The Practitioner’s Guide to Mirroring Hands

In this instructive and illuminating manual, Hill and Rossi show you how utilizing hand techniques can enable clients to unlock their problem-solving and mind body healing capacities to arrive at a resolution in a way that many other psychotherapies might not. The authors offer expert guidance on client-responsive applications and offer seven variations of the technique to give the practitioner confidence and comfort to work within and around the possibilities presented dynamically within a psychotherapy session.

Hill and Rossi punctuate their description of how Mirroring Hands is conducted with a range of illustrative casebook examples and stage-by-stage snapshots of the therapy in action. At times they provide scripted language prompts and images of hand movements that demonstrate the processes behind the techniques. These processes often take the client from disruption into a therapeutic reframe and on to integration, resolution, and a state of well-being.

This book begins by tracing the emergence of the Mirroring Hands approach from its origins in Rossi’s studies and experiences of therapeutic hypnosis with Milton H. Erickson, MD. We offer a transcription of an insightful discussion between Rossi and Hill as they challenge some of the established ways in which we approach psychotherapy, health, and well-being. Building upon this exchange of ideas, the authors define and demystify the nature of complex, non-linear systems, and skillfully unpack the three key elements of induction to therapeutic consciousness, focused attention, curiosity, and nascent confidence in a section dedicated to preparing the client for therapy.

Hill and Rossi offer guidance for the therapist by explaining therapeutic dialogue’s non-directive language principles, and through exploration of the four-stage creative cycle that facilitates the client’s capacity to access their natural problem-solving and mind body healing. They advocate that Mirroring Hands is not only a therapeutic technique, but also for all practitioners engaged in solution-focused therapy. Through its enquiry into the vital elements of client-cue observation, symptom-scaling, and rapport-building inherent in the therapist/client relationship, this book offers great wisdom and insight that will help the practitioner become more attuned to their clients’ inner worlds and communication patterns.

Hill and Rossi draw on a wealth of up-to-date neuroscientific research and academic theory to help bridge the gap between therapy’s intended outcomes and its measured neurological effects. Towards the book’s close we open the door to the study of quantum field theory to inspire reader’s curiosities in this expanding topic. As an ideal progression for those engaged in mindfulness and meditation this book offers heuristics for growing consciousness. It is written to enhance all mental health practitioners and is suitable for students of counseling, psychotherapy, psychology, hypnotherapy, and all others in professional practice.