Tolly Burkan Explained

Tolly Burkan
Birth Date:	May 17, 1948
Birth Place:	New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation:	Firewalker Magician

Tolly Burkan, also known as Bruce Burkan, (born May 17, 1948 in New York City) is a firewalker and former magician.^{[1] [2]} He is part of the Human Potential Movement.^[1] He is also the founder of the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education.^[3]

Biography

During the 1970s, Burkan created a firewalking class and began teaching firewalking to the general public.^[4] In the 1980s, he started working with large corporations and began training instructors.^[5]

Burkan's disappearance from Asbury Park, New Jersey and his subsequent reappearance two months later, after a memorial service, was the subject of national news in 1967.^{[6] [7]} Although he would explain in his book Dying to Live and in news stories years later ^[8] that he had run away from home for two months, the incident would continue to be cited in pseudoscience books as "still unexplained" and evidence of alien abduction ^[9] or teleportation ^[10]

Bibliography

• Extreme Spirituality
• Let It Be Easy
• Dying to Live: From Despair and Death to Freedom and Joy
• Guiding Yourself Into a Spiritual Reality^[11]

Further reading

• News: Carey. Art. A guru's guide to fire walking and forgiving. The Philadelphia Inquirer. 1 May 2002. D01.
• Beth Ann Drier, "The Curious Hot Foot It to a New Fad," Los Angeles Times, 11 April 1984, pt. 1, 1.
• News: Chipello. Christopher. If Past-Life Trauma Has Got You Down, Firewalk May Help. Wall Street Journal. 18 April 1989. A1–A2.
• USA Today 4-2-90 Page 1, Section D

External links

• • National Geographic
• Loring M. Danforth, Firewalking and Religious Healing: The Anastenaria of Greece and the American Firewalking Movement, Princeton University Press
• ABC Science article
• Discovery Channel
• Edwards, Emily D. “Firewalking: A Contemporary Ritual and Transformation.” TDR 42 (1998): 98-114.—analysis of Burkan's seminars
• Mythbusters - Firewalking 101
• "The Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena"

Notes and References

1. Web site: Firewalking hot trend in Southern California - UPI Archives. UPI.
2. Book: Vilenskaya, Steffy. Larissa, Joan. Firewalking: A New Look at an Old Enigma. December 1991. Bramble Co. 0962618438. 253. First. registration.
3. Web site: Rare feat. Tampa Bay Times.
4. HEALING STATESby Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D. and Stanley Krippner, Ph.D.Simon & Schuster 1987
5. "ANCIENT ART IS A HOT EXPERIENCE - WALKING ON FIRE", Miami Herald, February 14, 1997.
6. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9901E5D81E3CE63ABC4E51DFB667838C679EDE&legacy=true "Missing 2 Months, 'Dead' Jersey Boy Returns to Family"
7. "19-Year-Old Bruce Burkan 'Returns From The Dead'", AP report in Jackson (TN) Sun, October 26, 1967, p2
8. "From Misery To Near-Death To A Glimpse of Happiness", by Joan Barbato, Morristown (NJ) Daily Record, March 13, 1975, p17
9. https://books.google.com/books?id=EIWWpUOtdgUC&dq=%22on+august+22%2C+1967%22&pg=PA181 Our Haunted Planet
10. "Teleportation... The Ultimate Trip", by George Cunningham-Tee, in Pittsburgh Press Sunday Magazine, November 20, 1983
11. Web site: In the Easy Chair with Mike Merner. July 29, 2018. Westerly Sun.