Some people walk into a room and the room changes before a word is said: conversations lower, eyes turn, something settles. That is magnetic presence, the quality others feel before language, and it is the fourth instrument of non-verbal hypnosis after the gaze, the passes and the touch.

You have felt it from the other side. A friend arrives agitated, and after a minute beside him your own breathing has become shorter; another arrives calm, and your shoulders come down before you decide anything at all. A newborn turns towards a quiet face. A horse settles under a steady hand. Presence travels, always, in both directions.

I will take you through seven steps, in the order in which the School teaches them:

1. What magnetic presence is, in Dr. Paret’s definition.
2. Why it is felt before words: the two levels.
3. How it is built: the exercises from Alchimia Pratica dell’Uomo, quoted to the letter.
4. What you feel as it grows, and what others feel.
5. How presence carries the gaze, the passes and the touch.
6. Where the practice comes from.
7. How to learn it, and why live.

What is magnetic presence?

Presence is freedom to act in the present. Dr. Paret gives a simple definition: presence is the state in which you stand free of the movement between past and future, rooted in the present [1]. It is felt in the body before it is understood: the breath drops, the muscles let go of a tension they were holding for the future, a calm settles, the physiological rhythms slow.

When that rootedness becomes stable and can be directed towards another person, the tradition calls it magnetic presence: a quality of energy, of attention and of stillness that the other person’s system registers immediately, beneath the conscious mind [2][3].

Presence puts you in contact with your own Essence, the part of you that stays the same while roles, moods and opinions pass. This is the reason the work goes deep: you are training the ground of the person, and every capacity you already have stands on that ground.

• Presence improves whatever you do. It is the base of optimal performance: the same speech, the same negotiation, the same consultation, given from presence, arrives with a different weight.
• A person who tries to appear calm transmits the trying. A person who is present transmits presence, and stays calm with ease.

Here is the image that makes it clear. A lamp has light of its own; a mirror gives back the light that happens to fall on it. The whole work of the School is to make the lamp. In MESMERISMUS® the central principle is exactly this: the operator first learns to produce and to hold a quality of state in himself, and afterwards, in a magnetic way, guides the other person towards a corresponding change [3].

Why is presence felt before words?

Because the first dialogue of every human being is made of faces, hands and breath, months ahead of language, and that channel stays open for the whole of life. Babies of two to five days already tell a direct gaze from an averted one, and prefer the face that makes contact [4]. When two people look directly into each other’s eyes live, their brains measurably synchronise [5]; their heart rhythms and their breathing tend to align [6]. The space around the body registers an approaching person ahead of contact [7]. A present operator offers all these channels one stable signal at once.

There are two levels, and both are real to anyone who practises.

The neurological level. Face, eyes and voice belong to a system that signals safety or danger below any conscious decision, and the state of one person regulates the state of the other: this is the reading polyvagal theory gives of every encounter [8][9]. One word makes it concrete: the ventral vagal condition is connection. When that circuit is active in you, the other body reads connection and answers with connection; the whole art of presence consists in holding that circuit steady while the encounter goes on.

The energetic level. When two people are in relation, both feel that something passes from one to the other, and the tradition has called it energy: it is a matter of sensations. It may be the non-verbal communication that creates similar states in the two bodies; some read it as a non-local effect, of a quantum kind, between one brain and the other; it may be a psychological mechanism still to be described; it may be an energy in the proper sense. The School stays open to all these possibilities and, at the practical level, works with the simplest description: it is like an energy that passes, and this remains a valid approximation, because it corresponds to what both people feel. The primary reality of the phenomenon of energy is that it is felt [10].

How is magnetic presence built? The exercises, to the letter

What follows is taken word for word from Dr. Paret’s Alchimia Pratica dell’Uomo [2], in this order. These exercises look small. They are the door, and whoever crosses it enters a small élite: the people who work on the ground of themselves while the world works on the surface.

Exercise 29 — The point of concentration. «Imagine a point, a small point in front of you. Make it as small as possible and concentrate on it for about ten seconds. We call this a “point of concentration”. It represents the direction of attention. To reach the best results you must be able to guide your attention.»

Exercise 30 — Projection of the point. «Immediately after the previous exercise, now look at yourself in a mirror and imagine projecting the point of attention onto the image in the mirror, in the area between the two eyes. Simply affirm: “now I decide to take the way towards myself”. Close your eyes, move away from the mirror and do not think about it again until tomorrow.»

Exercise 31 — Presence at the mirror. «Simply fix yourself in the mirror without blinking. Fix yourself between the two eyes. You will notice various sensations doing this exercise and at certain moments you will lose consciousness of yourself.»

Exercise 32 — Constant consciousness of a part of the body. «Maintain constant consciousness of a part of our body (for example a hand). In time this exercise can also be accompanied by attention to a foot (possibly on the other side of the body).» The book states the purpose: «The aim of these exercises is to begin to “remember ourselves”. The aim is the further development of Presence as a way of freedom.»

Work them in the sober register in which they were written: an inner discipline, taken up daily, held with severity towards yourself and calm towards the results. Observe, as the book asks, the sensations that arise at the mirror, the moments in which the ordinary sense of self falls away, and the growing ease of keeping a hand in consciousness while you do other things.

It is like learning to keep a candle lit while walking: at first every step puts it out; then, one day, you cross the room and the flame has stayed still.

What do you feel, and what do others feel?

Inside, presence is felt as a deep, unusual quiet, a pleasant emptiness that is in fact spacious, and a weight that settles into the feet and the base of the body. The inner commentary thins out. Time changes: the present widens, and the minutes at the mirror seem longer than the clock says, the same widening Dr. Paret describes in his work on kairòs, the time of opportunity [1]. In place of the old agitation an inner force appears, quiet and available.

Outside, others feel it as a change in the atmosphere: they lower their voice, they turn towards you, they finish their sentences more slowly, and a persistent interest arises in the person who is standing that way. These are signals we observe; each person answers in his own way.

How does presence carry the gaze, the passes and the touch?

The four instruments are one circuit. The body gives structure; the gaze gives direction; Fascination gathers the attention; presence makes the transmission stable [3].

• A gaze in presence draws; a gaze alone freezes. The tradition distinguishes them exactly: the purely hypnotic gaze blocks, as the snake blocks the little bird; the magnetic gaze, held in presence, moves the person’s points of reference and draws her in.
• A pass in presence carries warmth and weight. The same slow hand, given from presence, travels down the body and is felt long after it has passed.
• A touch in presence closes the circle. The hand on the forehead becomes the seal of everything that came before it.

It is like a musician’s silence before the first note: the note is the same, and everything that follows depends on the quality of that silence.

Where does the practice of presence come from?

For the Egyptians the eye and the hand of the healer were the seat of a power, and every ancient temple trained the priest ahead of the rite. Mesmer, in 1779, worked with passes, with human energy and with a fixed, continuous look his patients described as the strongest part of the treatment [11]. Deleuze, in 1825, opened the classical instruction with a demand that is pure presence: before touching the person, the magnetiser collects himself, fixes his will and stays entirely with the person in front of him [12]; Du Potet and Lafontaine repeat it in every chapter [13].

In the twentieth century, in Italy, the line passed from Donato to Erminio Di Pisa and to Master Virgilio Torrizzano, who initiated Prof. Dr. Paret into hypnotic Fascination and into the magnetic work; it is taught today in the MESMERISMUS® school, which a recent English handbook describes as the modern school of the art [14][15]. The full story is on our page on the history of mesmerism. For those who look further, beyond the ordinary, the tradition keeps a more mysterious side of the work of presence, described on the page on the secret power of the gaze.

How to learn magnetic presence?

The mirror exercises can be done alone, tonight, and the first sensations arrive the first time. What the mirror leaves aside is how to hold that presence in front of another human being: keeping the state while you read her answers, while she moves, while the exchange goes on.

That is learned live, in the MESMERISMUS® training, as swimming is learned: by doing it, beside someone who already knows how, beside a master whose state you can feel and progressively reproduce, because the master-student transmission passes through the eyes.

What the training builds with it is a powerful triad: unstoppable confidence, self-esteem, security. It works on the Essence, and through this practice you change intimately, inside. The related practice is the mental void; the demonstrations are on our channel, youtube.com/@neurolinguistic, where presence is shown as it happens.

Frequently asked questions

Is magnetic presence the same as charisma? Presence goes far beyond charisma, because with presence you feel your own force and your own Essence from inside. Charisma is the name people give to presence when they meet it in others. Presence is a skill with exercises, degrees and a lineage; anyone who practises can develop it, and it stays stable.

How long does it take? The first sensations at the mirror come in a minute, the first time. Holding presence in front of another person, in ordinary life and in the magnetic work, is a matter of guided practice, and that is the reason the training exists.

Do you need a gift? You need a guide. What passes for a gift is a person who already holds a stable presence while the way it was built stays hidden even from him. The skill divides into parts that can be taught: the direction of attention first, then the body, then the relationship.

Is it safe? Presence produces a state of deep rest and receptive attention, in yourself and in the person in front of you. It is an art of self-knowledge, communication and presence, and it is taught only to people who promise to use it for the good: the power of a practice makes the quality of the person who uses it even more important. Medical and psychological care belongs to the professions that govern it.

Scope and limits

In the MESMERISMUS® of Prof. Dr. Marco Paret this heritage is taught as an art of self-knowledge, communication, wellbeing and personal growth. It is offered as such, and every medical or therapeutic matter belongs to the professions that govern it. The historical and scientific references below let each statement be checked at its source; the exercises are quoted from the book to the letter, and their full form is taught live.

Notes and references

1. Paret, M. (2009). L’energia segreta della mente — the definition of presence as the state rooted in the present, and the chapter on time and kairòs.
2. Paret, M. Alchimia Pratica dell’Uomo: Magnetismo Personale e Realizzazione. ISI-CNV — Exercises 29 «Il punto di concentrazione», 30 «Proiezione del punto», 31 «Presenza allo specchio», 32 «Coscienza costante di una parte del corpo», quoted to the letter and translated. The numbering follows the edition: the same four practices appear as Exercises 16–19 in Paret, M., Coaching e Successo Magnetico (ISI-CNV, 2013).
3. Paret, M. (2011). Training Manual: Mesmerismus — Fascination — Presence. ISI-CNV, Université Européenne — the progression vital force → fascination → presence, and the four instruments.
4. Farroni, T., Csibra, G., Simion, F. & Johnson, M. H. (2002). «Eye contact detection in humans from birth». PNAS, 99(14), 9602–9605.
5. Hirsch, J. et al. (2017). «Frontal, temporal and parietal systems synchronize within and across brains during live eye-to-eye contact». NeuroImage, 157, 314–330 — the study compares live eye-to-eye interaction with gaze directed at a pictured face, and finds greater cross-brain coherence in the live condition.
6. Palumbo, R. V. et al. (2017). «Interpersonal autonomic physiology: a systematic review of the literature». Personality and Social Psychology Review, 21(2), 99–141.
7. Serino, A. (2019). «Peripersonal space (PPS) as a multisensory interface between the individual and the environment». Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 99, 138–159.
8. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. New York, Norton.
9. Grossman, P. et al. (2026). «Why the polyvagal theory is untenable». Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 23(1), 100–112; and, in the same issue, Porges, S. W. (2026). «When a critique becomes untenable», 113–128. We use polyvagal theory here because it gives an adequate frame, one that corresponds to the phenomena described. We stay open to other interpretations, provided they account clearly for the phenomena, which in practice are effectively tangible. Our opinion is that polyvagal theory, even where details may be perfected, has touched great truths and offers an angle that greatly eases the understanding of the mechanics of the phenomenon, as we actually observe it.
10. On the question of the fluid: in 1784 the French royal commission chaired by Benjamin Franklin concluded that the fluid stayed invisible to them and that the commissioners felt it absent (Rapport des commissaires chargés par le Roi de l’examen du magnétisme animal, Paris, 1784). The School reads that report as an analysis conducted outside the adequate state, in search of a visible or tangible agent in the medium, on the assumption — still awaiting its proof — that whatever operates must be measurable from outside. After three centuries of inquiry the epistemic instruments may simply be insufficient; the effect, meanwhile, is felt. On the epistemology of the controversy: Méheust, B. (1999). Somnambulisme et médiumnité, 2 vols. Le Plessis-Robinson, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.
11. Mesmer, F. A. (1779). Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal. Geneva–Paris, Didot.
12. Deleuze, J. P. F. (1825). Instruction pratique sur le magnétisme animal. Paris, Dentu — the preparation of the magnetiser: recueillement, will, attention to the person.
13. Du Potet de Sennevoy, J. (1846). Manuel de l’étudiant magnétiseur. Paris, Baillière; Lafontaine, C. (1847). L’art de magnétiser. Paris, Baillière.
14. Alfred-Edouard D’Hont, known as Donato (1845–1900); Erminio Di Pisa; Master Virgilio Torrizzano — the Italian lineage of hypnotic Fascination.
15. Gerrard-Barlow, L. Modern Day Mesmerism — on the non-verbal nature of magnetism and mesmerismus, and on the contemporary school headed by Dr. Marco Paret.

Presence is what the other person feels before you have spoken, and it is built: a point of attention, a mirror, a hand kept in consciousness, and then the same rootedness held in front of another human being. It is the ground on which the gaze, the passes and the touch stand, the most original instrument of the magnetic tradition, learned live, and still being taught. Learn magnetic presence and the four instruments of non-verbal hypnosis in the MESMERISMUS® training of Prof. Dr. Marco Paret.