The music picks up pace, the beat thickens and the lights dim.

The room hushes as a man confidently approaches the stage. Sailesh the Hypnotist’s booming voice, filled with candor and charisma, consumes the room. The packed room filled with students is suddenly quiet.

The enticingly comical man paces on stage calling out warnings about colorful four letter words that will be dropped at any time.

“This is an uncensored show,” Sailesh said. “If small four letter words bother you…” he pauses dramatically, “get the fuck out.” The room erupts with laughter.

The room of over 300 is about to experience the control this man will exhibit over 19 people’s mental state. However, the self-taught hypnotist is mainly concerned with the therapy side of his work.

“It’s their mind that can make this amazing change. They can change something for their lives for the better,” Sailesh said.

This is more than just a show for entertainment.

Sailesh has had people come up to him and tell him that they haven’t ever laughed that hard for that long.  As much as he loves doing the show, having people do amazing things and making people laugh, he can also help people, Sailesh said.

Jokes aside, Sailesh’s therapeutic approach has been what inspired him for the past 17 years.

“I’ve always wanted to help people, and I’ve always had a passion for it,” Sailesh said. “I’ve worked with people one-on-one, and I want to be able to do it in mass groups, to change an entire group of people.”

The students have noticed.

“I think it’s really cool, and I hope I get picked,” Melanie Kappel, freshman child and family development major, said.

After 19 volunteers were selected, Sailesh began his melodic chants that not only entranced his on-stage volunteers but also had the audience behind him fighting the pull. Some succumbed and fell asleep in the crowd.

During the hypnotic state, the volunteers were asked to act out a plethora of embarrassing scenes and noises at their own expense. Humping chairs, launching into hypothetical outer space and believing a belt is a snake only by hearing a sound was just a few of the treats the audience watched unfold. Individuals making sex noises at the opposite sex was the real crowd pleaser.

“I was very relaxed,” Mary Hefton, volunteer and senior marketing major, said.

Even after humping the chair in front of her co-workers and making sex noises on cue, Hefton admitted that she didn’t remember anything she did until the end of the hypnosis.

“It’s about keeping them confident and keeping them safe,” Sailesh said.

Rebecca Pollack, special events chair of the University Programing Board, raved about Sailesh’s talents, pleasantly surprised by his humanity.

Pollack said, “We went out to dinner with him before the show, and he was so funny. I just kept thinking, ‘you’re so cool.’”