Here is a free mentalism trick that has been around for a long time and is easy to perform. While it’s a common trick (they recently did it on the new TV show, “The Mentalist”), it can still fool a lot of people and looks pretty cool anyway. You can practice a few minutes before to learn it well. All this free mentalism trick requires is some table space and a twisted napkin or paper towel.
First tear off a piece of paper napkin and twist it into a long thin thread. Then place it on a table or bar counter. Tell your friends that you are going to mentally move the twisted strand, without even touching it.
Then tell your audience that you need to create energy on the table or counter to get it moving. This, along with your mental focus on the napkin thread, will cause it to move across the table.
Start rubbing the table just around where the twisted thread is. She massages the table in small circles. Make sure you do it right around the strand. Basically, by doing this, you’re drawing everyone’s attention to the thread. Now everyone will focus heavily on the thread.
Then proclaim that you are ready to begin. Take a few deep breaths or make sounds with your mouth that you are inhaling forcefully. At the same time, circle your hands in the air around the strand, keeping people’s attention on it.
Then suddenly stop your hands and as the thread moves, follow it with your hands as if the energy coming from your fingertips is what is moving the thread across the table.
So how does this twisted napkin thread move?
Simply by letting out a small stream of air through the mouth! By gently blowing on it, the thread moves across the table while your hands are just above it as if guiding it.
The key to this free mentalism trick is to mentally control your hearing in two ways: make it focus all of its attention on the strand, and fool its auditory senses with the noises of your deep breath.
By focusing on the strand, they create a wall that blocks your vision and attention from outside of that space, therefore you can get away with it visually. When taking deep breaths, they are audibly programmed to accept these sounds beforehand, so that when you blow, any slight sounds you make will not sound out of the ordinary to them.