The Holy Grail of Mind Reading & Mentalism
What is the holy grail of mind reading & mentalism?
The holy grail is being able to walk up to a spectator - 100% impromptu - and be able to tell them what they are thinking of. Mind readers and mentalists have tried to come up with the perfect method for being able to do this for years and years.
There are a range of different methods you could use but there is one which I've recently discovered which I think beats them ALL hands down. This method is called “The Revelation Technique”.
I first found out about the revelation technique when I received an email from someone who back then was just a stranger – his name was, and still is funnily enough, 'Michael'. The email was rather mysterious and was sent purposely to grab my attention. As I read the email I was a little suspicious of what he was claiming..
“Imagine, you ask someone to think of something – anything – they tell no one, yet you now have the power to reveal that secret thought..”
I've been in this game long enough to know these claims are usually a let down when you finally see the method. So I spoke with Michael over the course of a few weeks and he finally let me in on the secret in exchange for a few of my own secrets. I was blown away. Finally! A brand new trick I could add to my arsenal of already very impromptu tricks, and this was to eventually be my favourite.
The Revelation Technique is actually going to be released to select few who get on his mailing list early and it is by invite only. With his permission he has let me give people access to the secret if they visit The Revelation Technique within the next 10 days!
3 Ways To Use Rapport In Mind Reading & Mentalism
Having rapport with your audience is a must. I've laid out 3 ways you can use it to enhance your mind reading performance.
What Is rapport?
Rapport is a relationship. A pleasant feeling of mutual trust, affinity and friendship established through verbal and non-verbal means.
When performing to people you don't know, whether they accept you or not is an important factor in whether to effect will do down well or not. There's nothing worse than performing to someone who doesn't like you and wants you to fail. This can bring your mind reading performance to come crashing down and leaving you with a red face.
To make your mentalism and mind reading tricks really successful you need the audience on your side. To get them on your side you need gain rapport with them. I've listed 3 great ways to gain rapport.
1)Mirroring Body Language – a great way to gain report non-verbally is by mirroring the body language of the volunteer. Mirroring is basically copying what the other person is doing with regards to how you are seated, stood, where your hands rest, whether you are cross-legged, slouched, up-right etc. Now you don't want to make this too obvious so a great way to casually mirror the other person is just with small movements that mimic their hand gestures. When they scratch their head – you scratch etc.
2)Use The Same Words – another good way to gain rapport with someone is to copy their dialect, slag or metaphors. You will find when speaking with people that they will use the same words and dialect to describe things. A great way to gain rapport is by using the same words confidently when speaking with them.
3)Match their voice – this is a more advanced strategy and it's used by copying their tone of voice and their rhythm of speech. Some people talk quietly and with a fairly fast rhythm. It's your job to copy them without being someone you're not. If you are a loud and outgoing person and you are dealing with someone who is an introvert and fairly quiet. Take your lively ways a notch down or two. This will gain rapport with them in which you can then slowly get back to being who you are and they will follow suit comfortably.
These tips merely touch the surface on gaining rapport with someone but is a good starting point for any mind reader or mentalist.
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Quality, NOT Quantity – An Important Lesson
The most commonly made mistake by beginners in mentalism magic is thinking that the more tricks they know, the better they're going to look. On the contrary, the best mentalists will usually only perform between 3 and 6 really good mind reading tricks on any one occasion that they know inside out. What beginners can't get their head around is the fact that it's how it actually looks to the audience and not what the mentalist thinks it looks like. The urge to perform as many tricks as they can in a space of time is hard to suppress.
That being said it's completely understandable, I mean most mentalists will go from having no attention to having the whole room of people surrounding them and thinking they're pretty damn cool and interesting. The shock and awe after a tricks revelation is addictive to say the least, so they want to cram in as many of those moments as they can, but what they don't notice is the potency of the tricks will lessen and there is a tendency to not be congruent with each effect. When I say being congruent, I mean sticking to mind reading tricks that have an explanation. The problem with the beginner is that in discovering mental magic they will usually stumble on a plethora of basic magic tricks and after running out of mind reading material will move onto those obvious sleight of hand tricks. This will usually make the audience assume the mind blowing mentalism tricks performed earlier were nothing more than sleight of hand conjuring tricks.
Although 5 tricks may seem like a small number, the professional mentalist will know how to stretch these tricks to last much longer than a beginner would, thus building the suspense of the final revelation which gains the applause of the crowd. Usually the tricks will begin with a short story, explaining a phenomena, setting the scene for the effect and then building up the anticipation slowly until a final gasp from the crowd. The tendency to rush the build up is a hard thing to control for the beginner in mind reading magic. This patience will pay dividends and it is always better that you leave the audience wanting more, this is where you can get approached by the opposite sex and engage in a phone number exchange for a private show..
To learn mind boggling mentalism tricks to freak out your friends visit mind reading tricks
How to Use NLP in Mentalism & Mind Reading Tricks
Lets get something straight before we continue. When I talk about using NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) in mentalism and magic, I'm not talking about using it in some sort of way to use psychological mind control like some 'mentalism professionals' claim they are using.
I'm not talking about when they 'say' they are using it to influence your decisions when picking a card, a box or just about anything. This isn't actually possible. Don't be fooled by the professional mind reader's or mentalist's false explanation for a trick. You cannot control people with NLP to the extent they say they do. This just isn't possible.
So now we've made that clear lets talk about a method where you CAN use it in a magic tricks. This is to make a crowd reaction stronger. This stuff actually works and will subtly add to your mind reading effects.
I'm talking about using NLP 'Anchors'.
So what is an anchor?
The word anchor comes from NLP whereby when you get an emotional response from someone, whether it is being happy, sad, excited, positive, negative etc. you anchor that emotional response with touch (kinaesthetic anchor), sound (audio anchor) or vision (visual anchor). You can then bring about that emotional response by activating the anchor you set.
Here's an example:
If you casually touch someone's knee every time they laugh, after about the 8th time, you can touch them on the knee when they aren't laughing and they will get a feeling like they want to laugh. You could also use a different type of anchor like a word with a different tone of voice (audio anchor), or a hand gesture (visual anchor) as a more subtle way of anchoring. Or, you can even use them all at the same time to leave a stronger anchor.
This can be abused and it already has been by pick up artists worldwide by using anchors to trick the opposite sex into thinking they have a stronger bond with the person than they really do. If you choose to use anchoring for that reason that is your business but I take no responsibility for your actions.
So how can you use anchoring in magic and mentalism?
There are numerous ways to do this and it really deserves its own book but I will share with you one method..
It's quite simple, every time you perform a trick and the audience reacts with amazement (you need to do a good trick by the way – I recommend an Ultimate Mind Reading trick of course 
..) you need to anchor that response. If it's a one on one setting, you can casually touch the spectator on the shoulder every time they react with amazement. Otherwise, if there's a bit of a crowd, you could bang on the table and say a word like “Jesus!”. This will anchor the emotional response of amazement with the crowd.
You can then bring them to a feeling of amazement more easily if after every trick you bang on the table and say “Jesus!”.
This is a subtle way of adding to your mentalism and mind reading tricks and the best anchors are by creating your own which you feel comfortable doing yourself.
Have fun..
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A Mind Reading Must Have – The Persona
Don't Even Think About Doing a Mentalism or Mind Reading Trick Until You've Read This..
There's a very important thing all aspiring mind readers should know about - The Persona. What do I mean by The Persona? This is the backbone of your display of mind reading abilities. This is what makes your performance believable and separates the Mentalists & Mind Readers from the magicians.
This is who you are, what you do and how you do it
When you perform a mind reading trick you need to be congruent with what you claim to be doing. This means building a character where everything you do 'makes sense' to what you're saying. So if you say you're an expert at reading body language and human psychology but you're a 13 year old boy, this is going to be pretty hard to look authentic.
The same goes if you are claiming to be a psychic but are performing regular coin disappearing magic tricks along side displays of psychic ability. The audience will just label you as a magician and think that your mind reading tricks are using the same principles as your magic tricks - which they are - but this is what separates the professionals from the amateurs.
There are a small number of magicians who just about manage to pull it off, one of those is David Blaine, his whole persona is of a bit of a weirdo who does magic. That being said, I can't help but think many of his mind reading displays are labelled as sleight of hand magic because of other tricks he performs.
One of the best Persona's I've seen created in recent times is that of Derren Brown's. He's managed to craft himself as a body language expert 'slash' hypnotist 'slash' psychological illusionist. He DOES use hypnosis in many of his displays, but a lot of it is off camera and you are not supposed to know the subject has been hypnotised - although this is a discussion for another day. Derren Brown mostly uses regular magic tricks and disguises them as 'mind reading' and 'body language reading' and he fools 99% of people who are blissfully unaware of this fact.
I can't reiterate this enough and how important it is to think about every performance, it's explanation and whether it is congruent with who you want to be. If you are doing it for a bit of fun, then don't worry, but if you truly want to freak out people at parties, in work, in school etc. you need to have a persona and tricks to that match up with that persona.
Some of the best mentalists and mind readers have only 5/6 tricks they can perform really well and this is enough to be a professional mind reader. Although I know how to do hundreds and thousands of tricks myself. There are only a few key tricks I will perform to strangers, these are the most powerful ones I know and I have an explanation of how I did each one (the explanation is false of course, but you already knew that, right?
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