Now magnetic hands is the routine that I used to use before I did steeple fingers. I used to love it, but these days I don’t really like it, let me explain more about it and I will then explain why I’m really indecisive about it.
So magnetic hands is really quite simple, you don’t need to do steeple fingers first, but typically that’s the way a lot of street hypnotists do it. They do the steeple fingers and
then they say “just like before, I want to show you something, I want you to hold out your two hands like this”.
Ormond McGill has a description of magnetic hands in his Encyclopaedia of Stage hypnotism (1996) it says
The following routine excellently illustrates the operation of the power of suggestion in a visual manner. A variation of this test is to have the subject and/or subjects stand with arms outstretched with the palms of the hands facing each other about a foot apart. Eyes are closed and it is suggested that the hands are magnetically attracted to each other, which attraction is causing the hands to move closer and closer together until they touch palm-to-palm, the suggestions being given: "Your hands are pulling together, together, together until they touch." The subject will soon find himself standing with the palms of his hands pressed together. (p77)
Usually I will end up doing magnetic hands with a slow hypnotic subject, with someone who doesn’t have any misconceptions about hypnosis, doesn’t seem resistant to me hypnotizing them, they just purely seem to be unaware of the fact that their mind can carry out behaviours,
actions, thoughts, feelings by itself and as a response to suggestion from a hypnotist.
Magnetic hands is a good opportunity to give the hypnotic subject something active to do, you ask them to hold out their two hands in front of them, so this makes them feel that you’re not actually manipulating them, or making them do something against their control… instead your just providing a framework for them to discover that those hands might move together.
Usually the moment when a subject who has clearly not had enough experience with imaginative experiences in the past – with their own sense of responsiveness.. usually the moment they gain a little bit of a clue for what you’re looking for when you speak to them, because you’ve seen their hands move by themselves or something then
suddenly they start becoming a good hypnotic subject, but until that moment they feel like hard work and a lot of effort, but these subjects who listen to you, who
understand you but just lack the responsiveness are really your biggest fans in disguise, they are the ones who really want to get this they just feel like they’ve never had that before and thus don’t believe it’s possible for them now.
Usually with subjects who don’t understand their
responsiveness although they passed steeple fingers – i.e.
you did steeple fingers on them and they seemed like they were good, but then you suddenly realize that they are struggling on magnetic hands… you failed to notice they were bad early on because they were so agreeable and willing to work with you, and you seeing how nice and easy going they were made you blind to see that they weren’t actually experiencing any hypnosis, that they purely just experienced the physiology of feeling those muscles tense in those fingers make those fingers get closer and you thought – jeez their fingers moved together fast.
I’ve inaccurately believed so many of these subjects who are really intelligent, switched on, listening to you,
understanding how hypnosis works and thought to myself – I’m going to go straight for the big phenomena and this is going to take about 20 seconds, then I suddenly go for the big phenomena and think “why did that not come off”
and I fail to recognize that the subject never got a chance to actually see that tiny segment of lack of control to show them that they are really capable of this.. Although they are good in all other respects they need this last piece of the jigsaw before they are ready to be worked… but once they are then they can become your best subjects.
So the title magnetic hands really just explain what’s required in the routine, you have someone hold out their two hands (about 9 inches apart from each hand) you tell them this.
One useful tip that it’s a good opportunity to mention to you is that the hypnosis subject is always wrong-ish, (unless they are being perfect then don’t criticize them for no reason) you should have the subject hold those two hands in the position you specify, and when they put their hands out you should then move their hands slightly closer together and say “now” as if what you’re doing has some kind of special significance, I think this provides the subject with a good understanding that they need to follow your instructions of a very precise way.
“I want you to hand out your two hands in front of you, and I want you to imagine there is a magnet on each of those two hands, in a moment those hands are going to come together and touch, they are going to move closer together”.
Then you need to find the words to talk those hands together. As you learn to hypnotize you’ll realize that a lot of it is really just talking as if something is about to happen in a moment, and using the information about what has
just happened as a pace… as evidence for why that response is going to happen in a moment.
Sure that rule won’t work for every routine, you need to consider it in context of what I’m saying, but what is important is that you need to keep speaking, and keeping telling them how those hands are moving, that they are getting closer, and that they are going to come together and touch.
The risk with suddenly losing your words and stopping talking is it can sound like you’ve ran out of ideas or that you’ve given up on the hypnotic subject because they think you’ve stopped talking because you don’t know how to deal with the fact that they are a bad hypnotic subject.
They aren’t really a bad hypnosis subject it’s just that they believe they are and they will look for any evidence they can that supports their view – because they really don’t know any better, and they have been working with you for at least 2-3 minutes by this point and they feel that it’s probably taking longer than they expected and they are beginning to wonder why they're interaction with a hypnotist is going rather slowly and they don’t feel any different.
So you really need to take this opportunity to be organised with your words. Here is an example of some of the various words you could say when those two hands are moving together.
“So I want you to imagine there is a magnet here and a magnet there in a moment those hands are going to get
closer together” One of the bad things to say is “as you feel those magnets” because usually the subjects don’t actually genuinely feel the magnets it’s more like “your hands are doing it all by themselves”, a good thing to tell the subjects is “as you watch your hands get closer and realize in a moment they are going to come together and touch” now I really don’t like doing hypnosis with people’s eyes closed because I don’t think it represents the style of Street Hypnosis that I’d like to see being done.
I actually rarely use magnetic hands, because I don’t believe in hypnotic inductions and I nearly always do steeple fingers, if it ever got to the point where I wasn’t convinced that I could easily hypnotize the subject during my initial interaction in the way they listened to me during the pre-talk, and the way they went along with steeple fingers then I’d usually just redo that again until the subject seemed to understand exactly what I wanted them to do, and to take it seriously, to concentrate, to be emotive etc. Suppose I did choose the route to “let the subject come to realize their own responsiveness” what I mean is if I work with a bad subject over time and show them that their mind can do things outside of their consent, i.e. do things automatically outside of where they believe they issued an action –then I might do magnetic hands, or do arm levitation telling them their arm gets lighter – or being as I see both phenomena as fairly equal – then I often find myself performing magnetic hands and arm levitation back to back. “Just like before, watch what happens, when you… Put your arms out in front of you. “ at this point I
readjust wherever they put their two hands “because in a moment those hands will come together and each as if there are two powerful magnets in each of your hands that is going to bring those hands together, in a moment those hands will come together touch as they begin getting closer now, because when they touch it’s going to feel strange, those hands get closer together, moving
automatically as if there’s magnets bringing those hands together”.
But with magnetic hands, maybe because how long it’s taken to get this far in the routine, or maybe because you’ve done steeple fingers before and typically that creates a dramatic hypnotic response then the subject feels that magnetic hands isn’t as strong, that its slower that they have to work slightly harder or concentrate more to notice their hands come together.
So for this reason it can be a good opportunity here to ask the subject to close your eyes “I want you to close your eyes and concentrate on those two hands, and I know you don’t know exactly where those two hands are but in a moment they are going to come together and touch” the reason why you say “and I know you don’t know where those hands are” is because people have their eyes closed they tend to be unsure of the location of their hands and this kind of begins to slowly convince the subject that their hands are starting to move together and then the subject seems more willing to let their inner responsiveness
happen at that point, rather than perhaps intercepting their own responsiveness.
One of the key things you’re doing in this script is your just “talking” as if the hands are definitely coming together, and that’s the only possible thing that can happen, if it sounds as if you don’t believe their hands are coming together, or if you stop talking, the person might assume that you don’t believe this is working – the subject (or a bad subject) will tend to take any hints they can to make an excuse and believe the hypnosis isn’t working and if you’re the one providing those cues they will jump straight on them and decide to do something else with their valuable time.
One good technique instead of sounding like your
repetitively saying “they are coming together” which can come across a little bit desperate if the subjects are taking a few moments longer than you expected to have their hands move together. Then it can be good to instead talk about what it will be like after those hands together “and when those hands come together and touch you’re going to feel a strange feeling inside of those palms”, I tend to say “when those hands touch you’re going to feel like a static electric shock, get ready for this.” In neuro-linguistic programming this is called a presupposition, because your acting that the hands are definitely bound to come
together and you’re talking about it as if it’s a sure fire thing that’s definitely going to happen then this allows the subject to pause and stop worrying about whether those hands are going to come together and instead just focus on the process that’s making it get there.
Now the perfect routine that follows on from magnetic hands is arm levitation which will cover at the end of this
section, and because you’ve likely got the subjects eyes closed when you did magnetic hands then you have a good opportunity to have them focus there with their eyes closed and talk them into the next hypnosis routine of arm levitation – which is where you make a subjects arm feel lighter and then it starts to float by itself…. So the subject feels as if there arm is moving upwards without them participating in the process.