We have shared the story of how Mike Mandel Hypnosis got started as a company before. But the origin of our flagship live training event is a different tale entirely.
If you have ever walked into The Architecture of Hypnosis, you know the vibe. It’s high energy. It’s full of laughter. It’s a room where people are practically vibrating with excitement. But if you think this curriculum was carefully planned out in a stuffy boardroom with flowcharts and marketing consultants, you are dead wrong.
The training you see today didn't come from a business plan. It evolved from stage shows, intuition, and a refusal to be boring. This is the story of how a series of "happy accidents" became a global destination for hypnosis training.
From Stage Shows to the Classroom
Long before the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy existed, Mike was already a legend on the stage. But he didn't start teaching because he had a grand vision for a global academy. In the early days, he mostly ran small weekend trainings at hotels in Toronto because he wanted extra cash to buy a Fender Stratocaster.
His education happened in front of live audiences. For years, Mike performed thousands of shows, using the crowd as his laboratory. He tested techniques in real time to see what worked. He didn't even study Milton Erickson formally until the 1990s.
There is a famous story Mike tells about the first time he used "embedded commands" during a show at Sheridan College. He looked at the students lying on the stage and simply said, "And as you are all lying there, you can relax even deeper." The entire group instantly slumped down. That moment was a turning point. It proved that the language patterns were not just theory. They were electric.
The "Juvenile" Genius
Eventually, Mike decided to formalize his knowledge. He dived into NLP and then began training with a man named Derek Balmer. This is where things got interesting.
On the very first afternoon of the class, Derek pulled Mike aside. He looked him in the eye and asked, "What are you doing in my class?" Mike thought he was in trouble. But Derek shook his head and said the material must seem "juvenile" to him. Derek had spotted Mike's intuitive hypnotic ability immediately.
By the end of the week, Derek hired Mike to be his "hypnosis hired gun" to teach future students. Mike agreed on one condition. He demanded the right to burn the curriculum to the ground and rebuild it. The original course included slow, grueling videos of therapy sessions, that sucked the energy right out of the room.
Mike wanted to energize the class. He wanted to try new things. He brought in the movie My Dinner with Andre and had the whole class watch it together while eating popcorn. It was a mandatory, immersive viewing session designed to showcase the power of conversation and language.
While we have since evolved the curriculum to focus even more on hands-on practice, that spirit remains at the core of what we do.
The Engineer and the Intuitive
Derek Balmer passed away in 2000, and for years, Mike taught a version of his course solo. He was the "Batman" of the operation, occasionally helped by a "Robin" like NLP Chris Keeler. But the business side was shaky. Classes were often canceled if they couldn't scrape together six students.
Enter Chris Thompson.
Chris came into the picture around 2002 as a student. He was an engineer, an MBA, and a finance guy, who saw the brilliance in Mike's "Big Chunk" teaching style. Mike is an artist of the unconscious. He operates on decades of intuition. He just does the thing without always explaining the steps.
Chris is the opposite. He needs to see the blueprints. He needs to know how the engine works.
When Chris joined the team, he brought an engineering mindset to the "magic" of hypnosis. He would sit in the class and interrupt Mike to ask for clarification. He would break down Mike's intuitive leaps into steps that anyone could follow.
This dynamic became our secret sauce. It is the combination of the Artist and the Engineer. It ensures you don't just see the magic but you also learn how to perform the trick yourself. The only real hazard of this partnership is that we sometimes enjoy Mike’s comedy so much that we jump on his punchlines before he can deliver them. It irritates him, but the jokes are too funny not to share.
The Ireland Premonition
The shift to our own brand wasn't a calculated business move. It was a premonition.
In 2011, Mike returned from a trip to Ireland with a strange feeling. He told Chris Thompson that he felt he was going to be "fired" or let go by the NLP company he was then teaching hypnosis for. Chris thought Mike was crazy. The classes were going well. It didn't make logical sense.
But Mike's intuition was spot on.
When the split finally happened, we didn't panic. We didn't scramble. Chris simply went out and bought a bottle of champagne. We realized this wasn't an ending. It was the beginning. It was the push we needed to build something fully our own.
Building the Cathedral
Mike was studying Gothic cathedral architecture at the time, and the metaphor hit him like a ton of bricks. Hypnosis isn't just a grab bag of tricks. It is a structure. You need a solid foundation to support the soaring arches.
We renamed the course The Architecture of Hypnosis. We wrote a new manual. We marketed it ourselves through our podcast.
The response was instantaneous. People didn't just come from Toronto. They came from everywhere. One dedicated student drove his Lexus SUV all the way from San Francisco just to attend that first class.
The Happy Accident of the Academy
Here is the funniest part of the story. We originally built the online Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy because we thought people couldn't travel to Toronto. We thought it would be a "Plan B" for students who couldn't make the trip.
We were completely wrong.
The online Academy didn't replace the live training. It enhanced it. It created a massive global community that feeds into the live event. Many students start online, realize how powerful the material is, and then decide they simply must experience it in person.
When you come to The Architecture of Hypnosis, we absolutely teach you the fundamentals. We build your skills from the ground up, whether you are a total novice or a seasoned pro. But thanks to the Academy, the learning doesn't stop when the week is over.
Usually, at the end of a seminar, everyone says "bye-bye" and the energy fades. You go home and life gets in the way. But because of the Academy, our students don't just disappear. They go home, log in to the community, and keep practicing with the friends they made in class. It keeps the family together and ensures the "hypnotic storm" keeps growing long after you have left Toronto.
Join the Hypnotic Storm
We have refined this course over the years. We’ve engineered the perfect balance of art and science. And we have created a learning environment that is supportive, hilarious, and life-changing.
If you want to experience the difference between reading a script and becoming a true hypnotist, you need to be in the room.
Check out the next dates for The Architecture of Hypnosis. Come for the education. Stay for the fun. And then take the hypnotic storm home with you….
