Erickson handshake

I felt I should write a bit about a new induction that I have just figured out how to do.

As an induction the Erickson handshake is quite unusual, and I've also found it to be quite mysterious too, especially in my attempts to find examples of it to emulate. I've heard it mentioned a number of times in the hypnosis books I've been reading, but so far I have only seen one example of it being performed, in a youtube video by a young American magician and mentalist called Katherine Anne. Nevertheless it looked very interesting so I decided that I really wanted to give it a try.

When I first started learning hypnosis I treated inductions almost like, if you'll pardon the analogy, magic spells. I've treated them like procedures that must be followed almost to the letter, and if done correctly trance will result. As my knowledge and experience have started to grow I have come to realise that the words and actions during an induction don't matter as much as the context in which they are placed. What do I mean by that? Well, put simply the procedure of an induction is merely a vessel for the hypnotist's intention to hypnotise. Once the hypnotist understands this it means that practically any induction will "work" as long as that belief and confidence is strong enough.

To me it feels as though, as an induction, the Erickson handshake depends on this intention principle even more than others because the subject's eyes remain open and consequently the hypnotist has to keep eye contact. At the pub a few weeks ago Darren demonstrated a three handshake induction on me and something that I was very aware of then was how effectively his eye contact communicated his intention to hypnotise. I think it was perhaps this lesson that gave me the inspiration to try the Erickson handshake.

So what is the Erickson Handshake? Everybody seems to know the "handshake induction" but this is usually the one credited to Richard Bandler where the hypnotist performs a motor pattern interrupt by catching the subject' right hand with their left before it makes contact, lifting it up in front of their face, and pacing and leading from there with the "look at your hand..." spiel. Erickson's version is quite different; as far as I can tell it still uses the pattern interrupt, but the idea is to use an ambiguous touch to induce catalepsy in the subject's arm whilst talking the subject into trance with a steady stream of hypnotic language patterns. It's quite tricky to pull off because it requires multitasking; there's the ongoing delicate manipulation of the subject's arm, keeping up a steady patter, and all whilst keeping up that all-important eye contact.

So anyway, I was with a friend who had expressed an interest in learning a bit of hypnosis and after she'd practiced on me a couple of times, floating my arm up and down, I asked if I could show her something. When she agreed I took her hand as I would if shaking her hand, brought it out in front of her, and also supported the arm under the elbow. Then, looking her directly in the eye, I started talking. It was something like this:

"Have you ever found it interesting that it's possible for people to start daydreaming anywhere? Perhaps you might remember a time, maybe in a lecture, when you just zoned out. You'd be relaxed and your eyes would be open but you'd just start to loose focus on the things going on around you. Your thoughts would start to drift taking you deeper inside yourself, and that's okay because it's natural for people to zone out like that, to go into trance. Now, you might find that..." etc

At the same time I was alternating support of the arm between elbow and hand. The idea behind this ambiguous touch is that the subject isn't sure who's supporting the arm. I felt like Indiana Jones swapping his little bag of sand for that gemstone or whatever it was in that film; a very delicate touch needed.

This said, I think the most difficult thing was to hold onto my confidence and keep talking as by this point friend was just looking back at me blankly but not really displaying any signs of trance that I recognised. It would have been so very easy to get distracted in questioning whether it was actually working.

As it was my friend broke before I did and, snatching her arm back, she said "Whoa! That's weird!" She went on to tell me that everything around the edges of her vision was starting to blur out and it was as though she was getting drawn into my voice, but not the actual words - they were blurring too. I've heard of subjects commenting on this induction being quite an odd experience, especially the eyes open part, so to tell the truth I wasn't too surprised at my friend's reaction, although I was quite amazed that it had worked.

Needless to say this eliminated any doubts as to whether what I was doing was working, and so on the second time I had no trouble continuing. It was a very surreal experience because of the way that my friend's eyes glazed over. She was also noticeably blinking more, so on the spur of the moment I linked that to eyes feeling heavier, and had her close them. By this point I'd removed my hand from her elbow and had drawn my other hand gradually away to the point where I only had one finger remaining in contact supporting the arm. It was strangely like playing Jenga, and it's true to say I experienced the same satisfaction when the arm didn't come crashing down when the last finger broke contact, it just hung there in the air.

I would say that it's as simple as that, but I feel it really isn't. I don't think I could have done this induction a month or so ago. The fact that there's so much going on at once makes it very difficult and I don't think I could have kept the patter up. That said, having gotten this method to work I feel absolutely over the moon, itching to practice it again and see how much I can improve my technique.