Hypnotism is a silent conversation between a hypnotist and a person’s body language.
A shift in weight, eyes darting or twitching, or uneven breathing patterns communicate what someone is thinking about.
On Jan. 25, Brian Imbus, a self-taught mentalist and hypnotist, performed a mentalist show on the first floor stage in Iowa Hall.
The local community and energy of the Kirkwood staff and students has welcomed Imbus’ hypnotist shows for the last 15 years as a Welcome Week tradition.
The interactivity between Imbus and the dozens of students in the audience guided his show through various tricks and routines.
Students interacted with Imbus onstage and offstage. By the end of the show, every audience member had been a volunteer at some point.
The audience’s openness to him allowed him to predict images, numbers, birthdays and destinations that passed through their minds.
With pacey routines, plot twists and high stakes, Imbus kept the audience on their toes using his spontaneity.
Imbus said his introduction to magic when he was a child helped him understand how his mind worked.
Magic inflated his curiosity in hypnotism and this newfound interest in playing with the mind led him to the library.
He said he checked out books about psychology, magic and hypnotism.
It was shortly after this he decided he wanted to perform on a stage with nothing except the minds of the audience. Thus, his mentalist show was born.
When asked about his mastery of mind reading, Imbus said, “I believe that we all have these abilities and we just need to understand how our minds work and how to utilize that 80-90% of the mind that we don’t use, using the five senses to create the sixth sense.”
Categories: Art & Life
