Magician and Sleight of Hand Artist
Life’s Mysteries
Fighting Stage Fright
Jul 19th
As I was finishing packing up after a performance last week I was asked by one of the newer members of the Australian Institute of Magic whether I get nervous before starting a performance.
I told him I don’t.
He looked a little surprised by my answer. I talked a bit about what works for me. I’ve actually only learnt some of these excellent and effective techniques in the past year.
I know that panic attacks are dreadful and I used to get them. Often the only thing that saved me from being totally overcome with stage fright before a show was that I was too busy being concerned that everything was in place and all my props were ready so I would forget about how nervous I was.
I stumbled on a method of allowing fear to subside which didn’t mention stage fright specifically, but it works.
The exact same technique can be applied to pretty much anything that’s related to the emotions or causes panic, dread, fear, insomnia, worry, and other emotional stress.
In my case when I suffered panic it was often brought on by thinking about overdue bills. I would get intense feelings in my chest and throat area. The worst was when I would start worrying before going to bed.
Panic can be so debilitating, and it gave me a lot of restless nights. I didn’t like admitting I had insomnia because I always thought insomnia was ridiculous. I mean c’mon. Insomnia! Just sleep it off. You’ll get better. It’s not so simple when it’s happening.
I remember just two years ago always being tired, and that affected every area of my life and work. I tried hard not to let it show, so I may have gotten away with it somewhat.
I am so glad I no longer have those panic attacks as I have found a way to deal with that horrible dread. I can now recognise the early stages of panic and immediately put myself into the right frame of mind. It seems to be something I can do automatically now.
I came across different courses that take you through a step by step process showing you how to bring those kind of emotions under control.
Though some authors make big claims, such as the course showing the way to achieving abundance, and reaching your life’s dreams and goals and such, I targeted my expectations to the area of dealing with panic and stress. The results have been very good. If I also achieve the other claims then that’s a bonus on top of my expectations.
I’ve used three such courses and I can say that I like them all. There is a free on too which I haven’t tried. And that is the Dhamma.org 10 day meditation retreat. The courses I can tell you about can be gone through with a set of CD’s and maybe an accompanying workbook, or as one course calls it, a Playbook, which is cute. You’ll be surprised how placing a positive spin on everything in your life can start making everything easier to deal with.
Even though I thought I had already heard a lot of the best advice available on dealing with worry, I was still curious enough to see if maybe someone had a novel approach.
Stumbling on these various courses was a result of a little exploring and willingness to discover something new.
What got me interested initially was pure and simple curiosity. I wanted to know what formulas people have come up with for dealing with life’s challenges. And it didn’t hurt that some of them claimed to open up your life to abundance. But I am going to recommend these courses as an excellent tool for learning how to deal with stress and that includes stage fright.
As I was taking a walk in the park today with my wife we were talking about how the fear of embarrassment can be greater than the fear of death, and yet we know that the latter is inevitable. It kind of seems illogical that fear of failure often rates so much higher. But emotions are not logical. The intense feelings of dread can be so difficult to deal with. I have been so pleased to find out that those feelings can be changed. They can be under our control. And this is the best thing I got out of the following courses.
I guess when fear of failure and fear of death are compared like that we can see that perhaps being willing to spend a little effort on dealing with the fear of failure makes sense.
These may seem like more than adequate for dealing with a seemingly abstract issue like stage fright.
I believe they are extremely effective for the sole reason that they are not dealing directly with stage fright.
Yes you read that right. And this is why: by going through any of the following courses you gain a skill for life: understanding and managing emotions. And by not focusing on stage fright you can slowly let stage fright ease its way to the periphery, that is the edge of your awareness, and drop out of your experience.
The Courses
the following two are based on the work of physicist Lester Levinson.
The Sedona Method
Don’t ask me why it’s called the Sedona Method, but it’s a memorable name. So, points for good branding.
I applied the processes set out in this CD set to tackling challenges and big hurdles that were in the way, with good results. Because this CD set is quite extensive I also benefited in other areas such as anger management, time management, and general contentment. These aren’t even the main things featured on the advertisement for the Sedona Method. I’m sure everyone differs a little in how they benefit from something. This one is made by Hale Dwoskin who was one of Lester Levinson’s students. He does a fantastic job of wording the course in a way that gives you confidence in how easy and do-able it is.
The Release Technique
This course really struck a chord with me. I like Larry Crane’s down to earth approach. He just jumps right into the exercises without too much explaining, which worked for me. At first I was getting a little annoyed at hearing the same 30 seconds of musical intro on every half hour section. The course is about how to deal with stuff that annoys you, and soon I found that it didn’t annoy me anymore, and if I was fast-forwarding the music, it was no longer done out of frustration but because I was eager to get to the content. Larry Crane’s personal story is also quite interesting and how he ended up continuing the work of Lester Levinson and making The Release Technique available to the world.
Why do magicians love playing cards?
Jul 14th
What is it about playing cards that holds such an allure for magicians? Why is it that there are more tricks using playing cards than any other object on earth?
Who was so clever as to invent a device that could entertain so many billions of people and also contain the secrets of the universe?
Wait a minute! Secrets of the Universe?
Ok. Well, maybe not exactly the secrets of the universe, but at least some ideas about our view of the universe: and more specifically the solar system. Even more specifically, the Calendar.
Lunar Calendars and Solar Calendars and were in use many millennia ago.
The Solar Calendar won out as the one we use today, but a deck of playing cards cleverly combines the two in a matrimony of ideas.
But there are practical reasons why magicians use playing cards in so many of their tricks.
Playing cards are practical. They do not take up a lot of space and you can create incredible magic results if you know what you’re doing. Sometimes even easy tricks can be fascinating. Though I venture to say, that spending a bit of time learning more advanced card tricks are well worth it and the resulting impression on an audience is many times stronger than the basic “pick-a-card” trick. With a little box filled with 52 pieces of card you can take an audience on a journey of amazement and engage their imagination to such a degree that can rival any form of entertainment. Can. This of course is not guaranteed. But it can. So that’s one reason magicians love playing cards. Portability, usability and versatility.
So far I have been able to incorporate the use of playing cards in the following forms of magic entertainment: transformations, vanishes, apparitions, time travel concepts, mind reading, gambling based concepts, lost and found concepts, espionage concepts, master memory, suspension or levitation, ghost themes, synchronicity themes, mathematical themes, remote control (of a human) theme, destiny theme, truth/lies theme, estimation themes, luck, thought transmission, and other unclassified tricks that are just done because I can.
So what else is of interest about a deck of cards?
Even though there are possibly thousands or tens of thousands of card tricks I still think that new tricks will continue to be published because cards have evolved along with modern people and are intrinsically linked to our psyche.
The numbers in a deck of cards are of great interest. And this is where we find the Lunar and Solar calendars interlaced.
There are 52 weeks in the solar year. There are 52 cards in a deck. The Joker could be the leap year’s extra day, if you really want to stretch the comparison further.
There are 4 seasons in a year (at least in most cultures and in the most dominating areas of the world). There are 4 suits in a deck.
There are 13 lunar months in a year. 28 days x 13 = 364. Each suit in a deck of cards is made up of 13 cards.
That’s just the beginning of the many interesting things found in the numbers of which a deck of playing cards is made up.
If I were to continue looking for links to human culture or even to us human beings I might draw a comparison to there being 2 colours in a deck: red and black. Male and female, if you want. Or yin- yang if you prefer.
There are ten “spot cards”. Ace through ten. (though by some definitions this doesn’t include the ace) But I’m trying to find significance with the number ten, so I’ll say there are 10 “non-face” cards in a deck. Ten is a very meaningful number to us humans: ten fingers! And the base ten number system is used worldwide.
There are 20 “non-face” cards of each colour. Still a significant number as our fingers and toes add up to 20.
Actually there are quite a few interesting things about the number 20. The Tzoltec calendar upon which the Mayan and Aztec calendars were based worked using 20 and 13 as multiples. Both those numbers are significant in a deck of cards. And what’s more 20 x 13 = 520. There’s that 52 again, magnified ten fold. And 100 fold equals 5200, the number of years that it takes for the Pleiades to reach a zenith.
Playing cards began appearing in Europe with the Gypsies we know from at least 1370 AD. The term ‘gypsy was shortened from Egyptian, though this has been disputed by some scholars (I can’t really understand why this is disputed). The Italian Tarocchi cards were said to contain vestiges of the learning of the ancient Egyptians, according to “Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards” By William Andrew Chatto, pub. 1848
In this book Chatto also mentions other speculation that King Edward I might have brought the game back from Persia.
Am I the first person to notice that playing cards have significant astronomical numbers and that their origins can be traced east, while the same numbers had significance in the western lands of the Americas? Probably not, but I wish I could find more information about it.
All that to say, I think it’s a fascinating study.
Strange and wonderful body clock
Mar 19th
It was at the age of 12 that I discovered I could tell myself to wake up at a certain time. This fact mystified me as it seemed to indicate that my conscious thoughts could somehow influence the automatic functions of my body. Having recently read the assertion that the human mind processes up to 2 million bits of information per second it should be apparent that there is a lot more we can do which we are strangely unaware of. I say “strangely” because it defies logic how we can be capable of more than we are aware of. And yet real life examples abound.
I find it fascinating that the adage “a job will take as much time as is allotted for it” more often than not becomes a true statement. When preparing for a magic show, I usually work backwards, from the show start time, calculating when I need to start getting ready by adding each task. And that always serves me well.
But take a task that has no pressing time line. No deadline. An open goal. Such as decluttering my office. My eyes glaze over just thinking about it. I can spend several hours a week on it and it is never actually finished. Even telling myself that I have a two hour limit, does not seem to work. The way to trick my mind into actually believing that the time line is real and needs to be respected is to invite someone over who is going to see my office. That is a believable deadline.
Sorry, you can’t come over this weekend…
