It's me the dazzling out simone, checking in for my charity work shift, charting a spotlight on the most sparkly folk. Yeah. I'll give back to the world by speaking to sometimes very normal people, but I so selflessly use my time to uncover the extraordinary behind these ordinary types. All right, time to start my shift and meet today's normy Rall. Hi.
My name is Matt. I'm from just outside London, but I've lived in Perth over twenty years. I've previously worked as a club DJ, at TV presenter and radio announcer, and bookmakers have actually issued of a thousand, one thousand to one for me to play the next James Bots James Bond. I enjoy foil surfing, wing falling, pretty much any other beach and ocean activity. But I I'm concealing something about myself where I'm usually front and center, but not the stuff.
Okay, Hollo man, how you going here today? How what's going on over there? Oh?
It's beautiful, it's sunny, it's lovely. I've had to stroll down the beach already.
So you've lived a thousand lives, it seems already. Club DJ, TV presenter, radio announcer. Possibly maybe not James Bond, but you know, there may be bad odds, but it could still happen. Are you hiding? Are you running from something? Are you running from the law? Why have you had so many different lives?
That's it? You know, I crash a burn at a certain time. I have to reinvent myself. No opportunities present themselves, and I you know, I just I like to explore opportunities, and I like to make sure I've done all the things that I've had in my mind that I want to do, and so sometimes you just have to kind of blow everything else up and start again. So I've done that a number of times.
Yeah, now Perth, you're formerly from just outside of London. Very cool spectacles, Might I say thank you? That are very very fun. They look like a cartoon drawing. Are they functional or just fashionable?
No, they are functionable. Without them, I do find it very hard to see you know, your exquisite detail, and that was something that I needed to make sure was one hundred percent locked in for this pod.
So well, I know it is very important that you see my beautiful vizage here. Now you've said foiling what surf foiling, foiling, What do you put foil on a surfboard? Is that?
What that is? I don't know what that is.
Yeah, it's a relatively new sport. I surf for over twenty years, since since I moved to Australia I started serving. And then there's there's something which looks vaging like an aeroplane wing that you kind of stick on underneath a surfboard. Is called a hydrofoil. You pop it under there and it kind of lifts the board out of the water slightly.
All right, So running from the law future foil fashions, okay, yeah, very important things to me, all right, yep, okay, just making my picture here. Now, what I'm going to do is ask you three questions, and from the answers to those three questions, I'm going to try and work out what it is you're concealing from me here today. So first question I have for you is, all right, you're going to go climb them out and you're out of
the water. Yep, Okay, we're climbing a mountain instead. What is one item you want to take with you?
Oh? I'm actually using them right now. I'm going to take some earbuds, but I'll obviously have to. I'll twin it with a playlist of absolute dance floor bangers, because I reckon if I'm climbing a mountain. I've walked on mountains. It's a struggle, and it's I don't know why you really want to put yourself through that. So I'm going to need something to get me through it. And I think music has that like suggestive ability to change the
way you feel. So I'm going to have a big pump up dance floor bangers playlist which will really, you know, give me that woomph to get up that mountain.
Okay, motivational music, Okay, things in your ears?
Question number two?
All right, you were saying some lovely things about me, But what is the best compliment you've ever received? Oh?
Do you know what? It's lovely to rid for seed compliments, isn't it. I'm not sure it's the best one. It was just like a very memorable one, Mike. Mike Tyson actually told me I was amazing. It was quite scary, to be quite honest, but it was also quite nice.
Mike Tyson.
Maybe this third question not really helped me out because I'm really suiting blanks here today even chrest number three is okay. Besides me again, I was the last thing that made you laugh very very hard.
Okay. So with what I do, this will sound weird. But when I was doing that thing I do recently, people sometimes become a penguin or penguins. Normally that's pretty funny because they're kind of just like waddling around. But recently someone fully committed and did a full on run, jump and belly slide across the length of the stage I was on at the time.
Okay, right, so someone did a bally flop on this on the stage.
Okay, So.
Right, so you're on a stage, you're like good music. Some mirk tys and said you're amazing, but you you're You already told me you've been into club DJ, so it can't be that you're a DJ. You say, people want me become penguins, penguins, belly flops, water water okay, London James Bond, animals, belly flop, motivations, climbing a mountain.
I love the way you're trying to connect all these.
Yeah, I'm really rea Okay, the only thing that I have in my head and it's not right.
Are you a zoomba instructor? What do you think? Well, you're motivating them and getting up the thing.
And maybe Mark Tyson went to one of your zumba classes and then you know, maybe one of your moves is the penguin. But someone just said, oh no, I belly flopped and they fell over. Maybe you're a zomber instructure.
I am a stage hypnotist. I performed comedy hypnosis shows all over the world. Very silly things happened over the years. I've used hypnosis to help people quld smoke, eliminate their anxiety, remove their phobias, day to day, night by night, I'm on the stage.
I'm scared. Now are the glasses there? Just so I really have to look into your eyes? They pull focus? Is that why?
It's that barrier? No, No, it's that barrier. It's like a protective barrier between me and you. We're going to be fine.
So how through all the things you've done, how did you get into humanotism?
Do you know what? I did? One term at Hogwarts? Harry Potter was in the other classroom and I no, do you know what? It was? One of those things I've always been fascinated with how the mind works. And I've always had some kind of like one toe in the entertainment world for everything I've done. And I saw a hypnotist doing the show, and I thought I could probably do that, and so I kind of went out to try and find how I could do that, and
ye know what the psychology behind it was. And yeah, then I put a show together and started rolling down and see what would happen, and then you know, things snow would very quickly.
So you're saying you just said, oh, I could do that, and then you just put a show together and it worked. There must be something in between besides your terms at Hogwarts.
Yeah, yeah, obviously, you know. I delved into it. Wasn't It wasn't like, oh, I think I could do that, and the next week I was doing it. So no, I delved into it. I was like reading up old books about hypnosis. I was talking to hypnoties. I was trying to get my hands on any training I could get anywhere, like looking at shows. To be quite honest, when I initially saw shows, I didn't I loved the
idea of it. I wasn't overly keen on the presentation it always seemed to be more about making fun of people. But I kind of always thought, you know, instead of being in the audience and looking at what's going on stage and laughing and thinking, oh, it's funny, but I'm glad I'm not up there, wouldn't it be better if you sat in the audience laughing, going oh wish it was me up there? You know, it looks so much fun.
So that that's the approach I've had to it, And so I kind of use the basic template of how hypnotists were doing shows, but I guess modernized it a lot more. You know, we get get away from the swinging watches and the weird spirals and the strange stairs because you know, we all kind of go into trancel all the time.
So did you start practicing on friends or people or strangers.
Yeah, friends would be like did that work? Have it now? Did it work?
It worked? It worked sometimes, And that's the thing it was. You know, it's a numbers game, but the first time it works properly, you just kind of think, oh, well it does work. It's a little bit surprising, and you're thinking, wow, okay, all right, there's something in it, and it's interesting when I was doing that kind of you know, starting you were just kind of mucking around with friends at parties
and around your house, that kind of thing. But when you actually do your first show, you're almost like it's almost like you got your fingers crossed behind your back, thinking, geez a, I hope this works, because realistically, there's no real practice for your first show except doing the first show, because you know, until you get you know, twenty bodies in those seats and actually do that thing, that's the first time you're doing it, you know, on a stage
for real, and it's you know, there's no real practice for that.
So you've studied up on it, you've given it a shot, it's going it's working. Well, how does the hypnotism actually work? Because what I know I haven't I don't know very much. But what I've absorbed is that it's kind of no one's going to do anything that you tell them to do unless they're kind of open to wanting to do it in the first place.
That is that true?
Yah, It's true because you're not you're not in another world, you're not zoombead, you're not unaware of what's going on. And the way I explain it. I always say it's like focusing on a thought so much it starts to feel real in that moment. And when people are thinking, oh, I don't know if I could do that, Well, we do it all the time. You know, if you watch a sad movie and the dog dies, you can actually cry, but you know that dog is actually still running around
earning zona ten thousand dollars a movie. But in that moment when that happens, it feels real. You know, your brain makes it feel real. You know, when you're dreaming and you dream you're falling and you suddenly all kind of wake yourself up or and like that, that's your brain making it feel real in the moment. So we do it all the time, and so I kind of like move that state of mind to happen on purpose on the stage.
This just so much mystery behind it all, because it just doesn't how does it. How do you just get a stranger up and convince them to do whatever you're telling them to do.
It's just crazy.
Well, I think what happens is when you see on movies and TV, you don't really see the process. All you see is someone going, oh, I'm sleep you know, it looks crazy, it looks so unrealistic. But you know, even when I do TV work, we're actually not allowed to show the hypnotic part that precedes kind of the result.
So you might see the quick bit, but that quick bit happens after we've you know, had a little bit of prep with a person, taken them through that nice relaxing you know, kind of stay focus on this, take a deeper thing just and we're starting to kind of disengage their mind from everything else going on around them and starting to focus their imagination inwards. So in that process that happens kind of off screen. If you see it
on TV or the movies, it's just crazy anyway. But when we do it on stage and in a show, you know that that part happens on the stage and you see that process and for a lot of people, because I don't want it to be mysterious, I don't want it to be weird. I think hypnotis of years gone by, that kind of cliche style they used to make all this was a weird power I was born with, or you know, this is full of mystery. I could and I like, now it's that's complete rubbish, you know,
it's basic psychology. It's imagination, it's focus, it's concentration, and so you know, I like to kind of make sure that the audience can really follow along that process when we do it on stage. But it kind of almost makes sense now because you know, we're so much more in tune with yoga, mindfulness, meditation, that kind of thing, so that you know, I have so many people who come off the stage after was going, oh man, that was wild. But it was like when you did that
first part. Oh, it was just like when I'm at yoga and the instructors doing our thing at the beginning. So we're starting to become much more not aware, but much more used to this. This using the state of mind.
Anyway, it's almost a form of manifestation. If you just think about it so much, it just it would just happened coming up. Why's even networks are fearful of airing the full process of hypnosis. Matt goes one on one with Mike Tyson, and by the end of this episode, you will have all the skills you need to hypnotize anyone in your life. So he wouldn't mad the hypnotist, And why can't you show the full process of hypnosis. Why can you only just show the fast bit on TV?
Yeah, it's really interesting. I think you should be able to.
But I think what it is is that they think that people could watch this and then become hypnotized at home, and then that Hollywood thing plays into their minds, like, oh what if these people are sat hypnotized at home and they'll never get out of hypnotal, which is just rubbish, right, But you know, there's that kind of thought process that you know, you can't do that in case someone's yet driving along and they're listening and then sudden they get
hypotized in their car. So you know, there's a level of credibility to that. But I think that's an overcautious thing to do, you know. I mean I do shows with hundreds of people in the audience, and we don't suddenly have like a hundred people in the audience. You know, you zomked out by the end of the show because they happen to be in the same room as hypnosis was happening.
I know, I think you're beginning to be a bit closer to James Bond than you think, because if you're just hypnotizing people, people are obviously scared of you. They're scared, they're terrified. The government scared of you. You know, the TV networks are scared of you. You've got power. Maybe you'll be the next villain on the Bond series instead.
I hadn't thought of that. Do you have an e villain name for me?
Hypno Guy doesn't sound really good, But so you said that, Mike Tyson said, you're amazing. Please explain, Please tell me the real story.
Now, that was a really weird momented time. A number of years ago. I was in Vegas doing some Hypno stuff over there, and I went out for lunch, and then across the way from where I was having lunch there was Mike Tyson was doing some kind of signing in some memorabilia shop. So I thought, wouldn't it be fun if I go in and try and do something with him, So basically, you know, the mind I tried to show me, you know, try to do the next thing.
But I actually walked round to the other side and sat down, stuck my hand out, said Mike, look up here, look me in the eye right now. So I've now got his hat, so only his mind is kind of what's going on and I just thought, look, I'm either going to get absolutely wallopped here or or taken out or whatever, but either that would be a good story. Yeah, yeah, right right, yes, you know we're thinking the same right, so,
so good story either way. So you know, I kind of end up doing a couple of funny little things where I'm looking at that say do this, say this, and then you know, next thing is yelling at the top of his voice and yeah, you're amazing, You're going to take over the world, this kind of thing. And then at that point the handler moved in and said, you've got to get out of here.
Can you please leave? Thank you.
What is the community like? Is it a rather small community? And if so, are there are there any impostors? Do you think are any rumors of impostors who aren't actually very good at hypnotizing, but they you know, maybe just put a plant in there.
I don't know, I don't know. I like drama, I love gossip.
Uh, it's look, it's such a small community. There's I mean, there's really only a handful of in Australia who would be doing this full time, and so you know, we kind of get to know each other. But I mean, as for you know, what you say, impostor, I don't think there'd be anyone out there willingly being an impostor. I guess, you know, there's hobbyists who are trying to
trying to make it happen. But as for a plants, you just don't need it because if you if you do a show that's good enough where you are able to first of all, get you know, twenty people to want to take part in your show initially. Well then out that twenty people, you're always going to get a number of people who are going to be great, you know, at being very highly suggestible. They've already used their mind for similar things in the past, so it's it feels
natural and normal to them. And there are a section of the of people in general who are just naturally, you know, susceptible to be very good at this. We called a somnambulis that's like very hypnotizable, and so there's that across all walks of life anyway. So it's a bit of a numbers game obviously, you know, the better you are at your processes and that you're going to get more out of the people. But I guess even with a bad show. You'd probably be able to get enough to make a show happen.
What do you say, sabam a mammalilis?
I like that word better. I like that word better. Somnambulist. Oh yes, somnambulist. Yeah yeah, yeah.
What are the identifying qualities of a somnambulus?
Can you?
Can?
You just look at them and go, you come up here, you'll be good.
Not not really, I mean I can definitely, you know, if you're talking about hypnosis and someone's like completely fascinating, they're just like they're just hanging on every word. They're definitely a few steps along the way and there, you know, and like you joked earlier, it's like, oh, you know, don't look in my eyes that kind of thing. I do get that a lot, which for some people, for most people is a bit of a joke. But there are some people who genuinely think that, you know, if
they look at me, something's going to happen. So they're already talking themselves into that. And what I love doing with those people is basically if someone goes, oh, you're not doing something already, are you, And I just love to tap them gently on the shower and go No, of course not and just kind of really build on that. I'm written, build on that.
But it's lighting down. That's very good, guess lighting. So, yeah, what happens when things don't go to the plan? No show is going to be the same, right, They're going to be different every time. How do you learn to adapt with that? And what's B mode versus C mode versus you know, set the place on fire and run out?
Yeah, well it's great. It's great because obviously, you know, you've got fifteen twenty people on stage, you've never worked with them before. Some people act on a suggestion one way,
something like act on it another way. It's not like what happens when things don't go the way you know, on those rare occasions, it's almost like every night, it's every night something different happens, and so it's it's a bit improvy style, I guess really, you know, because you'll start to you know, you will bounce off what happens,
you know in that show. So if someone gets up and does the most ridiculous dance you've ever done, even though the suggestion was like get up and be whatever the station was, but then suddenly they're doing a dance that the audience thinks is hilarious, Well, we're going to use that again later in the show, or you know that we'll kind of build on that. So if they say something, do something that's not quite expected but it works really well, well we're going to build on that.
If it's just totally unexpected and it doesn't add anything extra to the show, just kind of move on to the next thing.
So what is the difference between a hypnotist and a hypnot therapist.
Yeah, that's a really good question. So essentially both have the skills to hypnotize people, you know, and we're using what we might call a hypnotic induction, which is that kind of process where that gets you relaxed and focused us your imagination and really kind of disconnecting from kind of externally so you can really focus on, you know what the hypnosis saying. Obviously, with the hypnotherapy, we're working on people one on one to get to a certain
result they're trying to get to. Now, whether it's you know, curing a fear of spiders, or whether it's a quit smoking or more or more commonly now to quit vaping. Your mind has got a certain program that's been running. It's either a program you've accidentally taught, it's taught you to do, like smoking or vaping. You know you've you've done it so many times that your brain kind of switches off and goes, oh, don't worry, I'll run that
program for you. But then the day you think, yeah, I don't know, my health isn't good smoking or vaping. I want to stop, but that program still running, which kind of makes you grab the vape or grab the smoke. So, you know, we kind of show you the ways that you can use your mind to kind of adjust that program, same as you know, irrational phobias and fears.
I guess technically a hypnotherapist could do what you do, but probably wouldn't do it very well.
Or Yeah, so actually this is a really good thing because I think if you're already a performer and the entertainer, you're used to the stage and people and you know, engaging crowds and things like that, it's much easier to pin hypnosis skill skills on an existing performer show than it is to kind of like have the hypnosis skills but then teach the performance side someone like yourself. Natural entertainer, you know, born performer, right, you know it's it's it just comes naturally.
Well, I'm glad you've told me that because now I don't have to become a hypnotherapist. I can become a stage hypnotist. So because I'm really.
Natural on the stage, you know, I light up a room. Love me.
So I was wondering if you could give me some pointers on how I would hypnotize someone.
Yep, nice and easy. You're just gonna close your eyes because that takes out a lot of other visual stimuli going into your mind.
Close your eyes, Okay.
I usually prefer people to have their eyes closed when they're watching me on stage anyway, So that works.
Yeah, that's perfect.
We're working halfway there. Tick excellent, tick, and then just some basic things. You're just going to start to get people disconnecting from what's going on around so you're going to start to direct their imagination in different places. So at the start, it's just like, imagine the way that your hand is just like resting on your lap there. Now, direct your direct your mind to your foot, and you
just feel what that feels underneath you. Because what's happening there is they can't at the same and then think of like, oh, there's four hundred people watching me out there and blah blah blah blah blah blah. You know, you're busying their mind with something else, and so you can then start to put much more developed things to imagine into their mind. That's it.
Well, I thought what I could do. I could do heads down, thumbs up. I think that'd be really handy. So everyone put your heads down thumbs up, because we all know that from primary school. So I think that'd be really good. Yes, just you know they yeah, and they heads of down so they can't see, so they're all right. So I've got them with their heads down, their thumbs are up there, they're now They're minds are now not thinking about anything except for the thumbs and
the heads. How do I then insert a new suggestion for a sub it's a good a person that one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for one of those for sure. Yeah. I mean you can literally then just go straight into it. Like the other fact, do you.
Know, buy my book, buy my book, go on big w and buy my book Google.
Right now here. I'm there right now. So you are a natural? You were a natural?
So that was Matt the hypnotist and not the zombra instructor but us. That's all one new skills to the test.
You are getting.
Sleepy, size sleepy. And when I click my fingers you won't click that follow BT and also Jenny, now I'm nodding.
I look on the socials.
Did it work? Concealed with that? Simon is an iHeart production