More than half a century as a hypnosis professional…
It’s January 29th as I sit here writing this, still wrapped in blankets and slowly dragging myself back toward the land of the living. I’m on Day 6 of what feels like an unusually sadistic flu. It’s been trying to establish permanent residency in my lungs and sinuses, launching daily invasions that I’m gradually pushing back. It’s annoying, exhausting, and entirely unwelcome. But I'm on the mend, albeit slowly. And that’s good enough.
Because despite the persistent cough and the mountain of tissues, today is a day that matters.
Exactly fifty-one years ago, on January 29th, 1975, I stepped onto the set of The Tommy Banks Show in Edmonton, Alberta. I was twenty-one. Nervous, excited, full of ambition. That day marked my first paid appearance as a mentalist and hypnotist, broadcast across Canada. It should have been a shining moment. Instead, it became a cautionary tale.
And the reason? I let my parents pick my outfit.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved my parents. They were warm, intelligent, encouraging, and gloriously eccentric. But fashion was never their strong suit. If there were tribunals for crimes against style, they would have been convicted unanimously and sent away to a gulag.
At the time, though, I was convinced I looked brilliant. Which only proves how blind we can be to our own stylistic disasters.
Here’s what I wore to launch my career: camel-colored trousers so baggy they looked like I’d borrowed them from someone twice my size. A thin, white nylon turtleneck that clung to me like a jelly fish. A burgundy polyester jacket, likely flammable, but definitely ugly. Brown suede shoes that offered no support, physically or stylistically. And topping it all off, an overcoat so large it could have doubled as a tent. Its color was something between dog dirt and wet cardboard.
But wait, there’s more.
To complete this fashion catastrophe, I wore a pair of giant plastic glasses inspired by The Amazing Kreskin. These weren’t just oversized. They dominated my face and looked ridiculous.
As for the performance itself, it was forgettable. I did a card trick that, in hindsight, wasn’t very clever and wasn’t very well executed. But oddly enough, it impressed one of the other guests on the show - former CIA agent and whistleblower Philip Agee. Why it impressed him, I’ll never know.
Still, despite the shaky start and the fashion trauma, I kept going.
Within a couple of years, I’d sharpened my skills and, thankfully, stopped dressing like a character from an experimental theatre group. I began doing shows in high schools and colleges across Canada. The momentum picked up. I got agents and went through a few managers. Most of them took a healthy cut and worked me to the edge of exhaustion, but the bookings kept coming.
I started opening for rock bands, often in strange venues and under stranger conditions. I performed in gyms, echoey arenas, outdoors on rickety stages, and places that barely qualified as buildings. But I loved it. It was chaotic and unpredictable.
And I couldn’t get enough of it.
Over the next four decades, I would go on to perform nearly 5,000 shows across North America, Britain, and even Australia. I made hundreds of appearances on radio and television. And all the while, I was slowly building to something more than just a stage career. Without fully realizing it, I was becoming a master of hypnosis, not just in showmanship, but in technique. Over the years, I estimate I hypnotized close to 100,000 people, which is a staggering number when I stop to think about it.
In 1992, I began delivering keynote talks. That turned into a new phase of my career. I connected with police services through my shows at the Ontario Police College, where I performed over a hundred times. Those performances opened unexpected doors. I started doing forensic hypnosis and providing specialized police training. I found myself moving into deeper, more unusual applications of the skills I’d been honing since I was a teenager.
Eventually, all these threads came together in the most meaningful chapter of my professional life: teaching. With my friend and business partner Chris Thompson, I co-founded the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy, and that was the turning point. After years of performing, touring, and burning the candle at both ends, I discovered that what I loved most was teaching others to discover their own abilities. Guiding students. Sharing knowledge. Watching people light up as they “got it.” Teaching became the heart of what I do.
And now we come to the strange part.
I told you my first paid event was in Edmonton. That was January 29th, 1975.
Well, my last paid event was also in Edmonton. Thousands of kilometers from home, and yet somehow, the same city that launched me also closed the curtain.
And here’s where it really gets bizarre.
My final performance took place on January 29th, 2020.
That’s forty-five years to the day. Exactly.
And amazingly, both of them happened to fall on a Wednesday.
I’m not suggesting the universe was orchestrating anything. I’m not looking for hidden messages in calendars. But it’s strange, and oddly satisfying. It feels like a book that knows how to end properly. A beginning and an ending, perfectly spaced.
So now, I don’t perform anymore. No stage shows. No keynotes. That part of my life is over, and I have absolutely no desire to return to it. And why would I? The arc completed itself with such elegant timing.
And I’m happy with that.
I stepped off the stage, and into the classroom. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
- Mike Mandel
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