ALTAMONT — Michael DeSchalit deals in trickery as well as therapy.

He’s a hypnotist and a magician. He’ll be at the Altamont Fair next week, giving three shows a day. The first two are what he calls “comedy magic.”

“I’ll make a bowling ball appear from a one-dimensional drawing,” he said. “I’ll do a trick with linking rings, and I’ll do a comedic straitjacket escape.” The comedic part is him getting into the confining garment, DeSchalit said, and the magic comes with his escape.

The third show each day will be what he calls “comedy hypnosis” where he’ll ask for 14 or 15 volunteers from the audience to be hypnotized to “do crazy things.” For instance, he said, “I’ll make guys think they are pregnant and can’t get out of a chair.”

Hypnosis, which comes from the Greek word for “sleep,” has been around since ancient times as people in various cultures and religions regarded it rather like meditation. Franz Anton Mesmer, a Vienna doctor, popularized modern hypnotism, and gave us the word “mesmerize.” Hypnosis is currently used in therapy, helping people to relax while at the same time focusing their attention and allowing them to respond to suggestion.

Asked how hypnotism works, DeSchalit answers with a question of his own: When you go to the movies, do you laugh and cry and scream?

He continues, speaking rhetorically, “Why? It’s not real. It’s just pictures and sound. You go to the movies to escape reality. You accept it as real so, when someone ‘dies’ on the screen, you cry.”

DeSchalit sounds two somber half-step notes. “That’s the sound in ‘Jaws’ whenever the shark comes out,” he says of the popular horror film. “It brings you right back to the late ’70s.”

DeSchalit says he started with magic when he was 7 years old. “I was a little kid when I got my first magic kit, and loved it,” he said.

Life happened. He got a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Arizona and was working in a mortgage and insurance business office when one day an officemate asked DeSchalit to “watch the phones” so he could go to a magic shop to get a trick for his Sunday-school class.

“Forget the phones,” said DeSchalit. “I went with him. I got a $10 trick I learned right in the shop, and that was it. Twenty-five years later, I’m still trying to find out why.”

Along the way, he’s also become a hypnotist, hypnotherapist, and motivational speaker.

His branching out began when schools where he gave magic shows wanted a lesson along with the show. “They wanted edu-tainment,” he said, and obliged. He has, for example, performed for hundreds of safe grad-night evenings across the country.

“I then became a comedy stage hypnotist,” he said, which he has done for the past 16 years. In his Vegas-style shows, audience volunteers become part of the act.

He also does corporate presentations. “I’ll talk to business professionals to up their game,” said DeSchalit. “I can teach them how to bypass the critical factor, the voice in their head that says, ‘I’m not good enough.’ That way, they can reach their goals.”

He also holds private, clinical hypnosis sessions to help people quit smoking, lose weight, eliminate phobias, or better focus on schoolwork or sports. “One gentlemen came in, smoking two packs a day. He quit in the first session and has been smoke-free for 10 years,” said DeSchalit.

He also worked with a college baseball player, he said, who was having his worst season in his junior year. “He saw me for three sessions and starting having his best season. He was picked by the Toronto Blue Jays,” said DeSchalit.

DeSchalit crisscrosses the country, performing and providing therapy. He spoke to The Enterprise on Monday afternoon as he was boarding a plane for Boston. “I think I’m in Columbus, Ohio,” he said. “I’m not sure.”

Despite his hectic schedule, he’s maintained a 27-year marriage and has two children, ages 19 and 24. He’s used hypnosis on his kids for pain management when they had dental procedures, he said.

DeSchalit was traveling on Monday to teach classes in hypnotism. He first learned stage hypnosis in five days of training with Ormond McGill. “He’s considered the dean of American hypnotists. He was the David Copperfield of hypnosis,” said DeSchalit, referencing the illusionist.

“I now teach on the same staff I learned from,” said DeSchalit. “We teach people from all around the world.”

DeSchalit went on to become a clinical hypnotherapist, which required 100 hours of training that he received from a private school in Tucson, Arizona, he said.

He is now an adjunct, teaching for the National Guild of Hypnotists, he said. The not-for-profit organization for consulting hypnotists is based in New Hampshire with over 14,000 members in 80 countries.

DeSchalit said he looks forward to returning to the Altamont Fair next week where he has performed for the last three years.

“It’s a great fair with great people,” he said.

DeSchalit concluded, addressing his would-be audience, “See the show or be the show.”