Videos of Milton Erickson

by Bob Walsh

There aren’t many videos of Milton Erickson on the web, but I’ve tried to list them all here. If you know of other videos, please let me know about it by commenting below.

Milton Erickson Video With Trance

The part where you can see Milton H. Erickson in action starts at 1 minute 20 seconds, you might want to skip the intro:

This is pretty much the best video footage of Erickson you can find on the web – in the past there used to be more videos of him, but they’ve been taken down because of complaints by the copyright owners.

Milton Erickson Video Demonstration

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Here’s a video of a live demonstration by Milton H. Erickson from 1977. The interesting part starts around 1 minute into the video.

And at 1:40 he starts to talk about hypnosis:

The first thing about hypnotic techniques is the attitude of the operator. He should manifest an air of confidence. He should have no doubt at all. His entire bearing should be one of complete confidence and full expectation. There is no reason to be doubtful about yourself, because you’re not doing the trance induction yourself… your patient is responding by going into a trance.

And it’s all up to the patient, not to the operator. The operator can only furnish a fruitful climate for a trance to give.

So you uncross your legs, …….. your arms ……..

And now look ….. being up there…..

look in that direction.

You don’t need to talk.

You don’t need to move.

And while you’re not moving, not talking, I’m going to remind you of something that happened a long time ago. When you first went to school, and where confronted with the task of learning, to write the letters of the alphabet, it looked to you like a horrendous task. A very great big job, very difficult. All these different shapes and forms. ….. back there, printed letters, written letters, capital letters, small letters. Now slowly, gradually you form a visual mental image, a visual mental image located somewhere in your brain, located there permanently, while you didn’t know that it is being located in your brain permanently. And while I’ve been talking to you, your respiratory rate has changed, your heart rate has changed, your muscle tonus has changed, your blood pressure has changed, your motor reflexes have changed. And next I say the word “now” your eyes will close now. And stay closed. And I’m going to give you a task to do. Your hands going to lift up toward your face. All the way up. All the way up. All the way up. All the way…

…. improved learning…

Unfortunately the sound quality isn’t too good, so there might be some errors in transcription, but we tried to do the best job possible.

Milton Erickson Video: Wizard of the Desert

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Now this is not a video where you see much of Erickson in action – there are just a couple of very short segments (around 10 seconds) of him working, but it is still nonetheless a very interesting videos, because many of the people who worked with him and many of his friends share their experiences and opinions of Erickson.

Milton Erickson Docu


Again, this is a video about Erickson – lots of information about Milton H. Erickson, but not so much footage of him at work. Yet, still an interesting video.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ericksonian hypnosis, I highly suggest you claim your complimentary copy of the Hypnosis Secrets course. Simply go to the top of the page and put your name and email into the field, and you’ll get free lessons and information about Ericksonian hypnosis.

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