“This healer was so wonderful… Like no one has ever understood me before.”
“This psychic basically explained my entire life without me even speaking.”
Maybe you’ve come across these sentences.
Maybe you’ve even uttered some of them yourself.
It seems that the person in front of you has some kind of “superpower”:
They find the things even you don’t know.
They interpret what you have inside your mind.
They trace all the way back to your heartbreaks of childhood…
However, what if most of it is just the art of reading people’s non-verbal communication combined with suggestion and pretending it’s magic?PSYC
What if, instead of magic, a very intelligent Clever Hans effect is helping the healer?
A smart horse and a human blind spot
Back in the early 1900s in Germany, there was a horse: Clever Hans.
The owner of the horse said that Hans could do math addition and subtraction, and even answer questions correctly when the audience was watching.
People would ask math questions and Hans would correctly tap his hoof the number of times.
No one could believe what they were witnessing:
“The horse knows math!”
After a while, the truth came out: The horse was not really able to do math.
The person asking the question, however, would…
Unconsciously alter their body language as the correct number was getting closer: Their facial expression, breathing, posture, tiny muscle movements…
Hans would detect these tiniest changes and sense the moment when he had to stop tapping.
Humans thought they were seeing an extraordinary miracle of intelligence.
But, in fact, something much less complex was taking place:
There was no actual knowledge, there was a great ability of observation and a constant flow of very subtle signals from humans.
The term of the Hans effect is used to refer to this very phenomenon in psychology and science.
“How did this healer read me like that?” what’s really going on?
Let’s return to your life.
Suppose, a healer is what you need.
Without telling them anything, you enter the room.
Words they use might be:
“Looking at you one would say you are strong, but I know that inside you are very tired.”
“The thing is, it comes from your childhood, the family, and that is still not completely healed.”
“You find it very hard to trust others, but at the same time, you don’t show it.”
Be honest:
How many times would these phrases actually apply to a lot of people?
Thinking of these sentences, people respond differently from one another, among ten people, at least seven or eight will say,
“I am amazed how you have described me.”
Though it is not only about which generic statements are more plausible.
The real magician of this trick is here:
While the person giving the reading is expressing these things, he is at the same time decoding your immediate reactions:
* Are your eyes opening a little wider?
* Does your face get expressionless or more gentle?
* Are your hands clenching or loosening?
* Are you moving toward the person? Is there a slight shaking of your lips?
Even when you think that you are not showing anything, your body is doing the talking.
And the other person who is very perceptive is noticing this without fail.
After that, they don’t just stop with one sentence.
They dive a bit deeper.
That “I’m shocked” expression just appeared on your face, and that reaction gives them another hint:
“Alright, don’t stop. You’re really hit the point.”
Clever Hans is back on the scene again at this point:
The horse got the idea when to stop tapping from the human’s body language.
The healer picks up “which next” from your body language.
And you end up thinking this is pure magic, energy, or some higher-level intuition.
These people aren’t dumb. They are actually very smart…
Let’s get something clear:
Most of these healers, mediums, psychics, coaches, energy masters are not simple or naïve.
Instead of that:
* They have a very high level of perception of people.
* They can not miss any of the micro-expressions, changes in tone of the voice, breathing, posture; and they evaluate everything.
* The majority of them have gotten this skill through having a long pipeline of clients over the years.
In some aspects, this can be compared to body language engineering.
It is quite imperceptible.
It demands the observer to have very sharp skills.
At times it can even be considered as an innate skill:
Some of them are not aware completely how they do it, they simply refer to it as a feeling or something that comes to me.
The trouble begins here:
This power, when combined with a mystical sleeve such as:
“I am endowed with special powers, I am the chosen one, I see what others cannot,” you become less and less in control of your own power, mind, and intuition.
“If they see me more clearly than I see myself, then they should be the ones making the decisions.”
That is the point where things get very risky.
Everyday Clever Hans moments
The Clever Hans effect is not only limited to healing sessions.
There are tiny instances of it hidden all around in our daily routine:
* The aunt reading your coffee cup
When she says, “You’re hurt but you’re hiding it,”
most of the time it is that she is already seeing the grief that is there on your face.
* The relationship coach
When they say, “There’s an invisible wall between you and your partner,”
they can understand this from your staring at your phone and not looking into the eyes while talking about them.
* The salesperson
When you redress slightly, they do a discount immediately to get you back again.
* Your close friend
When they say, “I could hear from your voice that you’re not okay,”
here, too, is the same mechanism but on a smaller scale.
The distinguishing factors are:
* Your friend normally does that for loving you.
* The rest of them might be using this skill for making money, gaining power, or creating dependence.
Does this mean that no healer ever truly helps?
No.
There are people who, in fact, help.
Relief can sometimes actually come from a session, a conversation, or a touch.
However, seeing what is essential is this:
The thing that most often does the healing is not some “mystical superpower.”
Most healing comes from:
* Someone is really listening to you.
* Someone makes room for you and takes you seriously.
* Someone helps you to understand more fully the emotions that you cannot completely articulate.
Simply put, a very large part of the healing power is:
The feeling of being seen, understood, and given hope.
Instead of celebrating that human experience the healer just rebrands it as
“I’m the chosen one, I have unique powers, only I can fix you” which is precisely the point where the Clever Hans effect + ego show come together.
A mind shrouded in darkness: Who is really under the spell?
“Who is really under the spell?”
The truthful answer is:
In most cases, it is the person’s own mind that is being affected.
* The more you express, “They understood me so deeply,”
* The more you think, “Without them, I can’t move forward,”
* The more you feel, “I should ask them what to do next,” the more you suppress your own intuition, judgment, and thinking.
Slowly but surely, you find yourself embracing this idea:
“They see what I can’t see in myself.”
This is the point where your mind starts wrapping itself in darkness.
It is as if your inner light is no longer sufficient, you keep expecting someone to give you a flashlight from the outside.
However, in truth:
* The insight is still coming from your brain.
* The wish for healing is arising from your own soul.
* The bravery to make a move is coming from your own heart.
The one before you can be the reason for all this.
They can facilitate it, reflect it, articulate it.
However, they are not a “sorcerer”.
At most, they can be a keen observer and a skillful storyteller.
Ask yourself: whose care are you putting your mind under?
Next time:
You say, “This healer read me like a book,”
or you can’t help but wonder, “This medium was absolutely correct,” then don’t just stop with these two statements, add more questions on top of that:
“How much of the body, the face, the voice of mine were giving them the clues?”
“How many of those statements were so vague that they could refer to almost any person?”
“At this moment, do I really feel my own power, or am I getting more and more reliant on this person?”
Recognizing the Clever Hans effect is not at all a way to laugh at others.
It is rather about not leaving your own mind, your own intuition, your own level of energy behind.
Because in the end of the day:
It’s true that someone might have understood you very well.
It’s true that they might have been the ones to help you.
However, the bigger question is this:
“While all this is going on, who is the one that has the control of my mind?”
Before you respond, take a moment here and body check as well.
Because it may be that, the one who heals you the most honestly is what you happen to sense at that very time.