Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

Doty’s own story begins in the summer of 1968. Doty is 12 and spends much of his time riding his bike around Lancaster to escape his life at home. While riding one day, he happens to notice a store called Cactus Rabbit Magic Shop. Doty enjoys practicing magic tricks, and was dismayed when he discovered, earlier that very morning, that his fake thumb tip had gone missing. Hoping to find a replacement, Doty goes inside.

A woman sitting at the counter greets Doty, introducing herself as Ruth. Nervously, Doty asks whether the store sells plastic thumb tips; Ruth admits that she doesn’t know—the store belongs to her son—but invites Doty to look around. As he does, Ruth engages him in conversation, asking him what he likes about magic; Doty responds that he likes the feeling of control that comes from mastering a trick. He then explains how he uses the thumb tip in his tricks, prompting Ruth to share her thoughts on how it works: “[T]he mind is a funny thing. It sees what it expects to see. It expects to see a real thumb, so that’s what it sees” (21).

Ruth goes on to explain that she believes in a different kind of magic: one that allows people to manifest whatever they imagine. She offers to teach this kind of magic to Doty. Although confused and skeptical, Doty enjoys feeling that someone has taken an interest in him and agrees to return to the shop every day for the next six weeks.

The next day, Doty nervously returns to the magic shop, where Ruth greets him warmly and introduces him to her son Neil. After showing Doty a card trick, Neil explains the secret—a marked deck—and gives the pack of cards to Doty so he can practice for himself.

Ruth takes Doty into a back office. Before beginning, she asks him to promise to one day pass on what he learns from her. He does, and she instructs him to close his eyes and imagine that he’s a leaf floating on the breeze. Doty, however, remains visibly anxious, so Ruth asks him to concentrate on the sensations in different parts of his body: “Someone can ask you how you are feeling and you might say, ‘I don’t know,’ because maybe you don’t know or maybe you don’t want to say, but your body always knows how you are feeling” (39).

Ruth asks Doty to describe a time he felt sad or angry. Though initially embarrassed and reluctant, Doty begins to talk about his life at home: his father’s alcoholism and temper, his mother’s depression, the lack of regular income, the judgmental attitude of those who could help (e.g. the doctor who treated his mother after a suicide attempt), etc. Afterwards, Ruth thanks Doty for opening up and asks him how he feels. Doty responds by describing his nausea, tight chest, and headache, and Ruth leads him through a breathing exercise, asking him to concentrate on relaxing each part of his body in turn.

Before Doty leaves, Ruth asks him to practice this exercise every day; in time, she says, he’ll come to feel in control of his body and mind. By his eleventh day visiting the shop, Doty is indeed able to relax his entire body, and Ruth begins the next step: teaching him to “do something about all those voices in [his] head” (51).

Doty quickly develops a deep sense of connection to Neil and Ruth, who listen to and believe in him. Although he doesn’t know it at the time, Ruth’s lessons are preparing him for his own career as a doctor and future developments in neuroscience:

Now I know the brain can be trained to improve one’s focus and attention and also to not respond to the ongoing dialogue in our head that distracts us from making clear and useful decisions. Today this is well understood, but at that time what Ruth was teaching me was unheard of (61).

After Doty has largely mastered the ability of relaxing his body, Ruth begins training him to empty his mind of thoughts by focusing his attention on his breathing. Doty struggles with this, in part because he has always thought of his thoughts as part of himself rather than as (in Ruth’s words) a “deejay” offering unreliable and overly harsh commentary (63). However, over the next few weeks, Ruth and Doty discover two mindfulness exercises that work for him. The first consists of focusing on a candle flame; Doty appreciates that he’s able to keep his eyes open while doing so. The other involves the silent repetition of a mantra, which Doty constructs from the first two words that come to mind: Chris (the name of a girl he had a crush on) and knob (as in “door knob”).

The more Doty practices these techniques, the more he finds his attitude towards his family circumstances shifting. His father has only recently returned from a drinking binge, and the family is facing an eviction notice, but to Doty’s surprise, he now views these facts with acceptance rather than dread. When he overhears his parents arguing one day, he’s even moved to intervene and tell them that he loves them; they respond by reassuring him that they love him too and that things will work out. The underlying mechanism at work in Doty’s growing ability to quiet his thoughts will remain a source of interest to him in the future: “I spent many late nights during medical school using my brain to think about the brain and then using my mind to ponder the irony of it” (76).

Roughly two weeks before Ruth plans to return home to Ohio, Doty pauses on his way to his daily lesson to yell at two local bullies beating up a boy. The bullies let the boy go before turning on Doty, the bigger of them grabbing him by the shirt and demanding that he kiss his feet. Doty, however, flatly refuses, and his willingness to look the other boy in the eye causes him to back off: “[F]or a second our eyes locked together and I saw him, and he knew I saw him. I saw his own pain and fear. [...] His gaze broke from mine and he looked at his sidekick and back at me. ‘What a waste.’” (85).

Doty is eager to share this story with Ruth, but when he arrives, he overhears her arguing with Neil about an unnamed boy. Assuming the argument is about him, Doty anxiously asks Ruth about it once they’re alone. After clarifying that they were talking about Neil’s son, Ruth explains why Doty’s assumption that he had done something wrong is significant: the next lesson she plans to teach him involves “opening his heart” not only to others, but also to himself. She further explains that this kind of empathy tends to grow out of suffering, implying that Doty will find the practice easier than his more privileged peers might.

Over the next week, Ruth teaches Doty several self-affirmations to recite to himself and encourages him to practice extending positive thoughts to loved ones, strangers, and even enemies. The latter in particular is difficult for Doty, but with Ruth’s help, he begins to understand that those who behave cruelly or selfishly are often acting from a place of pain. Scientific research has since corroborated the positive physical and mental effects of practicing compassion in this way. There is, for instance, a documented correlation between feelings of love and compassion, HRV (heart rate variability), and overall well-being: “Research shows the heart to be an organ of intelligence, with its own profound influence not only from our brain but on our brain, our emotions, our reasoning, and our choices” (95).

With one week to go, Ruth announces that Doty is ready to learn the final technique: visualizing and materializing his desires. However, she also stresses that Doty should never do this without first opening his heart; otherwise, he might find he was mistaken about what he truly wants. Doty largely brushes this warning aside—a decision that later costs him.

Doty shows up for his final week of lessons more eager to learn than ever. However, when Ruth asks him what he wants most from life, he’s unsure how to respond, eventually settling on a million dollars—enough, in his mind, to be able to buy whatever he wants without worry. Ruth then asks him to picture himself having this money, looking out at the world through “millionaire eyes” (113). Doty struggles to do so, but Ruth assures him that if he keeps practicing, he will eventually be able to make his vision a reality.

Doty returns the next day with a list of 10 wishes, which include a Rolex watch and a Porsche. Although Ruth had asked him to compile this list, she appears dissatisfied with it and questions whether Doty opened his heart before he sat down to write. When Doty says he did, Ruth chooses to focus on his desire to become a doctor, which he has nurtured since a pediatrician visited his school on Job Day. Once again, she asks Doty to picture himself having attained his goal, assuring him that the image will become clearer and clearer until it is eventually a reality: “[I]magine in your head you are looking through a window. The window is all fogged up. […] Think of your intention as the defrost setting. Set your intention over and over again so that the window gets clearer and clearer” (120).

That evening, Doty begins visualizing the first item on his wishlist: avoiding eviction. Over the course of the week, he dutifully pictures himself and his family happy in their house, although he doesn’t believe his efforts will pay off. At the end of the week, Doty reluctantly answers a knock at the door; to his shock, it isn’t the sheriff he was expecting, but rather a man paying Doty’s father for an odd job. Elated, Doty races to the magic shop to tell Ruth—who’s leaving the following day—that her magic worked. Ruth hugs Doty happily, but she also cautions him once again about the potential for misusing her lessons. With a bag full of free magic supplies from Neil, Doty returns home, confident in his ability to make his dreams a reality.