“Fetch Timo!” shouted all the children. Up until then challenging my Year Six pupils to arm wrestling matches had been good fun, but Timo – a member of the other Year Six class who had now appeared in my classroom – was built on an entirely different scale to your average Year Six pupil. He looked at me through his thick glasses with a friendly gaze, sat down opposite me and held out a giant paw. I could think of little worse than being beaten at arm wrestling by a Year Six pupil, but could not help wondering whether there was any way for me to win. I did not want to lose, but there was no avoiding the situation when his arm was already stretched out in front of me. What should I do? I imagined that my arm was a large steel bracket, welded and bolted like the massive steel roof girders which tower over vast railway station concourses. I no longer saw an arm; I only saw a girder staying rigidly in position up in the roof. Timo pressed his hand against the steel girder for a long, long time. When his arm finally trembled, I very slowly tipped the girder over and let it topple under its enormous weight, burying Timo’s arm below the roof of the station concourse. I had won.

“Arm Wrestling” describes a method of muscular stiffening with simultaneous analgesia. The general trance phenomenon of catalepsy is heightened and strengthened by an additional visual/imaginative suggestion, and a similar procedure is followed for the numbing of any pain; as well as the fundamental anaesthetic effect of tranceinduced relaxation, it is implied that a steel girder cannot feel pain. There are certain risks and side effects involved with this story; it took three weeks for the damaged muscle fibres in my arm to heal and the pain to disappear.

(From: Stefan Hammel: Handbook of Therapeutic Storytelling. Sories and Metaphors in Psychotherapy, Child and Family Therapy, Medical Treatment, Coaching and Supervision, Routledge 2019)