During the school year, he’s Matt Jarman, second-year UCLA
communication studies and Spanish student. But during vacations,
he’s Matt Jarman, professional magician and hypnotist who
performs at resorts in Mexico and Florida.
Jarman has been performing magic for eight years, and began
studying hypnosis about four years ago.
“I first got into magic when my parents gave me some magic
sets. Afterwards I got some magic books and kept practicing,”
Jarman said.
Four years after he began practicing magic seriously, Jarman won
the Annual International Brotherhood of Magicians Junior Close-Up
““ one of the world’s largest magic competitions with
contestants from 29 different countries.
Jarman is also a member of various magician organizations,
including the junior group “The Magic Castle” in
Hollywood and the International Brotherhood of Magicians.
“There aren’t a lot of tricks that interest me now.
I’ll try anything I see, but I’ve reached the point
where I make up a lot of my own tricks,” Jarman said.
After feeling that he was familiar with the general way most
magic tricks were done, Jarman looked for another ability outside
of magic that he could learn.
“I started learning hypnosis because I heard it could help
with school work. After doing it more often, I thought it could be
added to my magic as a stage act. I like hypnosis because some of
the things you can make people do are really incredible,”
Jarman said.
To make sure that hypnosis was something he wanted to pursue,
Jarman began by reading books on it. He then became certified in
hypnotherapy ““ defined as psychotherapeutic treatment by
means of hypnotism or the treatment of disease by inducing a
trance-like sleep ““ and took courses on hypnosis.
“The majority of my knowledge of hypnosis came from books.
However, I took courses in hypnosis because I wanted to have a good
grasp on it before going into stage hypnosis, and thought it would
focus more on the main points of hypnosis,” Jarman said.
Jarman felt he knew the majority of what he would need after
taking the hypnosis courses.
“When I first started hypnotism, I wasn’t skeptical
exactly, but nervous about what it would do. I didn’t believe
in stage hypnosis, but I did believe in self-hypnosis,”
Jarman said.
Self-hypnosis, some say, has been used to help with relaxation,
memorizing, speed reading, breaking bad habits, and performing
better athletically.
People are able to hypnotize themselves because during hypnosis,
the subjects are still conscious and in control. Consequently, if
the self-hypnotist tells himself to relax, it would basically be
the same as another hypnotist telling him to relax.
“Everyone should learn self-hypnosis because you can use
it to help every aspect of your life. I use it before midterms and
finals and tell myself that I’m going to get an
“˜A.’ Tests have shown that anxiety can affect your
performance on a test,” Jarman said.
Jarman normally practices and performs his magic and hypnotism
for his friends. His first subject was a friend from his
hometown.
“When I first hypnotized him, he wasn’t scared at
all. We were both really excited and thinking, “˜This is so
cool.’ He’s my favorite subject and I’ve
hypnotized him over 100 times. I usually try new hypnotism ideas on
him,” Jarman said.
Jarman has also hypnotized his floormates a few times, in order
to help them relax.
“I had been having trouble sleeping, but the next few
nights I could sleep whenever I wanted to. I felt very relaxed all
over,” said Darren Lanning, a third-year chemistry student
who Jarman had previously hypnotized.
After consecutive successes in his hypnosis endeavors, Jarman
began adding hypnosis as a side act to his magic shows.
“I’m always impressed with hypnosis. The fact that
you can make a guy think he’s falling is pretty cool,”
Jarman said.
Through hypnosis Jarman has made a subject believe that he was
unable to sit up from a chair because his butt had been stolen,
that he had nine fingers, that he could speak his own alien
language, and that he was flying around the room. Jarman also made
Lanning believe that his chair was saying mean things to him.
“Once I had a deck of cards and told a guy to study one
card and put it in the middle of the deck. I shuffled the deck and
told him to find it with the card facing down, and he did,”
Jarman said.
During hypnosis, the subject must be willing to be hypnotized
and will remember everything he or she has done unless the
hypnotist tells the subject otherwise.
“It feels like role-playing because you know you’re
being hypnotized. I was just in a very different state of mind,
very relaxed, very open to whatever (Matt) said,” Lanning
said.
In some ways, hypnosis can be used for reformation of people.
However, the subject has to want to be hypnotized, which explains
why hypnosis cannot reform convicts, since most convicts
don’t necessarily want to change the way they are, Jarman
said.
However, hypnosis can be used to help people change their habits
““ for example, heavy smokers who want to quit smoking.
“I helped someone to stop smoking at one show, and she had
been a heavy smoker for 15 years. She hasn’t smoked
since,” Jarman said.
Jarman does not plan to pursue magic or hypnosis as his main
profession. He plans to continue performing throughout college and
turn to a business profession afterwards.
“I’m planning on always doing magic and hypnosis, it
just won’t be my primary source of income. I’ll mostly
do it at night a couple times a week, only because it’s
something I really enjoy,” Jarman said.