Celebrity magician Dynamo will be making a welcome return to our TV screens tonight (Thursday 9th April) with a brand new show which he’s dedicating to all the unsung heroes of our NHS.
The popular star, who has been battling Crohn’s Disease for the past five years as well as chronic arthritis and recently tested positive for Covid-19 as well, described frontline workers as “the real magicians” and said he had joined in the nationwide applause that took place a week ago to show his support for all those risking their own lives and health to help the country fight the pandemic.
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning show earlier today, the Bradford-born king of magic told Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby that his immune system had been wiped out by his pre-existing medical conditions, leaving him wide open to the coronavirus threat.
He said, “I’m so lucky that my symptoms, although they felt bad at the time for me, compared to what other people are going through around the country and the world, what I’ve been through is nothing and my thoughts go out to them, to everyone who’s going through it right now. I think the NHS are doing the best job in the world. I think we’re all super-happy and thankful that we have them in our country and obviously all the doctors and medical teams working around the world.”
Dynamo explained to Phillip and Holly how his career as a magician had been put at risk when doctors delivered the heartbreaking news that his arthritis would limit the use of his hands.
“I had to kind of re-evaluate my whole approach,” he said. “Initially I thought my whole career was over but then, after getting past that, I started to try and reframe my approach to magic and think – okay, well if I can’t use my hands anymore and do the things I normally do then what if I could put magic into the audience’s hands or do magic in a different way? I wrote down all these ideas whilst I was in my hospital bed and these are the ideas I ended up bringing to life once I got out of hospital and finally got back to health.”
The trickster’s new three-part special, Dynamo: Beyond Belief, airs tonight at 9am on Sky One and all episodes are available to stream on NowTV.
The series combines jaw-dropping magic with the story of Dynamo’s road to recovery after the career threatening onslaught of chronic arthritis. Throughout the three episodes, stunning moments of magic are intertwined with Dynamo’s brutally honest back story. The gripping series slowly reveals Dynamo’s journey from the start of his illness, through to the height of his hospitalisation where he created over 200 new magic ideas sketched from his hospital bed, and finally to his return to health.
From the neon lights of Tokyo to the Day of the Dead festival in San Miguel De Allende, Dynamo visits extraordinary and dramatic places all over the world. He performs a spine-tingling encounter with a Geisha in one of Tokyo’s royal tea rooms, makes vodka shots turn to ice in the heart of Moscow’s underworld and embarks on a daring adventure in one of Mexico’s notorious Barrios.
“This show has been a passion project of mine for almost three years and represents a whole new approach to the genre,” Dynamo has said. “I believe that now more than ever people need a sense of magic in their lives so I can’t wait for everyone to see what I’ve been working on.”
Here at Phoenix Coaching & Therapy we’ve always been huge admirers of Dynamo’s work. In fact I use aspects of magic and mentalism in the therapy room myself to help illustrate to clients how the human senses can deceive. Making people aware of the often erroneous impressions they receive from the senses is absolutely pivotal to my work because clients' problems are frequently caused by a distorted or biased perception of events.
Too often we take things at face value without subjecting them to critical analysis. Then the monkey mind takes over and constructs a paranoid fantasy around that erroneous belief, piling speculation upon supposition and wrapping them all up in a package of unfounded fears and anxieties. But when I demonstrate to a client by way of illusion or sleight-of-hand that things aren't necessarily what they appear to be, this can produce a quantum shift in their thinking and perception. Once we understand that the senses can lie, and that they provide an incomplete picture of reality, it becomes a massive game-changer in terms of how we view reality. Petty fears, anxieties and other negative emotions begin to subside, freeing us up to live a fuller, richer and more rewarding life. If you want to know more about how we use magic and illusion at Phoenix to alter perception and improve lives for the better then drop us an email at info@phoenixcoaching.co.uk
But we’ll leave the last word to the King of Magic himself, Dynamo, whose courageous comeback from adversity serves as an inspiration to us all. Speaking to Metro about his new show last week, Dynamo said: "I think that in the show you see the incredible support that I have from the NHS who help get me back to my health. The NHS did such an amazing job. These are the unsung heroes who are really creating magic out there and right now, I think the whole nation is appreciating what they're doing."
· Dynamo: Beyond Belief, airs tonight at 9am on Sky One and all episodes are available to stream on NowTV.
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