This is going to be the first hypnosis routine I have you learn in this text
Now you’re going to ask the subject to put their two hands out in front of themselves and to squeeze them together and bring them up so you can have them perform steeple fingers – you’re going to do this to show them something about their own mind, as a kind of demonstration of Something similar to what you do but not necessarily Hypnosis.
Now, when you do steeple fingers this can be a good opportunity to do a pre – talk because having them place their hands out in front of themselves distracts them as it gives them a task to do for the time being.
So you can say a pre talk as simply as “this uses your concentration and imagination, just focus on the ideas I present to you” that’s the simple version of the pre talk and it’s a good idea to get in the habit of using one even if it is that short in this first week. This pre talk sub
communicates several things it implies that they shouldn’t resist you, that instead they should listen to you, and imagination, and almost play along with the ideas presented to them, but it’s ambiguous as to whether they should do that, and thus creates the ambiguous response of mix roles; when their fingers start to move.
So this essentially is just a routine to give a hypnosis subject the experience of having their fingers move together all by themselves.
The way you get to occur is you need the final result of having the subject hold up their two index fingers with their two hands having all their other fingers interlocking.
Then what should happen is as you convince the subject that they have “a magnet on each of their two index fingers” then what should happen is those palms start coming together all by themselves.
Ormond McGill (1996) called the routine crankily or Extended fingers; he wrote
“A miniature version of the magnetic hands can be performed in which just the extended forefingers of the subject move together. In this, the person is asked to interlock and clasp his hands and extend his forefingers. This position brings the forefingers about an inch apart from each other. Have him keep his eyes open and watch what happens as you suggest that you are going to crank his fingers together until they touch.”
“Begin making cranking motions in front of the extended fingers; sure enough they will begin slowly moving towards each other until their tips touch. This stunt works very well, as the position of the extended fingers place them under muscular tension so the suggestion "they are being cranked together" is quickly followed. The stage hypnotist does well to take advantage of physiological conditions to aid his
demonstrations.” (p77)
I’ll explain the exact script that I use in the following script.
“I want you to take those two hands and I want you to put them out in front of you like this”, “now while those two hands are out in front of you I want you to squeeze those palms nice and tight together.”, “Interlock those fingers and” “now as you press those palms together I want you to pull up your two hands like this, and bring up towards your face”, “now hold out your two fingers and look at the gap between those two fingers, I want you to imagine there is a magnet on each of those two fingers and in a moment those two fingers are going to come together and touch”.
That’s the script, what’s important is the steps, so ultimately you want to end up in the position where the subject has there two hands clasped together in front of their face with their fingers interlocked and their two thumbs crossed.
Now when they are in that position you want to have them hold out their two index fingers in front of themselves, now because it’s a physiological effect – the fingers have a natural tendency to come together because of the muscle tension in those fingers when they are out stretched, therefore you need to interrupt the subject when you have
them hold apart their two fingers, you need to say “hold those fingers, look at them”, “because they are going to move together all by themselves as if two powerful magnets is going to bring those fingers together all by themselves” you need to say this immediately when they hold out their fingers so when the fingers moves together they believe that you are responsible for the effect despite the fact that its physiological.
Now I know what you’re thinking, if hypnosis is genuine then why is a hypnotist using a muscular trick to
hypnotize people – this is why I disregarded the steeple fingers as a good hypnosis introductory routine for years but the truth is, the majority of people don’t really feel that much tension just because of the physical reasons. And even if those fingers do come together because of physical reasons you can usually notice other reasons why those fingers moved together so quickly.
So after delivering a great pre talk, as this is usually my first routine on a participant then you need to say this.
“So I want you to place your hands out in front of you and squeeze your hands together nice and tight. “ often I will demonstrate my bringing my palms together and
interlocking my fingers before I ask my subject to, the moment I do this I tense my palms and forearms up for a brief moment.
This delivers the impression that my hands are kind of stuck which is the exact impression that I want the subject
to almost copy when the subject brings their fingers together.
When their hands come together and their palms press and their fingers interlock I’m hoping that what happens is that they repeat the exact tense movement that I have just performed.
I then say “squeeze those hands together” and then I tell the subject to pull their arms up and to hold out their two index fingers I tell them “imagine there is a magnet on each of those two fingers and those fingers are going to move together all by themselves and in a moment they are going to come together and touch. “
This is the order in which you need to get someone’s hands setup if you want their fingers to come together. It might look casual but I’m doing this in a very particular way. Let me go through those particulars. (Step 1) I have him hold his hands out for a few seconds before I have him squeeze his hands together (step 2) if the subject doesn’t squeeze his hands like this in image two them I am in deep trouble and this is where 90% of the steeple fingers mistakes that I see hypnotists do come from, they come from this moment in the initial set up. I want to see those hands pressed together tightly. I want the subject to be ready… if we are going to do handclasp after this the subject needs to already feel what it’s like to have his hands stuck together and by him feeling that will allow him to quickly relate to my suggestions when I say they are stuck.
I tell them “those fingers are moving together all by themselves and in a moment they are going to come together and touch as if this finger is moving this way and this finger is moving that way, as if this hand is moving this way, and that hand is moving that way, and they keep on pressing up against themselves and get more tense”
“as you squeeze those hands together those fingers move together now all by themselves and as they come and touch” now their fingers come and actually touch I say
“it’s like ideas in the mind happen all by themselves that by you focusing on those fingers coming together or me mentioning the magnets on those fingers brought up the idea of magnets and made those fingers come together and touch”
The physiological reasons for the fingers coming together are because the muscles and nerves are tense, now because they are tense this puts a strain on their fingers when they are raised up that brings them together (step 3) this is the Index fingers stretched out, this is the moment when you say “those fingers are going to move together as if magnets are on those fingers, they are going to come together and touch.” The risk is that if you haven’t said that quickly enough, if you didn’t say that, then because of the muscle tension those fingers might move together before you have the chance to say it and therefore the subject won’t feel as if you’ve caused their response. I tend not to announce that I’m going to do this routine until the moment (step 3) happens. Now I tell him that those fingers are going to touch and move automatically. And in a moment they will touch and you will notice something strange, by having
the subject focus on the end goal, the moment those fingers touch it presupposes…. It makes it almost seem certain those fingers are about to touch. I talk in a fairly paced way with a certain level of sureness and authority because I want this to happen quickly and by speaking in that way imply that this is happening immediately. So now you tell the subject to look at their two fingers and that they are going to come together and touch, here you need to just keep on finding the words to talk. I want you to say things like “they just move all by themselves” “that’s right already”, “and when they touch you’re going to notice something strange” I can tell you some bad things to say
“you can feel the magnets in those fingers “the subject often can’t feel anything, “you’re not pretending” that’s a really bad thing to say until you get a solid binary
response because on some level the subject is slightly pretending one way or another. (See advanced sections of guide) every time the subject attempts to look at you or their friends tell them to look at the gap between those fingers as this will help them concentrate and focus on the happening… rather than distracting themselves to
thinking about other things.