• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 356 0

now, all ten fingers relaxed and warm. You may leave your eyes open if you wish, or close them at any time. It does not matter in the least, though many people find it helpful to concentrate on a single object" ( ... one pink plaster rose on a pale yellow ceiling ... ) "as they walk down the ten steps. Noises from the room or your body's little reactions will not distract you, just nudge you a bit further towards the next step. We are at ten now, like your ten fingers, I want you to feel them one at a time as I count them, beginning with one." I touched the last knuckle of each finger in a slow cadence, numbering each one in turn, but I broke the rhythm after nine. An instant after I should have touched the last finger, it twitched ever so slightly, and I smiled to myself. This lady would not only walk through a fountain; she would probably undress first if I asked her. Intelligent, well-defended people are often the easiest to manipulate. I made a mental note to add a caution before I brought her back up from the trance.

"Very well, you are now fully relaxed, and you understand what we're doing, and in fact, when we're finished, you'll be able to do it all yourself. It's actually a very useful thing to know— for when you're going to the dentist, especially. I once had nine teeth worked on, and by walking down the steps first, I didn't have to be bothered by the discomfort; I could answer the dentist's questions, and afterwards I didn't have any pain, because my body had already acknowledged it. So you can see what a useful thing it is, and very easy, really, you've already made the step to nine, a small step, very easy, wasn't it? Just that bit more relaxed, your hands feel a bit heavier— feel your thumb joint, how heavy it is?— heavy and warm, even the tips of your fingers, down to nine, just under the surface now, and your face is beginning to relax now, your eyes and your mouth, like the feeling you get after a day of physical work, when you can sit back and relax, very tired, but a good tired, a satisfying tired, a tired that you feel at eight o'clock at night, in front of a warm fire with a hot drink, after eight hours out in the fresh air, but it's evening now, and you can relax and be satisfied."

Hypnotism is all rhythm and sensitivity, and I guided her down, never taking my eyes from her, never mentioning the night we were aiming for, always building her confidence and relaxation. In twenty minutes, we had passed through the yawning and twitching phases and were at four. Her eyes had fluttered closed. Tommy O'Rourke had not moved.

"Four, a nice balanced number, four limbs, four corners to a square. A dog has four legs, and I'd like you to do something in a minute, with your right hand, as we move down to three, only three steps now, three points in a triangle." I talked about three for a while; then, when she was firmly settled, I said, "I'd like you to make your right thumb meet your right middle finger in a circle, but you don't want to rouse yourself to do it; you want to let the two fingers do it, let the two tips of the two fingers come together all by themselves because it's the most natural thing for them to do. You can feel how they want to touch, can't you, if you just allow them. Just think about how it would feel to make a circle with those two fingers."

I spoke very slowly now, increasing the silences between the phrases. I was myself more than halfway into a trance, and as I spoke, I could hear another voice in my ear, saying the words I was about to pronounce, a woman's light voice with a slight German accent, speaking to a severely traumatised adolescent whose problems were considerably greater than those of Sarah Chessman's. The voice in my mind fell silent, and I stopped talking for a minute and watched the beginnings of the involuntary muscle control in her hand, jerky at first, as her unconscious mind took control of the muscles of the thumb and finger and brought them together, slowly, inexorably, into the light joining that would be like an iron link to pull apart. O'Rourke watched