On Wed., Apr. 16, 2013 Hypnotherapist Dylan Tenney visited Plymouth State University to perform a magic/hypnotist show. The event was presented by PSU’s Health and Human Performance (HHP) Department as a fundraiser to send students from the Physical Education Department to a conference in North Carolina.
Junior PE major Zach Thomas, a longtime friend of Tenney, proposed the idea of a show to the department for the fundraiser. “I’ve been helping Dylan out with his shows for a long time and I saw this as a great opportunity to get his name out there while helping the Physical Education majors get to the conference in North Carolina.”
The show was held in the HUB Hage Room, with a full stage set up for the performance. At the beginning of the show, Tenney talked about how he has been practicing magic since he was 8 years old and began hypnosis in high school. Tenney has spent years honing his skills and awing people with his natural talent.
He told the crowd about one of his favorite experiences. “This past February I spent 19 hours in hypnosis classes in Las Vegas, Nevada training for my hypnotherapy career” said Tenney. He then informed the crowd that over the past summer, he became a certified hypnotherapist.
Tenney started off with a few magic tricks that made the audience yelling out loud, “How did he do that?!” One trick in particular had the spectators on the edge of their seats while cringing at the same time. Tenney boldly placed four razor blades in his mouth after swallowing a piece of dental floss, and proceeded to pull the floss out of his mouth with each razor blade tactfully tied to it and not a drop of blood was spilled.
To end the show he completed an unbelievable trick with a Rubix cube. He then randomly selected one of the mixed up Rubix cubes, and solved it by throwing it up in the air.
As if that wasn’t enough, what followed was what everyone had been waiting for, the hypnosis. A group of volunteers gathered on the stage and allowed themselves to be the butt of the jokes for the rest of the night. In what seemed like no time at all, Tenney had his volunteers in a trance that persuaded them to follow his every command.
The volunteers participated in all kinds of shenanigans, from forgetting everything but their first names to believing that a belt was a venomous snake. The audience was constantly laughing out loud as they watched their friends helplessly make fools of themselves on stage. Senior PE major Kara Ryan said, “Everything he made them do was hilarious, I couldn’t stop laughing.”
After the show, Tenney said, “I had a great time here in Plymouth and I would love to come back again.” So keep your eyes open because if this guy comes back, you definitely don’t want to miss his trippy trances.