Anxiety and sleep problems have overtaken cigarette addiction as the top problems people seek cures for, said hypnotist and magician Keith Barry.
“More people than we can imagine suffer from their anxiety and they need to find techniques to either reduce it or get rid of it,” he said.
The other big problem is sleep and the lack of it. Barry blames the ubiquity of technology.
“I think a big part of that is the digitization of the world because our subconscious absorbs every single piece of information that we see every day. And unfortunately, you can’t “invisible” the bad news you see, you can’t “invisible” the unfortunate horrors we’re witnessing, or “overhear” our politicians who are breaking bad news.
“All of this is imprinted in our subconscious. So if you take in more negative than positive information while you sleep, it will disrupt your sleep.”
His new Saturday night show on RTÉ One, The Keith Barry Experience, beginning April 2, and encouraging viewers to engage in an interactive mass experiment. A celebrity will also be dangling from the rafters and a volunteer will face their most extreme fear in the studio.
Barry admits that while he can help others overcome their fears, he hasn’t yet conquered his own.
“I have fear of diving. I don’t mean diving – I just mean diving into the water. It’s totally unnatural. I can’t even explain it to you,” he said.
“That’s the problem with phobias. People often cannot explain it. So I have to hire a trainer to take me to a private pool or the sea and help me with that
about that.
“The only fears you’re born with are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises, so everything else is a learned fear, which means you can unlearn it too.”
The 45-year-old, who is preparing for his first tour in two years next month, has also set out to pull off a stunt that no TV network has previously wanted to endorse.
“There I am given a parachute and I ask a local authority to bring their own mandatory straitjacket and get them to put it on both me and the parachute. Then we go to 30,000 feet and they push me out of the plane. No television company in the world has allowed me to do this and I’ve asked everyone from CBS to Fox. They all think it’s crazy.
“I will do it for the next five years. I will do it before my 50th birthday and if I can’t get a TV station to do it I will do it myself and post it on my social media channels.”
