Harry Houdini: A Body under Control - Essay Example

?Running Head: HARRY HOUDINI: A BODY UNDER CONTROL Harry Houdini Harry Houdini: A Body under Control Harry Houdini: A Body under Control Harry Houdini was a performer whose main art was escaping from seemingly impossible constraints. He was known for his ability to escape from any pair of handcuffs, but that was not all. Through learning how to control his body functions, Houdini was able to hold his breath under water for much longer periods of time than an average person and to manipulate his body to slide out of straightjackets and apparatuses of all types. Houdini used everything from individually trained toes that performed like fingers to a digestive track, in which he could hold a key until such time as he needed it. Through the control of his breathing and training his muscles individually rather than in groups, he was flexible and strong in ways that most people are not. The training of his body provided him with an extraordinarily powerful level of control, and Harry Houdini was able to create some of the most wondrous performances of escape art in history. Harry Houdini was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1874, moving to Appleton, Wisconsin in 1878 with his mother and siblings. His birth name was Eric Weisz, which was changed to a German version of Ehrik Weiss as he immigrated with his family. As friends called him Ehrie, which sounded remarkably like Harry, he came to be named publicly as Harry. His last name was created through his admiration of Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, a French magician. These changes in identity can be related to his physiological skills in the sense that he was under constant transformation. As a child, he started his first performance experience at the age of nine as a trapeze artist called ‘Ehrick, the Prince of Air’. He considered his first public performance as having started on October 28, 1883, where he performed his trapeze show in Jack Hoeffler’s 5-cent Circus. His physical training can be traced back through his childhood, as he trained for his acts and as he was a cross-country running champion. With a high interest in gymnastics and acrobatics, he developed physicality in his youth that will serve him as he trained and performed throughout his life (Kalush & Sloman, 2006). Harry Houdini had two very distinct talents. The first was that he was an amazing showman who knew how to create spectacle in order to raise interest in his shows. As an example, he put on a tour in Europe in which he challenged police departments to lock him in their handcuffs only to amaze them as time after time he managed to escape. The act of escape was part of his second talent. He had amazing control over his body functions and could bend, twist, or manipulate himself as needed to escape from wherever he was placed. This included straightjackets, tanks of water, and various metal handcuffs and chains, which seemed to be outside of the possibility of escaping. Time after time, he amazed his audiences by slipping from the devices in which he was placed, making him to be one of history’s finest escape artists. One of the secrets shared by magicians is that they do not perform their illusions through magic, but that they have trained their bodies to perform in ways in which the average person is unable to perform. One of the first ways in which Houdini was trained was through his voice. One can do many great and wondrous feats of illusion, but if one has an untrained voice, the showmanship suffers. In an editorial about showmanship, Houdini wrote that “A successful presentation depends on the address in connection with the presentation” (Gibson & Young, 1953, p. 238). In modern terms, the physical training of the voice is seen through the effort to place it spatially in the room. In order to project the voice, the muscles involved must be trained to clearly push sound into a space, so it can be seen as a special entity (Watson, 1995). According to Frisell (2007), in order to utilize the voice appropriately, one must stretch the vocal muscles from the top downward, which puts the vocal cords in the right position. The arc of the palate is positioned so that the ‘hook-up’ points in the resonation cavity of the pharynx, which results in an actually thin passage. This allows the voice to project into the audience space. The use of the respiratory system as it related to the voice was also trained, but the training did not stop at merely being able to breathe, speak, and project well. In order to learn how to do water escapes, he had to train his respiratory system to not respond to the lack of oxygen that it was receiving. Breath-holding, or voluntary apnea, begins with a phase in which CO2 is increased. Breathing is a response to concentrations of CO2 within the arteries, so during this first phase the stimulus to breathe is easily resisted as the CO2 levels rise. The first phase is prolonged in relationship to the capacity of the individual’s lungs, along with the ability of the person to withstand the discomfort which is increasing as the lungs are demanding air. Physical training is not enough to allow the individual to overcome the obstacles to prolonged voluntary apnea (Cheung, 2010). Houdini had a water tank in his house specifically for the training of holding his breath under water. For the second phase of training of voluntary apnea, the dive response is relevant to how the individual can train for this feat of endurance. Human hypoxia tolerance comes when several factors are present. Those factors are body weight, spleen weight, blood volume, and red blood cells (Hochachka & Somero, 2002). Hochachka and Somero (2002) state that “the latter three traits are evident, even when corrected for body weight, it is reasonable to conclude that these three traits – large spleens, large blood volume, and large RBC (red blood count) mass – are true biological adaptations that extend diving durations, probably through effects on O2 storage and O2 management during diving” (p. 186). In training to hold his or her breath, one is training the body to find a way to slow systems so that the need to breathe is lessoned. David Blaine, a contemporary magician who works with the art of escape, discusses that one of the ways in which he has trained to slow his need for air has been to train his heart to slow down, decreasing the need for oxygen throughout his cardiovascular system as it depletes more slowly into other systems. Blaine reports that he studied the way in which Houdini trained his body, his focus on training every aspect of his physical being so that he could gain control over it (Siegel, 2011). While training his body, Houdini was also training his mind. He gained control over his bodily systems in order to find a way to function through harsh environments. Training was at the core of the accomplishments that Houdini was able to achieve. Some of what Harry Houdini learned was based upon the science involved in the contraptions with which he was challenged. As an example, he was able to escape the Scotland Yard handcuffs because he studied their mechanism and found that if he rapped them hard against a hard surface at one particular spot the cuffs would open (Foster, Migliaccio, Cone, & Hedges, 2001). It was the training of his body that was the most efficient. He found a way to harness control over all the individual muscles in his body, his focus as he trained being on each individual muscle so that it could function in the way that would serve his illusion. He trained his toes so that they could act as fingers so that he could use to untie, manipulate, or function in a way that served his escape. He could manipulate his body to move in ways that were unusual because of the control he asserted over each individual muscle, willing it to move one way when muscles in that same muscle group were moving differently. This allowed him to move until he could optimize a position in order to release himself from whatever grip he was held in (Kalush & Sloman, 2006). In order to accomplish his training goals, Houdini used many systems in conjunction with one another, training each individual to exert superior control over them. Through learning how to exert voluntary apnea, he was training his cardiovascular system, respiratory systems, and various connected systems. When training his body, he was training his muscular and skeletal systems as they worked together, in conjunction with various systems that were related to the function of his muscles. The bones create anchoring spots for the muscles to connect to in order to have support and be moved through a sort of levered system. A person who has not trained his or her body as Houdini did is limited a bit through planes of motion. The sagittal plane divides the body into a right and left orientation, while the coronal plane divides the body into a front and back half. The transverse plane divides the body into a top and bottom (Brooks, 2001). Skeletal muscle responds voluntarily, which was one of the reasons due to which training these muscles was crucial to his development. Houdini trained his body to defy this ordered division which provides communication throughout the body in order to be able to individually direct each muscle as it connected to the skeletal system to move as he needed. Houdini also trained his joints to be more flexible and to allow him to place his body into unnatural positions. His diathrodial joints, which are also known as synovial joints, were stretched and made more flexible, as these are the joints which include the hinge joints which can be seen in the hip and shoulder. They have the ability to move in multiple directions and are examples of mulitaxial joints. Having an advanced ability to move these joints would give him a great advantage. The amphiarthrodial joints connect two bones together and the synarthrodial joints are immovable, such as those that connect the skull and the tibia, meaning that Houdini would have had wanted to have some knowledge of how much flexibility was too much where the less flexible joints of his body were concerned (Cheung, 2010). The involuntary muscles are those muscles that move without a specific intention of the individual for them to move. The heart, intestines and blood vessels are examples of involuntary muscles. The involuntary muscles would have been very important for the Houdini’s training. As stated, being able to control his heart rate would have been essential in voluntary apnea, as well as in doing most of his other illusions. While controlling how his body functioned, he was also using his endocrine system to his advantage. As an example, as his body would normally release epinephrine as a result of fear or adrenaline, the heart rate would increase. In focusing on maintaining a lower heart rate, he would also be in control of his endocrine system in relationship to those chemicals that are released for short term goals. These neurotransmitters have only a small amount within the body for the use at any one time, but they create a powerful response to fear. If he learned to control the release of these chemicals, he would also be able to give himself an increased supply of energy for a short burst of time. This would mean that he had tremendous control over his nervous system as well (Rushton & Cooley, 2004). One of the tricks that used the muscles of his digestive system and control over that system was one in which he was handcuffed and placed in a trunk that was thrown under water. The handcuff key was held in his digestive track, which was then ‘thrown up’ so that he could retrieve it to undo his cuffs (Kalush & Sloman, 2006). His control over the muscles in his body was so precise that he could hold the key within his digestive system until the appropriate time when he would need it, when he rolled it back up into his mouth, using the trained muscles of his esophagus and stomach to push it up through the system. This meant that he had control over his gag reflex and all of the instincts that his body held to push the key through his system. Houdini had to have complete control over his bodily functions in order to perform the highly stressful accomplishments in front of his audiences. His urinary and digestive system would have to be under complete control as he performed his highly physical escapes, so that his system did not impede either the showmanship or the necessary control he needed over his muscles. He would not eat before his performances in order to make sure that his system was clean for the performance, having carefully discovered when he needed to eat in order to sustain energy while having his digestive system empty enough to not interfere (Kalush & Sloman, 2006). However, one of the aspects of his physiology that he did not seem to control was the stress that he experienced during his performances. Before each performance, he was in a state of stress, as he was always worried that someday someone would finally bring the set of cuffs or the ropes to knock him off of his claim of being the King of Handcuffs. This shows, however, that even despite mental stress, he still was in control of his body, as he had a long career holding that title (Gibson & Young, 1953). The systems in the body that Houdini had control over allowed him to manipulate his environment so that he could escape from virtually any trap into which he was placed. He was notorious for escaping all kinds of handcuffs, both old and new. Also, he could stay under water for longer than normal periods of time and manipulate himself out of straightjackets. The reason that he was able to perform such ‘miracles’ was that he was in a high state of awareness of virtually every action within his body. He was aware of and had a great deal of control over his respiratory system and cardiovascular system. He was able to control, to a degree, the responses of his endocrine system and to use his digestive system. While he had high levels of personal stress, he was still able to regulate his heart, avoid stressful releases of chemicals in his body, and maintain his showmanship throughout his performance. His commitment to training his body began at a young age, honing his skills to become one of history’s most amazing performers. The way in which Harry Houdini trained his body allowed for such control that it is almost a type of magic, which amazed audiences throughout his career. References Brooks, D. (2001). Effective strength training: Analysis and technique for upper-body, lower- body, and trunk exercises. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Cheung, S. S. (2010). Advanced environmental exercise physiology. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Foster, R., Migliaccio, E., Cone, S., & Hedges, B. (2001). Take five minutes: Fascinating facts and stories for reading and critical thinking. Westminster, CA: Teacher Created Materials. Frisell, A. (2007). The baritone voice: A personal guide to acquiring a superior singing technique. Boston: Branden Pub. Gibson, W. B., & Young, M. N. (1953). Houdini on magic. New York: Dover Publications. Hochachka, P. W., & Somero, G. N. (2002). Biochemical adaptation: Mechanism and process in physiological evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kalush, W & Sloman, L. (2006). 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