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!

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.