The Intuitive Magician by Justin Higham | Book Review

So let me ask you something and be honest with yourself here because I'm going to be honest as well. Have you ever told someone that you are a magician and almost instantly they say, amazing, do a trick. In that exact moment something very strange happens. It does with me. Your mind, the same mind that has spent years learning sleights, studying theory, buying books, downloading lectures, practicing moves into your fingers here, your mind just quietly steps out of the room, buggers off as they say, so bless us. It's not that you forget one trick, it's not like you're a little rusty, it's more like a total system shutdown. You know, you know magic, you know your practice, you know that you want more material than any reasonable person should, meaning in bottom drawers, and yet standing there with people watching you've got absolutely nothing. If this has happened to you then genuinely you are this person who this book is for. Today I want to talk about The Intro to Magician by Justin Hiraiyama and one of those rare magic books that doesn't teach you a single new trick but instead calmly and sometimes uncomfortably explains why you have fallen apart when it actually matters. And honestly reading it feels equal parts comforting, confronting and also a little bit insulting because at a big picture level the book is asking a very uncomfortable question. Why is it that magicians who know laws of magic struggle so badly in impromptu situations? Why can you rehearse for hours alone and be completely fluent but the second someone unexpectedly asks you to perform everything disappears? Hiraiyama's answer is simple and slightly brutal. Most magicians are training the wrong part of their mind, apparently. We're very good at training the intellectual brain. We drill steps, sequences, routines, structure, theory, the list goes on. We analyse methods, we refine scripts, we categorise techniques, but live performance doesn't happen in the neat intellectual space and when pressure hits the intellectual brain is usually the first thing to shut down. Which when you hear it put like that explains a lot. Early in the book he talks about something called performance paralysis. That's horrible spotlight sensation when your hands suddenly feel unfamiliar, your breathing sounds too loud, time seems to stretch and you become hyper aware that everyone is looking at you because you need to perform. You're not even into the trick yet and you already feel like you're doing something wrong. It compares it to athletes getting the the yips. So your body knows what to do, your hands absolutely know what to do, but your thinking brain barges in and starts interfering and the cruel twist is that the harder you try to think your way out of it the worse it which of course is exactly what most of us do. That leads into one of the central themes of the book. Intellect versus intuition or versus intellectual intuition if I can say the words correctly. Now this isn't the anti-intelligent rant. Highly analytically and extremely well read but he makes a strong case that intellect is a terrible leader during live performance. If you've ever tried to consciously think about how you walk or how you type on a keyboard you already know that quickly your mind awareness makes things clumsy. So magic works the exact same way. The moment that you start narrating your own actions in your head, okay now double lift, don't flash, relax your hands, act natural, you've already disrupted the flow. Nothing destroys naturalness faster than trying to be natural on purpose. The moment that you start narrating your own actions in your head, so okay now double lift, don't flash, relax your hands, act natural, you've already disrupted the flow. Nothing destroys naturalness faster than trying to be natural on purpose. Another section that really lands is where he talks about memory versus learning. So Haim argues that many musicians don't truly learn magic they memorize it which is sort of true and memorized information doesn't survive adrenaline very well. That's why you can perform flawlessly when you're relaxed at home but under pressure it feels like the knowledge is locked behind a door you suddenly don't have the key for. The material hasn't vanished it's just inaccessible. The book it keeps returns this idea that the real learning happens through experience and not storage which is slightly frustrating because experience is one thing that you can't fast track. You can't download it, you can't add a shortcut to it, you have to go through with it and perform and get that experience. There's also another fascinating section on rapport and this is where the book starts to feel less like a manual for magic and more like a study of human interaction. Haim compares impromptu magic to conversation, good conversation it isn't scripted. You're not mentally preparing each response the three sentences ahead, you're present, you're reacting and you're listening and when magic works at its best it operates exactly the same way. The moment that you try to deliberately apply rapport techniques running checklists in your head people can feel it. It's like when someone mirrors your posture just a little too obviously and you suddenly think why are you sitting like me? Real rapport happens when you're genuinely there not when you're performing rapport and here is the idea that quietly runs through the entire book. Improvisation isn't something that you do after you've mastered magic. Improvisation is how you master magic. Mistakes aren't proof that you're bad, they are training. Forgetting what comes next and still find a way through, that's training as well. Awkward stage moments, awkward moments with close-up, strange reactions, bad lighting, noisy environments, that's where the real understanding develops. It's a very comforting idea that right up until you realize it means that you can't avoid those moments anymore. So far in a review it's a hard book to review I think because it's not like specific things of this and this that you have, certain routines that you learn so you can say oh yeah those are good routines, this is this. It's more about the understanding and intellectual part of magic and performing as in like you can't sit down write an entire script for a routine, perform that routine flawlessly following every single line in the script. You sometimes have to deviate depending on the audience, the situation, if there's something that happens, someone spills a drink, whatever, that disrupts your performance so therefore it's all about trying to get used to it and going on from there, learn from mistakes and continuing. So it's hard to write a specific review based on if it's a good book for routines but I think for getting you thinking and getting your mind working as to how you can prove as a element then this is something that's in the book I think. So who is the book actually for? If you're brand new to magic and you're looking for tricks this might feel like you're being handed a psychology lecture when you ask for a coin banish but if you freeze when asked to perform, you overthink constantly, if you feel far better in practice than you do in performance with real people and if you've ever walked away thinking I swear I'm better than that then this book is speaking directly to you especially if you're the the kind of magician who analyzes everything, thinks deeply and then quickly beats yourself up when things don't go perfectly. This is a fair warning though about the book is it's not a light breezy read, it's dense, it's reflective, it's philosophical and you don't binge it. I sat with it and read a section and then you think about it and then you read some more and that feels quite appropriate because what it offers isn't a quick fix or a clever shortcut it's an explanation, sometimes understanding why you struggle it's more valuable than learning another trick that you'll forget the moment that your heart rate spikes. So final thoughts on the intuitive magician won't make you instantly confident, it won't remove nerves, it won't hand you the perfect opener for every social situation, what it will do is change how you understand performance, how you understand fear, learning, pressure and improvisation and if you've ever felt like your brain betrays you at the worst possible moment then this book might actually finally help you realize that's not because you are bad at magic it's simply because you've been training the wrong part of the brain. If you've read it I'd love to know your thoughts on it and if you haven't but everything we've talked about here felt uncomfortably familiar it might be worth your time getting this book and having a read. Like I said you don't learn any tricks from it but it's more sort of to do with your brain and learning things about yourself as a person I suppose and as a performing magician but yeah hope you enjoyed that review like I said it's a bit hard to do this review on the book because it's not something you can pick up learn a trick and go from there it's and something that I've read since I've got it so it's like weeks into it now and still finding little bits and bobs that's quite interesting to learn about and read and sort of be reactive thinking to but yeah that's the review if you're interested in more magic reviews and especially books I'm sort of to get more back into those I've got a big massive range there that I need to go through and read and there's so many hidden gems in the book so it's interesting to pick those up and sort of go through. If you're interested in those there should be some other reviews on the screen now so if you want to check out other magic reviews check those out but until next time see ya!