I began teaching my SET course in Experiential Hypnosis last night. I started out with a review of some basics so we’re all comfortable with one another and are on the same page when we start moving into the more advanced and potentially extremely fun stuff.

Part of my set was to review some of the standard suggestibility tests . . . to use that I have a sequence similar to the Suggestibility Games for the Imagination set I have posted here before.

I was talking with Lorraine and Kaye at lunch today about some of the responses to the tests and Kaye was quite taken with the descriptions of the Stick Sticking to Hand, Hand Shaking, Name Amnesia, and Hand Tingling games/tests.

So . . . being the kind of dad I am . . . I handed her a pen and immediately went into the Fastening a Stick to Hands patter. Of course, it worked beautifully and she quite enjoyed the odd sensation of having a pen stuck between her fingers and no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t get the wretched thing to become unstuck from her hand. Then I did the countdown from three and snapped my fingers and pop it fell right from her hand.

These games are fun and demonstrate responsiveness of trance partners but they’re also good exercises for would-be hypnotists and hypnotists.

Now, when I teach these in my courses, I also signpost that any of these can be converted into an instant hypnosis induction. After all, if you can have someone immediately forgetting their name and unable to speak it within a thirty second suggestibility test, you know they’ll respond to any induction you please so you’d might as well leverage the test and convert it into the instant induction it already is.

Besides . . . these really are fun.