{"id":20,"date":"2007-08-26T20:12:18","date_gmt":"2007-08-26T20:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/?p=20"},"modified":"2026-07-22T00:18:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:18:37","slug":"the-handshake-induction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/the-handshake-induction\/","title":{"rendered":"The Handshake Induction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m often asked if I use Milton Erickson&#8217;s famous Handshake Induction.<\/p>\n<p>It is said that psychologists wouldn&#8217;t shake Milton&#8217;s hand because they were afraid they&#8217;d go into trance.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also heard that they used to teach courses to these psychologists about how to do hypnosis without going into trance yourself. Pretty funny, actually. I&#8217;m in hypnosis just about every time I hypnotize someone.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway Erickson&#8217;s handshake induction goes like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Go to shake the person&#8217;s hand<\/li>\n<li>As you near their hand, pull your hand away<\/li>\n<li>At the same time, use your left hand to pick up that person&#8217;s wrist and bring their hand up to their face.<\/li>\n<li>Say, &#8220;look at your hand.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is a pattern interrupt.<\/p>\n<p>A person is so used to just going ahead and to shake someone&#8217;s hand that when the hypnotist does something different, it interrupts the flow of their brain for a second and their internal auditory quiets down.<\/p>\n<p>After those steps you can say something along the lines of, &#8220;Notice the lines and the colors of your hand, and the shades and sensations as your head can just stay there on it&#8217;s own and move closer to your hand.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brian David Phillips has a post on this with video examples (from a hypnotic video challenge) that I think is great.  <a href=\"http:\/\/briandavidphillips.typepad.com\/brian\/2007\/05\/handshake_induc.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Check it out here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m often asked if I use Milton Erickson&#8217;s famous Handshake Induction. It is said that psychologists wouldn&#8217;t shake Milton&#8217;s hand because they were afraid they&#8217;d go into trance. I&#8217;ve also heard that they used to teach courses to these psychologists about how to do hypnosis without going into trance yourself. Pretty funny, actually. I&#8217;m in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,56,5],"tags":[21,22],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hypnlp","category-hypnosis-techniques-inductions","category-hypvids","tag-inductions","tag-milton-erickson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":986,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions\/986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}