Tyzen, whose real name is Mark Tyson Paley, is a Canadian from Winnipeg now living in Las Vegas. He took the moniker “Tyzen” after a friend recommended that he make his middle name sound cooler and more “zen-like” for his hypnotism shows.
Although he had initially been set to join the Canadian Armed Forces after years as a sea cadet and training in British Columbia, Paley said he started practicing magic after studying a David Copperfield television special that his brother taped on Betamax for him and learning one of his tricks.
From then on he was hooked, practicing magic constantly and getting his mother to drive him to his magic show performances at birthday parties and similar events. He didn’t pick up hypnotism until later on in his magic career, after he was intrigued by a hypnotist he did a show with and reading a book about hypnotism.
The first person he ever hypnotized was actually one of his classmates after they asked for a demonstration of his project.