neglected training in magic

there are so many aspects that go in to making a miracle out of a mere magic trick. i m talking about sleight of hand magic in particular. many spend innumerable hours practicing sleight of hand but rarely train in ways to hide non-verbal communication(nvc). humans are amazingly good at picking up body language and other nvc.

how should the hand drop when it hides an object ? good magic books call attention to that hands should be held naturally but its become more of a lip service than anything else. in fact most magicians are not doing as much good magic as they lip service the so called greats.

thanks to the you tube and tv i see many so called experts performing and each and every time i find how at one hand they are successful in sone aspects but fail in other aspects and these other aspects are important for those who truly love magic. its not mighty important for laymen, 'coz they may be appeased by something that is not essential to magic for example they may be happy at the presentational skills of the performer or his comic lines or jokes etc.

one common observation is how the hand goes completely dead after palming ... it just becomes a heavy log and stays there ... its a sore sight really.

may be these nvc are easy to pick up when watching magic on telly or internet ... who knows ?

it's a question of beating muscle memory really ... our muscles and bodies are trained in a way that makes it difficult to make different situations look the same. for example our brains have learnt to move hands that hide nothing in a particular fashion ... when we try to replicate the same actions with somethings hidden in our hands our brains and bodies betray that fact and the movement is not the same. only training can rewire the brain to make both the movements same.

perhaps there should be a video archive of normal ppl doing ordinary motions. magicians should study those movements as artists study motion in humans and animals. also i think its vitally important to first do the actual action and then do the false one. better yet record yourself doing the actual action 100 times even before you begin to learn a sleight. we magicians learn it the wrong way ... we first learn the false movement since our teachers or books tell us to do so and then one fine day when we really and i mean really understand the phrase ``be natural" do we compare our movements with the actual movements. but by then our minds are corrupt and its not easy to replicate an untainted movement that normal ppl do.