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Walking barefoot on coals, an ancient religious ritual that has become popular as a corporate team-building exercise in recent years, has once again connected a group of coworkers with the shared affliction of burnt feet.
Officials said 25 employees of a Swiss advertising agency were injured while walking over hot coals in Zurich on Tuesday evening if the last stunt went wrong. Ten ambulances, two emergency medical teams, and police officers from multiple agencies were deployed to assist. by Zurich police. Thirteen people were briefly hospitalized.
“We are deeply sorry for the incident and are doing everything we can to ensure that our employees recover as soon as possible,” said Michi Frank, the company’s CEO. Golbach, he said in a news release. The company declined to provide further details about the event.
The sense that walking on burning coals required a special inner state motivated its transformation from a mystical spiritual tradition to a capitalist project of self-development. It is seen that the practice emerged as a religious tradition in various parts of the world thousands of years ago.
In Greece, tradition includes singing, dancing and walking on fire. commemorates Recovering icons from a burning church. There are also seemingly unrelated traditions Bali, Fiji, India and Japan.
Travel journalists popularized it, sometimes in mystical terms. The New York Times, “The secret is concentration” reported From a fire march in a temple above Kyoto in 1973. “Either the mind, body, and environment are in perfect harmony and all the sequences of cause and effect are synchronized, or they are not, and nothing will go right.”
It has since become a trope in movies and on television, particularly as a signature group event at seminars led by life coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
“Now let me show you how to walk on fire,” said Mr. Robbins. announce. A blood-curdling call of participants and “Say yes!” He organizes long lines of people to walk over burning coals, while leading the response. and yes!”
“The Purpose of the Fire Walk” announced At one 2017 event, “it’s a great metaphor for taking what you once thought was difficult or impossible and showing how quickly you can change.”
Sometimes the metaphor gets a little too real. Dozens of attendees walking on coals at Robbins seminars 2012 and 2016 injured, some hospitalized with third-degree burns.
“The goal is always for the guest to be free of discomfort afterward, but it’s not uncommon for less than 1 percent of respondents to experience sunburn-like ‘hot spots’ that can be treated with aloe,” he said. . said After The Washington Post, 2016 episode.
Pop culture has sometimes mocked the liberating potential of walking on fire. in 2007 episode Dwight Schrute from the NBC sitcom “The Office” tries to blackmail his boss, Michael Scott, by not over the hot coals during a corporate retreat, instead he tortures them until he gets a promotion. In “Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls” (1995), Jim Carrey’s character coals only launching someone else above them and stepping on him.
However, other portrayals praised its potential for spiritual transformation, including the first season finale of the CBS reality show “Survivor” in 2000. Along the way, injury reports have increased. in 2001 a dozen Burger King employees were injured A corporate retreat that involves walking on hot coals in Key Largo.
Was it a spiritual failure? Not likely. Experts say that with proper instruction and preparation, running over hot coals is not as dangerous as it seems.
“For the vast majority of people, a bubble the size of maybe your little fingernail is the worst thing that can happen to you,” physicist David Willey said in a phone interview Thursday. Mr. Willey, who taught for years at the University of Pittsburgh, once shared World record for longest distance traveled on coals.
Mr. Willey said it was safe to walk 20 feet or more above 1,000-degree coals, adding that he had walked 495 feet on coals at this temperature without swell.
on it Web sitewrites that on a brisk walk your bare feet come in contact with the coal for about a second, which isn’t enough time for the heat to be painfully transmitted from the coals to the human flesh. He said both the coals and the shell have much lower thermal conductivity than metal, for example.
However, mistakes can cause injury. These include curling your toes and squeezing a charcoal between them; walking on very hot coals; choosing the wrong type of wood, as some are warmer than others; and a fire walk on a beach where your feet can sink into the sand, said Mr Willey.
Thomy Widmer, organizer of the event in Zurich, said: In an interview with Swiss news outlet Blick He said he warned participants not to “run or jump” over the fire, but instead to go over it with a steady, quick “military step”-like clip. Mr Widmer said he felt sorry for everyone injured but denied he was responsible for the accident. “It could have been a great event,” he said.
Emma Bubola and Derrick Bryan Taylor Contributed to reporting from London. Christopher F. Schuetze Contributed to reporting from Berlin.
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