You wouldn’t think that walking on glass, swallowing swords and playing with fire are motivational acts, but when Martika Daniels talks about how she used these skills to deal with depression and anxiety, it seems pretty clear. “The simplest task can seem so hard when you are in a bad bout of depression,” Daniels says, “but I would tell myself, ‘You know, if I can learn to walk on glass, what’s stopping me from doing this?’ I would use that as a catalyst to help me break through some of my darkest moments.”
Daniels started her journey to become the “One Woman Stunt Show” as a child living in Germany for four years during her father’s Air Force posting. When they were able, he would take them around Europe, and in Rome, at the Colosseum, she encountered her first buskers. There, she watched someone juggling fire, and the image and feeling it invoked left a mark. Although she adored the circus in books and film, it wouldn’t be until later that she bought a hula hoop and took her first step into that world.
Now, Daniels travels internationally, bringing her show everywhere from county fairs and renaissance festivals to corporate retreats and libraries. Unlike a traditional “trickster” entertaining the audience with spectacular feats, Daniels aims for her performances to be more of a conversation with the audience—a back-and-forth where they are left with an experience instead of just being entertained. She entwines her motivational speaking with daring acts: swallowing long swords, eating fire, popping balloons with a barbed-wire hula hoop, laying on a bed of nails, walking on broken glass and hammering nails into her nose.
Learning to swallow a sword is one of the more difficult feats Daniels has mastered. You have to condition your body, week after week, or you will be forced to relearn the whole process. “It took me several months to really perfect the skill,” she says. “It is very much a mind over matter kind of thing. When you put a sword in your throat, every part of your body, every cell in your body screams don’t do this thing. You have to really fight every part of yourself to be able to do it and to make it look good.”
In a world where the fantastic and spectacular are just a social media scroll away, Daniels says there’s nothing like sharing the experience in person as someone eats and breathes fire. Many spectators have seen things like sword-swallowing online, but sharing the spectacle in person and in a crowd brings a sense of community and an intimacy that is lacking on little screens. “It’s different when it’s happening right in front of you,” Daniels says. “The sound of the glass as you walk on it while everyone is quiet, the experience of watching someone swallow a sword—it’s kind of gross. When the sword enters the stomach, it releases air. Some people say it sounds like burping or almost gagging. It is very alive.”
Daniels’ mixture of entertainment, astonishment and motivation is a unique one, which is why she is travelling across the country this fall to shows in Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, Arkansas and Florida. You can experience her show this October at Carved Experience just north of Kansas City in Richmond, Missouri. For more details, including information about her book, The Amazing Martika, visit themartikashow.com and her Instagram @themartikashow.
