Much has been made the last couple of years of NLP and its hypothetical use and influence in magic and mentalism. The problem is that NLP is something people have heard a lot about, but don't actually understand. Let's start with a little background.
NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, was first developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder who asserted that there was a connection between the neurological processes, language and learned behavior. They worked out a series of linguistic tools as a sort of therapeutic technology to help people overcome psychological maladies such as phobias. One of the early adopters was Tony Robbins, the self-help legend. It has yet to find any mainstream acceptance in academic psychology however.
The problem arises in that there is very little empirical data to support the hypotheses put forth by Bandler and Grinder. Though the self-help industry and countless people in management and sales swear by it, there has never been any formal proof to validate the claims. I personally have met people who claim to be using NLP to influence others and noticed no remarkable success on their part.
During the 1990's is where the claims of NLP got really crazy. Perhaps the craziest of them all is PUA guru Ross Jeffries, who enjoys the dubious distinction of being one of the first gurus in the scene, and also the one who is possibly the most disliked as a person. Jeffries' claims about what NLP was capable of got more and more outrageous as time went on to the point where he began claiming he could reach out and touch people with his "psychic tendrils."
That might all sound a bit ridiculous to you, but the claims that the magic community has been making in the last 10 years aren't much better. The interest in NLP among magicians and mentalists can be largely attributed to the works of Luke Jermay, Kenton Knepper, Docc Hilford and Derren Brown. In their work, they sometimes make references to suggestion and subconsciously influencing people. Derren has claimed in the past that he's using NLP, though this simply proved to be a smokescreen in the same way that Robert-Houdin claimed to be able to make his son levitate through a large dosage of ether. Truthfully, these men were actually applying principles of basic stage hypnosis to magic.
There is evidence that suggests merit to some of Bandler and Grinder's hypotheses. Kenton Knepper for example wrote about the concept of the subjective experience and its use in magic and mentalism. Luke Jermay, Caleb Strange and Andrew Mayne also developed effects based on this principle to varying degrees, though admittedly most of it was simply taking old principles a step further. If you want an example of what I'm talking about, refer to Punx's effect Great Minds Think Alike in 13 Steps to Mentalism.
Personally speaking, I do believe that some of NLP's concepts have merit and are worth investigating, but strictly in a therapeutic context. I believe it is not a new psychological technology, but simply a creative application of principles already developed in talk therapy and hypnosis. Study it if you wish, but be wary of 3rd party titles, especially ones that make more outrageous claims. If you actually want to learn more about suggestion and the like, start with learning stage hypnosis. If there is enough interest, I may write a full post here in the near future on the subject.
In summary, here are the facts and just the facts:
-NLP is an approach to therapy utilizing psychological and linguistic principles.
-Though some of the ideas have merit, there is little empirical evidence to support its associated hypotheses.
-Popular in business management, sales, and self-help.
-Originally developed by Bandler and Grinder, since taken in different directions by a number of outside individuals making a wide variety of claims.
-When magicians/mentalists talk of using suggestion, the majority are using principles of hypnosis, not NLP.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Russian Roulette (Is Still for Suckers)
An effect I see coming up time and again is the old Russian roulette plot. For those unfamiliar, this is also sometimes called Smash and Stab. A sharp spike is placed under a cup and mixed up with several others, usually making a row of 5. The magician smashes them one by one with his hand, sometimes a spectator's until only the one with the spike under it is left and revealed.
Before I open both barrels, let me get a couple lesser concerns out of the way. I've seen this effect performed as a closer most often. The idea is that the danger element ramps up the drama. But it's still only a 1-in-5 chance, then a 1-in-4, 1-in-3, and finally a 50/50 shot. Statistically, it's not all that impressive. It's better as an opener or somewhere in the middle.
That said, it also requires a certain amount of showmanship because again, it's just not that statistically impressive. It's entirely possible to luck out on it. You need a proper theme and hook to get people to buy into it as mental magic or mentalism, which is not easy to do. Trying to motivate this effect can be pretty difficult even for veteran performers.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's turn to the elephant in the room. It's just not very good taste. The whole danger element is cheap when you get right down to it. Seriously, why on earth would you do this to yourself? Only a handful of methods are completely failure proof. If you go to YouTube, you'll find videos of this effect going wrong. Unless you have a strong stomach, can't say I recommend it.
And if you use another person's hand, I have to ask: What the hell is wrong with you?! Even if you use a fool-proof method, it's still in bad taste. At no point should you ever put a member of your audience at risk for physical harm. Even if you leave aside the ethical problems, you're still making yourself liable. So in case you're callous enough to go through with endangering their hands over your own, know that their lawyer will want to have a little chat with you if things go wrong.
The plot of the effect isn't the problem. I've seen versions that use an egg instead of a spike, one that replaces the cups and spike with cans of silly string, and Rick Maue's Terasabos is a very effective variation on the theme. The problem is that most people don't know how to use it. They mistake the possibility of self-mutilation for well-constructed drama. If you're going to use this plot, exercise some discretion and a modicum of taste.
Before I open both barrels, let me get a couple lesser concerns out of the way. I've seen this effect performed as a closer most often. The idea is that the danger element ramps up the drama. But it's still only a 1-in-5 chance, then a 1-in-4, 1-in-3, and finally a 50/50 shot. Statistically, it's not all that impressive. It's better as an opener or somewhere in the middle.
That said, it also requires a certain amount of showmanship because again, it's just not that statistically impressive. It's entirely possible to luck out on it. You need a proper theme and hook to get people to buy into it as mental magic or mentalism, which is not easy to do. Trying to motivate this effect can be pretty difficult even for veteran performers.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let's turn to the elephant in the room. It's just not very good taste. The whole danger element is cheap when you get right down to it. Seriously, why on earth would you do this to yourself? Only a handful of methods are completely failure proof. If you go to YouTube, you'll find videos of this effect going wrong. Unless you have a strong stomach, can't say I recommend it.
And if you use another person's hand, I have to ask: What the hell is wrong with you?! Even if you use a fool-proof method, it's still in bad taste. At no point should you ever put a member of your audience at risk for physical harm. Even if you leave aside the ethical problems, you're still making yourself liable. So in case you're callous enough to go through with endangering their hands over your own, know that their lawyer will want to have a little chat with you if things go wrong.
The plot of the effect isn't the problem. I've seen versions that use an egg instead of a spike, one that replaces the cups and spike with cans of silly string, and Rick Maue's Terasabos is a very effective variation on the theme. The problem is that most people don't know how to use it. They mistake the possibility of self-mutilation for well-constructed drama. If you're going to use this plot, exercise some discretion and a modicum of taste.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
1 Exercise, 5 Benefits
Some of you have heard me speak at a live chat via webcam last December and may remember that I have a distinctive baritone voice. While this is in part genetic (most of the men on my father's side of the family have deep, resonant voices), it's also training. In high school, my voice started changing from a nasally child's voice and within the course of a year practically dropped into my stomach. I spent time cultivating this quality and have made it something of a personal quest to make my voice one of my... trademarks you might say.
Here's the good part: anyone can learn to develop a powerful speaking voice. In this entry I will show you one simple breathing exercise that if done for 5 minutes every day will dramatically improve the quality of your speech. There are many benefits to this. In fact, let's list them now.
1. Increased Oxygen Flow to the Brain
In the course of this exercise, your breathing will return to the state it was in as an infant. You will make better use of every breath and increase the flow of oxygen to your brain which will allow you to remain more alert, quick-witted, and energized.
2. Greater Speech Control
This exercise will help you to make the most of your lung capacity. You will be able to better control the rate of exhalation and sustain it much longer. This means that you can pace your speech more effectively and will no longer find yourself pausing in the middle of a sentence to take a breath.
3. Develop Better Posture
Keeping the skeletal and muscular systems aligned is very important in reducing stress. This exercise will help you to keep your torso and neck in proper, natural alignment, reducing fatigue and stress on your muscles as well as projecting a more confident demeanor.
4. Project Confidence
See above. The greater control over the pace of your speech along with the improved posture will improve your image to other people. You will look and feel more confident. And since our emotions check in with our bodies to make sure everything is consistent, you will actually begin to feel more confident as your brain tries to make sure it's in sync with your body. Weird how that works, no?
5. Fill the Room
Though not the entire secret to building resonance in your voice, proper breathing technique strengthens your sound, making it more authoritative. When you can remove unnecessary softness and airiness from your voice, people are more likely to take you seriously and listen to what you have to say. They subconsciously believe that you believe in what you are saying.
Sound good? Let's actually do the exercise. To start with, you're going to need to break a really bad habit you've picked up. Take a deep breath in right now. As deep as you can, then exhale. I'll wait...
Did your shoulders lift when you breathed in? You need to stop doing that. By lifting the shoulders, you're creating tension in the neck and chest that greatly restricts your lung capacity while creating unnecessary air pressure on your throat when you breathe out.
Lie down on your couch on bed and put a book on the point where the abdomen meets the sternum. In this position you'll be unable to move your shoulders. Breathe in deeply through your nose and visualize pulling the air down into your gut. You'll see you're doing it right when the book rises and falls evenly.
What's happening is that your diaphragm is activating. The lungs don't actually suck the air in the way we conventionally think of it. The diaphragm is dropping down, causing the lungs to pull air in and inflate to take up the newly available space. To do this, it pushes your guts down and out so that the abdomen expands slightly in all directions.
Now as you breathe in, imagine this expansion starting in the abdomen and slowly going up the body into the ribs. Your ribcage isn't expanding in the way that the abdomen is, but your floating ribs (the cartilaginous ones at the bottom) are. Also, the lungs are fully expanding slightly, creating a sensation that the chest is lifting independent of the shoulders.
You may feel light-headed the first few times you try this, but you'll eventually get used to it. What's happening is that you're getting more oxygen into the bloodstream than you're accustomed to. In our day-to-day lives, we actually don't need to exercise our maximum lung capacity very often. However, you want to keep exercising it for the same reason you work out your muscles. Most people don't have jobs that require them to deadlift several hundred pounds at one time several times a day. But if you don't exercise, doing basic tasks takes more out of you than it would if you had made a habit of going to the gym.
Once you get used to this, do the exercise standing. Breathe in deeply, pause for a beat, then exhale evenly. If you've met your full lung capacity, then you actually won't feel the need to breathe back in again for another second or two. Practice this for about 5 minutes a day and you'll see a noticeable difference before long in the strength of your voice and your ability to sustain sentences and passages without taking a breath.
I should make a final note. The reason you inhale through the nose is because all that air is going directly into the lungs. When you breathe in through the mouth, you run the chance of accidentally swallowing some air. That will cause your stomach to become bloated and be very uncomfortable before long. Singers undergo training to minimize and prevent this, but in everyday conversation, you're better off just breathing through your nose and keeping your mouth shut. Unless of course you want to wander around all day looking like you're stoned or doing an impersonation of Kristen Stewart.
Here's the good part: anyone can learn to develop a powerful speaking voice. In this entry I will show you one simple breathing exercise that if done for 5 minutes every day will dramatically improve the quality of your speech. There are many benefits to this. In fact, let's list them now.
1. Increased Oxygen Flow to the Brain
In the course of this exercise, your breathing will return to the state it was in as an infant. You will make better use of every breath and increase the flow of oxygen to your brain which will allow you to remain more alert, quick-witted, and energized.
2. Greater Speech Control
This exercise will help you to make the most of your lung capacity. You will be able to better control the rate of exhalation and sustain it much longer. This means that you can pace your speech more effectively and will no longer find yourself pausing in the middle of a sentence to take a breath.
3. Develop Better Posture
Keeping the skeletal and muscular systems aligned is very important in reducing stress. This exercise will help you to keep your torso and neck in proper, natural alignment, reducing fatigue and stress on your muscles as well as projecting a more confident demeanor.
4. Project Confidence
See above. The greater control over the pace of your speech along with the improved posture will improve your image to other people. You will look and feel more confident. And since our emotions check in with our bodies to make sure everything is consistent, you will actually begin to feel more confident as your brain tries to make sure it's in sync with your body. Weird how that works, no?
5. Fill the Room
Though not the entire secret to building resonance in your voice, proper breathing technique strengthens your sound, making it more authoritative. When you can remove unnecessary softness and airiness from your voice, people are more likely to take you seriously and listen to what you have to say. They subconsciously believe that you believe in what you are saying.
Sound good? Let's actually do the exercise. To start with, you're going to need to break a really bad habit you've picked up. Take a deep breath in right now. As deep as you can, then exhale. I'll wait...
Did your shoulders lift when you breathed in? You need to stop doing that. By lifting the shoulders, you're creating tension in the neck and chest that greatly restricts your lung capacity while creating unnecessary air pressure on your throat when you breathe out.
Lie down on your couch on bed and put a book on the point where the abdomen meets the sternum. In this position you'll be unable to move your shoulders. Breathe in deeply through your nose and visualize pulling the air down into your gut. You'll see you're doing it right when the book rises and falls evenly.
What's happening is that your diaphragm is activating. The lungs don't actually suck the air in the way we conventionally think of it. The diaphragm is dropping down, causing the lungs to pull air in and inflate to take up the newly available space. To do this, it pushes your guts down and out so that the abdomen expands slightly in all directions.
Now as you breathe in, imagine this expansion starting in the abdomen and slowly going up the body into the ribs. Your ribcage isn't expanding in the way that the abdomen is, but your floating ribs (the cartilaginous ones at the bottom) are. Also, the lungs are fully expanding slightly, creating a sensation that the chest is lifting independent of the shoulders.
You may feel light-headed the first few times you try this, but you'll eventually get used to it. What's happening is that you're getting more oxygen into the bloodstream than you're accustomed to. In our day-to-day lives, we actually don't need to exercise our maximum lung capacity very often. However, you want to keep exercising it for the same reason you work out your muscles. Most people don't have jobs that require them to deadlift several hundred pounds at one time several times a day. But if you don't exercise, doing basic tasks takes more out of you than it would if you had made a habit of going to the gym.
Once you get used to this, do the exercise standing. Breathe in deeply, pause for a beat, then exhale evenly. If you've met your full lung capacity, then you actually won't feel the need to breathe back in again for another second or two. Practice this for about 5 minutes a day and you'll see a noticeable difference before long in the strength of your voice and your ability to sustain sentences and passages without taking a breath.
I should make a final note. The reason you inhale through the nose is because all that air is going directly into the lungs. When you breathe in through the mouth, you run the chance of accidentally swallowing some air. That will cause your stomach to become bloated and be very uncomfortable before long. Singers undergo training to minimize and prevent this, but in everyday conversation, you're better off just breathing through your nose and keeping your mouth shut. Unless of course you want to wander around all day looking like you're stoned or doing an impersonation of Kristen Stewart.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Hiatus
My apologies for the silence as of late. Without getting into it, I just have had way too much on my plate following the holidays, most of it relating to the fact that everything that can break and require repairs has. With that in mind, I will be putting the blog on hiatus until at least April, more likely until after my appearance at Pittsburgh Comicon that month.
My mentalism book, tentatively titled Playthings of the Mind, is taking me longer than I anticipated to put together. I want a strong, intelligent beginners' guide that has not only effects, but performance theory and history. Naturally, this means the research alone is chewing up a lot of time. The thing is, I want to deliver you all a quality product that I've sunk as much effort as I can muster into. I'm not about to half-ass this in the name of just turning out a book.
That in mind, I'm withdrawing my predicted release date of this Spring. I won't be announcing a new date until I have a clearer idea of when I can realistically expect to get this done. I will be working on a couple of smaller projects in the mean time. I will make announcements here when any of them are released.
I will see you all again this Spring. Take care.
My mentalism book, tentatively titled Playthings of the Mind, is taking me longer than I anticipated to put together. I want a strong, intelligent beginners' guide that has not only effects, but performance theory and history. Naturally, this means the research alone is chewing up a lot of time. The thing is, I want to deliver you all a quality product that I've sunk as much effort as I can muster into. I'm not about to half-ass this in the name of just turning out a book.
That in mind, I'm withdrawing my predicted release date of this Spring. I won't be announcing a new date until I have a clearer idea of when I can realistically expect to get this done. I will be working on a couple of smaller projects in the mean time. I will make announcements here when any of them are released.
I will see you all again this Spring. Take care.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Echo Bazaar: A Great Use of Mystery
If you want to entertain people with mysteries, then you need to check out Echo Bazaar. It's a free browser game with incredible depth despite its stark simplicity of mechanics. Even non-gamers can play this, that's how accessible it is. So why should you?
Because as magicians and mentalists we are mystery entertainers. While the primary mystery is almost always the how of the things we do, there is the frequently overlooked why. A truly great performer will enthrall an audience not with another Miser's Dream effect, but depth as a character and person. There needs to be a mythos to create verisimilitude and the desire to explore more deeply the reality that the mystery entertainer lives in.
Echo Bazaar is a paragon of the use of mystery in an interactive piece of entertainment. As of writing, I began playing on Thursday and have become addicted. Seriously, if it weren't for the limited number of actions you can take at one time, I wouldn't have gotten any work done these last couple of days. The game's abyssal depth just sucked me right in. There were new mysteries to explore at every turn and pursuing one lead just opened up new ones. I'm never short for something to do, and now that I've chosen an ambition for my character it's only getting more intense as I go. Everything happens for a reason, but I can't figure out what. Yet.
Click the link above and give it a shot. It's free and despite being so addictive doesn't require anything more of you than 10 minutes of your time a day, if even that. If you want to create mysteries, you have to see how other people are doing it. It's the same as a musician listening to multiple genres of music to find his sound.
Oh and while I'm thinking of it, there's a social element to. Facebook friends and Twitter followers/followees who are in the game can interact with you. I'm on Twitter as DrAVornoff. Just in case... you know, you were curious.
Because as magicians and mentalists we are mystery entertainers. While the primary mystery is almost always the how of the things we do, there is the frequently overlooked why. A truly great performer will enthrall an audience not with another Miser's Dream effect, but depth as a character and person. There needs to be a mythos to create verisimilitude and the desire to explore more deeply the reality that the mystery entertainer lives in.
Echo Bazaar is a paragon of the use of mystery in an interactive piece of entertainment. As of writing, I began playing on Thursday and have become addicted. Seriously, if it weren't for the limited number of actions you can take at one time, I wouldn't have gotten any work done these last couple of days. The game's abyssal depth just sucked me right in. There were new mysteries to explore at every turn and pursuing one lead just opened up new ones. I'm never short for something to do, and now that I've chosen an ambition for my character it's only getting more intense as I go. Everything happens for a reason, but I can't figure out what. Yet.
Click the link above and give it a shot. It's free and despite being so addictive doesn't require anything more of you than 10 minutes of your time a day, if even that. If you want to create mysteries, you have to see how other people are doing it. It's the same as a musician listening to multiple genres of music to find his sound.
Oh and while I'm thinking of it, there's a social element to. Facebook friends and Twitter followers/followees who are in the game can interact with you. I'm on Twitter as DrAVornoff. Just in case... you know, you were curious.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Alex's New Book!
Since my beginner's guide to mentalism turned out such a positive response, I've decided to flesh it out into a complete guide in ebook format. I'll be covering not only bibliography, but also how to develop a performing character, scripting, presentation, specializations, using New Media, and more. I'll even be including some effects and routines from my own working repertoire.
If there is a topic you'd like me to include in the book, let me know. I want to make sure I deliver a comprehensive start-up guide for mentalism initiates.
If there is a topic you'd like me to include in the book, let me know. I want to make sure I deliver a comprehensive start-up guide for mentalism initiates.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Sentimentality
I play guitar. Badly, but I still play it. Yeah I know, a shaggy white guy who plays guitar. Big surprise! I used to hang out with other guitarists online and off. A situation that repeatedly came up was a guy would ask what songs he could play at a party to get the attention of girls. First of all, I have no problem using music as a way to break the ice and make people come to you. What I did have a problem with was the suggestions. One that came up without fail was Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton. If you don't know, Clapton wrote that song as a catharsis after his baby son fell from the window of a high rise apartment and died. All these guitarists would recommend playing the song for a girl and then telling her the story behind it. I always had one question for them: "Have you ever known the touch of a woman?"
There's something distinctly crass about exploiting tragedy for personal satisfaction. And yet, as we pursue magic as an art this sort of situation is inevitable. Time and time again, you'll see hacks who imagine that to be deep, they need to dial the personal tragedy up to 11. Why? My best guess is that sentimentality is much easier to articulate than actual sentiment.
What the difference? Sentiment is how we feel about the things that happen to us. It's sublime and complex, but usually understated when expressed in words. We have a massive variety of words to describe our emotions, the nature of them and the intensity with which we feel them. Some languages even have words to express feelings that others don't. An example would be the Russian word "toska," which refers to a longing for something that isn't there and which can give way to a general malaise or even full-blown depression depending on the strength of the longing.
Sentimentality on the other hand is the exaggeration of emotion. It's melodramatic, overblown and extravagant. Cheesy in other words. I little cheese is good for you now and again, but too much of it leaves you fat, sick and blocked up like... it's better if I end this metaphor now.
Sentimentality is easier to write because it doesn't require as much subtlety. A few touches of lurid language here and there, some outrageous metaphors and analogies, and there you go. So easy a monkey could do it. Which is a phrase that I always considered to be an excellent example of damning with faint praise.
Schlocky sentimentality may get you some nods here and there. There's a reason schmaltzy greeting cards sell so well. But if you want to actually make a strong impression on people, you're going to have to try a lot harder than that.
There's something distinctly crass about exploiting tragedy for personal satisfaction. And yet, as we pursue magic as an art this sort of situation is inevitable. Time and time again, you'll see hacks who imagine that to be deep, they need to dial the personal tragedy up to 11. Why? My best guess is that sentimentality is much easier to articulate than actual sentiment.
What the difference? Sentiment is how we feel about the things that happen to us. It's sublime and complex, but usually understated when expressed in words. We have a massive variety of words to describe our emotions, the nature of them and the intensity with which we feel them. Some languages even have words to express feelings that others don't. An example would be the Russian word "toska," which refers to a longing for something that isn't there and which can give way to a general malaise or even full-blown depression depending on the strength of the longing.
Sentimentality on the other hand is the exaggeration of emotion. It's melodramatic, overblown and extravagant. Cheesy in other words. I little cheese is good for you now and again, but too much of it leaves you fat, sick and blocked up like... it's better if I end this metaphor now.
Sentimentality is easier to write because it doesn't require as much subtlety. A few touches of lurid language here and there, some outrageous metaphors and analogies, and there you go. So easy a monkey could do it. Which is a phrase that I always considered to be an excellent example of damning with faint praise.
Schlocky sentimentality may get you some nods here and there. There's a reason schmaltzy greeting cards sell so well. But if you want to actually make a strong impression on people, you're going to have to try a lot harder than that.
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