Barefoot walking on hot coal is an ancient religious ritual that has become popular in recent years as a corporate team building practice, reuniting a group of colleagues through the common suffering of burned feet.
In a recent case of unsuccessful stunts, 25 employees of a Swiss advertising agency were injured on Tuesday night while walking on hot coal in Zurich, officials said. 10 ambulances, 2 emergency medical teams, and police officers from multiple agencies according to Zurich police. Thirteen people were temporarily hospitalized.
“We are very sorry for this incident and we are doing everything we can to get our employees up and running quickly,” said Michi Frank, CEO of the company. GolbachSaid in a news release. The company refused to provide event details.
The feeling that a special inner state is needed to walk on burning coal motivated a shift from a mysterious spiritual tradition to a capitalist self-improvement project. This practice seems to have emerged separately as a religious tradition in various places around the language thousands of years ago.
In Greece, there is a tradition of singing, dancing and firewalking to commemorate the rescue of the icon from the burning church.There are also seemingly unrelated traditions Bari, Fiji, India And Japan.
Travel journalists sometimes popularized it in mysterious language. “The secret is concentration,” the New York Times reported in 1973 from a firewalking at a temple above Kyoto. “If the mind, body, or environment is in perfect harmony and all sequences of cause and effect occur at the same time, or not, nothing works.”
Since then, it has become a metaphor for film and television, especially as a representative group activity at seminars led by life coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
“Let’s show you how to walk on the fire,” Robins said. publication.. He makes a long line to walk a short line of burning coal, leading participants to a bloody phone call and a “Sayyes!” Answer. Yes! “
“The purpose of the firewalk,” he said. explanation At the 2017 event, “It’s just a great metaphor for picking up what you once thought was difficult or impossible and showing how quickly you can change.”
Sometimes the metaphor becomes a little too realistic. With dozens of participants walking on coal at the 2012 Robins Seminar 2016 Some were injured and hospitalized with three burns.
“Since then, the goal has always been to have no guests feeling uncomfortable, but it’s not uncommon for less than 1% of participants to experience a sunburn-like” hotspot “that can be treated with aloe,” a spokeswoman for Mr. Said. ..Robins Said The Washington Post after the 2016 episode.
Pop culture sometimes ridiculed the possibility of liberation of walking on fire. In 2007 episode NBC’s sitcom The Office’s Dwight Schlute tries to intimidate his boss Michael Scott by not crossing hot coal in a corporate hideout, but stands terribly on them until promotion is granted. It remains. In “Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls” (1995), Jim Carrey’s character is fringe Someone else is on top of them and stepping on him.
However, other depictions, including the finale of the first season of the 2000 CBS reality show Survivor, advertise the potential for spiritual change. In the process, reports of injuries are increasing. In 2001, 12 Burger King employees were injured in a corporate hideout in Kirago, characterized by walking on hot coal.
Was this a spiritual failure? It’s unlikely. With proper guidance and preparation, experts say walking on hot coal is not as dangerous as it looks.
“For the vast majority of people, perhaps your little fingernail-sized blisters are the worst thing you can do,” physicist David Willy said in a telephone interview Thursday.Willy, who has been teaching at the University of Pittsburgh for years, once share World record for the longest distance walked on hot coal.
Willy said it was safe to walk more than 20 feet of 1,000 degree coal, adding that he walked 495 feet of coal at that temperature without causing blister.
About him Website, He writes that active walking will bring your bare feet into contact with coal for just about a second. This is not enough time for heat to be painfully transferred from coal to human flesh. He said that both coal and crust have much lower thermal conductivity than, for example, metal.
However, mistakes can lead to injury. These include rolling the toes and trapping coal between the toes. Walk on coal that is too hot. Choose the wrong type of wood, as some will be hotter than others. Willy said he would firewalk on the beach where his feet could sink into the sand.
Thomy Widmer, the organizer of the event in Zurich, said: In an interview with the Swiss news agency Brick He said he warned participants to walk across the fire with clips like steady and quick “military steps” rather than “walking or jumping over” the fire. Mr Widmer said he was sorry for the injured and denied responsibility for the accident. “It could have been a great event,” he said.
Emma Bubora When Derrick Bryson Taylor Contributed to the report from London. Christopher F. Schutze Contributed to the report from Berlin.
