The handshake is no more a form of casual greeting. Today it is a great accessory to the hypnotist as it helps in the hypnosis of innocent people without them knowing they are being hypnotized. Once you learn the art of handshake induction, you can hypnotize anyone just with a handshake.

The word hypnosis brings to mind using a swinging pendulum or a trance voice to alter the state of the mind of the patient. However not only is hypnosis practiced in these media; even handshakes are an important part of hypnosis.

The handshake induction is a hypnotic induction technique that was developed by the master hypnotist Milton Erickson and depends greatly on the automatic mirroring that people have towards each other through courtesy and politeness of the handshake. It is basically because people tend to respond automatically to gestures of greeting that the handshake induction is so successful.

With the handshake induction, the patterns of a shaking a person’s hand is interrupted so that there is a moment of confusion that leads a person into a trance. Everyone falls into and out of trance states regularly in life and so with the handshake induction; you find a subtle form of rabid hypnosis. Once the induction is not put into use, the subject just snaps out of the trance.

Of all the handshakes inductions, Erickson’s is the most subtle and used one. It starts with a normal handshake where before separating, the hypnotist’s grip transforms to a light touch with the thumb while drawing his little finger away. He then brushes the subject’s hand with his middle finger to pass the touch to the little finger.

This makes the subject change their attention while the hypnotist shifts to a middle finger touch and then to the thumb. This attention arousal arrests the handshake withdrawal to create a sense of expectancy to the subject. The hypnotist then touches the undersurface of the wrist gently, like an upward push and then a slight downward touch.

Contact is then severed gently without the subject knowing it so that their hand is left neither up nor down. With the induction, the hypnotist leads the subject with suggestions or creates a lapse in the trance with further conversation. So this is a rough idea of how a handshake is used in hypnosis.

However, this is not an easy art to learn or an easy induction to achieve. There are simpler forms of handshake induction to learn; but this is the most effective of the lot. However if you wish to learn the handshake induction, it is better to practice to someone willing to get hypnotized. This is because this makes it easy for you to make all the small hand gestures run smoothly, without any hesitation before you actually try it out on someone who is unaware of your hypnotic ideas.

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