Mentalism is a performing art that is more than just magic tricks and entertaining acts and antics.
It’s a skill that also touches base with psychology and human behavior. With practice, you can trick people into believing you are psychic and have supernatural mind-reading abilities.
Though many beginners hire coaches or take courses on mentalism, you can begin learning by yourself. You will need to put in extra work, but over time, you will learn several mentalism techniques that you can perform in front of an audience, such as your family and friends.
If you are truly interested, you first need to learn the basics of mentalism – the top 4 things all mentalists should know. Once you get a good grasp of the fundamentals of mentalism, you will fully appreciate this high form of art.
In this article, we’re going to talk about the top 4 things all mentalists should know.
So let’s begin!
Basics of Mentalism: Performance
Mentalism isn’t actually magic. It’s 80% performance and 20% predictability.
To have a great performance, you have to be in complete control, and you must get the audience’s utmost attention.
Here are some ways you can improve your performance.
Presentation
To perfect your performance, you need to ace the presentation.
You have to build on your communication and delivery skills to better appeal to your audience. If it helps, make grand gestures and exaggerate a bit.
Pick the Best Person
To be able to pull off a successful performance, especially when doing mind-reading tricks, you need to have the right subject or volunteer.
Mentalism relies on predictability, so you need to choose a person that will help you (without their knowing it) do the trick.
This is where your observation skills will be put to good use.
The best person is someone who is not too introverted and not too extroverted either. A highly introverted person might be too difficult to read, while loud, extroverted people might cause them (or you) to lose focus. Someone who is somewhere between these traits is the perfect choice for your performance.
To spot the best person, scan the crowd and look at people’s body language. A person who looks guarded, for an instance, has her arms crossed and looks rather quiet. Chances are, your mind-reading skills won’t work on them.
Cold Reading
Cold reading is another mentalism technique. It is a way of letting your audience think that you can read their minds by making vague assumptions.
By studying a person’s body language, facial expressions, and body movements, you can assume things that may be reflective of them, without elaborating. You can also use contradicting statements to make them seem more believable.
An example would be, “You tend to be calm and quiet, but you have an intensity about you that makes you passionate for things you yearn for.”
Statements that are vague enough will most likely apply to many people.
Basics of Mentalism: Confidence
You need more than just great skills and showmanship.
You need confidence.
Confidence that you can pull off the trick perfectly and wow your audience. This confidence will reflect on everyone watching you, and will make the performance more believable.
How do you gain confidence?
Master Your Tricks
If you want to be confident in what you’re doing, you have to know exactly what it is you’re doing. Know your tricks like the back of your hand.
If you’ve practiced it so many times it’s like second nature performing it, that will give you the confidence to pull it off perfectly.
Enjoy
Do not take your tricks too seriously. Have fun, too!
People who aren’t necessarily mentalists can read body language, too.
If it becomes too obvious that you are nervous and jittery, your audience won’t have confidence in your performance.
No audience will believe you if you look nervous and uncertain. If you want to be the master of your show, you want to look cool and composed. Relax and at ease.
You might also want to crack a few jokes. People like other people who are funny and witty. Engaging with your audience will also help you gain their trust, and allow you to influence their thoughts without them knowing.
Basics of Mentalism: Influence
Another thing you should know about basic mentalism is influence.
If you can influence your audience or a volunteer, that will give you more amazing mentalism tricks up your sleeve!
So you have to be an influencer, too.
Here’s one way you can do that:
Misdirection
As a mentalist, you won’t actually read minds. Instead, you can make subtle suggestions, carefully planting an idea or image of something in people’s heads.
Your audience won’t know it, but by your simple gestures, you will have influenced them to think whatever you want them to.
For example, you have a deck of cards, and you want a person to pick the Ace of Hearts. You can subtly suggest this idea to that person by embedding words that start with A in all of your sentences. You can also do it by using visuals and subtly placing heart symbols.
In a way, you are manipulating your audience by feeding their subconscious. This technique is known as misdirection.
To give you a better picture, watch this video by one of the world’s most famous mentalists, Derren Brown:
Basics of Mentalism: Practice
Finally, one of the important rules of mentalism is to practice, practice, and practice.
I know you hate to hear it. But all types of skills need a whole lot of practice to perfect.
Always remember that no skill is learned overnight, so don’t worry if you aren’t able to pull a trick the first time. Many mentalists experienced failure in the early stages of their career, too. You are no different.
You have to build on your skills and continue to hone them.
If you’re trying to teach yourself, try to read as many mentalism books as you can. You’ll be surprised how many new things you can learn from the pages of a book. The books will lay the groundwork for you, teach you the basics of mentalism, and provide you tips and techniques.
If you do not enjoy reading, you can start by watching videos online. Many world-famous mentalists share videos on how to start learning mentalism. Video resources are available on major platforms, such as Youtube.
If you have the budget for it, you can pay someone to coach you or enroll in an online mentalism course. Online programs may cost as low as around $10 or as high as around $120. It may be costly, but if you are completely dedicated to learning, you can consider the fees as an investment.
Conclusion
Now that you know the basics of mentalism, you can start your journey to becoming a successful mentalist.
It won’t be easy, and it will take a lot of time before you gain enough skills, but do not give up. Just practice by using mentalism techniques in your daily life, and don’t forget to enjoy the experience.