Ericksonian hypnosis induction

Milton H. Erickson is one of the pioneers in the field of modern hypnosis. He grew up in Lowell, Wisconsin and had been handicap with many disadvantages (he was dyslexic, color blind and contracted polio when he was 17). Even though he was severely paralysed he even used this to develop a great hypnosis induction technique, called a handshake interrupt, but we shall get there in a minute. He was a good medical student that got involved with psychiatry quite early and got his psychology degree while still studying medicine. During his lifetime he established himself as a profound hypnotherapist and was 78 years old when he died in March 1980.

Milton was a master of hypnotic speech. One of his hypnosis induction technique was the so called confusion technique. He confused a person with endless and complex sentences, ambiguous words and pattern interruptions to put people in a trance. Milton claimed that this technique was applicable even if patients were in pain or were hostile and resistant.

Among one of the most successful method he used was a handshake induction.The idea behind this technique is that person initiates a hand shake but before he shakes hand, he interrupts the move in some way, for example by grabbing the person's wrist instead. This gives a hypnotist a small window of time when the other person is confused, because his unconscious move has been interrupted. Hypnotist takes advantage of this in getting a subject into a trance rather easily. One of the founder of neuro linguistic programming, Richard Bandler, often uses this technique, and we can see the utilization of this technique in Derren Browns shows as well.

Milton also hypnotized people by telling meaningful stories. He would begin with one story, but before he ended it, he would start another and repeat the process with perhaps another story. He would than conclude the stories in order to achieve trance in his subjects. The method is widely used is some of NLP's practitioners seminars, such as Richard Bandler organizes.

There are more hypnosis induction techniques that Milton used (it must be said that these and other techniques require a mentionable degree of improvisation), but this should give you a general idea of the way this pioneer worked. This methods had a great effect on other hypnotists and a high success rate of these methods are a clear indication why they are still used today.