I’m sure you have seen the youtube video where a group of 4 people lift a 350 pound man just using 2 fingers each. Apparently, they first try without any mental preparation and fail. Then they do some sort of meditation by placing their hands above the man’s head and try again and viola the 350 pound man is lifted!! How does this work and why is the meditation necessary? It appears to support the paranormal theory that you can do anything you put your will to. Please explain! Thanks!
I haven’t seen the youtube video. Could you link it please?
Two fingers on each hand, or one finger on each hand? Or two fingers, using a single hand only? A link to the video would be helpful.
Doing the math, each person would only have to lift 87.5 pounds. If you’re lifting with both hands, that’s not even 44 pounds per hand. Not something you’d want to do all the time, but not exactly unbelievable. A popular childrens’ game “Light as a feather, stiff as a board” comes to mind.
Yes, and the highly credulous wiki article gives more background. We used to do this as kids, and often lifted the “levitatee” even on the first try (and probably occasionally failed to do so on the second, although I don’t remember that) – so it never made much sense to me.
(The liftee can allow or prevent the lifting merely by remaining stiff or limp, incidentally, if you want to mess with folks).
Here’s the link:
That doesn’t look at all like what you described. They successfully do it on both attempts, and there is no meditating apparent.
I know, the full video I saw isn’t there anymore…before the 2 attempts you see they meditated for 1 minute
There is nothing paranormal. It’s no great feat to lift 40 pounds per finger. Partially, the “trick” (and it IS a trick) consists of convincing people they can’t do it without the meditation, when they easily could.
That’s an old parlor trick. My dad’s old copy of “Dunninger’s Encyclopedia Of Magic” describes various ways of presenting it, including some that were in use by self-styled mystics of the time who claimed they could “magnetize” themselves to the floor and other such nonsense.
The paranormal and meditation have nothing to do with it. A couple of people can lift someone with a few fingers each as long as the liftee allows it (by body position).
Here is a clip of this trick being performed on Jerry Garcia (not quite 350 lbs, but close!) on the David Letterman show: the trick starts at about 1:18.
You also need to make sure everyone is trying to lift at once. The “meditation” or whatever can be useful to give everyone a cue. But, of course, you could get the same effect with “One, two, three, LIFT”.