Original subtitles

Hello, welcome to the course. I'm glad you're here. Today, what I'm going to teach is one of my

favorite demonstrations of all time. This is one of the first things I ever came up with. There's

videos of me doing this in the 2000s. Not only that, but it's got a lot to offer. It's something

that is quite easy to learn. Once you learn it, you have it forever. It's really easy to remember.

No special scripts, nothing like that. All it needs is the human mind and body to pull off.

Now, on top of that, I think of this as one of the perfect ways to practice a way of performing

that's authentic and it's magical. Now, I want to start strong by showing you exactly what this is

before we get into any of the information. So in the next video, you're going to see

exactly what this demonstration is, psychic surgery, and then you're going to learn a little

bit about how I'm planning to teach it and how you're going to be able to take this right off

the video and start to perform it for yourselves. Okay, so, invisible scalpel. It's a little bit

weird could be a little uncomfortable is that okay yeah yeah okay so i'm just gonna take this

and i'm gonna cut open your arm right here i'm going to open it up and i'm gonna take out your

muscles i'm gonna need it invisible yeah could you yeah don't move your hands okay really important

okay we take out the ligaments and tendons put them right here okay okay and i'm gonna take out

the bone. Sorry. Put that there. Yeah, right? And, uh, hold on. And take out this brick and, uh,

can you open your hand? Put in, oh, sorry, not open. Put it inside of you. There. You feel that?

Yeah. Yeah. Put in another brick. And I'll put in another brick and we can sew this back up.

There. How's that arm feel? Yeah. Like, I can move it, but it's weird. Yeah, well, there's bricks in it.

That's so weird.

Get him out of me.

Uh, okay.

Thought you said you were cool with all this.

I don't know what you believe in it.

Cutting, it's the bricks that are bothering you.

Got you, oh yeah, should have asked.

Didn't ask me if I'm okay with bricks.

Okay, alright, well we could try, um, you know what, we don't need this one out.

Take that, put this back in here.

Take this guy out.

And, uh, actually I could go,

how are you about iron bars cool with that cool we can try it all right let's see so um

let's put this guy in here feel that yeah let's sew this back up how's that feel

oh my god

Yeah, yeah, well feel her arm. You don't feel her arm. You're busy.

Feel her arm.

Feel how tight that is.

Wow.

No way.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

So weird.

All right, we'll take this, sorry.

There, take that out.

So cool.

We're back in, yeah.

Um, I'll sew this up for you.

Although...

The whistle's back.

well we could go a little step further first yeah yeah okay um so i'm gonna leave a little

space there because i've got like i said this gets a little weird okay you can come around here

uh i've got a little microchip here okay um don't be don't be too worried about it it's

it's not about control it's really about connection put this chip in here sew this up

and uh here gonna switch that guy on there okay yeah yeah you see that yeah you see that right

watch see what happens if i start to move my pinky what does your pinky want to do

weird right no do you want to stop you can stop at any time do it again do it again okay

Show me how it is. Ready? Yeah it's a little weirder. Watch if I start to move my thumb.

It's shaking. This is so weird. I could like not move it also it's just like yeah what it wants

to do. Wait but here let's hold it here. What if I start to feel that coming up a little bit?

I just got back to Canada and have seen for the first time some of the well some of all of the

footage from the psychic surgery product and I hadn't intended to have like a an extra video

added this this one that I'm doing right now but I'm gonna do it because I had a few thoughts now

looking back after a couple months specifically because this is a different kind of approach than

many people are used to and as I was going around the world the last couple months showing

people a bunch of things, including psychic surgery. The feedback I often got was, well,

this is fantastic, but people aren't going to get it. Or even that the level of expertise required

to do this is very high. And I'm going to push back on that two ways. And essentially, this is

my biggest worry and my biggest hope for this product. The biggest worry is that I've been

informed that there's this idea that um there's there are things in the mystery arts that are

simple and things that are complicated um simple things are like sleight of hand and you kind of

start there and then maybe you move to mentalism maybe you move to suggestion and hypnosis and all

that kind of stuff and and then the great beyond i just have to say that that hasn't been my

experience i i learned it the other way around in fact kind of like all over the place um i know

that's true of a lot of other people too and I think that's just a myth. I think that what I'm

going to show you is really natural and really easy but the expectation that it's hard can get

in the way. I've even gone out and I've just shown this to muggles and I've been like here's how this

works here's how you can do it and they pick it up like that and I absolutely believe that that can

be you too and I guess that that brings me to my biggest hope about this product which is that

Maybe you get to see it a little bit the way I do, that there is no crazy mind power thing that you have to do perfectly right to create these results.

The fact is that there's a crazy mind power thing going on all the time inside of our heads in between us, and we usually don't see it going on.

and what we're really doing with this in this project is we're we're tapping into that we're

asking people inviting people to play in this space that they're not used to playing in but

is actually really natural and really easy the reasons it works uh rather than being some kind

of trick you should be ashamed of are actually better uh make it more impressive more magical

um but you don't actually have to know those reasons they are written they're mirrored they're

written in that book if you really need to know why but you don't need to know why this is this

beautiful little case in point showing what is possible when we we connect with somebody else

we offer a little uh way to play and we create a magical space where anything can happen

in the next few videos what you're going to see is me doing uh psychic surgery with a variety of

people there's people these are just people we walked up to on the street there's no setup or

anything just to be clear just so you can kind of get in your heads what is the context and we just

go up we essentially say do you want to see something interesting you want to see something

weird um drive into it right like that uh nobody said no of the ones we we talked to so there's no

like stuff that's cut out for for you to you know not not be able to learn from and we get all kinds

we get some who are like super up for it we get a couple who are um clearly they were hanging at

the sides clearly there to kind of like challenge you know not super overtly but you you'll watch

how i handle that we have somebody whose english is a little bit weak um and you'd see how i handle

of that too. In any case, that all happens. Then we go out to Salem, Massachusetts. We go out to see

Chris Bolter, who has a beautiful studio space up there. Well, he's actually two theaters in

one building. It's fantastic. Jake, who masterminded this whole thing, basically just called up Chris

and was like, hey, I got a guy with me and you really want to see what he's doing, but we're

going to film. Is that cool? Yeah. And so he didn't know what he was getting into. So you get to

experience it for the first time with him and then learn it along with him. What I hope psychic

surgery is, is this little window into this crazy possibility, this way of stepping past our

limitations and thoughts about what we can do with people and understanding that actually

there's this huge open space where you can show up just with yourself, just with this little

knowledge of how to bend the reality in this tiny way that can snowball and become so much more.

I'm gonna shut this off. Take it out. Take that out.

I'm just gonna run away with all this.

You have the most important job here.

I'm gonna open this back up.

How does that happen? How is that a thing?

Well, you see, once you make enough space in here, you can fit in some bricks.

You fit in a bar. It's pretty straightforward.

The bar was weird as I like that.

okay so what do we got? I'm going to start with the bone first, yeah, makes sense, yeah, you got to be careful with that, nice, and ligaments and tendons, thank you, yeah, appreciate it, and we'll put it in the muscles, muscles, they're important, so back up, and I'll sew this guy back up, okay, break that off, that's it, we're good?

yeah how's that feel okay so let's let's start by just diving into the effect and the performance

and the experience and then afterwards we can pull it out pull it out talk and talk about it

sound good absolutely okay so I can tell you a bit more of the story after but this is essentially

based on um do you know those you know those little games that kids play from like eight to

twelve ish um like crisscross applesauce do you remember this yeah light as a feather stiff as a

board um so one thing that i've noticed and what we saw yesterday when we're out filming is you say

that to anyone and they're like oh yeah that um yesterday we did it with people from italy from

uh it was uh israel um i've done it with people from brazil mexico all around the world people

remember that they played these little games as a kid um and so i'll tell you a little bit how this

came uh where this came from but i want to start out just by showing um it's almost like a little

riff on the games we play as kids um but with a twist that i think opens sort of the possibility

of how our minds work and what else might be possible.

Sound good?

I'm down.

So maybe let's scooch up next to each other.

I usually do this standing, so I haven't done this sitting in a while.

Okay.

Do you want me to take my watch off?

Yeah, sure.

Let's do that.

Let's make sure I got everything I need here.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let's start with this.

This is a little bit weird.

Is that okay?

Yeah.

It's going to be strange.

So have you seen one of these before?

No.

so uh this is an invisible scalpel okay yeah um how are you with like injections or cuts um

not too bad yeah drawing blood do you tend to uh yeah that's fine fine you look away or do you

i'm usually pretty good with needles yeah okay yeah all right um so if you're cool with it i'm

gonna use this scalpel i'm gonna cut you open yeah let's do it all right cool so let's start

like this actually i'll i'll get you your elbow up a little bit so much space under yeah um i'm

take this and tell me if it's too uncomfortable okay but i will cut your arm open like this

yeah you can tell you're a little tense you relax it's cool yeah i'm gonna open up the skin here

okay nice i'll even take out your bone here sorry about that and the ligaments and the tendons

muscles here we go whoop hope that wasn't anyone too close to you you got knocked over and earned

uh we'll get these bricks back in there there we go there it is and more brick

so this guy back up there okay now here how's that feel uh very heavy

give that a little lift and see how it feels it's yeah yeah it's hard and just for comparison with

this guy yep okay all right um here i'll help you with that open this up and take this brick out

this brick out there we go get that brick out feeling a little more normal i hope yeah not too

normal yeah no bone um a little loose yeah a little loose you're good at yoga right now yes

um and uh i'm gonna take this iron bar okay mind if i do a little insertion here yeah okay

So just put that

Kind of tight. Yes, okay bar in there. Sorry. It's a little uncomfortable. Yeah

Yeah, I'll sew this back up

How's that feel?

Tense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and let's compare with this guy

Okay, so you got an itch what are we gonna use?

It's a good point if it's if it's anywhere. Yeah, right you can

yeah not easily doing that yeah right oh that's crazy man uh all right so let's open this up

and sorry this part's a little uncomfortable out there all right that guy back

and we'll sew you up here that one looked a little unpleasant how are you doing i'm good

yeah yeah weird yeah uh you want to take it up a notch okay okay um for this one i'm going to have

have you scooch a little this way so i can get closer to you um it's always a little uh weird

operating upside down i'll do my oh yeah give you a lefty um okay open that back up

and um i'm just gonna do this to connect your arm to mine here we go hold on a second it was

little weird angle here yeah make it work okay and uh you'll see when i switch this on here one

there okay there good yeah now yeah so just let's both relax a little bit yeah okay now here's the

crazy thing is once we get this going just notice if i lift my arm um watch your pinky okay and when

And when I move my pinkie, do you see what, right?

That's crazy.

You can take that a bit further.

Okay.

Yeah?

Yep.

Because if I just move over here and we keep that connection and I just move up, what is?

Yep.

Right to the camera.

Interesting, hey?

Yeah.

And what if, yeah, this, here, yeah, that's strong.

All right, relax back down.

I'll get this out of you.

Wow.

Turn it off first, get this out of you.

Take that.

And sew this up for a moment.

How's your hand feel?

Weird.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, but yeah, strange.

Strange because something strange happened,

but also strange because it's missing something.

Right.

What's it missing?

It's the bone, right?

The bone, it's everything.

Yeah.

So responsible surgeon, I'm gonna take this.

I'm gonna cut you open here,

And we'll take your bone and we'll put that back in.

Tendons, your ligaments, and your muscles.

And we will sew this back up.

Snap that off.

How do you feel?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's weird.

Feels normal.

Feels normal, which is weird now.

Yeah, it does, yeah.

Yeah.

And I didn't leave anything in there?

I don't think so.

Don't worry about that.

No, we're good.

Okay, cool.

yeah so plenty more we could discuss or add in there but that's the the basic version of it

um how are you feeling yeah it was it was bizarre for sure yeah it was very very strange almost

dreamlike yeah yeah yeah so it was it was weird yeah all right do you mind describing to the

camera your experience just just so we sure yeah just get on the inside but what it felt like yeah

what was it like um it at first was it took a couple of seconds to really get into it yeah

you know it was kind of like all right what's happening yeah to really to like kind of let

your guard down a little bit as you can tell it was tense yeah you know once once we relaxed a

little bit i relaxed a little bit it uh it just kind of took over if that makes any sense yeah it

was very surreal at first like when you did the first cut and did the bricks i could feel my arm

dropping down yes you know like like you were putting bricks in there yeah that was the the

whole yeah it was crazy yeah then you took the bone out and i didn't quite feel it right away

but then after a second i could feel like like a looseness yes you know and i could feel the

muscles by himself and then you did that part we got rid of those tendons and it just i knew that

everything was still there but yeah it felt like it wasn't you know what i mean yes it's hard to

explain yeah but um it you have to experience it it was and it wasn't there yeah it was like you

knew it was there yeah but it just didn't feel like it was it if you could i could visualize

when you pulled the bone i could i could literally see it yes so and then with the steel rod going

in i saw the rod yes everything and i felt it almost like almost walk into my elbow if that

makes sense you know yeah it was it was weird yeah very weird yeah it got very visual just saying

towards the the middle part and then at the end like i could see the stitches in the thread yeah

so you break off the thread i would see it break off and yeah it was bizarre yeah cool well thank

you that yeah thank you very much for that was crazy experiencing that and sharing yeah yeah um

yeah yeah definitely feel that yeah hey everyone i'm aaron alexander i'm here with chris and today

we're gonna lead you through a really exciting interesting process to essentially kind of hack

into people's minds um to create some really unusual effects okay so um i'll start by explaining

the basics of this and um then we'll uh actually probably the best thing to do is teach you and then

maybe we could hook in the camera guy and you could do it on on him sure yeah awesome yeah

because i'd like to i just like to see it all go down i assume that

you doing it the first time will teach people a lot more than me doing it the millionth time

so let's go that way but i want to start off just by you know a little frame on this of this to me

is a little piece showing a much greater possibility both because of the experience

you create but also because as far as i know this always works i'm not saying like nothing always

works you know you could drop your cards or i don't i don't know i don't know fancy magic words

to say the many ways you could mess up um flash flash there you go i knew that one i didn't think

of it um yeah so obviously things can go wrong as far as i can tell this is as reliable as anything

can be um our camera guy will attest to yesterday we got some tough customers it was fine um and

so i'm just gonna explain sort of how i would do this in an ideal circumstance how i would do this

in a case where things go wrong and you can you know fudge around um and then if there's

any missing pieces at the end we'll come back and cover those um what about like worst case scenario

like horrible spectator just does not comply well i mean it depends how much they're not complying

uh i assume like and you know if there's if you like pick a card and someone's like no

yeah uh i don't know if there's much you can do about that well i have thoughts on that but i

don't think uh i don't think this is the place for them let's let's assume this is somebody who's like

willing to engage um because i we've had some really interesting conversations about what

causes people to engage and how to set the stage and all that kind of stuff, and we can get into

that on the back end if it comes up. But yes, keep track, all present, keep track of your questions

and doubts and we'll try to resolve them all. So the first thing is, and we won't get into it a ton,

but I've framed this a whole bunch of different ways. I framed it like a psychology demonstration

for an academic group i've done it at parties i've done it in a couple times in a stage show

i i ended up having another thing that works better for my vibe so i haven't done it a ton

there but i have uh and i know other have who others who have too um and so you know whether

i frame it as a thing about uh connection i can do that often i i really i love just talking about

the kids games because it doesn't require it's just so authentic and it's real it's where it

does come from and it doesn't require anything but stating facts uh in an interesting way um

and it genuinely is a demonstration of something our minds and bodies can do that we don't tend to

think about you know human imagination is it's it's one of you know one of the lines i sometimes

use in in shows is like um you know we think of imagination as that thing that kids had before

ipads were invented um but actually the our process of like imagining what could be and

clicking into what seems to happen is sort of how all of this came to exist it's you know what put

us on the moon some would say um it's you know it's it's so fundamental and we're essentially

using a process you know it's not just some imagination game it's us stepping into that

human space of understanding and generating possibilities and experiences and then bending

that a little bit to experience the world differently than we might have otherwise so

i begin by essentially inviting people to do that um so if it's a more formal show maybe i start by

talking about kids games or talking about um different sciencey shit which if there's demand

for that i'll talk about the science stuff too because that's my main background um but setting

the stage of like getting some kind of interest engaging people and essentially at some point

saying something along the lines of are you cool with experiencing something a little weird or

something a little odd and as long as you get a yes to i'm comfortable being uncomfortable or

comfortable doing something weird that's a yes that's the first yes that's going to allow them

to invite us into this space where crazy stuff happens and then of course um there's a second yes

and a third yes and a fourth yes where i'm saying things like and i i kind of jazz it it's never the

same every single time in fact i mess up in a way that i haven't probably ever done with you

the first time and it doesn't matter because i'm i'm following the thread yeah yes well i didn't

either. The camera guy caught it. But that's it. The sequence is less important than following

the thread of inviting someone to experience something that's a little impossible and me

recognizing that this is actually the natural thing. This is the natural thing for us to

experience the world in a different way when invited to do so. So I'll get some kind of yes

around that and then I often will get into either talking about getting cut or uh drawing blood

sometimes I'll say when you get blood do you normally look away and that's so right after do

you want to experience something weird that's my next question and they're like oh it's about to

happen yeah yeah right and so again if we've created the right vibe if I'm if I am connecting

with this person even a little bit and that's all you need a little bit yeah um they're going to

engage with that question quick question yes does your context of presentation or purpose change

when it's on the street versus on stage yes okay yeah and well we i mean the context absolutely

changes what i say just changes from a theatrical perspective if it's on the street or if it's at a

party or something i'll pretty much just go with do you want to say something weird it's a

conversational yeah it's very conversational sometimes i'll bring up the kids game sometimes

not right um but all of that is like a 10 to 30 second thing sure um whereas on a stage maybe i

you know i set it up with like you know the the diary of samuel pepe's and it's long history of

of weird kid games right um so depends absolutely on the context okay um in fact in like an academic

context i might start with some sort of academic sounding let's talk about brains and mirror neurons

etc and then completely kick that out the door once they right accept that i'm sciency enough

sure and then we go straight into kid games right and i'm thinking about it from the perspective of

a magician and a mentalist yes you know if i was going to put this on stage yeah how would i frame

it theatrically gotcha so that's that was my gotcha point to the question okay yeah and yeah and so

theatrically there's that but also this as an opening or a conclusion can be really strong

because you're essentially framing you're essentially using a thing that shows how to

open our minds and uses the frame of a time in our lives where our minds are open when we're young

and we're playing with the ideas about the world so it's a wonderful opening or closing um and can

be combined in different ways but essentially so we get that and then the first thing i do

take out my scalpel and see one of these before it's an invisible scalpel and in

this next process you'll tend to get a lot of different reactions

next process you'll tend to get a lot of different reactions some people will be like haha some people

they have some scalpel history yeah and so they're like gonna be sensitive yeah yeah um and you just

kind of you feel it out as much as you can but essentially if they're a little too much you can

be like it's an invisible scalpel it can only do invisible scalpel things it's cool right if they're

really cool like with it like a bunch of people yesterday you kind of play it up and make it

uncomfortable like i will imagine being comfortable in my body as i'm going to cut yeah and from here

on like it's 90 theater and play right so i'm playing with your energy and i'm doing the theater

of miming this you don't have to be an amazing mime i didn't go to clown school i did one improv

class um the bar is low okay as much as you can just get into it because you're really just playing

with a person and you've opened with the idea of we're going to play a game we're talking about kid

games people love play they they're it's it's like this thing that so many so many adults are missing

and so when you come in and you say do you want to well i don't say do you want to play a game

because is that hostile or uh saw yeah gotta yeah adjust your language a bit it goes backstage

okay so anyway i'm getting into the weeds a bit so i come here and i just mine i'm gonna do this

for real so to speak uh cutting them open and i'm always careful to keep track of this guy because

it's real because it's real because we're building a world and even though it's surreal right it's

also real where if i just drop scalpels everywhere yeah you you kind of come out of the moment right

so i put the scalpel away i pull apart your arm and i start pulling stuff out i start with the bone

do you want me to do that right now yeah okay all right sorry okay so i take out the bone right and

i'm taking out the muscles and do you notice what i'm doing as i take out your tendons and ligaments

like a pull rip kind of or that's the theater part but there's i said 90 theater and play okay what's

that 10% it's the feeling strategy yeah okay your strategy exactly but this is it i'm actually going

to start to sculpt your experience okay very subtly so here i'm just going to put in the muscle for

you for a second okay i'm going to take out the muscle and then i'm going to put in a brick right

okay so what am i doing as i do this i'm communicating yeah through my arm right through

my body the sensation of that yeah so and i take this out you'll notice if you watch back

you start here even at the beginning i think you had your hand on like this yeah right above my

knee i think it was even on your knee and i was like i moved you off to the side right right

because i'm gonna take things out of you then i'm gonna put things back in and the whole time

i'm communicating with my body what's gonna happen yeah so this experience we say imagination

but i'm really illustrating it physically yeah so um what are we at now i took muscles are gone

muscles are gone but did i get rid of this brick too okay yeah okay um so then i'm gonna put in my

three bricks okay and this is the moment where you don't want to get too hung up on working or not

working i would do quotes but i'm holding a brick um but this is where you start to see boom i put in

the brick yeah and i'm going down with my arm but i can see and feel that it's not just me right this

is a team effort now yeah so and the push of the other hand yes exactly yeah the weight and the

experience of having bricks so i'm putting another brick boom right and you notice and maybe this was

semi-deliberate but this happened in the real shoot as well i'm pretty sure that you started

anticipating the wait yes right before it happened right your system is already engaged and i can feel

this is a heavier arm than it was right so this here is the moment where you start to notice okay

do i have to do any extra work or is this game over in your case this is pretty much game over

i did have to we can go back and look at the original thing i did have to do a little work

to set you up i did have to relax your arm a bit we'll get back to that yep but um once you set that

up and we can go over that a bit more at this point often is a done deal so i take my brick

i put in the third brick okay and at this moment it's it's a wonderful moment because it's real

and it's surreal at the same time obviously everything is ridiculous and yet here's your

heavy arm so i take out my needle my thread i sew them back together some people will get really

neurotic about sewing everything right and all that it's surreal it doesn't have to be perfect

as long as i'm following my own rules so in in the rules that i'm setting this is where my needle

goes i wouldn't do that in real life i might sit on it um but now you have a heavy arm yeah and

very likely i can feel how heavy it is just by how much extra weight is in there and i know

100 what's about to happen here boom it's heavy arm yeah move that around a bit and feel yeah yeah

yeah and i'm holding a tree or something very heavy yes um we'll open this up and again people

have different responses we'll get into that all responses are good responses open this guy take

out the brick right here and what am i doing with my arm as i take out the bricks going up yeah we're

back to baseline right again it's easy to get kind of neurotic about okay here's the line and i'm

going to go this far down when i put a brick i'm going to do this far when i come up that's not

important you're following it's like you're following the thread of our experience as long

as i'm in the moment enough to to remember to communicate with my whole body the rest is taken

care of the strategy is that 10 if that so now to create this experience we've kind of done we've

talked about how to open this situation up we've gone from this surreal impossible thing to him

saying yes to impossible things here's an invisible scalpel you want to play with this

yeah i'm gonna cut you open is that cool okay he's a he's accepting impossible premises and then

and a lot of people until the arm gets let go they're still kind of like okay whatever dumb

game and then i let go of the arm they're like what yeah right right so this we're because i'm

communicating essentially subconsciously or greater than consciously this will tend to just

just come all together as long as i do as long as i keep hold of the thread so now the next thing

we're doing you can do any like follow your imagination you can do anything you want but

this is my basic sequence because we go through one surreal experience that i can that um is weird

but not uncomfortable to one that is weird and uncomfortable to one that is weird uncomfortable

and kind of out of this world for most people yeah um so we're also kind of scaling up as we go

so now oh i did open you back up so now we come in i take out this bar and i'm going to put it in

and i'm going to push it up his arm and what am i doing as i push this up your arm yeah walking

i'm locking your elbow yeah and i'll even test behind here because you get different people with

different resistances there's some people are super stiff the moment you touch them right um

and so i'm putting it in and i'm using a bit of leverage here to straighten the arm and then i'm

confirming here that the arm is straight as i push the rest of the that end which has the experience

of now i'm straightening here i'm straightening here and i'm straightening here which feels like

having a bar on your arm right and because we already have the first stage where everybody's

going to feel their arm is a little heavy right most people will feel it's very heavy but everyone's

going to feel a little bit now we have this visceral one where is this all right yeah no okay

some people get quite uncomfortable i want to check um so now we've got this one where his arm

is feel that yeah super tight and of course it's because we've created this frame we're engaging

there's been this slow ramp up but it's also because i am creating the feeling of that as we

go okay now i will often because this is the one where i would say the there's the most variation

in terms of working so everyone will feel something in their arm as far as i can tell

some people will be like oh that's weird and some people will be like yeah okay so what i'll often

do is i'll hold right here just theatrically if there's a group if there's if it's just us who

who cares? But if there's a group, I'll often hold here so that I can kind of control the

response a little bit. There was a girl in the market yesterday who's a great example of this.

She was a wonderful responder. Everything was great. She got so distracted that she was like

moving her arm a bit. And so just for theatrical purposes, I'll tend to hold on here. If I'm really

confident, I'll let go. Doesn't matter that much. I'll even, you know, sometimes I don't love the

whole hypnotic challenge kind of thing often it can work sometimes try to lift your arm yeah and

i'll never do like try to bend your arm and the more you bend the harder it gets right we've

already put an iron bar in there like why all the small talk and so you know if if they want

they're like oh my god that's weird yeah you know i might say a few things about how weird it is or

what does that feel like and they might try to bend it right cool go to town yeah but that's not

my focus and if i get somebody who's well we'll get into people who are trouble later um but in

the absolute worst case scenario if i just really focus on the discomfort of this and and people see

this weird hyper extension nobody remembers that they didn't you know they didn't actually

hurt themselves trying to bend it now i noticed you have my wrist turned as opposed to straight

up and down is that intentional here let's get this out of you so it's um here i'm gonna reach

in so i reach in and as i pull it out i relax his arm down so there's a really clear moment here

where it bends right okay um now am i bending on side on purpose uh yes because i can see this is

more exactly you know than this yes yeah exactly okay and also if i'm holding here i have more

control than here right because i have my in this direction yeah yeah and i can even with my finger

here i can add a little extra straightening right so little touches okay and um i think when when you

do it we'll talk more about little touches as we go okay so that's the sorry my friend i yeah i'm

bleeding all over the place uh luckily this kind of blood comes out easy so um so we've gone from

like kind of surreal but very playful to surreal and like actually a little uncomfortable this is a

uncomfortable thing and you this feels weird this feels more like losing control

this is something that's like whoa so at this point you have somebody who's really invested

and so that's when i'll go on to in my basic version um the i i play it different ways the

connected arms sometimes i'll even say i'm putting in a microchip you're um free to play because at

this point you've built up such a little reality where crazy stuff happens that you can invisibly

do all sorts of things you can jazz it you can jazz it yeah one i take this i'll give you a little

cut here so you don't need much bigger and so i think when i did it with you i just said and i'm

going to connect the arms and again so i'm not a big jj abrams fan but if you watch a jj abrams

movie it's kind of like everything sort of emotionally makes sense and then you think

about it and you're like that made no sense at all it's okay to have a little jj abrams where

you don't like you know it's like i'm going to connect arms how right magic um so i'll open this

but just for diversity i'll go in and put in a microchip here now this i can talk i have all

these little tips these little tricks that you can use to fully enhance the experience i forget them

all because it's actually gotten a lot easier now and and this is you know this is the thing

with any anybody who's doing something you have to think how much of their secret sauce do they

really know some of us the engagement some of it's like beliefs that they have and certainty

confidence but i have taught this to enough people that i know anyone can do it okay i learned it

it from a 12 year old is that too oh well i went the the brick stage um so i come here i i put a

microchip and i come in to a position can you switch that way a bit where we're like this which

is theatrically very nice it also puts him in my sort of frame of sphere of influence i don't know

what to call it you're in my space now yeah um i'll tend to shy away from control because that's

how you get resistance right we don't need that um and here just like before it's i can do little

manual things so for example so what i what i'm really all i'm really gonna do is reliably is

i'll probably put you here is how i often start so that this pinky is somehow touchable might be

okay because in order to get a movement humans are actually very wired to connect to each other

and empathize it doesn't take all that much but i like to have something here because um you will

tend when you when you imagine this moving it will want to move that doesn't mean it will right

so i can help it along i can help it along by having some pressure here and letting go a tiny

bit i can have it by even saying do you feel that tension build up here yep the point is you seeing

my finger it causes you to sort of mentally uh empathize with my finger gotcha and so when i do

this and you're really in the moment not normally but when you're really in the moment this will

also kind of want to move okay and so i'm just helping that along i'm helping along by potentially

fudging here a little bit or i'm helping along by just directing you very clearly

but what i also started doing recently which i don't know if i've done before so i do this a few

times which i think is great because it sets up i've gotten much clearer movement it sets up what's

about to happen and you're not really sure am i doing that is he doing that right so anyway i turn

on my chip if i'm a chip or i create the connection i make it clear that the connection is created

and i'm doing this and then i go now look at your pinky and i start moving mine yeah and so that's

the moment where so many people are like what and as i'm moving as we're moving here your other

fingers start to loosen up and there's actually again this is teamwork whether you know it or not

so as this moves your other fingers are going to start to twitch a little bit and i'm going

to start marrying you so you're watching this and i'm actually one ahead of you right where i'm

watching the other movements start and by the time you see what's happening it's like our hands

are actually synced yeah and then um at this point i will often come here i'll move up move down and

if you don't have the cleanest movements in the world i'm out now which you might sure the last

few days it's all been this all the way but it could happen i also have this hand here okay so

i'm supporting you i'm making everything easy but if you're not making everything easy i can just

give a little push and i can even uh give a little bias this way like that so i'm just giving the

tiniest cue and at this point it is kind of marionettish right because i'm not controlling

you but i am leading you right and you're not consciously able to know all the things that

are happening because we only have that much attention sure and so now we've you know if i

for example if i move my thumb you can feel that now there i've verbally directed you to it right

if i move my thumb but at the same time um if i just go like this and i start to move my pinky

well i guess i'm trying to do that for them but if i were and again you'll get the most fluid

movements when it's not just me controlling it's me feeling where a little bit where you want to go

sure and and by the way little movements are enough in fact little movements are often things

that people cause like lose their the most right i've done things where you can do all sorts of

more fluid movements it's actually less impressive gotcha um because it's looks too staged it looks

oh god yes yeah people think it's fake um or it just kind of becomes hokey which you can do if

you want right um so there's a few other things i'll go over here which i don't really do anymore

but you can do so for example if i want to give a little couple a couple more nudges i can hold you

up like this we can practice like this and um when i come down what i'm doing is i'm i'm holding here

just the tiniest bit and when i release at the bottom your fingers go out yep and so i'm actually

mirroring what's about to happen so um or or i can do sometimes when i'm here i'll i'll go like

okay i'll turn this off for now then i'm like fiddling and i'm like okay there there all right

i didn't really do that well that time but i'll like do a little snap or a pop and kind of it

felt like my arm just like went loose for a second well it did yes because because that was

and that was my issue communicating because i i did a little snap and a pop and i just yeah i felt

like everything got sucked out of it yep yeah and so you'll see is what's kind of happening here is

i'm building a little reality or we're building a little reality where you're mostly following

my lead i'm also following you a bit but when i'm a little unclear strange things happen like your

arm goes dead yep so if i want to create an arm dead effect i can do that sure but if i'm a little

messy i might end up with a dead arm and that's cool too i'll just roll with punches okay um so

open this guy take out the chip sew him back up here um and we can go you know i'm not i'm not

always the most organized thinker so we can go um when you're doing it we can go over that again sure

but one of the important things about any experience especially you know transformative

ritual which is this is very lightly inspired by is that people engage most when there's

go or not like bookends like i you are willing to experience this crazy world where crazy things can

happen as long as it starts and it ends and you don't walk away going okay if he scratches his

nose am i gonna scratch my nose right um yeah and so we essentially undo what we did in the first

place very simple so grab my scalpel open up spread that apart i said he had to do that much

oh yeah i did because i took out the chip already yeah um grab your bone put that in

ligaments tendons yep and your uh muscles that in and we'll sew this guy back up

snap that off put it in how's your arm feel yeah better yeah better yeah normal yeah not normal

um so essentially recap um i'm just kind of casually asking do you want to experience

something weird unusual different and then i am communicating with my body and with my actions

everything that's going to happen um but well not but and a lot of that just has to do with

knowing where i'm going and in my body communicating that thing uh makes sense yeah okay well let's

um do you have any questions before we um move on not at the moment but i'm sure i will okay

awesome awesome all right so we'll get some uh well you gotta put everything back in first i

forgot about that so there's uh some of you hey jake hey buddy good to see you i'm doing well

uh do you mind if i show you something that's kind of interesting yeah it's kind of a weird

experience all right uh do me a favor here take your arm and i want you to just relax a little

bit all right and um i want you to imagine that um i have a little little thing right here this is a

uh can you see it no it's a it's a scalpel oh it's a scalpel it's invisible you can't see it

but i want you to watch closely here are you afraid of sharp needles or knives or anything

like that depending on situation how about blood you good with blood uh yeah okay okay so do you

Do you look away when you get needles or blood drawn or anything like that?

I do look away.

I am that guy.

You're welcome to look here or not, but I want you to just take a second and experience this for me, okay?

So I just want you to watch.

I'm going to place the scalpel right here in your arm and just kind of cut into it here as you can see it come right through here.

Let me put this down now.

Hold on a second.

So I'm going to take my hands and just open up your skin right across there.

There, good.

Can you feel that?

You see it?

Yeah.

Awesome.

Okay.

Now, you see the bone right here.

I'm just going to unlock that and take that out.

Good.

All right.

You feel your arm.

It's a little bit more loose now, right?

Yeah.

Less weight there.

Now, you see the muscles on this side.

I'm just going to pull that one out and pull that one out.

Good.

Get these tendons and nerves and veins out of there.

Good.

You feel that?

Yeah.

Good.

All right.

Awesome.

Now, I want you to pay attention to this area here.

I have this steel pipe.

gonna kind of just shove this right up into that spot in your arm you feel that right there yeah

good all right you feel that part of your arm awesome okay all right all right now what does

that feel like just stiff stiff all right perfect now if uh if i let go of your arm let me see just

uh tell me what that what that what that feels like there really rigid so if i if i move it here

right does that does that doesn't hurt at all or anything right no no okay all right so i want you

to watch me very closely here take that i'm just going to reach in just grab that and put that down

because you feel the tension release yeah you feel that going a little bit softer now awesome

all right so we'll get some uh gets well you got to put everything back in first i forgot about that

so there's uh some of your muscles there right those back in on that side some of these veins

and nerves need those and then of course that big bone right there feel that going right back in yeah

good all right awesome just push that skin back together for a second get a needle and thread

there just kind of just sew that back up perfect good you feel that it feel yeah a little bit better

now awesome normally good all right awesome perfect nice good picture for my guy yeah yeah

flopping around on me there looping um here you go how was that that was i know that was just like

that first phase the second phase um yeah yeah that was good um yeah i thought you you definitely

got into it it looks really good um i i made a couple notes to think of um yeah i so i like that

so when i when i do it i don't say imagine this imagine that i just like this is how it is and i

think both can work okay yeah um both are good frames yeah i'm coming at it from the mind of a

a magician so maybe a little different yeah visualize it see it feel it yeah i notice a lot

especially people with hypnosis trainings when they're when they're learning some of the stuff

that i do they'll talk a lot about imagination visually visualizing adding on layers um and if

that's your style fine but you actually don't need it and so most people won't care but the people

who you know there are some people out there who will be like aha he's hypnotizing him by using

hypno language doesn't matter but it's just one thing that could happen okay um i thought you had

really good feedback around like this is what's happening i you really got into the miming um yeah

and i i thought will be useful for people to notice and watch is like when you first got into

the wrist thing you actually maybe you were just a gentler soul than me i really give him a crank

yeah not a ton you didn't but that's fine because i had mentioned that you can do a check up here

and you did and so you caught it here which i think had you not done that he would have had a

slight bend and you would have you know he might have felt tense he might have felt all these things

but it's not nearly as vivid right as here okay so yeah that was great all right um do you want

to do as well with like when like obviously this stuff half of the game is you know in a sense

for people watching two for entry right yes if you just do and go and they go whoa that's weird

but you don't ask and feed back into their experience,

nobody's going to go with, right?

So you did really good at asking, what's that light?

You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff.

I think that's a really important thing.

So you hit that dead arm.

And I can't move my arm is different than I can't move my arm.

And so you caught him into the better position at the end.

Yeah, because it's a bar.

Yeah, it's a bar.

Now, when you put the bar in, are you going to the elbow?

Are you going right up to the shoulder?

I'm shoving it through here into their shoulder.

okay and i'm actually using this arm okay as leverage to make their shoulder because i imagine

when you're pulling the bone it's this bone not the whole shoulder yeah so are you pulling the

whole shoulder bone out i'm just taking out the front bone but if you want to get them all

so this is again my original thought this is from here to here right so okay the nice thing about

surreal is that you make your own rules and as long as they meet you at your rules yeah it's fine

so for me it's like you know i actually do more than this right while only really working in this

area okay but i'm consistent because i can tell you what happened when you did it to me yeah and

you put the pipe in yeah i actually felt this sort of resistance i got to here because of the rest

of your bones pushing past my my other my upper arm right yes and i could actually it's kind of

weird but i could feel it almost like knock into it yes 100 yeah sort of like it was it felt extra

thick yes you know and this is it like so we're we're gonna follow our own rules right we're gonna

we're gonna use these little tricks and little like maneuvers and we're gonna think we're gonna

be a little bit more in our heads because i'm crafting the experience but you're the one

animating the experience as the participant and so if i get caught in my mind around i'm the one

doing the magic I miss the magic because what's really happening is I'm opening this door and

saying what if this were real and you're going yeah okay and then all the other things happen

right and that's what's crazy and I and that's that's half of the fun if not more is okay some

people it's different for different people that's why I say every reaction is good sure because it's

going to be a little different for different people and instead of going oh no in fact there was one of these yesterday oh

yesterday oh no my bar is movable i might have even said everyone's a little different right

that is it or i might have said like it's like acceptance right like yeah letting the reality

validating the reality yes so instead of yes absolutely instead of this meaning the bar didn't

work this means well clearly she's responding to a bar but it's it's not as thick as some bars sure

you know and and if you talk to them instead of going oh it didn't work often they'll go

yeah oh it's so weird it's this is easy this is so weird that's just the bar they have right i think

i think that's one of the biggest difference between something like this and traditional

hypno too because when you have the hypno challenge right yeah which again we've kind

of talked like i'm a little more aggressive to an extent with like doing something like this or bridge

uh but i still have to be open even with that kind of a kind of more aggressive kind of guidance of

it yeah in my character to you know facilitate being open to you know say you're doing uh the

the the marionette movements you do that and they just use it like a slight or they say i feel it

want to go i'm like yeah you can just allow it to go and even just say that you know but if when

you have a hypno challenge you do like a stiff arm yeah you know if they've been that arm you've

failed yeah and this if they've been that arm you've just basically said that's right yeah you're

student this is this is your experience in your world and this is how you're experiencing it

and when we did it and this will be good we'll call back to the performance footage on this right

we had a group yesterday israeli i showed you a brief like quick reaction that was her doing the

bent arm one she like you said earlier she got so into it she was able to bend it yeah and it didn't

even phase her at all but she was unable to bend it and she kind of bent it a little bit in the

thing yeah two we brought the other guy who immediately said i want to experience this too

and literally you're like questioned like the exact same thing and he's like yeah yeah and we

got into it his bent arm was very much that and there was no what has been no his one was hers

the one there's a little more hers was a little bit loose his was a real perfectly stiff but it's

still because even though the rallies were different yes and we're breaking the conventional

rule over actually mentalism all this are doing the same thing twice it's just as interesting that

to the experience they're different right yeah and this is i think this gets to one of the core

things that you know because we talk all the day about like what is or is not hypnosis

like but i think one of the incontrovertible truth that's happening is we have these reality

generating capacities and we're leveraging that in a really interesting way precisely and if i

over control and i say this is how it's supposed to go um yes that'll work with many people right

um but one is well okay there's gonna be a few a few i'm not even gonna i don't know even count but

uh you will um often it creates a power dynamic which isn't great some people really respond to

that negatively um uh there's a auto rank talks about some interesting relevant stuff around how

create sort of subconscious power dynamics um but you're also um there's an inherent creativity in

our mind body systems and when i don't over control too much that's where there's this weird resistance

as i go from open arm to to like still got a bone in an arm and it becomes more real because you're

participating i'm not over controlling and that's where the magic really begins because if we if

we're all about control we will consistently end up with the same effects of okay there's a thing

in my arm but we also will become uh caught up with the same reactions because people are just

like oh this is what it's like having a weird arm some people are i think that's crazy some not right

but if you meet them in the middle and you're responding what they're responding to and you're

engaging their creative process now all sorts of crazy stuff can happen and the last point of that

is we essentially have different modes for engaging with reality and there is the controlling one

and there is the exploring one and we are as we can see with our fingers and stuff

uh our mind body systems are contagious so if i come in saying this is how it's going to go

and i'm going to control this experience well it can work it will work especially because you can

you know modify and do all these kind of things you get a certain amount of engagement but you're

actually using closed system and so they're going to tend to respond closed system and if they don't

right i'm still not going to catch what they're giving me right because i'm closed yeah so

essentially and i think this sort of uncomplicates it hugely yeah i just do what i want from them

i'm curious when i cut him open how's he going to respond like when genuinely yesterday when we were

going around in the market and i was like okay i'm going to cut you open how do you feel about

blood or whatever i was saying i said a little different every time every yeah every answer was

like oh to me because i'm like where did we find all these yeah all these needle junkies yeah right

exactly we were joking about like what is up with this town yeah yeah exactly who comes to boston

the masochists so um yeah so i think i think um above all else i'm engaging curiosity with

curiosity like attracts like right and the premise of all of this is we're playing yeah we're using

a frame that talks about play i'm engaging in a way that feels kind of playful i'm it's surreal

it's not real so you know like if you're doing a mentalism effect that's great they can be great

but if you're a little too hyper realistic then you're you know dealing with the adult

controlling mind and they can be wow or not but it's still that controlling mind you add a little

surrealism and they're weirdly they become even more invested yeah even more engaged would you

say a good way to kind of if we really condense this down to like layman's terms like in a way

it's better to be just so many i think mentalists magicians uh performers in general they're so

focused on being the hero but that's but that's not you don't you're not looking for a hero to

guide you on a journey you're looking for obi-wan kenova you're looking for a god right like you

want to be so your participant is luke and you just gotta you want to make you like him up on

a speed racer working with a luke you know i just like you're kind of guiding them through

this experience all right yeah so this is joseph campbell magic we're getting it yeah i think that's

a fair yeah i think it's a fair way of yeah i think it's a fair way of putting it um yeah so i

mean that was a big aside but i think that's probably the most important thing on here um so

thank you but i would like because um there will be a lot of detail-oriented people as well yeah do

Do you want to run through 1, 2, and 3, or at least 1 and 3, so bricks and movements,

just so I can see it, comment a bit on it, and report back to the crew?

Yeah, I didn't do the bricks. I totally forgot about the bricks.

So, oh, actually, could I?

This is point number two of important shit, is I actually have a neurological issue.

I can't do things in sequences almost ever.

Yes, he has. He's noticed.

and uh i i found that it's liberating to tell people that because i literally can't do my own

shit correctly and it still works right yeah so funny so that's that's kind of where the bar is

it's it's not about doing it right it's about doing it yeah and so i've i started doing this

in about 2008 uh so 14 years later done it a thousand times less than the last few years given

I think for the first time ever, I forgot to put in the bricks first.

Take out the bone.

It's like the basics.

I'm so proud.

Exactly.

I couldn't have fit in a bar.

Good thing the camera guy caught it.

But that's it.

You can be wrong.

You can get messed up as long as you're still in the moment.

As long as you're still engaged with the person.

because it's not the perfection that makes it,

it's the imperfection.

The imperfection is where this weird resistance came from.

The imperfection is how you dropped differently

than the last guy.

You're always gonna, as long as I'm engaged myself,

as long as I have some little helpers

to make sure I can communicate an experience,

that's all that's gonna take to unlock the real magic.

Totally.

And so when I'm, you know, in my head around like, ah, I fucked it up.

Well, that's me going back into defense mode, not curiosity mode.

Yeah, curiosity mode is so important for this because, you know, like you're saying, biofeedback in a lot of ways, right?

If you have curiosity into something, it's like there's a really interesting model out of like, I think it's like five conscious commitments of conscious leadership, something like that.

Could be.

There's an interesting thing where it talks about observing emotions, right?

where you can sit there, if you say you have an anger reaction, right?

And instead of just emoting it, maybe you stop for a second,

almost imagine taking it out and then look at it and go, why is that?

And you're curious about it instead, and you can redirect from that path.

I think the same thing with this kind of thing, right?

When you have that curiosity, and that curiosity is infectious

when you, say, have that emotional reaction, too.

It allows you to kind of control the thing a little bit more.

It takes people off guard when they do something that should make you angry,

they feel me get angry and then you know instead you have a look of curiosity on your face you've

taken a moment and you're curious about something you know yeah yeah might have rambled there but

no that's all right no it's it does make sense and it's i i think a lot of people will comment

on a similar thing because it's just a human truth is like we can take we are contagious we

are contagious yeah i know that from the last couple years um me to it yeah um thanks this

project a bit but it's all right yeah and people tend to to notice similar things about how we get

the way but let's let's do that let's do it again and um in the beginning or do you want to let's

do from the beginning okay as early on as you want but let's at least begin with the opening

so let's pick it up from the second half let's start absolutely beginning okay and um to piggyback

a little on our conversation before for people who are new to this kind of stuff you're going to come

in you have some basic tools that you've seen of how you can change experience and and like give

little nudges here and there but also be open and you're also probably coming in with a feeling of

nervousness anxiousness discomfort yeah um and the slight reframe there is what you're actually

feeling is excitement what you're actually feeling is is this gonna work am i gonna fail

well that's curiosity so let's label those correctly as excitement and curiosity and guess

what is going to open this man's world to the possible it's excitement and curiosity

so a little frame to come in with and then let's start with the arm or wherever you want to start

whether it's the frame up or just dive into the effect all right um i'll probably start from the

beginning again because i need to just start doing stuff it's weird um all right uh hey jacob nice

to see you again um i want to try something kind of um interesting with you if you don't mind um

all right can i see your arm yeah of course good i want you to just relax your arm for a second now

are you afraid of like needles or scalpels or anything like that depends okay how about blood

you good with blood uh yeah good with blood okay good when you get a like a shot or have blood

drawn do you do you look or do you do you look away okay yeah you like me too even though i've

got a lot of ink i still tend to look away um so i want i have something here this is uh can you see

that no it's a it's a scalpel actually so i'm gonna do something here for you i want you to

watch I'm just going to touch it into your skin there and just kind of make a little cut right down

the center right there good all right I'll put that away now I'm just going to use my hands to

just spread open the skin right on that line okay okay now you can see inside there's your is your

bone right there I'm just gonna just gonna pull that out for just a minute there now I'm just

going to grab these these muscles here okay good all right perfect get that one okay good all right

all right you feel it's a little weaker now right it's a little softer it's like it's not much so

there's a few things left in here let me just get these these these veins and arteries get rid of

those all right so you feel it's like can you yeah yeah what does that feel like you're very light

right you can feel it's still on your wrist right you feel that yeah your arm is kind of

yellow in a lot of ways so i want you to watch this here i've got this uh get this brick all

right i'm just going to put that right in your arm do you feel that yeah all that good all right

i want to take this next one i got a couple of them all right there you know it goes goes down

a little bit more do you feel it is it's getting heavier right yeah heavier all right i got one

more one more to see if i can stick that in there right perfect good you feel that let's see if you

try lifting up your hand just a little bit see how much heavier it is now yeah can you bend that

elbows is that easier yeah yes good all right so i'm just going to pull that up just a little bit

here let me get that one out okay that one here all right so you can feel a little bit of the

weight relief right right there pull that one right there good all right you feel it's even

lighter now yeah right there's one more one more all right good all right you see how it's it's

loose here but it's not as heavy yeah back to jello now i got one more thing let me get this

it's a just a piece of steel rod it's gonna just in place of your bone just gonna put this right

right up into your arm right there good right perfect right you feel that kind of straightening

out yeah perfect all right awesome good all right you feel that what's that feel like just

stiff like my fingers are stiff you feel you feel your fingers you feel the fingers but the arm is

kind of you know where i'm gonna let you go here for a second can you feel that now yeah if you live

if you move your arm up tell me what that feels like moving your arm a lot of resistance let's

feel it in perfect yeah okay all right can you what about that arm does that arm still work fine

all right good all right so let me take this here i'm just going to pop that that bar out

all right good put that right there i'm going to sew you back up here i got to get some needle and

thread there perfect now i didn't put anything back in but you sewed up you feel that yeah

feel that it's weird yeah awesome so i want you to see the the thread going through your arm there

i'm just going to grab the end here i don't even do you feel you know when you pull that thread

through your fingers sometimes you can feel that i want you to pick can you feel that yeah running

through your arm there yeah there do you feel that coming through we'll get rid of that all right

right there all right let me throw that muscle back in it's over here there perfect there's one

good there's there's two get that bone pop that bone back in good all right that needle and thread

again perfect good all right how's that feel is that better yeah good move your arm a little bit

all back to normal good every both arms are the same fantastic all right um we can take it a step

further if you like yeah yeah a little different okay all right let me get that scalpel back out

again i'm just going to make a smaller cut right about here right there perfect you see that just

going to open just a little bit and have this little pin see this pin a little piece of metal

just going to pop that right there okay should bring your arm out here now i want you to watch

your hand here because i'm just going to put it right on top of mine all right there just like

that all right now do you see that i'm going to move my arm up here i want you to watch here because

now we're sort of connected you feel that yeah all right i want you to watch here as i move my

arm up you see it starts to starts to come up as well right yeah all right now i want you we'll just

keep an eye on my my little finger right here okay so i'm gonna see it start to to wiggle a little

bit yeah right there right now as that one goes feel that rocking back a little bit yeah good

watch your other fingers now separate your hand like that right watch watch your hand

all right let me bring my arm back over here take that and just you can unlock everything perfect

and relax your hand a little bit all right just grab that put a couple of stitches in there take

that pin out first there good and should be good to go back to normal we're good to go how does

everything feel i think feels good good that was cool perfect all right nice loved it loved it yeah

no comments perfect no no it was yeah it was great it was great and it's it's uh affirming my

my intuition to not get into all the little details of stuff because i could see that like

i you know the the way you were creating crawling his arm it's like i could feel that you found the

right thing that worked for you to get the maximum leverage and it was different than what i would

have done okay and it worked just as well okay yeah so i thought that was great i'd um you know

like often i'll have my hand here because i can put some leverage here and i noticed there was

like his arm raise was slow yeah and i think if you had done it my way yes that would have been

easier but i you know i liked how yours opens the role and yeah so yeah okay awesome one of the

little bits i noticed this yesterday when he was doing this too um because remember girl she kind

of i think commented first girl yeah okay she kind of told her why don't you just just guide it up

and he said yeah sure but then what what you did was you you did it one more time and then you

opened up because what happens is you're actually setting the expectation as well right

if you get in the mind a little bit and then when you opened up and it still went up anyway they go

oh so essentially something really nice yes and so essentially i'm dealing with a challenge by

telling the truth just not all the truth sure um so and i could tell all the truth too it's not like

this is all happening for reals guys um but yeah with her she was the first person i had done this

within probably a year because covid and stuff um i guess i did a couple in december yeah um so

well almost a year um so i with her i was kind of over doing it and she's like aren't you aren't

you pushing on my arm and the fact is that yes i'm pushing on her arm why am i pushing on her

arm to give her the experience of what it's like once we're connected yeah and by the time she's

caught that i've already given her that experience so i'm like oh no we can just take the hand away

and i don't even probably didn't even say no i said you know what i'll just take the hand away

it was already raising two is the best thing yeah so it's already in motion yeah and she's

wrestling her own yeah right imagination curiosity exactly that's what we want to call the mechanism

that makes us work yes takes over right and so yes and so in in a way this is like this is not

a kung fu kata this is wrestling i i have a goal and there's an elegance to it and i'm trying to

communicate somebody something through my body to another person's body um and that's the thread

that i'm holding on to it's not about all the little pieces the pieces help but they also will

tend to flow naturally from me understanding that what i do is real yeah what i'm doing is real

what i'm doing is something that's really interesting for you it's something that opens

this idea this this experience of a true thing for us as humans yeah crazy that we can do this

and this is a tiny bit of what more we can do um well it's real for you too as a boy absolutely

the operator you i mean it's just like um to put it in magician terms figure out that it is

peddling magic i'm a coin magic junkie huge and when you do a pet when you do a toss vanish or

a retention even you know you need it to look like this hand drops a little bit yeah sell it

the worst coin magic thing i've ever seen them do is they do a french drop like that and that's

how it looks right versus you can just do something like that and it looks absolutely dead on you know

it's a lot it's very for those of you out there it's very slideene-esque in a way how this works

you know that is the fulcrum piece this is that real mimicry getting into it you know you got to

go inside your head and like it's kind of like um we're talking about yesterday right the best way

i think to do mime is imagine you've got like a ball or something and imagine pushing on it and

when you can feel the resistance and feel it there in your hands yeah muscles are literally like it

actually gives you a workout almost yeah doing it you've got a perfect theater exercise it is

exactly theater the golden ball the golden ball yeah and and so often we kind of split things like

this is theater this is real life this is magic this is real life and i like that you know we're

kind of going in that in-between space of this is theater and it is magic and it's real life

and the real you know how it works and the truth that we're conveying is there's more to us as

people we forget that all the time totally and this thing happens because of how you know how

awesome we are and so for example yesterday well and always well you'll notice and maybe i should

say this in the copy i don't know i haven't done one of these videos before uh but like nobody goes

was that a trick nobody goes how did you do it everyone's like which real thing is this right

like is this mirror neurons is this like some kind of voodoo is this you know is this psychic

it's like nobody's like where's the strings because it just doesn't occur to you why would it

which real thing is this and i love that as a starting place yeah and um and on top of that

because you're leading in with this real thing yeah um the next thing is also going to be real

right no matter what you're using as your nudge maybe it's not uh your hand anymore maybe it's

maybe it's whatever you tend to use yeah well it's kind of like uh it's like i was kind of

saying yesterday right like you don't do a card trick before this right like like i feel like

if you've created the frame of you take a card all right cool now uh watch it's on the top

and then you did this i don't know i think you've kind of tracked from it depends i think it really

depends on what you're doing if if you're on the street i don't know like if you were in the market

doing quincy market doing this no i wouldn't do a card trick before it yeah um but if you were in

a stage context or if you were doing a parlor style show or even walk around you know strolling

magic i could see this being incredibly hard hitting after like of invisible deck yeah see

you know the context thing would fit you know what i mean so you mean it all depends on

your theming you can turn a card trick into something as magical feeling oh totally as this

yes um would you put them side by side it's up to the performer yeah you know in your style also

your personality you pull it off absolutely absolutely if you have the the balls yeah honestly

you have to have balls to do something like this anyways yeah you know because you're you're going

out on a limb literally yeah um interaction with with a stranger most of the time i mean maybe

doing this at a party or something i can see this being a little bit more comfortable maybe

you know, more lubricated. But I can definitely see this being challenging for a newbie on the

street. So, yeah, absolutely. It all depends on your context, your purpose, what you're driving

at. Yes. And I'll add your own internal frame of if, you know, there are many different types

of performers, magicians, mentalists, what have you. I mean, many types of even within those

categories and often there's this feeling of i'm doing this to you i have to be in control um and

if that's your frame whether you're especially if you knew but even if you've been around a while

it's going to be hard on the other hand the first 20 of this literally talked to me by a 12 year old

right and i think that a big part of this is going to be allowing allowing it to work allowing

it to happen trusting that people this is actually the natural thing this is the most natural thing

you come up to somebody and the moment they're okay with experiencing something weird this is

what can happen yeah and you saw it you saw it yesterday i mean we kind of saw it today

oh it's first time works both times yeah little modifications here and there you got a captive

audience uh but yesterday we went out and had a very not captive audience had some shit disturbers

had some i don't know what the oh yeah american term for that is yeah uh we had some troublemakers

yeah and skeptics and uh no no dickheads dickheads yeah um no i'm trying to say hecklers

yeah honestly hecklers they just weren't they're very open people they're more closed at all yeah

but again so i you know i guess i guess what i emphasize is that um we can allow this to be

the natural thing and the fact that it's natural doesn't make it not magic that in a certain sense

makes it more magic because magic is stuff that happens when you don't really have control over

it like the experience of magic so i can see this hitting somebody really hard really hard

if you i i've been working a presentation in my head for this since we started talking i'm serious

i've got it almost completely fleshed out for this so um yeah and um it fits beautifully because

i'm already doing something not what you're doing but using an arm so adding this into it i can see

that demonstration being a focal point so and i'm not bullshitting there i've been literally going

through different thematically you know interesting points on how to plot it so yeah yeah it um yeah

it's great yeah i love it and so just because you know we'll probably take a moment here regroup see

if there's anything we haven't covered but in this interaction that just happened yeah uh do

you have any further feelings on how it like how it went questions yeah moments of doubt um no

no you have to commit yes you have to commit and believe it um if you don't commit you're not going

to believe it they're not going to believe it and it's going to fail um and i think it's going to

feel bad you know coming out of the mindset of a magician and a mentalist like you were saying with

the failure being the problem with those challenge of effects you know like you can't raise your arm

can't bend your elbow um that's where my mind goes as that type of performer but if you commit like

what you're doing with something like this and you're not framing it as a challenge right and

you're not framing it in the concept of i have the control you're my puppet yeah you know it will

work but you have to believe it honestly yeah so yes i love that well put and and so what you're

doing is you're committing to play a game and you're committing to play a game knowing that

what you're doing is real yeah and as long as you have those two things i think it'll happen

because my experience i don't i don't know if i've i'm sure there's been somebody who's been

like no my arm's not heavier i can't remember it it's probably going to happen enough you're

gonna get some yeah yeah you know what it's like i tell people that are like i mentioned what i do

i'm like oh yeah i'm kind of like a magician you know i'll bait him a little bit well but could i

pause for a second yeah because what i'm saying is i don't remember this person it may not have

ever happened yeah it it might impossible it's plausible but the thing is so one is this is a

very natural thing it will tend to happen you're setting up the right frame we're but we're also

using our tools to make it the most like to feel it as it's happening this is gonna have this is

gonna be much stronger than say light hand heavy end you know balloon brick kind of thing because

you're physically in there and you you're able to have so much leverage yeah and is there a i guess

an inherent shock value to it as well absolutely so little points on their presentation like i

noticed you didn't let go of the arm with the bricks it was very it was this big and it could

have been you know you could have if you wanted set down the arm as I sometimes do to put it here

and that's where they're coming from sure you know visual or I mean coming in from seeing you do it

15 minutes before yes you mean at first I completely forgot about the bricks yeah but but like you forgot about the

at first i completely forgot about the bricks yeah but but like you forgot about the bone yes you

know what i mean and like you said there's no there's no order there's no proper order other

than the beginning other than the beginning you know because like you said you've done stuff out

of sequence yes now the sequence i would say is an optimal one because of how it it engages small

it engages with a reliable light heavy and you're scaling up to harder things

it's just that that sequence is helpful it's not the be-all end-all you have to have the start

middle and end absolutely yeah but the bits in between there was a few you know a few things

that can be manipulated 100 yeah yeah yeah and there's so many extra things you can do with it

we've talked about this variations yes and we'll get into variations after maybe um so so yeah like

like i said i think you did a fantastic job i think it was a great example of like okay you're

15 minutes into this thing, you're already nailing it. And that, yes, there will be people

who resist. There will be people who say, okay, this isn't working. I haven't really had that

problem. I'm sure it will happen. But we're just committing to a little game. And no matter the

outcome, my experience has been, this is something people can engage with. And even when they're not

engaging with it that i was getting back to is when you use the tools correctly um okay suppose

you're a total shithead and you're giving me trouble i'm doing this i'm doing all the stuff

i'm kind of maybe asking questions in a more closed-ended way yeah how's that feel to you

does it feel tight and they're like yeah well i'm still holding them so you know like if if i notice

in the first little bit that he's not responding to this which is rare right um if he's if he's

giving me a bad vibe all of this super rare don't worry about it but in the worst case scenario

you've done this a hundred times and on the 101st time you get a total asshole yeah then what i do

is i'm going through i'm mangling him around a bit and instead of going to the third phase i look

out for the most interested looking person and be like do you want to see this don't take it a

little further yeah that's it you can bounce off of it exactly right and this asshole as much as

they think they're getting in the way of this they're not getting in the way of this right

because they're focused on this right and i'm focused on this and i'm going okay well i've

used him to show everything that's happening already right so let's bring a not asshole in

yeah and if we're one-on-one with an asshole yeah and then you can gauge you can gauge your audience

and see like you said who is your invested person you know and that person is going to give you the

results that you want when you get to your ending exactly you know and so i think you know maybe

we'll after a pause we can talk about different types of challenges and stuff i'm happy to answer

or or you know go back and forth on that but i really think the right mindset and the knowledge

that not only do these tools help you craft the experience for this guy you're crafting the

perception this is i'm sorry this is a bar in the arm right yeah look at it yeah it's the proof in

the pudding when i was doing it i wanted him to feel what i was feeling when you did it and i could

literally feel yeah the cut yes you know and i could not that i could feel pain i could just feel

like this and not because you were pushing on me either i could feel the push but i it felt like

the skin was separating yes you know and i'm coming at it because i want it to be effective

I want it to work but again that comes down to the your purpose presentations you know context

um and when I was doing it with him and I had the the thread in I just had the idea of pulling the

thread out like that touch you know I wanted him to I want him to feel the thread like unlocking

everything you know what I mean because I remember pulling thread through my finger and I could oh

that feels weird what if we did like ripping the stitches out you know what I mean but in a slow

way so um and i i felt like that just i could feel it while i was doing it and you were curious and

you were playful and there it is right and that's the good thing you can add things like that right

you know just you know i did i did the dowel instead of the microchip so that we were like

on a pivot system oh interesting that was the oh okay yeah so i didn't even understand that but i

saw that the way you get went in the way you came out like you were consistent and the effect was

there and i didn't even at least you said was it dowel you said i had it i thought you said a pen

no you said a pen yeah yeah the little like this and i took a pen and just stuck it right here

and then i and then you can add on it so that almost like we were yes on a locking point yes

so that explains your point you can customize it in the moment yes yeah as you feel it you

can jazz it like you were saying so yeah it's gonna be different for everybody all right cool

let's take a break and see where we are sweet maybe the idea of pulling say a tumor or a bloody

feather or what have you out was actually a way of shocking people so i um it's kind of two two

little inspirations that i wanted to um uh i wanted to share where this came from um so the first

is it genuinely does come from a little kid's game um i don't think it's a popular one i've

never seen this one anywhere else but back in like 2008-9 i was working at a group home for

high-risk youth and we'd often like i was i was casual so i'd come in and be the like the mary

poppins one we come and we have fun um and uh and so it's that you know in that age group it was

really common to have these little sort of mind-body games, which is really interesting to

me because they're all over the world. When I was researching my first book, I found some of them

going back centuries, very similar to how they are today. So these are things that are passed on

from generation to generation to generation of child. And that's part of why they're so engaging.

You talk to somebody on the street and you're like, you remember those games? And half the time

they're like oh yeah as though they hadn't thought of it in 10 15 20 years yeah um and it's genuine

and it's it's coming from this this space in our lives where the rules of the world haven't quite

formed and so we're on that cusp of childhood to adolescence to adulthood when there's we kind of

figured most of the rules out but they're not settled that's that's where we we play the most

our perception in these ways that people remember um but uh and so so part of it was like you know

they're they're creating their games at the same time or they're showing their games at the same

time i was studying uh basically the psychology of ritual in my undergrad and so i was learning about

sort of mind body type experiences as done by shamans and other people who are doing you know

healing or transformation or potentially entertainment what have you um and so you

you know, they'd show me these things, and I'm like, completely reminded of childhood,

then I'm like, oh, wait, I can create new stuff just knowing what I'm studying.

And this is kind of a fusion of the two, where they played this game with bricks,

this imagining a game with bricks.

And it sort of clicked off in my mind, oh, we could go further with this.

We could create something even more.

And so that's where that fusion came from.

And in particular, my thesis at the time was on this idea that,

okay have you heard of psychic surgery yes yes and so what's your knowledge of that um

mainly performed as a kind of a scam service yes you know healing people with real illnesses

with fake methods right sending them on their ways with them thinking that they've been healed

yes yeah right pulling out tumors and whatnot yeah um and so yes uh super popular in the 70s

i'm sure it's still around debunked by a lot of magicians as well as others but there's also this

idea in anthropology that maybe some traditions like that weren't actually a trick maybe the idea

of pulling say a tumor or a bloody feather or what have you out was actually a way of shocking

people into a state of perceptual openness where they're you know you could catalyze an immune

response perhaps or you know you could shut down a a hyper like unregulated cycle in somebody's

system what have you so this game that i was playing with kids became this idea of looking at

oh what if we're doing this magical thing but for real what if we're creating an experience that

shifts our mind-body connection and so that's sort of what this became okay i'm holding a feather for

some reason i need to yes yeah subtle differences so that's where this came from um any thoughts on

that um it's very interesting it actually makes a lot of sense yeah it would start as something

with some truth and authenticity behind it yes and then people like people got lazy uh-huh and

started scamming people yes you know and manipulating it to make money yes or that maybe

there was this more complex tradition where you're manipulating symbols and you're creating

experiences and doing all these kind of things and then someone comes in and they're like

oh i see where that feather came from yeah and they go do that do that to the westerners right

you know they're yep yeah i get it absolutely yeah so part of why i thought this is a really

interesting place to start is it's sort of this liminal space of what's what's a trick and what's

real childhood to adulthood this you know and all of these experiences it's like the anthropologists

are all talking about the age of exploration the stuff going on the 70s is these interesting

historical touch points of what do we believe about the universe um and when we get into how

it works and why it always works that's essentially what we're working with the

our systems for perceiving the universe and how socially we can come in and change those in an

instant make sense yeah cool yeah absolutely all right very interesting yeah yeah and and i i part

of why i wanted to to really focus on that is just the i you know a lot of the time i've seen um you

know i haven't done a lot of stuff on video i haven't done a lot of stuff other entertainers

have seen and so a lot of time the pushback is like oh it's some kind of suggestion trick it's

not going to work reliably or you know it's just yeah it couldn't possibly work and i i really want

to lay out i want you to be able to walk out of this room or even in this room we got a camera guy

and actually just do it to somebody okay because it's i would say the natural we're we're we're

taking advantage of the natural human social processing to create an experience that actually

becomes natural on its own that makes sense yeah i think so yeah yeah absolutely all right so let's

um let's get into the breakdown of this uh unless you have any thoughts or questions going in i'm

sure i will as we go through the breakdown good yeah um so how it's going to go is i'll show you

basically the way that i just kind of do it now okay sort of fudge it together um i have some

notes from so this was this effect is in in my first book reality is an art um i had it in way

more detail there's a hundred little things that you could do to nudge here and there if you needed

to um but i'll show you a couple quick ways of doing it then we can have a little break

and talk about some of the nudging and finessing okay yeah absolutely we're getting somebody to

agree to something that isn't expected and maybe has a bit of a risk to it oh um because we did

everything kind of conversationally um i just want to go back through step by step by step

and review what are we doing in this just very basic flow and of course the more you kind of

ease into it the more you can jive and jazz in whatever way you feel um so um steps to keep in

mind um the first one that i came to mind that came to mind for me just now as we were discussing

this is uh as you begin this effect just remember the truth like remember that um humans just

naturally perceive socially that these kind of games are things that that that speak to our

potential but also happen you know we we did them as kids most of us did them as kids this is the

natural thing and when you invite people into it it's actually quite easy to get going and of course

that that those nerves you have that doubt you have that's actually excitement and curiosity

and as long as you can recognize that in yourself you will exude that and people will pick up on it

and you will have the capacity to do a lot of things that you might not have thought.

So that's kind of frame number one. Then we're actually then we're gonna do it in whatever

context you're in and however you do it I think the important thing to do right off the bat is to

ask or imply that something weird is going to happen. Are you cool with doing something weird?

you want to see something odd. We're getting somebody to agree to something that isn't expected,

and maybe has a bit of a risk to it. So now we're kind of making sure that they're emotionally,

socially in the right place. Once you have those two things, I believe it's pretty much game over.

I assume there's people out there going, well, how do I do this to everybody?

regardless my answer is you don't want to do it to anybody who is not giving consent yes so that's

just uh weird yeah yeah right that's one way to put it um so essentially i'm setting up that you're

in to see something weird um and of course if someone's like no i don't want to see something

weird just show them not weird magic i guess i don't know how that works not my people um

in my experience you have an okay vibe people say yes i nobody said no yesterday

we we got some surly people uh they still you know um so then uh next is um you set your frame

and it could be as simple as um bringing up the kids games so do you remember as a kid you might

have played these games like crisscross applesauce that is a feather stuff as a board uh there's lists

online of people remembering these games that they played as a kid so find a few that either

you remember ideally something you do a connection to um or just find something a lot of people

remember um and so now we have you know the engagement and now this this is frame number two

this is i i come in with this playful vibe referring to playful things play is an inherent

human thing it's a learning state in my mind this is you know when you're playing as a kid you're

kind of learning your social roles or you're learning like it always trips me out a little

bit like what's hide and seek it's like predator prey it's it's how kids learned since way back to

not get eaten you know what's house you're learning social roles play is an innate human state it

becomes catalyzed and once we get into that space our our minds and our bodies start to shift and

adapt and we're able to engage with each other in a new way. So now we've set that frame. The last

opening point essentially is the scalpel. So now we've got the the agree to the weirdness,

we've got the engagement, and we've got this absurd thing of I'm following through on the

play and saying, Can I cut you open with this scalpel? Okay. So once I have that,

i might add little statements in like how do you feel about getting cut how do you what do you

normally do when you get blood something to kind of raise the stakes well this is also here so it's

an absurd state raise right i come in and then i do my first cut i make sure to treat my scalpel

as real because i'm setting the rules of this little universe we're building so i have to follow

my own rules i put that in my pocket i open this up and then i take out my muscles my bones my

ligaments we won't do it right now um i put them somewhere safe and you'll if we show the video

from yesterday you'll see this is kind of like some some by play with people of you know what

what is where are we putting these things are people getting in the medical space etc

then i take my bricks from wherever it doesn't matter it could be invisible shelf

but i play putting these in and as i do i'm leading with my language i'm imagining heaviness

i'm putting this in here i'm bringing my hand down three bricks then i sew that back up and

we let them react i like dropping the hand just to because some people they're they're quite stiff

here i like either if they're really stiff here i'll say just relax and i think that i did that

with you the first time a little bit i'm essentially i want to end up in a place where he's

heavy and it's obvious so i just ask for what i need if he's super stiff i say relax whatever i

need to to create this space so i let him be heavy for a moment i let him react and now we've

finished phase one which is the thing that everyone's going to respond to is super low stakes

um and um uh yeah it's super low stakes and it's obvious but when it really works but it's not

that obvious when it doesn't work as well so super low stakes and again if at any point i mess up

here i'll just correct myself like oh you know i'm just gonna add another brick for good measure

and that time I really give him a jostle down to to um exemplify that sure okay so I come I open

this back up I take out my three bricks and next I take out my iron bar and so now we're on to the

phase where it's a little uncomfortable there's a little more stakes it's a little weirder a little

more invasive so we're kind of upping the stakes as we go I come in and I as I put this in I'm

leveraging his hand to pop out his arm to create this iron bar thing. And I'm also pushing that in

so that I end up with this very theatrical, oh shit, this is very straight. And almost certainly,

well, definitely, as I'm doing both of these, and this is kind of the next step once you get

the basics down, but you can feel how strongly it's happening. When I put in the bricks, his hand

gets heavy it's crazy but it does when i put in the arm his if the bar his arm gets stiff it's

crazy that it does so i take this out a little extra there sorry um take out that bar and as i

take right as the bar comes out i push him down just so there's no leftover effects here take out

my bar and you switch the order of the last part which actually i do sometimes um doesn't matter

that much but so i'm going to sew you up most of the way break that off and then i either imply that

i'm going to do a thing that connects us doesn't matter or i say i'm going to put in a microchip

or some other you know you can say puppet strings or whatever whatever you want as long as you're

kind of consistent in following your this little reality that we're creating together

i put in that chip and now i scooch in and again with each of these you'll notice

the first one i'm out here the second one i'm moving in and the third one he's all in my space

so again i'm coming into his space and drawing him into mine it's like this increase in um

investment in kind of intimacy of pulling you into my world and i come in and now i set up our hands

so that we are close to each other, he can see me as I see him. And I begin with the mirroring

movement, not even mirror exactly, but the marionette movements. So I'll often begin with

the pinky because it's small, it's creepy, it's cool. You actually could start anywhere. I'll tend

to do pinky and thumb. And if you want to push this along, just remember that he is neurologically

mirroring me and everyone but especially me because i've created this this special space

so that when i start moving my finger even though we didn't do this whole thing you can probably

feel the tension build up yes definitely yeah that's all the tension we need so if i have to

give it a tap i will if i if i do my tendon trick and i come down and i release we're actually also

playing with the tension that's inherently going to be in the hand right so um anyway in this in

In this space, maybe I lead him up and down a bit to establish the rhythm.

I really like, this is a pretty, you know, I hadn't done this way back when I was using this,

but actually I like this a lot.

And then we go through the movements.

I like to take them, lead them up, lead them down.

Sometimes do like a wave or I like kind of like, oh.

And then we come back in.

I break the connection.

So I turn off the chip, take it out, cut the marionette string, whatever it is that I've done.

Give you a little cut, take out the chip, and then, very important, every time we open

a space where weird things happen, and we ask them if we can do that, we also close that

space.

So I open this, my scalpel, open, and then I put back in the bone, and I put back in

the ligaments and tendons, back in the muscle, and as long as I'm consistent enough, it doesn't

really matter.

And then I check in.

How was that?

Weird.

Make sure his arms are fine.

And that's not just window dressing.

If I forget something, people, even if they don't consciously know, they will tend to know.

They'll tend to be like, something feels weird.

And I'll be like, ah, shit, the ligaments.

And I have to go back.

So that's the basic process.

We, you know, we had taken a little break here.

grabbed a couple drinks over lunch talks about what might be people's worries issues doubts um

and maybe maybe i'll add to this as i i show the footage to some people but honestly um that bit

at the beginning of this is a natural thing i think that's the secret sauce like we're kind of

more allowing it to happen than making it happen right um and um and you know curiosity excitement

just kind of getting into it um yeah it it kind of goes on its own all all i'm gonna do is sort of

animate the experience i want you to have and uh yeah that's that well that's about it so i want

to thank you again for buying this download and i hope you go try it out i think the more you

practice with this the more the easier it'll get this could be a total game changer it's a great

way to play with something that's really real and engaging so i hope to see some videos of people out

there doing it and i guess until next time so i don't know about israel but i do know that around

the world there's like these little games that kids play that are kind of strange perception games

like do you ever heard of crisscross applesauce i know the same break an egg on your head oh yeah

yes did you have that yeah yes yeah it's crazy right yeah um so this is a different kind of

magic it's kind of playing with our those kind of like perceptions just as adults uh to kind of

show what our minds can do does that sound cool yeah cool um who wants to experience something

first yeah you could fight you could fight you could thump more yeah there we go we'll do the

survivor okay uh hey jake where do you want to start uh i thought you were right there yeah but

do you want to start right in with the yeah okay so we're gonna start like this then um i'm gonna

need your sleeve okay and uh how how are you with needles by the way just curious are you good with

needles weird all right all right like really confident i'm in um okay uh what about like

scalpel surgery that kind of stuff okay all right here we go got a good first one uh so have you

ever seen one of these before no no so this is an invisible scalpel okay uh this is gonna be a

little bit strange is that okay okay yeah all right so let's um i know you oh i've got famous

okay all right yes okay am i gonna start getting that also come on in yeah yeah you can join be

part of the be part of the crew okay so invisible scalpel is a little bit weird could be a little

uncomfortable is that okay yeah yeah okay so I'm just gonna take this and I'm

gonna cut open your arm right here I'm going to open it up and I'm gonna take

out your muscles yeah could you yeah don't move your hands okay really

important okay take out the ligaments and tendons put them right here and I'm

gonna take out the bone all right put that there yeah right and take out this

brick and you open your hand put in oh sorry put it inside of you there feel

that yeah put in another brick and I'll put in another brick and we can sew this

back up there how's that arm feel like I can move it but it's weird yeah well

there's bricks in it get him out of me okay how you said you're cool with all

this cutting it's the bricks that are bothering got you oh yeah you didn't ask

me okay all right well we can try you know what we don't take that this guy

out and actually I could go how are you how are you about iron bars cool with

that cool we can try it all right let's see so um let's put this guy in here feel that yeah

let's sew this back up how's that feel

yeah well feel her arm feel if you don't feel her arm you're busy feel her arm

Yeah how tight that is. Wow. No way. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

So weird. All right, we'll take this tight. There, take that out. So cool. We're back in, yeah.

I'll sew this up for you. I'll have my muscles back. Well, we could go a little step further

first if you want, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm gonna leave a little space there because I've got,

like I said this gets a little weird you guys come around here I've got a

uh i've got a little microchip here okay um don't be don't be too worried about it it's

little microchip here okay don't be don't be too weird

it's not about control it's really about connection put this chip in here sew this up

and uh here i'm gonna switch that guy on there there hold on okay yeah yeah you see that yeah

yeah did you see that right watch see what happens if i start to move my pinky what does your pinky

you want to do?

No!

Weird, right?

Nuh-uh!

It's so weird.

Do you want to stop?

You can stop any time.

No, do it again.

Do something else.

Ready?

Yeah.

It's a little weirder.

Watch if I start to move my thumb.

It's shaking.

It's happening!

This is so weird.

I could, like, not move it also.

It's just, like, what it wants to do.

Wait, but here.

I'll just hold it here.

here what if I start to you feel that coming up a little bit are you not doing

that with your arm watch watch no you're doing that with your hand

but watch

shut this off take it out take that out

I'm just gonna run away with all this you're the most important job here

all right I'm gonna open this back up how's that a thing well you see once you

make enough space in here you can fit in some bricks you've been in a bar it's

pretty straightforward the bar was okay so what do we got I'm gonna start with

the bone first makes sense yeah you gotta be careful with that and ligaments

and tendons. Thank you, yeah. Appreciate it. And we'll put it in the muscles. Muscles. These are important. So back up. And we'll sell this guy back up. Okay, break that off. That's it, we're good? Yeah, how's that feel? So weird! Do me next. Yeah, you want to? Yeah. It's that same thing. You got anything? Do it. I got a billion things, but we'll, uh, we'll, this is what we're practicing today. I'm still good with this? Yeah. That was crazy. Alright. Okay. Hit me.

Nerves, right?

Huh?

You're touching the nerves.

I think I touched a few nerves there, yeah.

One or two.

Alright.

Oh, we're gonna do the other side now.

This is weird to me.

Oh, we can do it right now.

I don't know.

This is good for my practice.

Sure.

Exactly.

Is it a mirror neuron thing that makes this work?

Well, we can talk about it after, but mirror neurons, it's like saying when you move your

hand is that a muscle thing?

It's like, yeah, it's a lot of things together.

we're complex systems mirror neurons are part of how we're empathizing all the time so absolutely

it evolves uh it's also a brick thing it's also a bar thing i have been you weren't making any

reaction towards it we wouldn't mirror so talk about it as much as we want after let's do it

first i like experience first always for me okay yeah so um how are you with needles um yeah

absolutely interesting okay most people are not so when you get a when you get a blood taken for

myself you look yeah yeah i definitely look you look okay okay for like a medical reason not

on on the record mom okay all right we are going to just open this here this invisible scalpel

feels a little different to everybody as your mind puts that together it's a little strange

but i'll open this up careful i'm gonna need a a nurse here who wants to help yeah okay good

we'll just put them in your jacket okay just i like it to be a stable surface of some sort

so we can you don't want to slide off yeah i don't want to get on the floor you don't want to ruin

the merchandise either okay so i'm going to take out the muscle first there we go got ligaments in

the tendons there and uh let's take out this bone too while we're at it that there and i'm in and i

can put in a brick. And another brick. Hey, careful, man. Whoa, whoa, whoa, be careful with my muscles.

Good morning in the black. Another brick there. I'll slow this back up. How you feeling?

I was training to lift it. Yeah, exactly. Like lift this one. Easy, no.

What if you take like a moment to like shake it out? No, no, no, no. Okay.

Then the bricks aren't going to start falling, I'm going to rip these in.

Yeah, you're going to break your nose, you're going to break your nose.

Yeah, they're going to go off to like my shoulder, I don't want to do that.

My invisible medical insurance does not cover that.

Take out this brick.

Don't.

Got lost of these, I'll put it somewhere.

And, right there.

It's better.

Yeah.

It feels lighter.

Right?

Yeah, it's getting less.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so, do you want to feel the bar too?

Yeah.

I'll take this bar, I'll put that in.

How's that feel?

It feels strong.

Yeah, I have trouble at the airport

Okay, you want it out? Yeah, I like it with it a little bit

Okay

Alright. Sometimes it's a little uncomfortable coming out. Sorry.

That was so weird. That was so crazy.

Oops. I bumped my guy.

Whoa.

Sorry. So how you doing?

That was insane.

Do the hand thing. Do the hand thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I want to try the microchip.

Alright.

I mean, I already have one. I'm three times vaccinated, so I'm good with microchips.

The funny thing is, after we do this, an invisible magnet will stick to your skin.

Oh, cool.

Does that interfere with the other microchips?

the government won't be able to track you. You might start having your own opinions. It's a real mess.

That's dangerous. Straight to anarchy from there.

Okay, take this open and I am going to... where did I put that guy?

Oh yeah, it's in here. And come in, guy, sew this back up, and it's different size.

This is gonna be a little weird. I haven't turned it on yet though, so put that in there.

there we go okay yeah there it is okay so watch your pinky watch it's weird right

like i don't normally have a shaky pinky but when it's connected often yeah you have to move

it for two it's harder really weird right yeah and it gets weirder when i come here and you can

kind of feel support you a bit almost like your thumb yeah this is really weird say hello to your

say hello to yourself like the queen this is insane you had a good connection i think i got

the signs behind it yeah turn that off come in and take that guy out for you i'm so confused right

now and okay i don't have anything in my arm right now yeah that's important okay and actually

i've done this before not much but like one time i was at a party i forgot to put stuff back in

it happens you know it happens to the best of us and i got some complaints uh i did yeah okay

let me know where i can file i just want to like be able to file an official complaint

my invisible medical board okay cool um so uh careful man we're just rubbing around his tendons

so it's weird it's supposed to be got some leftovers from lunch there put in ranch sauce

so that we put in the bone here and uh our tendons and ligaments there it's important

put in that muscle and sew that back up nice you're doing a little bit better how you feeling

back to normal back to normal it's weird that i wasn't normal it feels noticeably different yeah

so weird that's crazy that was so cool science magic no some faces like the crossy thing

that's because like right when when you put the chip in and then that's because like you're moving

it but your the hands are crossed. Do you want to test it? This is a video for anyone who's really

excited about getting into some of the nitty-gritty of performing things like psychic surgery

and to do that I've enlisted the help of James Brown, consummate performer, who took psychic

surgery i gave it to him like two weeks before shooting this or maybe one week and uh within

the first day he'd done it once then by the weekend he'd done it a handful of times by the time we

shot this video he's done it over 20 times so you'll get a little feedback from somebody who's

done it a lot or done a lot of performing and a lot of different types of performing now this is

going to be about an hour of us going back and forth we're going to cover a few points and we

We mostly stay on track, but there's a couple of rabbit holes here.

So I thought I'd give a really quick rundown of what we're going to get into in this video.

And so you can have a heads up of whether it's for you.

So we talk a little bit about some of the expectations, setting expectations, strategy.

It's especially setting aside your preconceptions and remembering that actually what we're doing is tapping into a really natural ability.

It just seems a little odd.

So we can get in our heads about doing it right.

we talk about how it's important to be able to ask for what you need he mentions there's a couple

times he struggled and one of them was with both of them were salvageable things we talked about

it a bit one was the guy with with an arm that was way too stiff and you actually got to see me

do that with chris he had a very stiff arm and we kind of talked through it and it's just a good

example of when you're doing something real it's okay to just ask for what you need in my case i

I need Chris to relax a bit. We can do that. Especially if you're kind of new to this,

there's going to be an adjustment phase. And as confident as I am, when I go out and I do this

kind of thing, there's a learning curve to everything. And you're going to find your niche.

And maybe this is it, maybe not. But I know I'm always a little overconfident because for me,

psychic surgery is just like, I may have said it somewhere else in this video. For me, psychic

surgery, it's like, the sun's going to rise tomorrow. Of course, this is going to work the

way I expect. But the fact is, there are more social considerations that I'm putting in about

how I engage people, how I'm reading the energy a bit. And also, when I'm teaching this to people,

they get to see me do it, they get to feel it, then they do it to each other, then they go out

and they get maybe a supported chance to try it with other people. And so that's the environment

I'm used to teaching people. So you may have a different kind of learning curve depending on how

you relate to this kind of stuff, and that's perfectly fine. This was in my book, so hundreds

of people have used it. I've got a lot of feedback from them too. I know you can do it, but I don't

want to downplay any struggle that you might have on the learning curve that is inevitable

for any time you're trying something. Obviously, some people are picking it up like that. I've

already got some reviewers, like early reviewers, who watched it and they've gone out and done it.

If that's not you, it's fine. There's a season for everybody. My sleight of hand still sucks.

I'm working on it. We talk about how and why it's useful to be curious and playful.

And especially in this kind of adjustment phase, we talk a little bit about listening to the quality

of the yes when people are saying yes to things. I talk in the earlier videos about

how as long as you're getting yeses it's gangbusters you're good to go but there's

always the quality of the yes that's worth considering um you know there's your sarcastic

yeses and your i don't know yeses and we get into it a little bit um we talk about some of the depth

in the strategy we talk about the you know not getting hung up on specific outcomes okay it's

not about getting an iron bar it's about what is an iron bar like for this person because different

people are going to have different experiences and that's a good thing. We talk also about and I think

this is the most important part but just like being easy on yourself as you learn and a few

thoughts on you know having the gift and losing the gift and sort of the ups and downs of creating

real magic for people and I stand by that I think this is an ideal training ground for it. It's a fun

game, it seems to almost always work on its own, it's affected a lot by your energy, it's affected

a lot by little, not just whether or not it works, but how much it works. And even in the videos,

if you, like we put in all the videos, even ones I kind of was cringing at, because you can see as

I go through the day and I start to get tired, other people start to react yet less. And that's

kind of par for the course. That's how it is. And that's, if anything, that's kind of what makes it

a perfect training ground. We talk a little bit about, but I'll say it here now because I think

it's important how this is not me saying you should do things the way I do, but rather I'm

offering sort of a different lens in a lot of what I'm doing. And I think it's really, it's great to

play with it, see if it works for you, or I guess like see how it works for you. So you can go out

and play with it and feel for yourself that there's more there. And when you realize there's more

there, the sky's the limit. That's the exciting thing for me. And I guess lastly, because this is

a bonus video after, I don't know if this is going to be before or after the other bonus video,

but there's a lot of content here. So if you've gotten this far, it means you're interested enough

that you've dove this deep. And so I'll put this here because might as well be here as anywhere

else that if you care this much, if you're this interested, if you're really getting into that

nitty gritty, it sounds like you're one of my people. It sounds like we have a lot of common

interests and one of the best things that ever came out of sharing that was just the interesting

people I ran into. So if you watch through this, if you're interested in some of the dynamics,

if you think it suits your style or you're just kind of curious how my style blends with yours,

find me and we'll make magic together. So with that said, here's me and James getting into it.

enjoy so you have very minimal um warning about what we're doing going in but as i started to

explain and then we hit record because why not explain it live is i was a little um because i

have some uncertainty about um this product this this project psychic surgery uh and who it's going

out to i know it's probably going to go to a lot of people who have a lot of performing experience

and people who have no performing experience and everyone in between and um i also know that a lot

of the assumptions that i have about where people are coming from will probably be mistaken so um

you know i wanted to kind of make a little video that bridges some of the gaps there especially

because i think in the video proper um chris had asked okay what about this or that circumstances

and i answered sometimes and there's a couple times where i was like okay we'll get to that

later and i felt like you know he had said what what about you know what if you're dealing with

an asshole and i was kind of like well there's ways like there's ways of dealing with assholes

we can talk about it but also don't work with assholes which i i think is uh actually sound

advice but um we could do better and i had wanted this to be um you know a lot of a lot of this

video this project happened kind of on a lark jake wanted to make a video we were in town together

So I was like, hey, let's do, I don't know what my rating, the content rating, I was like, hey, screw it, let's do it.

And so we did.

And I have a lot of uncertainty about where this is going to end up and when it's going to happen.

So why not give people this nice little gateway drug to trying a different type of experience?

And it's best if there's, whenever you're doing a gateway drug, best when there's fewer side effects.

So this will at least come a little bit to that.

That said, of course, I want to emphasize that you don't have to know how and why everything works.

I talk about it, of course, more in, I don't know if you can see that reality is an art.

But you don't need that book in order to dive in and just get some experience and see that, yes, this can work.

And it can work a lot differently than you expect, probably, depending on your expectations.

So just jump in.

And this is the help you jump in video that I'm kind of doing after the fact.

Yeah?

Yep.

Okay.

I'm with you.

Perfect.

So I made some points essentially around just a couple useful thoughts to have as you're going in and trying this out for the first time or for, I don't know, the first time of this specifically if you haven't before.

And then a few, we'll get into some points that I think are always useful to keep in mind when you're in the moment.

And then if there's some time or inclination at the end, and we're not too tired, because I know I'm kind of at the end of my energy today, getting close to it.

We could talk about maybe some more stories or examples or interesting things.

I haven't written any of those down, but whatever comes up will probably be the best.

they will probably emerge naturally anyway. So sound good? Yeah, perfect. Cool. So yeah,

I guess I want to start out first with, you know, acknowledging the different expectations that

people have going in. I was, I felt under some pressure to advertise this as like a 100%

way of creating you know mind body effects um and i i have some issues around that first of all i

don't think anything is 100 out of the box even like you buy a magic thing in an actual box anything

can go wrong um but especially something that's interpersonal there's a lot of variables that you

just um you know i can't predict how somebody else is going to use it i know that for me

ever since i i so to speak brought psychic surgery back out of the box it's been 100

um it's you know and we can talk about a little bit about when when 100 is 100 later but for me

it's been um like yes this this will work this will happen um but we can set that aside for now

and essentially say i will say if this is 50 for you i think it's still worth it uh and here's why

Okay. So a couple of things that came to mind is, um, so whether or not this works, the, um, you're, you're being authentic, you're engaging somebody's actual, somebody's imagination. There's clearly no trick. Um, in a lot of ways, it's really low stakes. It's, you're essentially saying, Hey, do you want to play a game? Or, Hey, do you want to do a little experiment? Especially, you know, magicians and mentalists often say, let's do a little experiment. Um, well, if this is your first time, it genuinely is an experiment.

And so just use that frame for real.

But it can be really low stakes because you are doing a thing that's real.

If it were to not work, that just proves that you're somebody who's doing something authentic and real.

If you're actually curious, your curiosity will tend to be a little contagious towards that person and get them in the moment.

It also, it happens so quickly that if you were to fall flat on your face, which, you

know, having seen, taught so many people, I'm thinking just of, just of like put bricks

in the arm.

I, I feel like if you have just this tiniest shred of confidence, you won't fall flat on

your face.

But even if you were to, um, it happens so quickly.

You're just like, you're through it in 30 seconds.

And not only that, you have this amazing frame of childhood games.

And I feel like, you know, if you're so unconfident about the method and you're not ready to experiment with that, consider experimenting with a frame because people open right up the moment you bring that in.

And so, yeah. And I guess I'll say, yeah, just that that that first bit, it works astonishingly reliably as long as you have this tiniest shred of confidence and people don't know what to expect anyway.

So, you know, yeah. Thoughts on that one?

Yeah, completely. I think one of the things that made the biggest difference as I was developing, and as you rightly said, I've not done this a huge amount of times, but we're definitely into, I've performed it 20 times, give or take.

And one of the first things that struck me was the willfully buying into it myself that rather than this was something that I was just going through the motions and doing.

It's not like you do a card trick when you know full well that what you're doing isn't real and the card didn't just magically change.

It changed because you switched it or you did a move.

And you're very aware of that in the moment.

this actually requires you to join in with the game fully and to and to think and feel and act

as if it's happening and the moment i got that in my head in that playful frame uh then then it

became i mean it's it's just been a joy to to play with and perform um and i've only had two

occasions where it hasn't worked at all. First occasion was simply because the person wasn't

engaging with me full stop. And I'd chosen the arsehole. And rather than dealing with that fact,

I kind of just steamed on in and, you know, then wasn't surprised that I was digging a hole for

myself. The only other occasion was, and we can dig into this further down the line if you'd rather,

when the person presented an arm that was already like a flipping block of iron. There was so much

tension in them and I didn't address that either. So there was no experience for them in the

process uh you know you know putting a putting a brick into an arm that already feels like it's

got all the bricks it needs isn't gonna isn't gonna create any moment for them um uh and uh so

yeah uh but but but i learned i learned those lessons really quickly and and coming into that

sense of we're playing a game this is a childlike experience of a you know an imagination game um

And that whole frame is such a delicious place to play.

And you can see people, as you say, this isn't a moment of challenge.

This isn't like a trick where you're trying to catch me out.

This is us engaging in an imaginative, childlike place.

Are you OK to join me with that?

And you can see them.

They immediately go, OK, I'm there.

And the eyes go wider.

And there's an expectation and a sense of excitement and wonder and curiosity.

And, yeah, I think to me, even with the limited experience I have,

that moment before I even go into psychic surgery or what it's about

or what I'm going to do, but right at the beginning when I said,

have you ever played those imagination games as a child?

Are you up for joining me with that and playing something?

In that moment, if I see the eyes open with the excitement and expectation,

I kind of mentally go, okay, we're done, we're fine.

I can just completely give in to this moment now because we're already there.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love that you said that because I truly believe that anytime somebody

seems to be doing something interesting, they, at best, I'm going to say 60% understand what

they're doing and why. And so there's always these little pieces that they think are important

that actually aren't and vice versa. So I always want to have that caveat, which is another reason

not do the 100% thing. But the other thing that struck me there is when I'm talking about the

method, a lot of the time people will start thinking about the method here. But I start

thinking about the method when I say, do you want to play? And I get those multiple yeses.

And you're kind of bouncing energy against the person. And when I say, and I won't say it always

works but when i say it seems to always work um the fact is that if you get mr asshole and i had

had this later in my notes but whatever we'll do it now um there are ways of handling that and if

you don't handle it you can't do the effect so find someone else or handle it um and i think

that's true of you know like the the example in the video i gave was if you said pick a card to

someone and they said no like what are you gonna do you know they made their choice that's that's

their choice um yeah so um yeah we come back to that we'll see um but i was going to say on this

on this subject the uh the let's let's just deal with this little elephant in the room quickly

on this whole idea of it always works um so i had this with an effect i put out many many moons ago

called cerebral steel which was a hypnotic based effect and people would often say to me you know

what's the success rate i've tried it and i couldn't get it to work and and i was like well

it kind of does always work for me but part of the reason it always works for me is exactly what

you've just said and that is that the process for me started way before i said you know look at this

you know look at this this card or this word or whatever um and i would never get to that point of

this card or this word or whatever yeah

of sort of starting cerebral steel as a trick until i knew that this person was in the right

frame of mind in the right space that we had the right dynamic yeah and hence why it always worked

when i performed it but i was always selective to when and who i performed it to yeah and i thought

I thought about the environment, I thought about the relationship I had with the person and what space they were in at the time.

So I would say the same thing applies to this in that sense that we can confidently say, not from a marketing point of view of trying to sell a product, but from a realistic point of view, this always works, providing you're actually going down the route and that you've practiced.

You know, even a self-working works every time out of the box miracle can fail if you can't be bothered to read the instructions and do it in the way it's explained and described.

So I think that's kind of an important point to raise right now, that this will work as long as you've properly gone through the process and you've learned.

Now, in the period of time where you're practicing and developing those skills, you shouldn't have the expectation of it working perfectly every time.

Because, you know, what does?

You've got a learning curve to go through.

You've got to put the time and the effort to practice, to work it through, to find your own voice and your own pace.

Once you've done all those things, then you can decide whether it's true or not to say that it works every time.

Yep. I like it. I feel like you've been reading my notes and I'm going to run out of things to say. That's actually a good, that's a good, it's a good problem to have. I had a thought on the, oh, well, actually a good example of this is if you look in, so unlike cerebral still, maybe I only gave a cursory look at what that was.

But with this, in all the videos and in all of the, you know, in the dozen or so times when I was in Europe where I did it, in almost every occasion, it was just like the first thing I did, walk up to a person, you want to see something weird or what have you, or it comes up conversationally.

So I don't want to give the sense that there has to be all this rigmarole.

It's just that the rigmarole matters, even if it's like momentary.

And a great example of that is if you look in the video where people are like super,

like the very first video is the first people I walked up to

and the first people I had done this with in like months or maybe years.

And because I had done it the December before, it was like eight months before that.

And then before that, anyway, it doesn't matter.

You'll see that there's two people who are losing their minds and they're like,

Oh my God, he's in my head.

And there's one guy who's in the back and he's like, wow, amazing.

Whoa.

But he's actually scared.

And you can, I think he's wearing a hat.

And that's, you know, that's the kind of guy who's going to be more of a slow burn where, you know, he, he will be there, but he's so clearly uncomfortable and out and feeling not in control of the situation that you, you know, uh, I wouldn't have, if, if he just said,

want to experience that a hundred percent i would have been there i would have noticed how uncomfortable

he was and worked with that um but as long as he's in the back going like because afterwards i was

like and you don't see this on the video but a whole bunch of people started crowding around we

met a whole bunch of people started doing stuff and after i turned to him i was like hey do you

want to feel what your friends felt and he's just like no i and he gave some weird excuse like my

uncle does reiki and i don't remember it's like i don't know what he's even saying um but it was

kind of like i understand what's going on it was kind of that i get it but you can't pull the wool

over my eyes and i was like okay the way you said the way you said that like he's like no i don't

want to do this my uncle does reiki kind of raises some some safeguarding issues doesn't it

probably but but like it doesn't matter what he said he was he the the implication was like

i'm uncomfortable and also i want to give some kind of explanation on this and and you'll in

the full performance he might even chime in a couple times of being like how is this possible

or like he'll suggest some sort of reason oh he did yeah i remember i remember watching that and

he was the guy that that sort of threw out um he said something like uh oh yeah he was the one that

said oh this is this is mirror neurons isn't it yeah yes and you were kind of like yeah but it's

also yes it's also the bricks um which i thought was a great response by the way i thought it was

a really lovely response you know we don't want to get too into the weeds but mirror neurons are

one of those things where it's like actually poorly understood but sounds like it is very

specific so people will just throw it out and you can kind of be like you know it's like somebody

saying it's metabolism and you're like yes without life processes we wouldn't be doing this

bring it bringing it back though bringing it back so so actually this is an important

little moment here that part of the process of of of creating the right environment is actually to

have that sense of awareness that that whilst you can you absolutely can walk up to somebody

cold and just begin with nothing other than you know did you ever play games as a kid imagination

games and bits and pieces and you want to see something or experience something a bit strange

uh or you know a bit playful a bit weird that that might be all you need but within that you

also simultaneously need to be paying attention to the person and their behavioural responses.

Because if somebody says, Yeah, you know, if you get you want to do an experience something weird,

and they're like, Yeah, yeah, you've got to be aware of there's a there's some fear and uncertainty.

And whilst that doesn't mean you can't do anything, it definitely has to inform how you

proceed yes as opposed to the person who's like wide-eyed and absolutely bumped straight in there

no problems which is which is useful to know i just you know because that's the kind of thing

where at workshops i'll do deep dives into how you can find that out um and work with it um i

talk about it a bit in some of the books and stuff but i i don't i think at a certain point it's like

talking about the dynamics of riding a bike before you're on a bike and it actually it's better if

you just don't know about curbs when you're getting on a bike because it's mostly not going

to matter. Well, it's mostly not going to matter as long as you're in a certain kind of safe-ish

place. And I think this effect is kind of that safe-ish place. It's low barrier, high impact,

almost always works just on its own without even thinking about the other variables. So

good to have in mind. I don't want to focus too much on it right off the bat because it's

just as a little thought on that one thing that might be worthwhile doing um uh with regards to

this this whole thing and that is uh get some footage of just going through not the whole thing

but just teaching a child how to put bricks in another child's arm because it's a very childlike

game to begin with and that's its origins but actually that in and of itself i think would be

a real useful thing for adults to see to realize oh i don't need to overthink this i don't actually

need to take this you know i can just do this and and it's going to have an effect and it's

going to be a great moment and a great piece of playfulness damn it that's a really good idea and

i love it um if i add anything more to this jake's going to murder me so

um but yeah that would be a great analogy about there's no point in um but it's a little bit like

The idea that, I can't remember who it was, some motivational speaker-y guy talks about the idea of skiers, slalom skiers going through the trees.

They're not looking at the trees because if they're thinking, don't hit the tree, don't hit the tree, they're going to hit the tree.

They actually have to be thinking, stay on the path, stay on the path, follow the snow.

And there's a similar thing going on here that if you're coming into this with the sort of childlike purity of I'm putting a brick in somebody's arm, that's way better to learn and develop the skills and the experience than coming in with the what if, what if, what if, what if.

Because now you're going to just keep hitting the trees.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yep.

Perfect.

Let's drive on just so we don't have too long of a thing for people because I said it's going to be kind of quick points and tips.

I guess I can always change the title.

So a couple of the stuff I was going to talk about we already touched on, so I'm not going to worry too much about it.

But one of the other reasons, we got into this from like reasons to do it anyway, even if it is just 50%.

um and so so i think it's also a great way of practicing all the things that make real stuff

more reliable and better and more impactful so you get to practice that play frame you talked

a bit about that and how engaging that can be and how disarming and how it invites people in

practicing group dynamics we talked a bit about that where you're seeing you know how people

bounce off each other a little bit how they're responding to what you're doing um and it's a

great way of practicing you being as authentically in the moment as they are as you talked about in

well you mentioned that too um and so when we're putting the bricks in the arm when we're open

we're cutting them open all that kind of stuff we're we're invested in it and we're treating it

as though it's real even though it's surreal at the same time we're treating it as though it's real

and so you know it's as we play the game it's kind of this this um liminal game where where it's it's

real and it's not real at the same time. Um, and all of those are things where if this just isn't

your style, you never use it again. Um, it just opens so many doors as, you know, just finding

the right way to do it opens so many interesting doors for whatever other kind of performing.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and actually I'll, I'll add to that. Um, if you go watch the performance footage,

You'll see also how, you know, when I when somebody is actually this is more this is more a point later, but I'll say it now and refer back to it.

There are people who are not responding correctly in every single video, I think, which kind of makes sense because it was my first time back and we just it was like we had this big thing planned and then we got rained out and we went to a market.

we cost some stragglers by a doorway super wonky situation um but um so you'll see that for example

the iron bar some people they can't move their arms some they can and um all of those things i'm

accepting as fine um with the with the first girl i'm kind of holding her a little bit so she's not

bending too much or sometimes i'll do little mechanical things just to create the the full

picture of how it's working but most of the time it's just like it's fine you know i'm riding the

experience i'm going through the the steps and i'm not getting too in my way about oh no her arm

therefore uh therefore this won't work therefore that won't work i'm kind of like okay this is what

an iron my arm is like for her but then for the next guy that's where he's like almost like i was

worried about him pulling something so yeah but so within that as well there's um it's this idea

of recognizing that just because the person doesn't respond outwardly in the way that you

want them to or arguably is possibly most conducive to a theatrical experience as well

sometimes yeah doesn't mean they haven't had a meaningful experience um there's a great there's

great interview done with um david blaine a few years ago where he was talking about the very first

tv special he did and a performance of a particular little little piece of magic on this i don't know

12 13 year old boy um and he vanished a coin off the back of the they put a coin on the back of the

kid's hand waved his hand and the coin vanished and whilst other people were like losing their

minds and getting all excited this little boy was just like whoa that was it just like the flattest

non-descript uh response you could imagine and all the tv executives were like yeah we'll just

scrap that we'll scrap that and he fought tooth and nail to keep that little moment in because

he said that moment was so it was like the most profound response to that trick you know it was

just so it was all happening inside yeah and actually it made me realize when i was looking

back at that clip subsequently and thinking about other performances of my own that sometimes i've

made the mistake of writing somebody off as not responding because they didn't respond the way i

wanted them to and actually we've we need to also be careful like so i had this the other night when

When I did psychic surgery, the bricks, the guy was like,

oh, I can't lift my arm.

This is insane.

Put the iron bar in, and he went, oh, that's mad.

That's absolutely mad.

And I'm thinking, this doesn't make sense.

How is he saying that it's mad, yet he's bending his arm to absolute freedom?

But I realized in that moment, I don't need to fight this.

I don't need to challenge this.

But also, I never set any set any expectation.

So when I put the bricks in the arm or put the iron bar in,

my only comment is, how does that feel?

Not, can you lift it?

Is that heavy?

Try and bend it and find you can't, none of that stuff.

It's just, how does that feel?

And some people will immediately understand the context

and they will go, I can't lift it or I can't bend it.

Wonderful.

but but but you've still given somebody what they're interpreting is yes which is is incredibly

magical regardless and that's yeah i love that and that's one of my the mixed feelings i have a lot

about a lot of my work is um you can actually create experiences and direct them quite specifically

um that's you know and and i think that when i started sharing my stuff a lot of people got

excited about that specifically. Um, but I'm torn on that because actually a lot of the time you

don't want to, you, you are more in the moment and creating something more real when you create

a space and you allow the things that they're bringing into it too. And you'll find often when

you do that, like the more you, you know, cause like, like with this, there's, there's some effects

where you're like over, you're, you're very tight in your control and creating a thing. There's

somewhere you're more loose and it's since writing that i've i've tended a lot more towards the the

less controlled ones where you're creating something and then letting you know get let

getting more from the person rather than directing because that's a lot of where a lot of the real

stuff comes from that's where um and it's it's not like it's my goal but i think people can sense

that and they bring in real things and you know i do the invisible rope a lot with people who

actually have a ton of trust issues and they tell me afterwards and it was like something for them

was really important to like play in this space with that thing um and and they get a lot out of

it and if i make it all about this person falls over rather than about giving them an experience

um those things don't happen uh and so so when i talk about real magic i'm not just talking about

and this is kind of an aside so we'll not stay here very long but i'm not just talking about

you do a real thing and there's a real effect you know you you make an invisible rope and it

becomes real you take an invisible scalpel and it actually does things on people that's a real part

but also how people are feeling subjectively inside that's real it's not just an appearance

thing and how they're relating to it that's real and the frames that they're coming in with you know

when when somebody's an asshole it's control it's vulnerability it's like those are real and you're

dealing with them as those things um and i talk a lot about that elsewhere but i i think i think

that's yeah maybe that's a little too in the weeds but it's true we can bring it we can bring it back

out of the weeds because actually what you really i think what you're really talking about here is

this this what's at the heart of an awful lot of your work which is this notion of building worlds

together that if i'm if i'm like let's look at the hypnotic variation of some of this stuff if i'm

just almost just directing everything like just telling you what to think and how to react and

how to behave and what to experience then that's entirely coming from me you you have no part to

play other than doing whereas what we're talking about here and what you talk about a lot in the

books in the book and in the manuscripts that i've read from you is this idea that we are we are we

are doing this together that that you're you're feeding that you know the other person is feeding

into this experience and they are they are making decisions about what it looks like what it feels

like what direction it's going to go. And as a performer, you're working with them, not at them

or against them to create these beautiful moments. So in that sense, it is important that we give

people the freedom to kind of take it in a different direction. I did psychic surgery a

few weeks ago where really quickly it was so evident that the person needed this this wasn't

a moment where they just playfully went oh that's mad that's crazy there was something else going on

and and there was a there was a dare I say it a therapeutic healing moment that that that naturally

evolved because they needed it to it was their decision to go in that direction and because we

were doing this together i i i wasn't resistant to that and it was it was it was a wonderful moment

it was a genuinely wonderful moment but that couldn't have happened unless i was willing to

let them direct things equally as as much as i wanted to steer it yeah yeah i i think that's a

useful point even just to say that you know even though this can work on out of the box on its own

so to speak. Um, there's a lot more to it if you like. And I think also you don't have to worry

too much about, I don't know, someone comes up for therapy, uh, all the time. Cause I do think

that you kind of, you get what you put out. If you're not super comfortable, you'll get people

who are kind of default comfortable anywhere. They don't, you know, they're not, they don't

need a lot of safety and testing and all that kind of stuff. Um, or, you know, you, you'll start

with low, you're doing low stakes stuff with the bricks and the arms and stuff. A lot of the stuff

I do is it's not in, it's not in a magic show context. It's in, you know, talking about mind,

body effects and mental health and that kind of stuff. So, so there's, um, it can, it can also be

very simple, although there are all, are all these other layers to it, which I think are really useful

and some people will be interested in them. I'll leave it there. Um, now I had said, um,

I don't know if I said it at the beginning to you or to, to everybody, uh, depending when we

started recording but i said i wanted to do three points to keep in mind while you're doing it so

some of what we had said already is just kind of you're getting into it let's assume that it either

can always work or not always work whatever just go out and try it as you said put in put in your

paces and find out what works for you great um so here's some things to keep in mind that i think

make it go really well um so three of them one is be curious and we covered almost all my notes on

this anyway already but i think it's useful to reiterate you know when we talked about all

reactions are good reactions all responses are good responses um you can be the one who makes

a reaction bad by going like you said somebody moves their arm and they're like that's mad and

you go, oh, shit, it didn't work. Yeah, it worked for him. Get out of your way. Get out of your own

way. I mentioned when there are people who are not super responsive, and I don't like the angle

from our instructional, so I'll say it again. I am making a very weird armband, and everybody

watching sees an iron bar. And their experience matters because I'm trying to build on their

experience but it doesn't matter in that i'm managing perceptions too so any you know in one

sense anything can become a real reaction that you can use and also anything can be a reaction

that you're theatrically putting into this context so that you know everyone walks away seeing an

iron bar yeah as magicians would would sort of look at that they would see this idea of a dual

reality that whilst in that moment the person might not be having the full-on experience you

know, we're talking worst case scenario here. Yeah. The person might not be having that full

experience from the audience's perception because of the position their arms in and because of the

context of everything they've seen. Um, it's, there's still, there's still a strong effect.

Yes. And it's kind of like dual reality plus because you're creating a perception

globally. You're also creating a perception for the person. And so you may know that in this

context, this person isn't necessarily feeling the thing, but it's not like a dual reality where,

Or they're not feeling it to the extent that you want.

But it's not like you're creating a duality where this person, you're fooling this person to fool those people.

You're genuinely doing a thing.

And if somehow the sun's in your eyes and they're standing on tacks so they can't feel or listen to you,

you can still make it look good and then continue on with other people or what have you.

I'd also say as part of being curious, and we mentioned this, you're kind of discovering as you go.

that's a very contagious frame it's like what is an iron bar like for this person not

did it work or not um and also as a part of that don't get hung up on specific results because as

you said people have different experiences and that's a good thing um a great example of this is

chris he was seeing he's the guy i don't know if you saw the full videos recently but he's the guy

who, great guy. Yeah. I highly recommend Chris to the world. Um, but he, he could see me cutting

things. Um, and he could see all this kind of stuff that will happen with some people. And

that's something that you can using certain principles make much more likely, but I'd say

don't, especially when you're starting out, don't worry about it. Let people have their experience.

And as they have an experience, you can just be like, uh-huh. Like just, you know, you can just

except that that's how it's supposed to be.

They don't have any frame of reference.

And so when they respond, they're like, oh, my God, I see blood pouring out.

It could be like, yeah, crazy, right?

And as far as anyone there is concerned, that's how it always is.

So with this idea of discovery, you know, curiosity and discovery,

do you think there's value in thinking as if and acting as if this is like a new experience for you every time?

so you know so so sort of in that moment like when the bricks are going in and you can you know the

arms getting heavier that you're actually in in the moment kind of like kind of kind of kind of

sort of going you know holy shit wow this is insane isn't it like really sharing in that

authenticity of a new experience yeah absolutely and and i think um this little nerd side aside

There's like research evidence that shows that actually new psychotherapists on average are better than psychotherapists who've been at it a long time.

It's like, on average, they get a little worse.

And of course, there's ones who get way better.

Caveat, caveat, caveat.

But like part of it is that it's your first time you care a lot and you're like super engaged.

And so if you can do that every time, you're, you know, as much as I kind of laugh off people who are not like the whole idea of dismissing a thing as a mirror neurons is very simplistic, like mirror neurons are there because we are actively modeling each other all the time.

We are, you know, you are in me as we are talking, like in a neurological sense and vice versa.

I'm glad you could be mature about that.

so difficult so difficult um but it's true and um so yes uh i think absolutely that's a long way of

answering yes absolutely you are um i think if you can do that great and often at the beginning

your results will be better because by the time you've done it a hundred times if it's just a

a grind for you it's more likely to be a grind for them yeah um okay point two let go of your

preconceptions. We talked about this a bit already too. Uh, I've taught this to kids. I've taught

this to adults. I've taught this to professionals. I've taught this to non-professionals. I've

taught, taught it widely. And the thing that seems to matter the most is not how experienced

you are, but how much you're able to hold your experience loosely and just go into the experience

with this person. Um, especially cause you know, like I work a lot with hypnotists,

hypnotists do amazing mind body stuff. No doubt about it. Um, they also overcomplicate almost

everything I try to teach them because well, they just do. Um, and so I'm like, do your amazing

wizard stuff, but just also set that aside for a moment and say, well, what if you don't have to

say anything at all? What if it's, it can be simple. What if, what if just ride the, what if,

and I think it's kind of a universal truth in a sense that the more you focus on your

technique and theory and words, the less you're able to play. And in this case, what we're doing

is we're playing a game. So we want to be playful and invite people into this game. And when we do

that, the technique, the theory and stuff doesn't really matter that much. So you could do your

thing, but also set that aside for a moment and see how this goes. Yeah? Yeah, perfect. But just

Just on that, I did a demonstration at a recent conference and kind of trying to get that point across.

And so if you can imagine, so what I did is I presented something, a technique where I purposefully did the technique kind of wrong.

I said right from the beginning, I'm going to be doing all the wrong things, saying the wrong words, fluffing through things.

But at some point, the only thing that's going to change is that I will shift from not believing in what I'm doing to believing in what I'm doing.

And that was the thing that made the greatest difference.

that was the moment the person went oh okay now now something's changed and and really the point

of this is that that that sort of playful frame of i'm not worried about the technique that's not

where my attention is the wording is not where my attention is not in its in that specific way um

the thing the thing that i really care about in all of this is uh is is the belief it is really

sort of stepping into this real world that we've just created together um and and and being as real

as i can be within that within that world and that to me seems to make more difference and i've said this when i've been

world. And that to me seems to make more difference. And I've said this when I've been teaching

hypnosis over the years, we're taught to get so wrapped up in the words, you know, the

scripts, you've got to say these things in these ways and with this tonality. And after

20 odd years, I've realized, no, you don't. The thing that matters is, are we engaging?

are we connecting uh are we being playful um you know am i am i am i making this this reality real

by how i act and behave that seems to make the greatest difference yeah certainly in my experience

yeah absolutely um okay and the last thing uh which is kind of a probably an unusual

thing to put in a essentially a magic video but this is my first one that i've done like

this so we'll see we'll see how people respond um i put be gentle on yourself um and i specifically

specifically put this because i think it's generally a true thing when you're when you're

learning anything um the you know the the thing that stops us from learning the most is self

judgment um but also you know i had that exciting experience a couple months ago where i um yeah

i essentially woke up on the kryptonite side of the bed and um had a few days where i was just

completely off my game, couldn't do what I wanted to do. And it was, it was kind of devastating in

some ways. Um, and so much of that, you know, I was, I was able to pull back. Um, but so much of

that was just like getting in my own head and being self-judgmental, especially because, you

know, I'd been somebody who for years just hadn't had that kind of problem. And so, you know, I,

I like extra spiraled. And of course, as we talked about, there's ways of handling that.

there's ways of handling difficulties with other people with yourselves and just like

in spite of doing that for years teaching it for years doing this kind of stuff with

skeptics like in the moment that that self like that kind of almost primal self-judgment came up

I couldn't do those things it was it was like you know forgetting how to walk almost um and

so yeah I wanted to well it's yeah I wanted to to just like put that out there and say like

it is um well in terms of forgetting how to walk it's like if you've ever i i talk about oh this

is easy even kids do it um there's a lot of things that kids do that are actually uh quite easy for

them and not easy for us like learning how to walk and it's it was because they they haven't figured

out that they can call themselves an idiot if they can't walk um they just do it and they fall

and they get up and then eventually they're fine eventually they're so good at it that years later

If there's some reason they can't walk for a day, um, they're completely in their heads.

And yeah, so especially for people who already have a background, um, with this stuff that

I'm offering, I think isn't a replacement for what you do.

It can be a new lens to look at it.

It can be a thing to use on the side.

It can be a thing to like, you know, and people up with using the stuff you have or the stuff

you have attached on the other end, whatever.

Um, but, um, it's anytime you have something already and you're trying something a little

bit different, you go back to that sort of child, like, I don't know situation, and it

can be really uncomfortable and it became vulnerable.

And that actually can be an incredibly engaging thing with people where you're a little not

sure, like that, that can be a ton of energy to use in your performance, but when it's

not, it almost entirely, it almost certainly will become some kind of like self judgment

and lack of confidence, tear yourself apart, or so I've heard and read.

So, yeah, yeah, I guess that's it.

The feeling of potential in this, you know, doing anything you can be really engaging,

especially when you're engaging people in this play that creates these interesting mind-body

experiences, it just can also go the other way too.

Well, the whole self-judgment thing I've argued for many years is the reason why, in the context of talking about performers, the magicians fail in their own estimations.

You know, why does magic go wrong? Why do you get caught? You know, why do you get caught out? Why does magic go wrong, et cetera?

And I would say that more often than not, it's because we are being unkind on ourselves.

And that unkindness is creating the problem.

A very good friend of mine, Howard Cooper, who's a change worker and therapist and all

around good egg and well-educated guy, makes the comment that most of the problems that

we experience in our life only exist because we're searching for a solution to them. In other words,

the moment we've labeled it as a problem that we have to find an answer to, it's that journey to

solve the problem that is causing us most of the problem. And, you know, I think there's a lot of

truth in this area as well. The moment we start to become self-critical because somebody didn't

respond the way that we wanted to. And we take that on ourselves as the cause or the blame,

we make life really hard. And it's taken me a long, long time in this business to realize that

somebody, somebody, somebody just looking at what, you know, I do a bit of magic and somebody kind

of just goes, oh, that was shit. I know how that's done. That actually doesn't reflect on me.

that tells me nothing about me nothing at all about me but it does tell me something about

where that person is in this moment yeah that's it that's all it tells me and you know I'd lost

you know I remember back in the day I lost days weeks months angsting over how one spectator

reacted to magic that I'd done and it was it was it was the dawning revelation that probably

30 seconds after as he'd walked off to the bar and i never i never appeared in the man's thinking

again yeah for the rest of my for the rest of his days he never thought of me again yet i wasted two

weeks you know beating myself up and it was quite a big lesson for me to realize do you know what

be kind be kind to myself in these moments but also be kind to the other people that not not

attacking the attacker yeah you know it was was way better i mean you might you might win the tiny

little battle that the audience around you go haha you came up with a really good put down line

for that guy but actually in my experience

it's being kinder to everybody involved always seems to have the better outcome

everybody involved yeah yourself included yeah yeah i like that i wish i wish you told me that

25 years ago well uh that was not being existing so listen to it today i was gonna say i don't

think that was being taught in my grade four or whatever oh god okay yeah at that point i feel

extra old thank you there was very little um lack of self-judgment there's a lot of judgment

Um, but I think, I think, you know, the, maybe what comes to mind when you're talking about that

is, is, okay, we're dealing with people who are performers, not performers, all sorts of

different backgrounds. Um, but that like having met all of these different people, I just have to

say from a place of a lot of confidence, you have something to share. You have something to give

that's really, really, really can affect people that can be fun for yourself. Do it, do it as

best you can um you know a lot of the time you you're you're buying something because you feel

this feeling of potential like oh if i have this thing i could you know do this with so and so like

yeah that's like lean into it man it's uh we're only here for so long yeah um so to to kind of

wrap that all up um who should you start with a curious non-asshole i'll say um and then once you

feel comfortable with that try some assholes um yeah i'm testing you today um so uh and and of

course i think i mentioned in the video like this can be great with skeptics like the way um i i can

think of a bunch i used to do this in science classes all the time i was this was a common one

for me i didn't have bridge when i was in doing science lectures um and there's a lot of great

ways to frame it with skeptics as it can be great fun to practice that especially because whether

they're curious or whether they like curious oh my god let's this is amazing i want to see you're

curious like what's really going on here there's nothing for them to find um what's happening is

you're showing something that's really happening in the human mind and body and if they engage

they can experience and if they don't they can't okay yeah yeah do you have any thoughts uh before

we wrap this up do you have any thoughts when when it comes to uh the family and friends thing

Because from a magic point of view, a sleight of hand point of view, family and friends can be a bit of a minefield in the early days.

Do you feel that there is any parallel in this sort of area where are you benefited or not by practicing on your family and friends?

So we've probably had this conversation before because it relates to magic in the Bible.

But, you know, that that line, you can be a prophet anywhere but your own home where, yeah, where Jesus is out and he's doing all sorts of crazy things.

And he comes back to his hometown and can't do anything.

I think that's very true.

I don't think it's I don't think it's a life sentence.

I think, you know, I can't think of anyone in my life who I wouldn't show something like this to now.

But I would say, yeah, it definitely, I think, actually, I would say this could be another thing to play with.

Because it's not, so maybe don't start with your most skeptical family member.

But one of the reasons it's hard to do a lot of magic, and you know more about this than me, so feel free to cut me off at any point.

But a lot of the time, in order to experience something magical, you kind of have to hop over the mundane explanation for the thing happening.

It's really hard for someone to hop over mundane reactions and frames when they've seen you in your diapers.

And so it's, you know, you don't know James is a magical person, but you do know this other guy's a magical person and you don't know his diaper stories.

So it's easier for you to make that connection.

So that's one dynamic.

but in the case of something like this like i said there's nothing to find so if you frame it

right if you explain if you frame it as you know to match their worldview say you know they're a

skeptic and you talk fine bring mirror neurons out of the closet um and you go that way it can

absolutely work and i've done it before so i'd say don't start there maybe uh unless you have

someone you're pretty sure is good for this kind of thing um but don't assume that you can't do it

yeah yeah um and i'll because we're about to wrap up i i'm gonna um plug a book not mine although

it's great um but uh folk illusions by brandon baker and claire born rice um it came out a couple

years ago it's essentially a book about kid games um a lot of those little games you play as kids i

wish it existed when i when i wrote my stuff because i i did get into kid games but there was

not this like anthropological semi-scientific thing um so i think that that could be a lot of

inspiration for performances it could be a lot of inspiration for your frames for people um it

could just also make you excited and that's um that is contagious so if you're um looking for

some inspiration check that out otherwise um just yeah do it i don't know do you have any

I'll give you a plug as well. In fact, I went up to my shelf. I've put it on my shelf right here.

So I would seriously recommend Reality as an art. And I won't tell anybody what you wrote on the

inside cover for me. That's between us. I don't think I remember. I'll tell you afterwards. I mean,

basically you were clearly in a silly mood that day and you were slightly taking the piss

but thank you um now everybody watching this is going to be wondering what on earth did he write

you're never gonna know get used to it um so uh but it's a wonderful book and um uh

i i think it's an important book as well uh and i'm not just saying that because you're hearing

but but from the perspective of it really does give you some great insights and you also expand

on an awful lot of the things that we've just talked about as well with regards to setting frames

and expectations and and who you are in that in these moments and why this stuff matters why it

works and as much as we are talking about simple fun effects if you wish with psychic surgery

there is there is something much more fundamental going on under the surface which as you start to

To perform it more, I think the more you perform it, the more your own brain,

we don't need to tell you this, as you perform it, you're going to start to go,

oh, right, okay, there's other little things going on here.

It opens the doorway to lots of other ways of seeing the magic that we do as performers.

And even if you're not a performer, if you're coming from a completely non-performance-based place for this,

uh, what, what it will help you to understand about how, how we make the world around us,

uh, is in and of itself, uh, in my opinion, incredibly important to understand and to

explore. Yeah. Good. Thank you. And I book good. Yes. Yes. Do you buy the book? Well,

if it's been hard to find for a while, but I'm going to try to make it easier. Um, but, uh,

yeah. And I, I think, I think that's another good thing too, is because every time I share a thing,

what will often happen or anytime anyone shares something is people will put it within the frames

they already know okay this is it's like magic it's like suggestion you put it in that box

um boxes are great in some sense they make things very easy and comprehensible um but in other sense

they're very restrictive and i like to think of a lot of what we're doing is i'm like understand

we're not we're not like these experts on all of human experience as often people will portray

themselves, um, whether they believe it or not, uh, whatever. Um, but actually what we get to be

is better than that. We get to be this expert on this 1% of human experience, this 1% of,

of kind of how our mind body machinery works in this one specific way, but it opens this 99%,

this, this greater expansive possibility. And so, um, you know, rather than seeing this as like

the end you know you get you get to somebody moving their fingers and that's the end actually

that's a case study of this gigantic possibility and you see some of it in the books and some of

it you know i wrote these things over 10 years ago most of them um the the amount of stuff since

then that's kind of melted my brain and thought oh my god what else is possible is this you know

it's astonishing so yes you know it's it's easy to say those things but like go out and do it and

see that for yourselves feel for yourselves this is an open door yeah very much so yeah wonderful

okay thanks james a little longer than planned uh but a little better than planned probably so

um thank you i've got a surprise bonus in here that i hadn't originally intended on including

in this project um a few days ago james and i were planning to meet to have this kind of long

form conversation about uh magic and science and perception and a bunch of other things and record

it and decide maybe to do something interesting with it uh but as it turned out on that day there

was a big storm in his area the internet was spotty we were both sick low energy so um we just took

some video of him doing um psychic surgery and did some commentary on it just as a a way of um

you know breaking this down in as many ways as possible because i know a lot of people are used

to different approaches so i thought why not watch you know james learn why not watch chris learn

who knows if there's some way of of adding stuff to this later i might add some other people maybe

some complete beginners learning so i thought the more ways you see it the better and so here's james

learning as he goes he went to the uk hypnosis convention um two three days ago um and just had

his friend record a couple parts of it on the side so he could look at it after and so we did

and uh it was it was pretty good it's um james is i think one of the reasons he's so um powerful in

in certain circumstances is because he just he kind of learns from the bottom up he learns by

doing it and uh so you kind of get to see a bit of it into his process and we talk a little bit

about um you know what i what i would have done and why and and what what seemed to work and what

didn't so i hope that's useful and uh yeah enjoy um okay so here we're back uh we had had a different

conversation plan for today but just because of some complications with your your internet

connection and possible storms and stuff we're going to do something that requires much less

bandwidth on your end that we'd hope to do anyway so um here you are at the uk hypnosis convention

and you are trying out psychic surgery i think for the second time is that right

yes yeah yeah this was the second ever real performance of this yeah and and here you are

with an audience of hundreds of professionals who are judging you I imagine yeah yeah I decided that

the best place to try it out for the second time ever was in front of an audience of my peers

okay well um different strokes for different folks uh although I'll be honest I've I've done

kind of thing a couple times um it's it's something about uh high stakes makes it easier

to practice for some reason anyway um let's uh dive into this so i haven't seen this yet by the

way i just thought you know we're talking this morning wouldn't it be cool to kind of do a sports

net thing with you doing um like sportsnet commentary with you doing psychic surgery

uh turns out you had just gotten some footage of it so dive in to see what happens so here we are

Is there any background or context that people need to understand what they're about to see?

No, this is pretty much a cold open.

I mean, the only thing that I've led up to this moment from the lecture point of view, the demonstration,

was to simply make a comment about the previous years that I'd been there and how my journey in life had changed.

But ultimately, this is pretty much from the moment I say, can I have a volunteer, please?

And then this is where we are.

Nice. All right, let's go.

half step forward um uh did you ever play kind of like imagination games as a child

yeah so there was one that we used to play where you kind of cracked an ego up on top of somebody's

head and they could imagine the egg drape you know you didn't play that one it's okay some

people here will understand what the nurse i'm talking about others won't but it's really about

the idea of an imagination game that i'm interested in that childlike thing we play

yeah entering a place in space um do you want to see something an experience something a little

bit weird it's very fantastic that's why you're here let's be honest do you know what this is

before we do this you're not scared of needles or do you kind of feel uncomfortable with

scalpels and things like that some people do a little bit you're okay yeah yeah so this is an

imaginary uh scalpel okay with this imaginary scalpel if it's okay i'm gonna just cut into you

Okay. So we're already into it. Any thoughts so far? I got a couple of little ones.

Please do share. I mean, as I said, this was the second time around for me. So whatever you have

to offer. No. Yeah. So, I mean, so far so good. I like, I know the order with which we bring up

things is different so i i like that because it just shows people it's not that important um i

also notice that you have i have an invisible scalpel and you have an imaginary scalpel

and i like both of them in different ways and in different contexts i'll almost never use

imaginary unless i've reframed imagination first but again that's just my own take on things because

imagination is kind of a dismissive term usually i'll be honest i think it was just the word that

popped into my head as opposed to invisible there was there was no yeah um given the choice i would

use invisible having now had you mentioned that i just think in that moment i wasn't thinking and

just said imaginary yeah well that's how it goes yeah okay just curious and and it's a you know i

will use imaginary um i just tend to be careful with when i use it because for some people

i'm sure we'll get into it uh let's keep going make a nice little decision all the way down

there and just pop this on the table and let's just open that up a little bit there and we're

going to start by just taking out the ligament there we go and we're going to take out the

muscles there and the muscles there and that bone just to take the bone there perfect and i've got

here somewhere some bricks so i'm going to start with a brick there another one in there and then

one more we'll just stitch that yeah you can really see from her shoulder um that's like

it's i mean you're holding it so you can definitely start to feel the weight of it often

but the shoulder is a huge tell of how much somebody is putting into this and you can see

with her like just the imbalance of her shoulders that this is not going to be an issue like i

haven't watched this before but i can tell immediately just by the way that her shoulder

is reacting you're uh she's about to go down at least a bit what is interesting is that i'm very

much aware that i wasn't really in the moment myself and i wasn't properly conveying and

committing the experience for the other person so even with me being quite lackluster in my

presentation of this the effect was still quite profound yeah and i could see so like the sort of

the the the way you were conveying the the lightness of the arm and how quickly you're doing

it is very different than the video and obviously or than the way i do it and obviously that's

common the first couple times you try something out or if you're in a new circumstance you might

blazed through it. Um, and so I was noticing that it was happening. Um, but at the same time,

uh, she was responding. She had that reaction when you cut open, uh, which is always a really

good sign. Sometimes when you're pulling it apart, that's people being ticklish, which

is actually good anyway, because that kind of emotional investment in other people don't know

what's happening. Um, but anyway, yeah, from, from this, it seems like just her emotional reactions

and her physical reactions this is a perfect situation like so so tell me how does that feel

yeah lovely i i'll often just to make it more like more of a contrast i'll have them like this

and i'll just say and by the way lift the other arm and they lift it and i don't necessarily say

try to lift this arm i might or might not but just casually referring to the other arm always

makes a way bigger contrast and that's often a kind of a laugh and applause point yeah yeah yeah

i mean i think again it's an interesting thing that if if they've got the shoulder down and you

say specifically lift your other hand right up into the air okay notice how different they feel

right you know tell everybody how how much different they feel you're still getting that

sense but you're not drawing yeah no i think that's a good way around it i mean often especially

if their shoulders like that i will say like try to lift it up that is um yeah so it's actually at

this, maybe it's worth saying, at this stage, what I'm often doing is, this is my first touch

point of feedback of, you know, I've already watched them react to this thing, which can be

a good sign, but don't, you know, don't, don't assume too much by how people are reacting,

because people are interesting. But then when you, when I feel the weight, that's the moment

where I decide, is this going to be, they're either going to go, oh, weird, that's, that's

heavier. This one common reaction is just like, wow, that's heavier, weird. And it's nothing

crazy. But I think everybody in my experience will experience as long as I'm being theatrical

and they're kind of in the moment, they'll experience that heaviness. And that's all we

need. But based on their reaction, if their shoulders down like hers was, if I feel the

heaviness in my hand, that's where I'm going to really milk it. And I'm just going to set it down

like a sack of bricks and their shoulder's going to go and then i'm going to make a big deal out of

it yeah open that up again and just add one more in there and just yeah and just tell me what it

feels like even heavier even heavier good stuff do you mind we'll open this up one i think it was

two yeah and uh oh here we go iron bar nice big long iron bar you ready

yeah again i'm like i'm way more physical with the hand when i do it didn't matter in this case

uh so like the way it's taught on the video no matter what their actual physical response is

you kind of create it and that helps build it in her case you know you the way you set it up was

perfect the the timing was wonderful yeah i like it constant i don't know yeah okay and then you

know can you move it around what's the feeling when you try to move that around i think it's

interesting maybe to make a point here about how somebody's reaction just because they don't react

overtly in one way doesn't mean it's not an incredible experience for them so this girl

was very expressive in some directions but actually in other ways she was like yeah yeah

that's just an interesting feeling yeah but speaking to her afterwards it blew her mind

you know the whole thing was incredible yes yeah that's often the case and and sometimes it's

like you never know the the relation whether the ratio of like how hard the effect is hitting them

is hitting them versus how comfortable they are in front of an audience for example

versus how comfortable they are in front of an audience for example and all the other variables

and all the other variables um and i also like you know i i will see what she's was she about to say

like it's an interesting feeling or it's a nice feeling was that what she's saying well have a

listen okay just gonna open that up again and i'm down for a second and what did she say you might

have to go back a moment and hear it again it's a nice feeling she can't move her arm but it's nice

again so some of these things like if you in the demo videos you'll see that i'm making i'm going

through a bit of pains to make it unpleasant for them at this point because i it adds some nice

emotional texture it's all in good fun um you know i give them i'm a little man handling their arm

here but um you know two things one is yes if you do that kind of stuff like you know i'm i'm

mirroring their discomfort um that will make it more likely that they're gonna say what i expect

but also kind of who cares because she for whatever reason has an iron bar in her arm she can't move

it and it's nice i've never had that reaction before but it's fine but it's it's yeah so it's

also down to lost in translation so with my question of how does that feel yeah she's not

necessarily thinking from the perspective of where is this taking me emotionally right she's actually

maybe just honing in on the sensation itself what is this sensation to me that's not it's it's nice

it's not unpleasant you know i'm okay with it whereas if i just said you know uh does this make

sense is this blowing your mind you may well have been like holy this is crazy yes maybe it's the

question that's pushed her in into the response yeah and that's you know um topic for another time

but we talk about um essentially there's there's moments where you control and there's moments where

you let go to have these emergent properties like people feel and experience and and bring things in

to the into the the demonstration the effect the experience that you would never have thought and

it can be beautiful and so you want to have both and what i find with whenever you're crossing

language barriers there's way more emergence just because there's way more ambiguity and less

ability to control um and so that's just a general good point for people who are doing this across

language barriers of you know be ready that it's the the as long as you set things up it will still

work just there will be more unexpected there will be more serendipity and you may not be

it may be a little harder to track where they're going i like that elbow put a little chip in there

a little microchip here one second pop that little chip in there we won't set it off yet

I'll just stitch that back up again, I need you to turn around here, that's fine, just turn it on, there, okay perfect, so now, father, wonderful, I want you to just look at your little finger here, just watch out what happens to your little finger as mine starts to burn, can you feel yours just starting to twitch along, yeah, and then your thumb, feel that in your thumb?

So we only have one angle here.

How did you feel she was responding or what was happening here?

So the responses were quite small,

but I also didn't necessarily set up the expectation of this synchronized frame.

But it was only really after the fact that I thought,

well, actually, I wasn't really making this clear

um that we were making a connection um and that we were setting this connection up so i think it

took a while for to understand what was supposed to happen yeah but then as you watch this through

the those things can't kind of step up to that you know where it gets to the end and you see

her response to that and it's it's a wonderful response nice um but a lot of this was about me

learning how to better uh better guide and frame the moment yeah so that it was a clearer story to

follow rather than you know not quite sure what their part to play is yeah and i like that yes i

like that people get to see this because you're just kind of like you plow into it and then you're

kind of correcting as you go and um i think one of the things people are going to struggle with

is kind of overcorrecting at the beginning to do everything right and you're sort of doing the

reverse of plowing into it noticing what you didn't do and then correcting afterwards yeah

it's a little bit stronger when we bring it this way so there it goes nice a second nice

start moving the thumbnail come up watch what yours wants to do there we are now we can kind

of connect these together really well right nice here we go now we've got that so we can just start

put your fingers in on the turn as well there's a there's a really lovely moment when you uh you

take so to start with there's a little bit of help going into the elbow just a little bit of help

and there's a lovely moment where you just take the help away and it's now just moving freely

and again you get another little physical kickback a little sensation that tells you

yeah we're here we're we're in this good territory again yes um so i found i found that even on that

one occasion i found that a really useful moment to go okay wonderful we're here yeah we can develop

this further yeah i was yeah and and there's a like just knowing the technique there's a little

bit of giddiness when you see your hands here and then your fingers come out and her hand keeps going

and i'm like yeah um it also um it made me think of how so that you you had done this thing

beforehand which i never used to do this was me picking up psychic surgery after years where i was

like just kind of started doing that it actually helped a lot where you're kind of conditioning

them with the up and down and i think i cover it in the video but i'll say it anyway what's really

useful is you do this a couple times you make it real you're playing with their fingers but then

when you go to turn their hand, you can lead a little bit here. And this part actually is

almost conditioning them to respond to your physical communication. And, you know, what I

used to do, like if you look at that old video of me in a bar, you'll see that I'm like, I kind of

work up to it. And it takes a long time to get to a place where they're like this. Whereas being,

a you know being a little more assertive here actually helps a ton well i had actually thought

um prior to this call because i've thought about it a lot since that one occasion yeah uh but that

idea of uh right at the beginning of the whole experience of actually starting to program down

here yes to almost very openly just just say look i completely control your hand yeah so not hiding

the fact that you're doing all this touching but having pre-programmed the movement that i thought

was quite a nice little thought process yes and that is maybe we'll add this to the if i update

the product i didn't have a chance to do it now but i guess i'll tip for anyone who's who's uh

interested enough to have made it this far um in reality as an art i talk about how conditioning

them so that when they close their eyes and it like this happens and essentially that's what i'm

i'm doing is is conditioning them so that every time i do a certain touch i'm doing something with

my other hand so unconsciously they they're following though they don't know if they're

following um yeah so that you know from what you're saying it's it's like you could almost

from the beginning just be way more direct about what you're doing you're not trying to trick them

into it you're leading them and you're getting them used to being that so that by the time i

wish I could let people feel what I'm feeling here it's like you're up down and then this is just

this tiny tiny little pressure here that that causes it to flop over when they're really in

the moment yeah yeah yeah absolutely I think it's worth exploring more yeah thank you

Yeah, there it is.

There it is.

Just, just...

Yeah.

And fish here.

There it is.

And we'll just come down here with...

Yeah.

And I'll just turn that off as well.

I'm just gonna open this back up.

And take that chip out, we don't need that.

Actually, I wonder, we'll just put that chip back in a second.

And just see if we...

You know that kind of, um, that sort of fizzy feeling, that, like, funny thing when you push it and you can feel that...

it relax you all the way all right you push it yourself and tell me what happens when you push

the button you should get a feeling that starts in here somewhere yeah that's right take it away

we'll just cut it out take it out and while we're here we'll pop back the tendon down there pop the

bone back in and add the muscles and give that little stitch up everything should feel normal

so that bit at the end was just me on the spur of the moment just wondering something but not

really having a a clear idea or thought it wasn't well communicated um and it was easy enough just

to step in step straight back out of without anybody noticing that it had really happened

yeah um uh so yeah that was that was mostly a case of i thought okay i wonder where we are

yeah but yeah but I I liked it and I think I know what you're going sorry what I just gonna say

overall you know doing it again was really great fun and uh you know the second I'd done it I was

thinking right I straight away I know there were certain things that I wasn't doing yes that I

should uh and also very much aware that uh you know I hadn't necessarily done a specific order

in the way that you would have done uh not because i was doing it my own way but simply because

i was just in the moment thinking differently yeah but that's i mean that's kind of why i love it

like you're um this is why by time number 10 you're going to be a monster because like like

i don't know here you can be being a monster something is a good thing like uh to be clear

i don't know how that translates um but yeah because i you know you described your first one

to me it sounded like it went super well and you added a bunch of variations and stuff but

it's a smaller audience then you try it number two with a big audience you even try a couple things

new um and you're kind of getting it like what i noticed about you is um often instead of

practicing a bunch you kind of just start doing it until a few times in it's sort of in your bones

and you know the it's almost like you know the emotional beats rather than the the actual correct

physical sequence and i think that'll be really useful for a lot of people who are transitioning

out of something where you have to kind of control the sequence to something where here you're

communicating an idea and they got to see you why i should definitely stop my share because

we're just using this little box um they get to see you um just kind of throw stuff out in the

general order that you kind of know it's supposed to be ish and then when it's not when you're not

communicating the thing that you want you shift and you're able to catch it and i think i think

the arms part was perfect a perfect example of that of like of all the stuff we talked about on

the video and even more in the book um you pretty much only do this but then you're able to kind of

catch where she's not hearing you or or getting the idea and then you sort of subtly imply

um that now there's a connection yeah i think with with most of the stuff i do i'm i'm i want

to try and get as quickly to uh to the idea of it feeling right rather than anything else so

you know that's that's why i tend to throw myself into doing something uh because i want to i want

to get to that intuitive sense of oh i can tell what the difference is between it working and not

working and it's this subtle thing yeah that for me that's a much better barometer for where i am

with something the rest of it can come later i just it just needs to feel like the right thing

yeah i like that and i i think you know one for somebody who hasn't done it a million times like

you not this specifically but that kind of thing um i think a good example of that barometer is as

we discussed at the beginning you're you you cut them open you put in the bricks and you're kind

of able to feel by the weight of their arm by the tension of like how uncomfortable they are

by the the tilt of their shoulder that this is going to be a good one it's always going to happen

but this is going to be a good one it's a bit it's a bit like to me in my head i was thinking

and like because i've done it a few times subsequently and in my head i'm thinking

i'm go but in that moment i'm thinking i'm going with the brick are you coming with me so do i do

i get a sense where you're you're totally coming with me fully coming with me or is the resistance

against that yes or are you playing into it too much what i want to know is in this moment are you

are you and i both feeling this moment as the brick goes in and i can tell whether you are or

not so yeah i found that's a really good barometer for me are you are you coming with me on the brick

straight away is that the physical sensation tells me okay we're in the same space here

um there's no there's no resistance to this at all and that that i found again and hence why it's

important to commit to the brick yeah because if i commit to the grip i i then get to feel whether

you come with me or not if i'm not committing then i can't tell what your feeling means there's no

there's no there's nothing to gauge it against if that makes sense yeah yeah um yeah i like commit

to the brick that'll be my my hashtag for the promotion no um but i um yeah i like that and i

i like that idea of um in that first stage it's not it's not even like am i doing it right it's

if if i'm doing this to you we're only going to get halfway there so you're really kind of thinking

of are you doing this with me and yeah and and so within the playfulness of your interaction you can

kind of coax them to be like you know but but this time i'm going to really put on the bricks

though right it's almost it's it's almost like and whilst you wouldn't say this to them it's

almost like you're saying to them i'm going to put this brick into my arm um are you willing to

to experience the same thing are you really willing to join me in the experience of what

this feels like as we as we place this brick in our collective arm and maybe that's it maybe it's

this idea of this is now our collective arm i'm going to feel the brick going into it are you

you going to join me in that experience and if you are then it becomes your arm and you move forwards

it's yeah it's true and i i just i just tested myself now and like when i do put in the brick

in someone else's arm i feel my arm get heavier um just complete like i'm just bought into it of

i'm you know i'm communicating with my mind and my body and as i put the brick in i'm feeling my arm

and it's getting heavier as I hold their heavy ass arm

to the point where I drop it.

And there's like, I'm kind of dropping my heavy arm

and theirs is getting extra heavy

because I'm not holding it anymore.

So it is, you know, it's not like you,

again, it's not like something you have to rehearse.

It's more of like, if I'm putting a brick in their arm,

am I ready to imagine that I'm holding a heavier arm?

Because if I am, then I'm communicating at way more levels

than just, hey, your arm's getting heavy.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

i did that so i i've got i've got a little little thought that i want to share with you after the

recording uh you've made me think but we'll save that for later um yeah i'm i'm making i think i

really i really enjoyed performing it again i will definitely take into account uh just having

a clearer structure in my head of conveying what it is that i want to convey and and sort of acting

into it more than i was the first time round um i i think for me maybe just the more you do it the

more in tuned you start to get with those little ways that people move and steer um along but i

yeah it's uh it was a good fun good fun thing to do well and i'll maybe we'll close ish with a

kind of follow-up of so this was you did it once you did it here um you were clearly experimenting

and seeing you know how it feels so you've done it a few times since did you learn anything from

that or is there anything you'd share with people who are just picking it up yeah i i think that the

the biggest thing is that the more i the more i start to learn how to physically respond to the

brick um and the the better i communicate that on that on that physical level um and through my

belief the the better the tie-in at the early stages um and you know even down to uh when you

put the iron bar up into the arm it's not just good enough that you mime an iron bar yeah you

kind of have to really think and feel and experience what it would be like you are pushing an iron bar

up and what what i would expect to happen if i literally pushed an iron bar up somebody's arm

is what i then get from them in their response yeah so so so the more i commit to the reality

of it the better the experience is and i think there's a huge amount to be learned from that

as well yeah um yeah i like that it it's it's almost like but not over not over egging it either

by the way so the part of it is is i don't need to verbally over over overcook this at all i it's

just about in my head am i thinking and feeling what i would be doing if it were real yeah yeah

yeah and you're not you're not saying imagine it getting heavier imagine it getting lighter kind

of thing it's you're just doing it um it makes me think of when i think of the interaction it's

almost like you're in a bugs bunny cartoon or something because you're doing this awful thing

to a person but they're going to be fine and it's kind of hilarious as you do it it's like you know

you're tying a bomb to their ankle and you're just going to blow them up and they're going to

fall back down. Um, and they'll be fine. It has that kind of like reality of yes, I'm doing this

awful thing to you, but levity of this is absurd though. Right. And yeah, even when they do, like

I was reviewing my, some videos from 10 years ago of me doing this in a, no, no, 13 years ago of me

doing this in a science class. I did some lectures, um, some psych lectures and there were some people

i i don't know what i was doing in that early phase that was different but a lot of people

were like ouch when i when i hit him with the scalpel and and i you know i'd just be like oh

uh you know all right i'll do it a little different this time it won't hurt whatever

um but there is like even though it's yeah it's it's very cartoonish of like you're doing this

awful thing to a person they're enjoying it when it in the rare cases it actually does hurt

they're like okay do it again but this time don't hurt me when you cut me open

but maybe maybe some of that is uh what i went on to say in the talk that i gave which is this idea

that when we know inherently that we're in the safe space of our of this playground of our mind

when we're playing these imagination games we can commit more fully to the emotional investment of

them, because we know it's a game. You know, you can allow yourself to be more scared in a cinema

than you would necessarily allow yourself to be in real life, because there are other constraints

to that. So I do think there is something really beneficial about entering people into this fun

playful space that we all know this isn't real, yet we can then get incredibly excited about how

real we've just made it for ourselves and maybe some of the reaction that people have is they're

quite they're quite spooked almost by how vividly they've just been able to imagine something that

they knew wasn't real yes you know yeah yeah that's good it i mean i'm i'm still kind of

reeling from the idea which is totally true now i think of it like watching friday the 13th can be

scarier than being attacked by jason because when you're being attacked by jason there's

derealization and dissociation and there's like all these other responses this is we're going a

little far far afield from a uh yeah but it's true in real real life is messy and complicated

whereas when you go into a cinema you can go right i'm just going to focus on this sensation

of fear and i'm going to explore what that sensation feels like but because i'm in the

cinema and i know i'm safe yeah i can allow myself to throw be thrown over the edge of that experience

but in real life there's all this other stuff that's way more overpowering going over going on

which would get in the way of the experience or the imagine experience so so yeah i think there's

something powerful in that absolutely and it makes me think of the kind of two two things because

so much of this you can kind of throw it away as a trick or a suggestion or whatever but um

like in a certain sense it is allowing us to tap into something more pure and and people can there

is something very powerful and empowering about step like fully feeling these this extent of

emotions that you only can when you're in a safe enough place to do it um and creating a you know

a show a playful space where people can experience things that's where they do it it's it's like

you know i don't think you should necessarily do therapy on a stage but a play can be therapeutic

and part of it's because you are showing up in this way and when you look at i i saw i was in

in europe for a month and i i was because i had just done psychic surgery for the first time in

i was cutting everybody and uh you could you could like the the excitement and the joy and

the disbelief that people were having over this thing that i had kind of written off in my own

mind um because i was like oh i have you know i have other stuff now that's better than this but

this like just there's something about the playfulness of it um that i think allows people

to have those experiences and they're real but this yeah i was going to say the second side but

I don't know. Carry on. Carry on first, please.

Well, the second side of it is kind of calling back to what we talked about with experiencing your own hand get heavy,

that you kind of have to go first and experience this as a playful and safe-ish space.

He says, not silencing his notifications to create a safe space for an interview.

But yeah, so there is an element of like when I'm playful and I'm like, I'm going to catch you, it allows you to playfully be hurt.

Not that that's the goal, but, you know, so it's.

But that might be the goal in that moment for that person to actually have that playful experience, which is why I think this is a beautiful thing of leaving that thing open.

I would say that we, I think we also have to be careful of not going too far in the opposite

direction. Right. That the moment we start to, the moment we start to do it for the sake of the

response we're getting is the moment we start to not get the responses. I think that it's a bit

like play for the sake of play. Yeah. When we, when we play into this, we get these amazing

moments of reactions. But when we start, when we start to kind of almost get the power out of that

moment and start thinking oh i can make you do these hilarious things and feel out of control

i think then it it loses its moment it loses its mojo yeah and there is there is something about

that where you know you'll do something like this and you create the right environment you have the

right vibe and you come up and you're like you're afraid of needles and they kind of oh and you joke

about it you cut them open and then afterwards they come up after the show and they're like

i've been afraid of needles my whole life this was such like an amazing experience for me and

you're kind of like you know you just have to take it in um but then if you get in your head

about it and you next time you're like does anyone have any needle fear come up here and you do the

same thing it doesn't you know it's like where you're coming from your expectations um even

the fact that like you don't know what made the first person engage um specifically or what allowed

them to feel a fear of needles and then say you know what i'm going to do this um and so there's

a lot of that mojo that is possibly not in the second circumstance because of your intention and

the way you framed it yeah yeah love it love it yeah that's a little far afield from this but i

think it's really relevant um especially in the context of the conversation we didn't have today

because of internet issues um you know why does this stuff matter why is it important what's

possible. Um, and I think this is a great example of how, like, even though psychic surgery is this

little kid's game that is, when you think of it one way, crazy impressive, you're, you're playing

with all the tools of the mind. You think of it another way. And it's just like this, this sequence

of silly things. Um, but then from both sides, you kind of have to realize that, oh, wait, this is

talking about like this huge untapped potential and this sequence of silly things is uh a beautiful

open door into that potential uh while also being a sequence of silly things and i just kind of love

that yeah yeah i love it brilliant right leave it there perfect perfect there's all these these

little strange games you play like have you ever you know uh crisscross applesauce break an egg on

head? No? I am in Spanish, you should do it, but if you're bad, you have to do it.

Aha, yes, yes. Yeah, so we're doing a project where we talk, where we kind of work with the

idea of these games and how they show how our minds and bodies work, so it's like magic, but

it's also real, so that's what we're gonna do. Are you cool with that? Sure. It's gonna be a

little bit strange. Is that okay? Okay. So, here's what we're gonna do. How do you

feel about needles? Never give too much thought, but I'm not afraid of it. Okay.

All right. Have you seen one of these before? It's

um have you seen one of these before uh it's an invisible scalpel okay you know what a scalpel

is yes i've never seen one okay so you use this to cut people open can i can i cut you open with

this yeah okay cool so i'm gonna take this scalpel it's like a very sharp knife i'm gonna

cut you open cool yeah okay i'm gonna cut you open like this you're gonna open up your skin

okay and i'm gonna reach in this will be a little bit weird take out the muscle

take out the the tendons and the ligaments in here take out the bone and uh i'm gonna put in a brick

another heavy brick another brick made completely out of stone i'm gonna sew you back up how does

your arm feel heavy heavier than my left one yes that's very heavy yeah try try lifting them both

see how it feels yeah here i'll uh i'll open you back up take out this brick you got this brick

Take out another brick here, and I'm gonna put in an iron bar. A bar made out of metal.

If I have one. Oh, I have one. Yeah, perfect. I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna put it in your

arm like this. Do you feel that? There we go. Sew that in. What's that feel like?

Maybe similar to how it felt before. Yeah, but I feel tight and stiff.

Here, I'll do one more. Oh, this is where it gets very strange. Is that okay?

So I'm gonna take out this part, I'm gonna set you up partway, I'm gonna leave some space.

Do you know what a microchip is? I've heard about them, yes.

So I'm gonna put in a little microchip, a little computer, into your arm.

You know what this does? Hold on, finish sewing this up.

So this is a little microchip, and this is about connecting our arms together.

Okay, so I'm gonna turn it on, there, and you can see that our arms are actually kind of connected.

in fact look at your pinky right here. Yes. Notice what it wants to do when I move my pinky.

What does your pinky want to do? It's strange right? Weird right? Now what if I, what if I move

my thumb? What is your thumb? Weird right? And what if I lift my arm? Do you feel yours wanting to lift?

Yeah. If I turn mine do you feel... Very good. Yeah. Weird right? And one more time let's see if...

weird right all right turn that off cut this open i'll take out this chip cut it away and

also i'm gonna open this up because you know what we need to do what do you need to do put everything

back so you can take your bone and put that bone back in there tendons your ligaments and uh oh your

muscles thank you close cup and sew this back up how's your hand feel back to normal thank you

Yeah. So you were playing with my mind the whole time.

We were playing with your mind.

It only works when you decide that you want to experience it.

No, I got it. I could feel it.

What was that like?

I'd say a little bit mind-blowing and at the same time...

coinvolgent?

What's the word for coinvolgent?

It felt like I was taken away from what you were saying,

believing in what you were doing and I did actually yeah. Do you get what I mean? No.

No. With the words you said, the phrases you were trying to put in my head. I felt like it was

really happening. Yeah. And it was making me do certain things. Interesting. Well you were in

control the whole time but it's it's a very interesting yeah experience. I hope you always

I do be here.

Yes.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

So we're going to start out.

You might have seen one of these earlier, but do you know what this is?

An invisible scalpel.

Okay.

How do you feel about, like, injections or getting cut?

I'm sorry.

You're fine.

How many fine people are we meeting today?

Most people are uncomfortable.

Okay.

So I'm going to use this.

I'm going to cut open your arm here.

Oh, sorry.

Open that up.

I'm going to take out the muscles.

I'm going to put these behind you.

Don't worry.

They'll be safe.

ligaments and tendons and i'm gonna take out the home i'm gonna put in one of my bricks

other brick and one more brick there so that back up how's that feel happy do you want to feel what

it's another brick even how much okay i'll put in even another okay relax a bit take this put in

that brick there. How's that feel? Great. You're right. All right. Put this guy up here. Take out your

brick. Don't worry, I'm putting them separate from everything else. Take out that brick and I'm gonna

put in a metal bar. Just hold on. Sew that back up. How's that feel? Feels stiff. Cool. What does

it feel like in here? It feels like it's tight. Yeah. The whole arm's tight. I mean, of course.

There's a bar in here now. Take this out. And this is where it gets really weird. Is that all right?

Okay. All right. So I'm gonna take this little microchip, put it right here. It'll sew you up.

Okay. Come behind here. We'll turn it on. Yeah. Perfect. Okay, so now watch. If I start to move my

my pinky. Feel what yours wants to do. Feel that right there? Yeah, let it happen. Weird, right? Cool. Yeah.

And if I relax. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Crazy. And even if I push here, it's almost like yours

wants to follow. Yeah. Fucking sick. Yeah. And watch. If I come here. Wait, let's start this way.

If I come here and I lift up, what does yours want to do?

Cool.

Yeah?

You can test.

You can test, you can test, but come back for a second just so you can feel.

Because watch, if I turn, what about your, in the, if I...

So this is a Marev system.

Yeah.

Turn that off.

Put this open.

This out.

And of course, yeah.

You want to see?

Okay.

Come stay around, we're almost done.

Here.

I'll, uh, I already got this.

So I'm going to take your, um, what we got here? Your bone, put that back in, your muscles,

and your ligaments and your tendons. Make sure those arms feel the same. Yeah? You want to feel?

A little bit. Wait, what? By the way, just, he doesn't know what's going on. How would you

describe that just without giving too much away? All right. Um, uh, okay, so, um, I just need a place,

you know what i'll use in my bag um so this is going to be a little bit strange is that okay

all right yeah you have a story um here i'll take this out have you ever seen one of these before

what two fingers i've seen that before okay so if you look closely the two fingers are actually

holding an invisible scalpel okay how do you feel about like giving blood and getting poked and that

i've donated and i have tattoos so i'm okay with it okay all right so you're an old hand um so i'm

gonna come I'm gonna take this scalpel and if it's okay I'm gonna use it to cut

open your arms alright yeah okay just tell me this is too too much I'm just

gonna cut this open like this do you mind holding something for me do you

have a minute okay so I'm gonna open this guy's arm up I'm gonna take out his

muscles sorry let's take out his ligaments and tendons and I'm gonna take

out his bones. You all right? It's okay. All right. It's weird though. It's weird. Yeah. All right.

And I'm going to take a brick. I'm going to put in a brick. Another brick. One more brick.

And we'll sew this guy back up. How does that feel? Oh, it's heavy.

Yo, that's dope. Yeah, yeah, definitely feel that. Yeah. That's definitely, it's the way you,

the arm is positioned, huh? Well, but put your arms next to each other.

you feel this one's super like i can even feel this one's heavier when i hold it like oh i don't

do anything but someone else could feel um here i'll open this guy up and if you if you were

somebody who is not like oh it feels heavier but maybe this arm just maybe you bowl with your left

arm right but when i take it out you'll see for sure watch uh i guess i don't really need these

anymore that's different again right yeah yeah do you want to go a little further let's go all right

Alright, I'm gonna take an iron bar.

Holy shit.

I'm gonna stick this guy in here.

Okay, there.

Sew that up.

Okay, how's that feel?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, but it's tight too, man.

Yeah, it's tight.

It's tight as fuck.

Dope.

That's weird.

I'm not gonna lie.

Yeah.

Here, I could even, if you want, I put one with little joints in it.

Do you want me to make it nice and stiff?

So you can feel it.

That's like, here, I'll put in one.

It's completely stiff.

and we'll put this guy right in, up to the joint, you feel that, all the way up there?

sew that up, and you know, I feel what that's like

it's weird as fuck, yeah, but it's hard to describe, but it's like, you can feel like that

it's like, I don't know if it's resistance or some type of like, weight, you can feel like it's weird as shit

yeah, that arm's heavy, yeah, it's definitely heavy

yeah, open that up

weird as, it's weird

now this is gonna be a little bit weirder

I'll take this guy out

Yeah.

Don't lose it.

Yeah.

Are you holding something in your hand?

Yes.

Thank you.

This is an important job.

You can try this after if you want.

Yes, please.

Okay.

So, make sure this is nice and clear.

Yeah.

I'm going to take a little, can you come over to this side?

Yep.

Take a little microchip.

It's going to help us to connect your arm to mine.

We'll sew this guy up.

Okay, now this is gonna be very strange, but that's all right, because I'm gonna turn it on and

Yeah, yeah, okay. There we go. Yeah, okay. I'm turn it on and now watch

So what when I raise my arm yours wants to but that's that's not gonna be convincing yet

Look at my pinky, right? And when I push my pinky, do you see what yours wants to do? You feel that?

Yo, that's weird. Oh, yo, that's some freaky shit right there, man. All right

Now it gets weirder, though, because if I raise my arm, what does yours want to do?

Slightly go up.

Yeah?

Naturally.

Yo, that's okay!

And if I drop it, but if I go up again, you feel that?

You are the god damn devil, man, I don't know what you are.

Turn that off.

Open this up, I'll take this out for you.

That's weird.

There's no sign that a lot of people don't.

Well, a few things, I think we all do.

And, uh, you know, sorry to leave this open a little bit, but right now, this one has some stuff in it.

This is missing some stuff. Can you feel that these aren't quite the same?

Right.

Yeah, like this one to me is lighter.

Feel...

Yeah.

Yeah, weird, right?

Yeah, you're right. This one must be lighter.

Because it's missing... Excuse me.

Is it in your pockets? Where are they?

No, thank you.

All right, open this up. Can I get the bone?

Yep.

Okay.

Put that bone back in.

We'll take the ligaments, tendons too, those are important.

And we'll take the muscles, put those muscles back in, and sew this guy up, okay, break that

off.

Now make sure, nice and same, like now it never happened to you.

This guy, he knows some things, man, he knows some things.

Dope.

So what's the secret behind that, if I can ask?

Magic.

Technically speaking.

It doesn't have nothing to do with the way the arm is positioned for an extra amount of time.

I feel like the way you touch certain places.

If he wants to experience it, I could test all of those things as it's happening.

You're up for it.

You ready?

Yep.

Okay.

So you saw this a moment ago?

Yep.

An invisible scalpel?

Yep.

Now, how do you feel about getting poked or stabbed?

Is that uncomfortable?

No problem.

okay um then let's here let's turn you this way a bit we're gonna cut you open here some people

they feel some people feel a little sting but a lot of people it's just like a thumb it's fine

i'm gonna open up your skin okay and i'm going to uh take out okay i'm gonna put him on the floor

that's all right i take out your muscle take out your ligament and your tendon and i'm gonna take

your bone. I'm gonna take a brick. Put that brick in. A brick. Put that brick in. And one more brick.

There. Tie you back. Sew you back up here. There, what's that feel like?

It's heavy. Why? Good question.

And moving the arm feels much more heavier. Yeah. Wow. Hey. I'm gonna open this back up.

you turn this way a little bit yeah and we're going to um already opened it up we take this

and i'm gonna uh take out this brick there correct this big here and um i'm gonna take an iron bar

yeah big piece of metal you can just put that right in there there we'll sew that back up how's that

feel. Why? It's much more complicated to twist. Also, I can... Yeah. Well, you see, it's because

there's a metal bar in here. Yeah, so that's a problem. The crazy thing is, once I take it out,

want to make it a little bit stranger? Yeah, please. Okay, I'm gonna come in. I'm gonna put

this microchip in here so this is going to connect our two arms and um let me just sew this up a

little bit here so now that it's in i'm going to turn it on yeah okay there we go it's on so look

at my thumb see weird right look at your pinky why yeah let it happen and what about this guy here

We could even go like this. Watch. Feel that?

It's like moving by his own feet.

Yeah.

What?

Nice.

I'll even leave it here. Pick a ear finger.

There we go.

What?

Gonna lower it down.

Come in behind here.

Yep, take this out.

Your hand is yours again.

And open it all the way.

And we're going to open this up.

And before we stop, do these feel the same?

No.

no because this one's missing something yeah this is like natural on this no yeah i'll help you out

here's your bone there's your ligaments and tendons you know there's your muscles

sew that back up this is incredible how the do you want to do you want to get some reaction

so what um what was that like it was like when you put the metal bar yeah i feel like it goes

all through the elbow no this is there yeah the shoulder the shoulder yeah yeah and it was like

oh metal i can't like move more than this it was really weird like when you take all of the bones

and everything i feel much more like i don't have arm like yeah like i don't feel it yeah i don't

know how to describe it it's incredible yeah how do you do it magic magic i don't know yeah i don't

know how to describe it yeah would you um would you say that you believe in this kind of thing

i didn't believe in these kind of things but i don't know how to do it so i have to believe i

mean if i see another another one doing to another one i i'm like okay it's prepared but yeah when

you put the metal bar it was like okay i can move my arm i mean i i it was incredible and also twisted

i i feel that i can twist my arm yeah now i feel weird with my hand and now it's everything in

sometimes it takes a minute but it it feels mostly normal yeah and shoulder the elbow also you didn't

touch it but it was like well the bar was heavier it's heavier when it's i don't know it's really cool

so have you seen one of these before this is an invisible scalpel it's like a scalpel but

it's invisible if it's all right um marie i'm gonna use this to cut open your arm a little bit

yeah okay um okay so just tell me if anything's too uncomfortable okay i'm just gonna cut this

open like this okay got it i'm gonna pull back your skin here and uh it's a little bit weird

but i'm gonna take out your muscles here and um could i put these in your bag yeah

take out your ligaments and tendons and uh take out take out your body yeah it's a body bag now

put that in there um and uh i'm gonna put in a brick put that brick in there and take another

brick put that there and one more brick put that right in there and sew this back up how's that feel

not different at all okay let's do one more brick are you cool with that are you are you cool with

this being a weirdly heavy brick okay so relax for a second and i'm going to put in that brick

right there and sew this back up different for everyone how's that feel it feels like my muscle

Now that is the bricks in there. It tends to make you very strong.

Move your arm. How's it feel having a bulked muscle? Odd? Well, drink your milk, go to the gym.

All right, let me take out this brick. I don't really need that again. It's like a biohazard.

One more like this. Sounds a little bit strange. Can I put it in an iron bar?

yeah okay take this i'll just put that right in there how does that feel restricted restricted

kind of does it feel i mean have you had an iron bar in your arm before does it feel kind of like

that it feels like an inside cast an inside wow and you're a poet too you didn't tell me this and

you're a poet too you didn't tell me this okay open up take out the iron bar you're uh you're

You're winning the award for giving you the most, like, quizzical looks today of, like, good thing you guys didn't go.

I'm going to sew this up for now, because we don't want to leave it open too long.

Bacteria, other stuff.

You got what you missed?

No.

Okay.

I wasn't missing anything.

You thought I was.

Oh, okay.

So, we can do one more, but it gets a little bit weirder.

Is that all right?

Sure.

Okay.

Then let's make a little incision again.

my scar tissue gonna be the same after this it's gonna look really cool they're like just the

coolest um okay i'm gonna take this microchip put it in here and uh i'm gonna sew this back up

and the thing about this microchip here is when i turn it on relax your arm for a second yeah

perfect this is actually about connecting our two arms together so just look at your arm yeah

turn it on now wait just relax for a second now watch what happens if i if i pull my pinky what

does yours want to do nothing you feel that build up right here watch yeah see that the base i feel

it yeah so let it happen yeah okay watch you feel it kind of on its own hey weird right the thing is

if we made a good connection and i go like this do you feel your arm wanting to lift up here

I feel my thumb holding the left hand.

To start.

Now let's see if the arm follows the thumb.

You feel that?

Weird, right?

The left's down.

Again.

Weird, right?

Come on.

Okay, come on, open this up, take out this chip, and I almost sewed you back up, but you're

missing something, okay, take your bone, put it back in there, take your muscles, put it

back in there, and your ligaments and tendons, come back in, sew this up, and do you want

me to like write anything cool, like scar wise?

Sure.

Like what?

What comes to mind?

cool scar but that's not a cool like i'm i don't want to let you in on a secret but i'm not that

cool so what do you think what do you think would be a good scar harley quinn harley quinn is that

yeah yeah all right harley quinn or just harley because if you get into bikes later you could

yeah it's versatile oh and i should probably make sure at least the main part is sewed up

make sure your arms feel the same yeah okay thank you very much