(Jeff Wilkin • ©Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY • 3/26/08)
As illusionists, Kevin and Cindy Spencer can float, walk through walls and spinning fans and escape water-filled tanks. They can also help people with disabilities. And these latter feats are not tricks. The Spencers will perform at Proctors in Schenectady Sunday afternoon. You can read all about the stage show in the print and online editions of The Daily Gazette. The hospital show is something different. (read more...) 

During the 1980s, the Spencers developed “The Healing of Magic” program for people who have suffered strokes, accidents, head injuries or spinal cord injuries. Folks with learning disabilities have also received a taste of hocus-pocus.

The set-up is easy: Learning simple magic tricks requires hand and eye coordination, and plenty of repetition. Instead of squeezing a rubber ball — an exercise with a high boredom factor — patients work on their tricks and toward two goals: learning a bit of magic and recovering from physical woes.

“They practice hundreds, dozens of times,” Kevin Spencer said, “not because you want to build back the movement in your hands, but because you want to learn the magic trick. And every time you do the trick, you’re actually doing your therapy.”

Spencer has a special interest in the program. He suffered spinal and head injuries in a 1988 traffic accident, and was also on the recovery path for a while.

“These simple little tricks help develop fine and gross motor skills, cognitive skills and perceptual skills that might have been affected as a result of their particular diagnosis,” Spencer said.
Older people get extra motivation through magic.

“After all,” Spencer said, “if you’re a stroke patient and your grandkids are coming to visit you, what do you want to say to them: ‘Hey, watch Grandma put these pegs in a board’ or ‘Let Grandma show you a magic trick.’”

Other people in the illusion business don’t mind the Spencers sharing expertise — and secrets — with civilians.

“In 1999,” Cindy Spencer said, “we teamed up with the International Brotherhood of Magicians — the largest organizations of magicians in the world with approximately 15,000 members — to bring this program to people all over the world.”

The Spencers’ magical therapy is being used in 2,000 facilities in more than 30 countries, most recently at the College of Medicine in England.

©2008 Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY