“You can do what I did — drag your butt around trying to figure it out as you go. Or you can actually be trained in it. That’s the difference.”
Mike Mandel is a legend in hypnosis — close to 5,000 stage shows and 45 years as a professional mentalist. So when he and Chris Thompson of the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy sat down to talk about who to trust for stage hypnosis training, their answer carried real weight.
Who’s telling you this
This isn’t a random review. It comes from two of the most respected names in professional hypnosis:
- Mike Mandel — a professional hypnotist and mentalist for over 45 years, with close to 5,000 stage shows before he retired from the stage. Author, trainer, and co-host of the long-running Brain Software podcast.
- Chris Thompson — Mike’s business partner. An engineer with an MBA and a career on Bay Street in Toronto, who walked away from it to train in hypnosis with Mike full time.
- The Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy — their training platform, whose Mandel Method™ has trained 10,000+ hypnotists in 50+ countries. Their world is therapeutic hypnosis — which is exactly why it carries weight that, for the stage, they send people to Michael.
Mike learned stage hypnosis the hard way — on stage, in front of real audiences, making every mistake and figuring it out as he went. It worked, but it cost him years. His message to you is simple: you don’t have to do it that way.
“It would’ve cut the corners for me. It would’ve made my work so much easier if I’d had a way to actually learn it instead of figuring it out as I went along.”
Then Mike met Michael C. Anthony. They became friends — and Mike watched Michael’s show up close. His verdict? “Freaking stellar.” Michael had studied the greats, built a completely original show, and honed his craft until he mastered two things most performers never combine: doing it, and teaching it.
Why they put their reputations behind it
This isn’t a distant recommendation. Michael flew to Toronto and taught as a guest trainer at the Mike Mandel Hypnosis Academy — so Mike and Chris have seen exactly what he builds, and how good it is.
They point to two sides of Stage Hypnosis University. First, the training itself: the full library of real shows and every element that goes into them — the pre-talk, the inductions, the routines, the whole performance. Second — the part they say almost no one else offers — the direct one-on-one mentorship, where Michael personally hand-holds you through building your own unique, original show.
“If you’re set on getting into entertainment hypnosis, he’s the guy to go to. He’ll show you everything you need and help you build your show.”
A bonus most people miss
Michael is also an incredible mentalist, and he teaches you to put together a full mentalism show too. So if you arrive at a gig and the room is small or something goes sideways, you can switch, perform your mentalism, and still get paid. Open with a five-minute effect and the audience is hooked before you’ve done any hypnosis at all — which makes everything that follows effortless, because they already believe in you.
“He’s better than I ever was. I’d put my reputation on it — he’s the best stage hypnotist in the world, and the best stage hypnosis trainer in the world. Bar none.”
Two seasoned professionals — thousands of shows and decades of experience between them — and one clear conclusion: if you want to learn stage hypnosis, get trained by the best, and don’t spend years figuring it out alone. That’s exactly what a free 45-minute Breakthrough Session with Michael is for — a call to map out your own path to the stage.