking and dancing through the fire and rubbing the coals on their bodies to generate the healing heat, they practice laying on of hands with results that Western medicine would consider a miracle.

The !Kung say what makes firewalking possible is when our n/um equals the n/um of the fire. The best translation for n/um I've found is energy. When our energy equals the energy of the fire we can walk safely on it. When our energy equals the challenge at hand, be it illness, relationship, environmental disaster or emotional despair, the real firewalks of our lives, when our energy is equal to the energy bound up in the task at hand, change or healing will occur.

I wish the scientific community would desist in attempting to debunk the firewalk and would put its wealth of resources into exploring the truly intriguing question: How do we generate this energy, this n/um, which makes firewalking possible, puts cancer into remission, inspires and uplifts, and how can we focus that energy to achieve our desired outcomes in life? After leading thousands across the coals I have observed that after a firewalk, when people have done something they previously thought impossible, that impetus allows them to break through barriers in other arenas where accomplishment previously seemed impossible. I also attribute the unusual capacity for healing and change and the energy level people experience at the conclusion of a firewalk to the fact that we are stepping into a tradition which has been practiced by shamans, priests, healers, medicine people and people in ecstatic states since before recorded history. These people have established a relationship to firewalking in the collective unconscious of the human race, which we access when crossing the coals, allowing the door between realities to open, and the wondrous to occur.

There was a woman recently who came to her second firewalk. She had originally walked with a student of mine. She had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis since she was a child and had been on pain killers since the onset of her illness. The night after the walk was the first she slept through without waking to take the pills, she has been pain free since and the doctors say her arthritis is in remission. She says it is healed. This is but one story out of thousands professing to the healing capacities of the fire. The firewalk is a perfect symbol for our times when it seems like the fires of life are burning out of control.

We women have a tendency to pull back from physical challenges, to recoil from the horrors currently facing the human race. This is not a time when we can afford to pull away. We need to step out and bring our balance to this world so thirsty for the feminine perspective.

The firewalk tells us to step into the fire, that hesitation is the robber that fear steals away power. If we but step into the fires in our lives, we will be given the energy, the power, the n/um to overcome, to heal, to soothe those fires that seem presently so uncontrollable to us. The last of the clouds seem to be swept away, a few linger on the mountains behind us, the glaciers shine in the moonlight. A blanket of stars spans the sky. I have raked the coals, the wind blows across the bed fanning the embers into a path of gems in the dark. Anticipation, n/um, growing steadily in the women around me as the drums are now joined by song. A young mother steps forward, approaching the fire, a baby tied to her breast in a colorful cloth. Another woman reaches out offering to take her child so she can walk uninhibited, and then realizes she Intends to walk with her child.

The singing intensifies; all eyes are on mother and child, all hearts with them. Then the young mother steps onto the fire and walks with quiet confidence the length of the coal bed. At the far end she bends her head and kisses her child, a young mother who in her lifetime saw the Swiss women gain the power to vote, affirms for her child a world where she can grow up without fear and walk in beauty and grace. At that moment there is complete confidence that we have the capacity to bring balance and harmony back to the human race. The fire, this element of change and transformation, has once again heard our prayers. The group explodes in joy and women laugh, embrace and walk and dance hand in hand across the fire, a wild celebration of our innate capacity to overcome obstacles, our unbelievable strength and tenacity when it comes to living, and the tender delight in being woman.

By: Peggy Dylan

Bosnia

Article by Peggy Dylan

Your vision is our vision, we will not forget!

"I don't want to forget, no matter how terrible... I will never forget. The world needs to know. We can not keep silent, this is how the Jewish people are making sure that what happened in Germany will never happen again. We must do the same, we must speak out!" A young man with a strong chin spoke, his eyes blazing. "Yes!" called another, "we are a people who always say: let's not look at it, we are strong, let's just go on and ignore the past. So then every 50 years we repeat history and have another war."

I was uncertain how my unconventional and reality shattering work would be received by this group, who had never done or heard of anything similar. Quite honestly, as a group they were dealing with challenges, both due to the horrors of their past and the culture they live in, which we here can hardly imagine. Their initial skepticism was to be expected, but as we proceeded their doubt started to turn to excitement. My heart expanded as young person after young person stepped up with determination and enthusiasm to participate in the challenges I gave them and were obviously grasping the concepts I was sharing with them.

A slight mist lifted from the lake and the almost full moon shone through the trees as we headed for the fire. The fire had been burning to coals for two hours and was hot as I raked it out. All fires differ in temperature and I had hoped for one that was a bit easier to walk on. Years of experience have taught me that the hotter the fire the more energy is needed to walk it. Members of a tribe from southeast Africa, whom I consider master firewalkers, say that the human energy has to equal the energy of the fire to walk it successfully. In my experience this holds true. As I raked out the fire I mused about the challenges ahead for these kids as they return home, the amount of energy it will take to meet their intent of changing the pattern of war their culture has been steeped in for centuries. The hot fire was an appropriate reflection of the challenges ahead.

I stepped back form the fire, it was ready: a glowing path of coals stretched out in front of me, symbolizing our capacity to overcome our fears and limitations, to reach into a part of ourselves we did not know we have and do what most people consider impossible. For these young people it was a declaration that a war would never be fought in their country again. The drumming started and two young men approached the fire.

Both of them had been very vocal in the morning session, almost competitive with each other, one insisting on change, the other mired in the hopelessness of the situation. They held hands drawing strength from each other, knowing that the only way they could bring about peace was to do it together, not caring if the other was Serb, Croat or Muslim, feeling that their desire for peace was stronger than their differences. They stood there in front of the hot coals knowing that to face the fires of their lives, both the memories and the reality of what was waiting for them at home, they needed to draw strength from others with the same vision. They stood for a few moments and then they squeezed each other's hands, a slight smile spread on their faces and they walked across the fire. Wild celebration erupted from the other kids as they joined in the firewalking and danced wildly to the drumming. I leaned on my rake and watched as they invited one another to walk, to dance, to skip across the fire. I saw fear turn to joy, doubt to hope, and pain dissolve as these young people touched on and remembered their capacity and the beauty of being fully alive.

The next morning I was walking the damp trail from my cabin to the main hall for breakfast when I felt a slight tug on my sleeve which brought me back from my reverie about the immensity of what these kids were wanting to do. "Please...just a minute", a slight voice said and I turned to find the slender blond girl holding my sleeve. "Thank you...I have no words...", she stumbled in her halting English and then continued, "the past is healed, I feel such joy, I am alive and so I can make our dreams real... with my friends...we can do anything!" She fell into my arms and gave me a long hug then skipped off to breakfast. I did not make it to breakfast that morning, I stumbled to a rock at the edge of the lake, tears blurring my vision. I sat there, the fresh wind blowing my hair and the water lapping at the edge of the rock, looking out over the lake to other islands in the distance. I sat on that rock feeling touched to the core and deeply grateful. I prayed that the gifts we had brought would be enough.

Yesterday, as if in response to my prayer I received an e-mail from a young woman who had firewalked with me when she was just out of high school and is almost thirty now. "Thank you", she writes, "it was one of the most powerful and profound experiences I ever had. I have never been the same since and it has carried me through countless trials." Our blessings go with the young Bosnians who are heading home to face the fires of their lives. Our prayers are with you and we want you to know we will not forget. We will not forget what has been, nor the strong dreams which you have chosen to now make so. You have given us all a gift in your willingness to dream big dreams despite tremendous challenges, our prayers are with you, as we all do what we can to make that big dream a reality for the whole planet.

Your vision is our vision, we will not forget.