The Either/Or Construction for Asking for Consent

I bought this delightful erotic hypnosis video by Lex of entrancement.co.uk, and there was a nice moment towards the end that showed a smooth way to ask for consent. His model, Ziva Knight, had been having a very sexy shower where she had gone in and out of trance and the shower gel, by his suggestion, was arousing on her skin. She was obviously getting turned on. After a while (and when she was not in trance) he asked:

Tell me, do you want this to feel sexual - do you want a climax - or do you want to cool down now and just enjoy the rest of your shower?

And, notably, she said, "Cool down". And he launched into his "cool down" patter.

I like this either/or construction, because it gives someone an easy out, which I think is so important for meaningful and easy negotiation. Women in particular are trained that it's a big deal to say "no", and if Ziva was asked only, "do you want a climax?" and wasn't skilled at deflecting the question, they might have felt pressured.

And how it was done was just as important as the form: he spoke in a neutral voice, giving both possibilities equal emphasis, and so conveying that he didn't care whether it went one way or the other. I know Lex is into hypnotic orgasms, and has included it in shoots where the model is comfortable with the idea, but he did a good job of hiding it. And then when she chose the "cool down" option, he accepted it immediately and without discussion, like she had just chosen between his offers of toast or waffles. (also a good reminder that even if someone is visibly turned on, that doesn't mean they necessarily want to have an orgasm, or even continue with the sexy sensations, and it shouldn't be taken as consent to escalate)

The either/or approach takes a little bit of practice and care, since you have to project that both choices are equally ok, and the "escape route"  should be something that actually is in the other person's mind (which might take a couple of tries). Often it can be something simple like, "or do you just want to keep enjoying this trance for now" or "would you like to come out of trance and take a break". Even though it's very tricky to as for permission from someone in a trance, as well as in the spacy state of mind between trances, and it certainly shouldn't be done for the big things, during a particular session, I think the either/or approach is an effective tool for tuning into what someone is in the mood for, even while hypnotized. All of Lex's videos that I've seen do a great job of modelling erotic hypnosis consent, with frequent use of either/or and many other techniques to make his models feel comfortable and in control.

Don't Pressure People to Have Hypnotic Orgasms

This valuable essay has been showing up on my Fetlife friends feed, Don’t pressure me to come. by Vonka. She writes:

It’s hard to tell your partner over and over “No, its okay, I’m good without one” when they take it as a challenge. You know they’ll be sad or disappointed if you don’t come. It can be way too much pressure. ... Even if I’d like an orgasm, when I tell you I’m not going to for whatever reason, please don’t insist I do anyway. It’s not about your ego. It’s not about a challenge.

(The comments are extremely valuable too) This makes me think how grateful I am that I read similar advice more than 10 years ago, before I had any sexual experience to speak of, in an entry on the amazing blog Why Your Wife Won’t Have Sex with You. Because it takes that long to absorb the lesson: that people, especially people with vaginas, have a huge amount of variance in how easy it is for them to have orgasms, and how important orgasms are to them. Looking back on my sexual history, it might be the most important piece of sex advice I ever had. Not respecting this reality will lead to anxiety, frustration, and a pulling away.

(Another good analogy is pressure on people to squirt, as described in this Fetlife writing by Ferrett Steinmeltz)

I think it’s important to bring up here, because I don’t always see this acknowledged where erotic hypnosis is discussed. For example, Wiseguy provides excellent tips for encouraging hands-free orgasms, but doesn’t bring up the possibility that some people might never have them. Considering that some partners I have had require quite a bit of intense physical stimulation, that seems like something that should be considered. He then goes on to describe many fun things to do with hypnotic orgasms, like “orgasm pills” or using them to reinforce suggestions, which seems like jumping up several dozen levels in terms of aptitude. And Wiseguy’s stuff is on the high end of grounded and trustworthy - many less careful teachers and performers make hypnotic orgasms look like something that should be easy, and a necessary part of erotic hypnosis play. (Peter Masters is the exception, although I think he goes too far in advising to stay away from orgasm talk altogether)

We as hypnotists get advised to speak with more confidence than may be justified, and I understand why: the unconscious understands confidence, and the unconscious is what will be making the suggestions work. By acting like you have no doubts, it increases the probability of success. But this is a case where it can actually hurt the situation. Pressuring someone to have an orgasm when it's not going to happen can kill their buzz, make an orgasm or other kinds of pleasure harder to access, and, if in a trance, bring them out of it. Making someone feel bad for not responding the way you want isn’t just shitty; if you’re a heterosexual man, it’s shitty in a very typical way.

Of course, I love it when a partner has an orgasm with me. It makes me feel reassured that I’m doing something right, and I’m into it aesthetically. If it’s a hypnotic orgasm, in a D/s context, it can give me a power thrill (I’m very into the idea of controlling someone’s pleasure). What the mind turns into during the moment of orgasm is not so far from the overwhelmed mush that I find so appealing in deep hypnosis. But there are lots of other things I love in sex and hypnosis too. And you will note those were purely selfish reasons. It’s not just about me, and it’s not about achievements or checking off boxes: what it should be about is pleasure and connection, and creating unique and amazing memories in the time you have together.

I will say that hypnosis is about expanding what the hypnotee thought their mind was capable of. To that extent I don’t think there’s anything wrong with experimenting with orgasmic response. IF - and only if - your partner is into the idea. Although I’m against the idea of hypnotic suggestions to change or “fix” your partner long term, when it comes to individual orgasms, relaxation and focus are things that might help, and things that hypnosis is good for. With the help of techniques from the likes of Wiseguy, and especially with practice by the hypnotee, more people are able to have hands-free orgasms on command than thought they could. But it should be presented as just one of many activities that are available. And if you run out of sexy things to play with when hypnosis is in the mix, you are seriously lacking in imagination.

Here are my guidelines for hypnosis and orgasms, which I wish I had always followed - I have screwed up with partners in the past, which is why I’m thinking so much about this. It shouldn’t need to be said, but these are in the context of a hypnotic relationship with an agreed-upon sexual dimension, as per rule #7 of my hypotist ethics.

1. Don’t bring up hypnotic orgasms until you have gotten to know your partner’s orgasms. Ideally by learning, firsthand, how they like to get off outside of trance. You also want to understand how much they care about orgasms, how many and when they like to have them, and whether they have insecurities about them - maybe from a past partner who pressured them. You also might want to ask if they have had bad or good experiences with orgasming on command (not just a hypnosis thing as I have learned recently). Of course it’s different if your partner brings up the topic! In the case where this happened with me, it wasn’t a big surprise that she turned out to be talented at hypnotic orgasms.

2. If you have the go-ahead, especially in the early occasions use permissive, open-ended language. That is, phrase your hypnotic suggestions without a specific expectation, that it will definitively happen at a certain time. Instead merely introduce the possibility of having an orgasm, phrases like, “as your arousal grows you might find that your body wants the pleasure of an orgasm, and it can have it, at any time it wishes.” If you do it right, then it will plant the seeds that can lead to an orgasm if one is within reach, and not make it a big deal if not.

3. Before giving someone a direct command to come, be very sure they will. I will ask, “Are you ready to come?” or “Nod your head when you’re ready.” This seems to work - even in trance people know where they’re at. Of course as you get to know a partner better, you can get to the point of feeling confident you see the signs without asking. But I think it’s so important to avoid giving someone the feeling of failing at an orgasm suggestion.

4. Mention that hypnotic orgasms may feel different than you expect (thought clearly identifiable), just as clitoral and g-spot orgasms feel different. And just like the different types of physical orgasms, it may take practice to find your hypnotic orgasm, and more practice to start having really good ones.

I will share with you another reason this issue is personal for me: I have trouble having hypnotic orgasms. At one time I was listening to two mp3 files repeatedly from different web-based hypnotists that were intended to produce hands-free orgasms. It was always a pleasant and very sexy experience, but when nothing happened at the end I would feel like a failure. Now I know that there are a lot of things more personalized hypnosis could do better, and I’m not ruling out that it might happen for me some day (fortunately I don’t think of it anymore as “the ultimate test” of whether hypnosis is real). But I don’t want my partners to suffer from the same thing, of a few seconds of suggestions ruining the afterglow of a very hot time.

Guest post: Kinetic Sculptures and Trance

Now it can be told (a year and a bit after the original post): this occurred at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA, and we tranced in front of a bunch of different kinetic sculptures. The lovely one my partner wrote about, and which gave me the whole idea when I saw it on a previous trip, is called Ialu by John Douglas Powers. Here's a video of it.

This was my first "art trancing", and the first I've ever heard of, so I'm pleased I got to do it some more at the MFA, and even inspired my friends djpynchon and Lee Allure to do it at the Art Institute of Chicago, which also has an awesome writeup.
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I'm always dying to know what my trance partner is experiencing during hypnosis, and so I always enjoy the post-trance chat almost as much as the hypnosis itself. But it's rare that I get a beautiful description, in writing, of how it felt. The backstory is that I had the idea of taking this partner into trance while she was looking at a kinetic art sculpture, and letting her lose herself in it for an extended period of time. All kinks have pluses and minuses (not that we get to choose our kinks), and while hypnosis is hard to do in noisy environments, and often isn't too exciting for others to watch, unlike say flogging it has the plus that it can easily be done outside and in public places without getting into trouble. Or disturbing others at all: to anyone giving us a second glance it would just have looked like someone who was really, really into the art. As was her far less still companion, who sometimes leaned over to murmur into her ear. We began by finding a quiet corner and doing a few short trances, using her reinduction trigger, which included practicing standing while in trance (in heels!) and staying in trance with eyes open. Then we sat in front of the sculpture and I gave her the trigger. On her request, we went back for seconds later, meaning that she might have stared at it for as much as 20 minutes in total - that has to be some kind of record for appreciating that piece of art!

Here is my trance partner's Fetlife post about the experience, reprinted with her permission. This was so compelling, not to mention immensely gratifying, for me to read. What a great way to spend an afternoon.

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Kinetic Sculptures and Trance

My body is relaxed. It's beyond relaxed. It's weight, it's matter, it doesn't belong to me anymore. It's on the ground and I am in the clouds. The reeds swayed back and forth, back and forth, the clouds rolled through the sky dark then light. Rolling clouds, swimming through tall, tan reeds. My eyes rarely blinking, engulfed in the sculpture. The passers by don't phase me, they don't disturb my trance. I was in the reeds, I was in the clouds. I could feel my body sway with them, trusting my subconscious to keep me upright. I felt the storm coming, the darkness approaching, the birds chirping wildly to warn me. I felt the reeds swish along my skin, enveloping my body. I was in a field somewhere far away.

Most intense, full body hypnosis experience to date. Incredible.

Now You’re Playing with Power (A Hypno Freeze Scene)

"The game is very simple. I ask you to do something, and you do it."
 - Slow Surrender, Cecilia Tan

I'm completely confused about what D/s is at the moment. I've read books about it, talked to people in long term D/s relationships and watched them interact, and had a fair number of what you could call D/s scenes of my own, but everyone seems to have a different definition, and many I don't relate to. All I have to go by is what sends an electric current up my spine and down to my cock, and the common denominator seems to be power and control. For many years, my kinky fantasies were all about mind control: making women do sexual things, usually through some fantastical means like telepathy, and shaping their perception and responses. (Now I know that many of those fantasies fall under the heading of con-noncon rather than D/s - that's something for a future entry.)

Then I found out that there are women who enjoy being given orders in a sexual context, and that changed everything. It took one particular partner in my late 20s to make me understand, way deep down, that she got a massive sexual charge from the idea of obedience, from having responsibility taken away, from having demands placed on her and earning praise by living up to them (or “punishment” when she doesn’t fulfill the challenges - usually rigged ones). With her I learned that I could inspire a wonderful squishy altered state of submissiveness, and my dominant side grew as I learned how to push those buttons more and more skillfully and take what I wanted. It was incredibly exciting to, say, demand that she strip naked and suck me off, knowing that not only was I getting exactly what I wanted at that moment, but that she was getting off on being directed in that way.

Although this felt intense, even dangerous, for both of us, it was a far cry from a 24/7 master/slave relationship: every scene had a beginning and end with an explicit return to being equals, and we also had hot non-kinky sex. I don't have many models for this, whether in books or blog posts, besides Slow Surrender by Cecilia Tan - a book I wish I could forcibly swap for 50 Shades of Grey whenever I see someone holding it (and I have read every word of that messed up book). Though it has the same premise as 50 Shades, as mandated by her publisher - young handsome billionaire courts a female grad student he randomly met - the emphasis is on consent, with the heroine being invited and enticed into power games ("Are you bored? Tired of the rat race? Looking for a little adventure?") but always given an explicit out ("If you don't want to play, that's fine," he added. "I'll leave and never come back if you say no.") I love the early scenes such as that one, where he's essentially teaching her how exciting and comfortable it can be to follow instructions and be sexually controlled. Even though the instructions aren’t explicitly sexual at first, the fact she is carrying them out means that she has willingly stepped into another world, that looks like ours on the surface but is full of dark and delicious possibilities.

That’s a digression. Anyway, although it's not as big of a commitment as full time Dom/sub relationships, to have these type of scenes still requires plenty of trust and mutual comprehension, which doesn't come right away (well, except in fiction) - not to mention the difficulty of finding people who have that interest. So I've only experienced flickers of that over the last couple of years. But now thanks mostly to the Boston kink scene it's happening again, more play with submissive partners. I try to keep acutely aware that each person's kink is a unique fingerprint, and each person has a different view of D/s and what they want from a dom, some of which I can't fulfill - for example, anyone who's met me knows I'm not about to dominate or intimidate my partners physically in any but the most symbolic ways. However, I'm finding overlap with some partners when it comes to mental domination, and that's fantastic - and in particular the eroticism is turbocharged for me by the newfound incorporation of hypnosis.

So I want to give an example of how D/s and hypnosis go together. I like hypnosis without D/s plenty, but together it’s like chocolate and peanut butter, or frozen montreal  bagels and a toaster. In an earlier entry http://deeperforme.blogspot.com/2013/10/reinduction-triggers-are-greatest.html I talked about the sexy power kick I get from reinduction triggers, taking partners into trance at a moment's notice, and how much I enjoy when I have permission to do that in a playful, surprising way. Recently I experienced a spin on that, with a very submissive partner  (she not so subtly hinted her interest in submission on an early date by casually kneeling on the floor beside my chair) who shall be Michelle on this blog. We got a strong "freeze in place” post-hypnotic trigger working for her. I benefitted from watching MrDream masterfully work with a freeze trigger for a novice hypnotee at Deepmind Darkwood, which also helped to convince me that there is an enormous amount of fun to be had with such a simple posthypnotic standby.

The nature of the trigger was that Michelle would find herself aware but unable to move, except for breathing and blinking and adjustments for her own safety (e.g. balance), whenever I said the word "freeze", and this would continue until I said the word "melt". When I would touch a body part, it would temporarily melt so I could reposition it, and then freeze again when I let go. When I brought her out of the trance, my heart was racing. She was sitting in my armchair, looking centered and normal, and I was sitting facing her. After we exchanged a few words, I couldn’t stand postponing finding out, so I said, "FREEZE."

It would have looked very unremarkable from the outside, but I was elated watching Michelle sit there very still. After only a few moments I said, "MELT", and she immediately started to shift in the chair. She smiled and said, "That was cool!" My previous attempts to get freezing in place to work (both as a hypnotist and as a hypnotee!) had failed, so I was incredibly pleased. It felt at least partially real for her. Both a game, and not a game. She could have broken the spell at any time, but chose not to.

So we played. While she was in the armchair I had her put her arms and hands in different positions, and repeatedly froze her and melted her. I stroked her breasts and the side of her neck while she was frozen and helpless. Then I had her stand up, and put her hands behind her on her ass, and froze her in that position. I walked around her and admired her form from every side. I stood in front of her and melted her, and we made out passionately, losing a lot of clothes in the process. While we had our arms around each other I said “freeze” into her ear, and extracted myself, leaving her arms circling the air. Then I hugged her from behind and melted her again.

I had Michelle kneel on the floor and lace her hands behind her head. I froze her in that position, and took more time to admire her and feel her up. Then I froze her on her hands and knees, and I flipped up her skirt and ran my hand over her ass and mound. When I melted her she bucked against my hand. We were both wildly turned on - I felt like I was vibrating. I said, “I’d like to fuck you right here,” and she caught her breath and said, “Maybe you should.”

The power games didn’t stop while we were fucking. I called out “FREEZE” a few minutes in, and her hips immediately stopped pulsing and pushing back on me. I gripped her and pumped in and out, with her unable to reciprocate or resist. When I melted her a few seconds later, she was even more desperate than before. I still have scabs on my knees from the friction on my cheap carpet.

There was more to that night, but that was a unique and mindblowing experience for me as a dominant and a hypnotist: it might be my first time truly being both at once. When I was waiting with Michelle for her train, as a train roared by in the opposite direction I leaned over to her ear and said “freeze.” I left her that way for less than 10 seconds, but to see her outside of my bedroom and fully dressed in nice overcoat, gloves and handbag, but frozen helplessly in place on the platform, under my control, with no one around the wiser, was incredibly hot to me. And to her too: when released she said, “are you trying to turn me on for the ride home?”

Maybe you don’t find something interesting or sexy in this game. Your brain has to be bent in a very particular way. But mine is, and I’m so happy that it’s not the only one.

Lex's Many Flavours of Trance

I found this gem on the personal blog of Lex, who sells very sexy videos featuring real hypnosis, with almost everything left in (including failures!) so you can actually learn from it, at entrancement.co.uk. It's in a very valuable post on How to hypnotize others. He's making the point that there are a lot of ways that someone might want trance to feel, and it's your job to be sensitive to that so you can "be the hypnotist of their dreams." Flavours of trance:

Safe & Protected
Aroused & Erotic
Blank & Mindless
Dazed & Drugged
Playful & Naughty
Captive & Helpless
Detached & Passive
Disarmed & Seduced
Beautiful & Sensuous
Emotionless & Empty
Empowered & Focused
Submissive & Obedient
Energised & Meditative
Objectified & Impersonal
Brainwashed & Mind Controlled

A similar terrific resource is his Hypnotic Induction Questionnaire, a survey for how people like to feel in trance and how they want their hypnotist to behave (e.g. "Protective & Benevolent", "Evil & Controlling"), plus a selection of settings ranging from "Lying on a sun-drenched beach" to "Brainwashed through technology".  (the results are interesting: yay to programmed and controlled, boo to both drained and energized)

At this point, I'm not really skilled enough to be in control of the feel of my trances. I'm using everything I've got to achieve liftoff and make some sexy things happen. But what these are great for is sparking the imagination of potential hypnotees and uncovering potential hypnofetishism they never knew - it's fun to send them the list and ask them, "which of these sound good to you?" And for those with some experience, these can help them to become critical consumers of trance and able to articulate what they like. I do aim for that kind of control over the flavour of the trance someday, so that the hypnosis I do with one partner might appear radically different than that with another. This is happening organically to a great extent, as I carefully learn what each of my partner's respond to and what they enjoy, but I want to stay aware of the full palette.

As a postscript I'd like to share two things that amused me from last week's post-Boston Hypnomunch practice: "Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors and you will go to sleeple." (from MST3k) "The number 4 has been replaced by the number cheese." (that's due to oneEyedstranger)

Random Tips and Phrases from Deepmind Darkwood

The time since Deepmind Darkwood has been packed with amazing erotic hypnosis experiences, including plenty of firsts, and some of the sexiest things ever. But I haven't figured out yet how I want to talk about them - even though myself of 12 months ago would be dying to read every detail, I'm hesitant, not just because of my partners' privacy but also mine. And when I try to write them in my head it comes out as gross bragging. I think progressing to the state of mind where I don't particularly want to brag is what is allowing these ridiculously hot experiences to happen, e.g. not thinking of people as "conquests", and doing things for inherent pleasure and excitement rather than approval. (though clearly I'm not yet evolved beyond wanting to allude to the existence of such activities!) Which is ironic, in a zen paradox way, and makes me infer that the craziest sexual things that are going on everywhere are things you will never hear about. In any case most of these scenes and milestones will probably come out in some form in posts about particular topics.

Every scene has been enhanced by things I learned at Deepmind Darkwood, and now that I've typed my random notes (many of them from Lady Ru'etha's class) I thought I would share them here, many in the form of great little phrases I want to incorporate into my practice.

• "I wonder if you can imagine..."
• "The sound of your own hypnotized voice can send you deeper"
• "If you allow yourself to accept that suggestion"
• "I would like to invite you to realize"
• "If you're so deep you don't feel like talking, squeeze my hand once."
• People who work with numbers don't like letting go of the numbers
• "You can allow the numbers to slow down"
• Encourage people to say "green" if something really works for them. (Lady Ru'etha promoting use of green-yellow-red safewords in hypno)
• Lady Ru'etha about her experience of hypnosis: I know every fucking thing that's happening, I just don't care.
• Three knobs to go deeper: one that's how deep you can go by yourself, turn it all the way up. One that's the two of us together. One that's the hypnotist: let your hand drop and go as deep as I can send you
• Share your happies with your hypnotist (your hypnotist will use them, e.g. if you like rollercoasters, she will always incorporate them)
• "It's too much like work to open them"
• "Even though your eyes are closed, you can still see my eyes"
• Other voices sound like the parents voices in Charlie Brown
• "Even though you know rationally..."
• Always say "that's right", other lavish reinforcement.
• Use the phrase "I give you permission" a lot
• Cuddling after sex but still in trance - a great time for praise and feedback

This One Time, at Camp Mindfuck...

I saw the very first trance to occur at Deepmind Darkwood, aka Camp Mindfuck, when Lee Allure briskly walked over to Amitus with a moistened piece of paper towel that she said was chloroform to him, and held it to his mouth, causing him to immediately and delightedly fade out (Amitus has written about in his lovely blog post about the whole thing). And I went, holy crap, this is going to be every bit as crazy awesome as I hoped it would be.

I'll be thinking and talking about Deepmind Darkwood for months, but for now I want to write down some impressions, the kind of thing I would have wanted to know about it if I hadn't been lucky enough to be able to go. It's amazing to think it was less than 48 hours, friday afternoon to sunday afternoon, all taking place in and around a 19th century lodge house in western massachusetts. It has those cool wide floorboards that I've only seen before in a very old hotel in Conchord, when they were still using whole tree trunks. Cozy wood stoves, rocking chairs and couches.

And 23 people, all seriously into erotic hypnosis. It's hard to convey how moving it was to be around them. I was like the bee girl in the blind melon video. I wanted to spend every second exchanging information and soaking in the hypno culture (e.g. t-shirt slogans, bad jokes, dance/trance puns...). It was too bad that my introvert circuit breaker flipped about 3 hours into the first day, and I had to keep taking little breaks to reset it, but I loved the vibe of the people there. There were plenty of Doctor Who and xkcd references, but the nerddom was worn lightly, not as a way to exclude people, as was the spirituality. It's still amazing to me to be around a lot of adults who can build an evening's merriment around something other than alcohol. It was extremely rare to see a smartphone being checked, and there was that feeling of radical acceptance that I've had elsewhere in the kink community: we know your dark secrets, and we actually like you better for them.

So I felt very comfortable there, and thrilled to see people being casually popped in and out of trance around me (one of my objectives was wonderfully satisfied this weekend, to see real live hypno D/s relationships in action), but very curious about what the hypnosis content would be, how we would break the ice.

Then, not long after, I was swaying in a big circle in the meeting hall, being rocked into trance as I rocked the person in front of me. Ok, there we are, I thought.

By the way, this was the massive important thing I learned from this weekend: bringing hypnosis into the body. Over and over I saw, and experienced, trance induced simply through touch, as well as guided and intensified. So much of my learning has come from books, audio and videos that I more or less missed this critical point. It's going to make my hypnosis sexier, and make it fit in better at play parties. ZanyM's kinaesthetic induction class, outside in the beautiful sunshine, was a major highlight. By the time it was done I certainly had a visceral sense of the power of touch - and had seen a wild hypnotic takedown scene!

There were dozens of great tips and ideas I got from the classes that were spontaneously organized the next day, such as the incredible 101 by Lady Ruetha, but it's a few big things that will profoundly affect my hypnosis as I absorb them, and those came as much from wonderful conversations, especially with Lady Ruetha, Lee and MrDream, as from the classes. Besides bringing hypnosis into the body, another one was pacing and leading, a concept from Lady Ruetha's class that clicked so hard for me. I was paired up with MrDream to practice that one, which was intimidating! But I actually took him into a light trance using the technique, which had me feeling great. I'll bet pacing and leading will play some part in every trance I do from now on. (in fact I used it in both trance sessions I've done since then)

Even more than that though is a shift in my understanding of what hypnosis *is*, most influenced by talking to MrDream and watching his masterful use of indirect suggestion. My best attempt to describe it is a transition from thinking of hypnosis as a magic spell that you do to someone, to rather an enticement and invitation into experiencing and behaving as the hypnotist wants, based on a connection between you that just continues to grow, within and across sessions. I no longer think that there's a hard line between "playing along" and hypnosis "really happening" - it's a teasing cooperation between the subconscious mind, the conscious mind, and the hypnotist. At some point the three of you might notice that you've gone very far together, but it's counterproductive to always be checking where you're at. Anyway these ideas will continue to sink in.

But besides the learning, it was just so pleasant. Good wholesome food, cozy sitting around in the living room, a campfire, and lots of impromptu activities. I was glad I'd gone to a lot of kink events, so that I wasn't fazed by partial nudity, polyamory, or happy yells from S&M. There was a fair bit of the hurting and other non-hypno kink (though often combined with hypnosis), and I got offered the chance to do fire play out in front of the lodge on saturday night, by the wonderful Bast_kitty! I said yes, and it was a fascinating sensation, both the lit alcohol swab being pulled along my bare back and the trails of mousse on my back that were lit on fire.

At one point I was invited to sit in where a couple of other hypnotists were  sending hypnotic words to a hypno bottom who was shuddering on the floor. Soon there were five of us, all blending our voices together to send her into pleasure overload! I felt like a bar band musician who got a chance to jam with some of the greats (for real - most of them make at least part of their living doing erotic hypnosis).

The bottom later referred to this as "hypnotic bukkake". Sadly there's no way that name isn't going to stick.

There's so much more I would like to write about if I have the time, from the classes and all the other things that were going on. Lee's compulsions, anchors and triggers class was a particularly hot and enlightening case. This hypnofetishist went around in a haze of excitement. I was so full of gratitude to MrDream, ZanyM, and Lee for constructing this extraordinary environment.

More things I came to notice: that there were at least as many female dominants as male, and in the leadership roles. This shouldn't be remarkable, but it would blow away some popular images of hypnosis and kink events. Furthermore, the primarily-submissive people were treasured and given a great time, even while their heads were slumped down sitting on the couch, or sprawled out like a rag doll on the floor in deep trance. I was particularly struck by Chewtoy's passionate and expressive hypno bottoming. I love that I got to see that side of him after years of being a fan of his stories.

Although I had a lot of hypnotic experiences, on both sides of the watch, I didn't have any scenes as such of my own - I didn't live up very well to my goal of boldly propositioning people. It's tough because even more than other kinks, hypnosis depends on rapport - in fact that's pretty much all it is - and there's only so much of that that can be built over 48 hours, despite the organizers' best efforts to meld us together. But I didn't mind, and nobody else seemed to mind either.

There was a lovely group ritual to end the weekend, and it really did feel like the last day of summer camp when I was a kid. I started to tear up, thinking about how exactly one year ago I had never been to a kink event let alone a hypnofetish event, and had never met a person like me in this way, and now my fantasies were concrete reality, thanks to the people in that room, as real as the hands I was holding.

Oh wait, I almost forgot, before the ritual the people who were in a bottomy space sat in the middle of the floor while the hypnotists sat on chairs around the outside and tranced at them (didn't I say the bottoms were treated well?), resulting in what mephki pointed out is probably the largest number of near-simultaneous hypnotic orgasms in history. Par for the course at Camp Mindfuck.

(credit to Lady Ruetha for the joke that I used for the post title!)

Into the (Dark) Woods

Tomorrow I'm heading to Deepmind Darkwood, also known as Camp Mindfuck (according to its own event page), a three day recreational hypnosis retreat at a campground in Western Massachusetts, spearheaded by Lee Allure (whose appearance at the Boston Hypnomunch I've written about). This is my gift to myself after missing every hypnosis event this summer and fall that required travel (e.g. Fetfest, WEHU, many awesome NYC workshops). There's only so far I can get with videos, books and my own inconsistent experimentation.

I'm a little nervous about how intense this is going to be (one of the listed activities for friday night is "cult-building", which I believe to be at most half a joke), but very excited. From the guest list I know there will be a number of heavy duty hypno tops there, a few of the most high profile folks in North America whose names I keep encountering across the internet. (I'm only familiar with one or two of the people who primarily bottom) I've met a couple of them in Boston, but never in an environment where they can totally cut loose. Besides any workshops or seminars that might be happening, I'm really looking forward to just watching how they interact with their subs/bottoms, and how all the hypnotists and hypnotees in attendance create an alternate sexy hypno world together for this weekend.

Besides spending time with awesome hypnokinksters, I'm there to learn, learn, learn. There is so much I'm dying to ask people about, and so many possibilities I'm sure I haven't even dreamt of. I once heard the conference advice that it's good to choose one question to consult everyone about, and for me it's this: without intending to, I've started to mentally categorize my trance partners into "high suggestibility" and "low suggestibility". The former are often people who have sought out the Boston hypnosis community and already have an interest and aptitude for it, whereas the latter are more often people I've met in the mainstream kink (or non-kink) world and developed a relationship based on other things too. Many of them had their first hypnosis experience with me; definitely their first erotic hypnosis. My experience with "low suggestibility" folks so far is that hypnotic paralysis and relaxation inductions work very well, as does visualizations, sensitization, and sometimes reinduction triggers. But some of the more controlling types of suggestions that I'm interested in, like post-hypnotic triggers, illusory sensations, and compulsions, have a much lower success rate than with the first group.

As I write this, I sound a little ungrateful to myself! I find just those "basic" things so compelling and erotic, and it's wonderful and amazing that there are people willing to do those things with me - and they're people I'm attracted to as well. Even more wonderful, and unexpected, my hypnokink seems to be contagious! It's the biggest thrill in the world to hear a partner come back to me with their own hypnotic sexual fantasies that they have been brewing, when it wasn't a part of their fantasy life before.

But getting back to my conference question, I am looking to not get trapped by these classifications, and learn how to introduce "low suggestibility" people to a greater range of hypnotic phenomena. Thanks to Wiseguy I know there's a lot more to it than depth of trance. Experience of the hypnotee and trust are a part of it, but just as much is my own attitude and technique, and improving that is my major objective. I will definitely be looking for stepping stones and exercises that can strengthen the power of suggestions for particular hypnotees without giving them unpleasant feelings of failure.

There are about a hundred other topics I want to know about, from instant inductions to nonverbal cues to hypnosis and D/s, as well as my ongoing study of ethical and consent practices of hypnosis (since my last entry I have been pointed to people who are doing excellent work on this, on the Ethics of Hypnosis and Mindcontrol fetlife group and fetlife writings by someone called Professor-X). But my biggest goal is to be as open as possible and sponge it all in, and to be bold about hypnotizing people, even in front of the master hypnotists - when I screw up, the wisdom I get from that will be burned the deepest of any lessons.

I really need to start packing.

Consent Culture and Hypnosis

My first lesson in consent culture came from my first private kink event: the presenter was demonstrating a chest harness, and asked the volunteer, "I might brush against your breasts when I bring the rope down the front, is that ok with you?" This really struck me at the time - asking specific permission for something from someone who had already volunteered to be an erotic rope bondage model - and it cued me in to the greater emphasis on consent in the kink community. When people are being tied up and beaten, among the great variety of things that kinky folks do, there's too many ways for things to go wrong without a strong foundation of consent. But I believe the concepts apply very urgently to vanilla sexual encounters too - and to hypnosis, whether sexual or nonsexual.

Consent culture, in my understanding, is an agreement that a high standard of consent is needed for anything that occurs between people in romantic/sexual encounters. When it comes to new partnerings in particular, this means that a critical component is explicit consent, that is, discussing things with words. Even when both partners are acting in good faith - i.e. taking each others' boundaries seriously - nonverbal signals are just too easy to misread, since we carry with us all the assumptions from our past partners and from the broader culture.

I remember there being a wave of anxiety in the 90s about explicit consent, manifested for example in comedy sketches spoofing it, but thanks to essays I've read in the last year, mostly recommended by my friends, I know that explicit consent, and consent culture, does not ruin sexual encounters - in fact it makes them better. These are great because rather than telling harrowing consent violation stories (though those are important too), they tell true stories of consent going right. And it's hot.

Disrupting Dinner Parties: Modeling Consent

Queer Guess Code: Un-memorizing the Silence is Sexy Date Script

Kinkopedia: Consent in Action: I Didn’t Kiss a Pretty Girl This Weekend

Research to be Done: Tips for Consent-Conscious Dating and Fuckery

Charlie Glickman: How to Ask for Sex
 
Pervocracy: Rescripting Sex

For someone like me, a cautious person who has sometimes been romantically crippled by fear of crossing invisible lines and creeping out the people I'm trying to attract, the explicit consent model is incredibly exciting as a way to make moves confidently and non-oppressively. And when consent culture is the standard, as it is in the mainstream kink world (at least as an ideal), and my partners know that I am serious about it and not into pushing limits, they can feel in control of what happens, and safe to explore things they want to try or that I suggest that appeals to them. Basically, more sexy things can happen, and crazier sexy things, the more solid the consent is.

And this of course applies to hypnosis. I've written before about how shitty I consider a lot of the mainstream models of consent for hypnosis, such as stage hypnosis where volunteering to go up on stage is often considered blanket consent for anything that happens, including potentially very humiliating things. As kinky hypnotists, with all these great models around us from other edgy forms of kink, and the risk of playing into rape culture, we have to do better.

My goal is the same as the goal for all consent, for my hypnosis partners to not feel like boundaries have been crossed, and to feel good about what happens both during and in retrospect. All the tools of explicit consent and beyond are helpful with that. Both the Wiseguy and the Peter Masters book have good little discussions about it, but there's a lot more work to do. The starting point, I think, is that everything that happens in every single trance has been negotiated, at least the category of suggestion, and that the standard is an enthusiastic "yes".

This entry was originally a longer guide to the subtler points of getting consent right, and the special issues for hypnosis, but a conversation with a friend convinced me that no way am I ready to to write such a guide. In particular, I need to talk much more to the hypno bottoms I know about their experience with consent, not just the bad experiences but the good ones too.

The point though is that I am already striving to live up to consent culture, and it is already making my sex/hypnosis life better, beyond making it less likely that there will be a serious disconnect. I have used these actual words, "Would you be comfortable with taking the hypnosis in a sexual direction?" When the answer is no, or anything but a strong yes, I try to make it instantly clear that I am cool with it and that there are plenty of other places to go if the hypnotee wants to continue.

But... sometimes the answer is yes!

Ranking the Erotic Hypnosis Books

So far I've found only three substantial books specifically about erotic hypnosis, that ring of real knowledge. I want to find more, but to be honest I haven't waded into the pool of shady Amazon e-books to see if there are some hidden hypnosis treasures - maybe when I've completely exhausted these will I start investing in the riskier ones, and reviewing them here. But here is my buyer's guide based on reading these three cover to cover!

1 MIND PLAY by Mark Wiseman

This is it. This is The Book. If you are interested in learning to do erotic hypnosis, you should buy it right now. It only came out four months ago, but I have bought it three times (one e-book and two paper, because I know I'm going to lend one and not get it back). I feel strongly that this will be the start of erotic hypnosis being a thing, in the way that there are a couple of books that can be found on the shelves of every person I know who's into rope.

A few things are special about it. First, it is clearly from a kink community perspective. This is someone who's done a ton of erotic hypnosis play, at events such as Fetfest, and it's refined his practice and given him a good idea of how to make things actually work (Mark Wiseman is not his real name, but his mcstories handle is Wiseguy, or Wiseguy35 on FL). And you can feel the pleasure he takes in sharing fun tricks and games he and the hypnosis community have developed. Many of which have a BDSM slant, which is so much more represented than in the other two books. You can also see the influence of presenting a lot on the clarity and accessibility of the presentation.

Second, there is an emphasis on explaining why things work, and giving you the building blocks to innovate and customize techniques yourself. Excellent chapters on such topics as fractionation, safety precautions, modalities, and indirect suggestions make this a pretty comprehensive first handbook for understanding what's going on. There's a particularly eye-opening discussion of the concept of depth, which directly contradicts the traditional view.

I've read this book so many times, and had so much success with his techniques, often practically word for word  from memory, that it will take me quite a while to develop my style that isn't just a clone of Wiseguy's. Apart from an unfortunate passage saying you have an obligation to disclose "your true biological sex" to your hypnotist, which was removed in the 2nd edition (so make sure to buy that one), my only complaint is that I wish the Kinky Human Tricks portion of the book was three times as long. But I guess that's what I will have fun filling it in myself.

2 LOOK INTO MY EYES by Peter Masters

This was the first erotic hypnosis book I bought, and I will be forever grateful that it facilitated my first ever time hypnotizing someone. It is a gentle and friendly introduction to hypnosis in an erotic context, and quite thorough and sensible, although all the basic information is also available in Wiseguy's book. This book is so 101 that it does not even assume that you have heard of BDSM, and takes some time to explain what the appeal might be, and why it's ok. That's kind of nice, but you can probably guess also means that it doesn't get so deep into the kinky possibilities.

What it does offer that the Wiseguy book doesn't is a couple of detailed sections on very simple, high-hit-rate erotic hypnosis activities, such as enhancing the feeling of touch, and creating a feeling of being too relaxed to move (hypnotic paralysis). Then a lot of the book is long writeups of sexual fantasies to guide a partner through while in trance. These read as amusingly square (sex on the beach, sex in a doctor's office), but something simple and sensual like that might feel great from a first person perspective, and it's nice to see it written out in full to get an idea for the pacing and the basic, literal language that would work for a hypnotized mind.

The book also has long scripts consisting of instructions intended to have long-term impacts, such as to help your partner feel less inhibited. While the examples here seem pretty harmless, I'm skeptical of whether hypnosis is effective in this way (just telling people they don't have to be inhibited) and it also sails close to therapy.

The real weakness of the book is the inductions. It has essentially one induction, which is a sort of combination of fixation and progressive relaxation. If you have only one, this wouldn't be a bad choice in terms of success rate, but there's nothing about confusion or rapid inductions, or any of the other methods Wiseguy discusses and prefers for giving the hypnotee more mobility (since their body isn't over-relaxed). And the induction material is curiously spread out around two chapters, rather than reading like a script. Another quirk of the book is that it connects going into a trance with the head sinking down and remaining there. And I can confirm Wiseguy's claim that this gets uncomfortable for the hypnotee after a while. Wiseguy adds suggestions to keep the head stable on the neck while the neck still remains relaxed.

3 HYPNOTIZE YOUR LOVER by Wendi Friesen

Of the three I'm talking about, this is the only one with a high "ick" factor, since it's written as an old-school pickup manual, complete with gender assumptions that wouldn't be out of place in Mad Men. The whole first third of the book is about men seducing women via hypnosis, in general without their consent, and I probably would have put it down and never picked it up again if it didn't have a woman's name on its cover (its extremely sleazy cover).

But reading it carefully from the beginning, I found myself developing a fondness for Wendi Friesen, who describes herself as "the daughter of a Southern Baptist minister, (yup, I’m the preacher’s daughter)", who now makes a full-time living doing sexy hypnotherapy (and shilling her CDs and DVDs, which she does throughout the book). You can see her in action in this clip from the Penn & Teller Bullshit episode about hypnosis at the 9:30 mark. That's her, speculating that hypnosis could cure cancer, or increase the size of your penis.

Yes, the flakiness is off the charts in this book, whether she's claiming that in retail stores, "what seems like the pulsing hum of an air conditioner, may actually be a well planned recording cycling at a beat that will place you into a more suggestible mindset" or devoting a chapter to something called "Remote Seduction" which appears to be shooting sexy thoughts at another person across the room without talking to them or interacting with them in any way (and of course, "without their knowledge or permission"), in hopes that they will come over. I would take every factual claim in this book with an enormous grain of salt.

So why do I still recommend it? First of all, it's only $5 as an e-book, and even if you don't trust them, the many scripts in the middle can spark fun ideas. But I really do believe Friesen has done a ton of hypnosis, both from the video clip and from what I know about hypnosis. And hypnosis is something where you do get immediate and reliable feedback - not about whether someone's T cell count is going up, but how deep of a trance and how good the person feels afterwards. Furthermore, while the 70s new agey approach is not so good for establishing facts (or boundaries), it can be strong on the intuitive "right brain" stuff, which is where the hypnotized mind lives. And strong on the mysterious sex magics.

I do feel a sexy power and rich imagination in many of the scripts she prints in the middle section (which is something of a disorganized dump, written by different authors with quite different styles). And I can confirm that two of her things, Hand Breathing (which she reprints from Terrence Watts) and the hand stroke (which she invented but is actually not described here but in Mind Play, and you can see it in the video), are dynamite. If even one of the additional wild things she describes, like five-minute-long orgasms, or mutual trance, actually works for me, it will be worth plenty more than the cover price.

Just stop before you get to the super irresponsible third section, that prescribes easy hypnotic cures for everything from impotence to vaginal pain (yikes). But this book is a good lesson that you can learn tidbits even from materials where the quality control and ethics are largely out of whack.

(for the record, not all of the seduction advice is terrible - for example, the idea that you should wait a beat after the other person has finished talking before you start to say something. If some poor schmo has to believe he's using "hypnosis", to learn not to interrupt people, then that's a good thing she's done)

In conclusion, buy them all! In this order!

Why You Want to be Hypnotized by a Hypnofetishist

I love kink parties, but I'm still trying to figure out my place in them. The ones that I go to tend to be primarily bondage and impact play (spanking and hitting). I'm fairly interested in the former, but still a fumbling beginner for all but the basics, but the latter is a foreign country. I have spanked partners before, even with paddles (and a long shoehorn), but I know there's a lot to learn about how to make a great scene for someone. Also, and this might be illogical, but the fact that it's not my kink also makes me insecure about it. None of the porn I seek out involves spanking or other types of pain. On the other hand, I do admire the intensity of the experience for the bottom, which is hot in itself, especially now that I understand just how much some people adore the sensation of getting hit.

At any rate, whatever interest I have in bondage and impact play is just a shadow of how much I love hypnosis. And last night at the party realized I'm experiencing a new wave of shyness in asking people to trance with me. I saw a number of instances of friends bravely propositioning people last night, often with very good results. But when I'm not worrying that people will think it's creepy, my brain is telling me that hypnosis needs a private space, and some kind of existing trusting relationship to work. I don't really believe that's true; I think those are excuses I use to chicken out.

But it does bother me that compared to the other wild things that are going on (many of which require more special accomodations than hypnosis), hypnosis is not very exciting to watch, and nowhere near as whole-body, at least how I've practiced it in the past. (future blog post idea: whether it's a problem that being the hypnotist can be such a cerebral pleasure, and if there's a way to bring it more into the body) It doesn't leave fun bruises or rope marks for people to show off.

Not everybody is into public play, I don't have to go in that direction. But these kind of parties can be great spaces to meet and do things with new people, as well as where people can let their hair down in general and make time to play.

Anyway, these are my ramblings. But I hope that I can make a little corner for erotic hypnosis in the public Boston scene before I leave, including figuring out how to have some fun scenes of my kink at kink parties. And that will just take some thought, and some boldness (as well as consideration for how some people find hypnosis to be triggering based on past trauma). But I certainly have a great time at these parties no matter what.

To psych myself up, and as an entirely self-serving PSA, here's why, if you're intrigued by hypnosis in a kink context, you want hypnofetishists like me doing it:

• No need for gratitude or reciprocation. Hypnofetishists get off on putting you in a trance, and so it's as much a pleasurable (and possibly sexual) experience for them as for you.
• They have a motivation other than to get some kind of hold. The idea of people learning how to hypnotize in order to get people to sleep with them, or be submissive to them, makes my skin crawl. You want someone who's into it for its own sake (or else wants to enhance an existing D/s relationship).
• They have a motivation other than trying to fix you. Might this be even creepier? The people, often male, who get off on the idea of curing the problems of people they're attracted to? AmHypnotic just wrote a great blog post about the icky behaviour this can provoke. I am not into this (see rule #1 here)
• They're highly motivated to practice hypnosis. Imagine how good I would be at guitar, or any of many other skills I've abandoned, if I got turned on every time I practiced it! Hypnofetishists consume huge amounts of material related to hypnosis, and relish every trick they can pick up. (because they masturbate to those things.) And this interest is going to be pretty steady over time.

There's some people who are interested in hypnosis, but might be uncomfortable about their hypnotist getting turned on. And that's cool. There are professional hypnotherapists out there, some of whom even do recreational hypnosis, and stage hypnotists (both of these groups, of course, overlap with hypnofetishists, but there is also the money motivation, and the fact that they have professional constraints). But I hope that in a consent-valuing subculture, and one where hypnofetishists identify themselves as such, people can negotiate those asymmetries, and feel safe within the limits that have been discussed ahead of time.

Reinduction Triggers are the Greatest

One of my favourite things to do with hypnosis, and which seems to be one of the easiest post-hypnotic suggestions for hypnotees to pull off, is the reinduction trigger. That’s a word, phrase or gesture that causes the trance partner to go from a state of being completely awake and not hypnotized at all, immediately back into a trance. Why I think it’s so easy is that most people’s minds really enjoy the feeling of being in trance, and if the mind knows the way to get there, it’s more than happy to go back (as long as it’s safe to do so, which I also explicitly say when I give the trigger suggestion). It saves time, and it’s also just a massive power trip to create that effect in someone: to watch their eyes close and their head and body slump all in a moment.

This is a lot of power to have over someone, potentially for the long term, and I feel very lucky that a few people have trusted me enough to give me that power. I think it helps that I am deeply not a sneaky person - I would be very bad at being sneaky even if I wanted to be - and I care about people’s mental autonomy. There’s plenty of out-of-trance negotiation that happens before I give the trigger suggestion, to make sure they’re genuinely ok with it, and I also ask for permission within the trance, as Wiseguy suggests (this is of course not the real permission). I’m sure these both help the trigger to be more effective. Besides the physical safety suggestion, I have suggested that it only works “as long as there’s a trusting relationship between us.” I just realized I haven’t always been consistent about that part, because from what I’ve read I’m pretty sure that’s how it works anyway (also I forgot), but it’s probably a good idea.

I get permission each time before I use a reinduction trigger, which some people would say makes it less fun, but is necessary for my ethics and respect for the other person. However I have an exception: I can ask my hypnotee, “Would it be ok with you if I playfully used your reinduction trigger from time to time this evening?” This still requires checking in occasionally, but it allows for that silly/mean/dominant playing with my partner’s state of consciousness that we might both enjoy a lot. There’s the potential for more blanket permission in a long-term D/s hypnotic relationship, but I haven’t gotten into that territory yet.

Once that's been figured out, the fun begins. I’ve only been hypnotizing people in real life for a short period of time, but I’ve already gotten to see some amazing and arousing effects of reinduction triggers on my hypnotees:

• Falling into trance in the middle of a sentence.
• Going from sitting up on the bed to falling back limp on the pillow.
• Me holding up an index card with her reinduction trigger written on it in sharpie and her head immediately slumping, without my having suggested that the written form would be effective.
• Requested to resist the reinduction trigger (which she really wasn’t keen on doing!) and apparently winning for a little while, holding her eyes very wide, and then falling down into trance. I really didn’t know how this one would go, and if she had succeeded I would have been happy too, since it would be an additional layer of safety. I know for a fact that reinduction triggers are not so irresistible for every hypnotee, especially on their first few times experiencing it.
• Me accidentally mentioning the trigger phrase while talking about the trigger phrase, and her going down, to my surprise. Rookie mistake! But cool!
• Going into trance on a bench in a graveyard.
• Going into trance on a bench beside the Charles River at dusk.
• Using a reinduction trigger during sex, and having her go limp with her legs over my shoulders, and me still thrusting into her. I’m not into the fantasy of fucking an unresponsive person (though there’s nothing wrong with that fantasy) but she really got off on the feeling of helplessness, and I loved the fact that it still had a strong effect when her mind was well occupied.
• Counting someone out of trance during a hypnotic blowjob. At which point the blowjob got about 1000% better. That’s not using a reinduction trigger, but it’s a nice mirror image of the previous occasion!

(please note that in particular the last two were discussed and agreed upon ahead of time. In fact I believe they were her idea.)

Now something I can share about making reinduction triggers effective. I recently had the opportunity to do my first hypnosis demo, as a last minute replacement (for someone with an electro machine!). So I didn’t have much prep time. But I wasn’t nervous because it was with my wonderfully talented hypnosis partner Cassi (not her real name or handle). We had a chance to do some planning and pre-negotiation off in a corner as the party was just getting started, and a chance to revisit her reinduction trigger. I had given her the trigger at a previous party in private, and we had a lot of fun with it - Cassi was the one who tried and failed to resist the trigger. However, when we tried it again only three days later, at the NEHG Hypnosis Study Group, it had no effect. Cassi was so disappointed! It was adorable. But we decided to leave it for the time being.

Now it was nearly a month later, but I told her I had a powerful hunch that I could make that trigger work again. I told her to get into a relaxed position on the couch and take a few deep breaths, just as before any induction. Then I started telling her to remember how good it feels to be hypnotized. Then I told her to remember a time when that trigger had been powerfully effective, thinking back to that party. Perhaps the time when you tried and failed to resist it. Her eyelids were already doing some serious flickering at this point. The last thing I did was to mention that when touch is added, triggers are much more powerful (I think this is probably true, but I said as though I knew it for a fact!) Then I put my hand heavily on her shoulder and gave her the trigger phrase in a commanding voice. She went right down, and got to a very good depth as I rocked her and kept up the flow of deepening suggestions. I was thrilled, and so was Cassi when she came back up!

It was neat because I don’t think the other partygoers knew that I put Cassi into three successive trances in the living room while they were chatting in the kitchen. When the demo began, I was very confident the trigger would work, and having her go into a trance instantly on my command made a dramatic introduction to hypnosis for the people watching! Reinduction triggers are just the greatest.

Guest Post: I Hypnotized Divney (Erotically)

I thought it would be cool to invite my hypnotist from this entry I posted today, about my first experience being hypnotized, to describe the experience from their point of view. And I loved reading this. I was surprised by how moved I was, not to mention turned on, to read the genuine enthusiasm for hypnotizing (me) that's in here.

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I am (probably) not a hypnofetishist, but I do find giving my partners pleasure to be a complete turn-on. It is tremendously empowering knowing that I am the one in control of their arousal. Hypnosis, with its potential for a variety of erotic experiences and the perception of control (even if that isn’t an entirely accurate perception), adds a new dimension to those more frequently explored aspects of my sexuality. Divney at some point in our conversations about hypnosis mentioned some interest in bottoming. While not specific about his interests, it certainly gave me a lot to fantasize about.

Something important to note is that I haven’t really done much research into hypnosis. Mostly out of a bad case of insomnia, I have watched a lot of hypnosis videos on Youtube (with some success). Out of those scripts I found useful and my experiences with Divney as a bottom myself, I managed to jumble together an improvised hypnoscene.

Within the context of our usual interactions, I thought it would be of mutual interest to experiment with heightened sensation and an orgasm while hypnotically immobilized. I started with an induction that had worked well for me in the past, then some passive progressive relaxation and suggestions that his senses would be heightened. To my delight, he seemed to quickly fall into trance and was visibly aroused with each touch. Seeing his cock move when I touched a totally asexual area (like his forearm) was incredibly hot.

However, by the time I was trying in earnest to get him off, something seemed off. I wasn’t sure if he was feeling anxious about the lack of control or if I wasn’t quite doing what he needed. First I tried to relax him further, which didn’t seem to fully solve the issue. At that point, I took a risk and suggested that his orgasm was unavoidable. Soon-thereafter, he came and I was jittery with excitement. I counted down to bring him out of trance, eager for feedback and a little concerned that I had overstepped with that seemingly crucial suggestion. Luckily with some discussion, I felt assured that I hadn’t done something inappropriate.

It was particularly interesting for me to hear feedback in terms of intrusive thoughts (something I have a hard time with too) and potential areas of exploration that I hadn’t considered a possibility before. In retrospect, I should have at least made a list of things I wanted to be sure to touch upon within the scene, as I entirely forgot to use a deepener which would probably have helped make the suggestions more powerful and the intrusive thoughts less of an issue.

If I were to give Divney a rating, it would be “two thumbs ups -- would hypnotize again.” He is a much better hypno-bottom than he gives himself credit for and I am excited to continue exploring with him, both as a bottom and sometimes top.

I Got Hypnotized (Erotically)

Out of nowhere in a texting conversation: "Can I try to hypnotize you sometime?"

My reply (the timestamp says in the same minute): "Oh yeah totally!" It was a surprise, coming from a hypnotee who had not expressed an interest in it before, nor had I suggested it.

But as soon as I heard the idea I was excited to be on the other side of the swinging watch, with a partner I trusted and found damn sexy.

I propped myself up at the end of the bed and got comfortable. My hypnotist started by getting me to try to stare at a point on my own forehead (looking up through my skull). This was uncomfortable, and I had to keep correcting myself, but it did the trick. With their steady flow of suggestions my eyes started to want to close, and then closed.

My partner gave me lots of suggestions that my body would feel heavier and more relaxed, and it felt very good. My head lolled to the side.

The hypnotist gave me the suggestion that when they caressed me, it would feel much better than usual. I didn't think I felt that, but the fingertip was delicious as it stroked my body - I got a full-strength erection when it ran along my thigh. So maybe I was more sensitive than usual, or else I wouldn't have moaned and shifted when they did that. But maybe that same effect could be attributed to the buildup of anticipation for the touch.

Sad to say, I had some of these thoughts during the trance. I have a highly analytical and self-reflexive brain, with a particular interest in observing hypnosis, so that got in the way a little. But the neat part was that I had about 70% fewer of those thoughts than under normal circumstances. The train of thought would only get a little way out of the station, and then I could come back to the hypnotist's voice. That reduction in busyness, the quieting down, is a wonderful gift for people like me.

Then I felt my cock being stroked, and the excitement was overwhelming. Again, I had enough thoughts left to critique that it didn't feel twice as good as usual, in contrast to the suggestions I was getting. In fact the angle was subtly off, and I couldn't tell them about it. A good reminder of one of the difficult things about erotic hypnosis, that it makes fine-grained communication during sexual acts impossible.

Then they started jacking me off in earnest, and said something like, "You're going to have an orgasm, and there's nothing you can do to stop it." And that just about made me lose my mind I was so turned on. Of course you wouldn't have known it to look at me, since my body was completely limp (except for my cock). A couple of times they put their hand on my shoulder and said "RELAX", and that was great - I felt my body go even more limp than before, and my head roll around a little.

So my body was completely immobilized when I came, and I felt a little bit of guilt that I wouldn't be able to help clean up right away. But mostly I felt great. When they brought me out of the trance, on the count of 3, my arms and legs in particular felt good, tingly and awake. I was extremely spacey for the rest of the night, but I think less lethargic than I normally am after an orgasm.

Now I know why people get hooked on being hypnotized. It is a luxurious, decadent feeling. So much so that I almost felt guilty for all that pleasure, and needed reassurance that my partner had gotten something out of it too. I was a bit mixed up about enjoying bottoming that much, giving up control, but if so many of my friends are comfortable with developing both their top and bottom selves I should be too. The part about making me have an orgasm had a real D/s flavour, and I found myself wishing for more of that, such as a countdown or command before I came. However I was glad they checked in with me afterwards about spontaneously introducing that flavour.

My hypnotist did wonderfully, especially as a first timer. For my first time, I read out a Peter Masters script from a Kindle in a nervous and squeaky voice, and barely got my partner into a trance at all. Whereas they improvised it, and smoothly too. And they had a difficult trance partner - they didn't try any intense suggestions or tests, which is just as well (because I think many of them would have failed for me, at least without employing deepeners). This certainly reinforced my belief that hypnotic paralysis is one of the easiest and most reliable erotic hypnosis games for beginners. All the hypnotee has to do is nothing, which is easy when you're so relaxed.

Anyway, this is what I can recreate from my somewhat jumbly memories (another good sign). This was a novel experience, and powerfully sexy. I still identify it as a top, but I'd try it again with someone I trusted in a heartbeat.

Script to Make a Partner Feel Pleasure in a Strap-on Dildo Like a Cock

(Begin with a deep trance, and with stroking all over their naked body accompanied by suggestions of heightened sensitivity.)

When I count to three, you’re going to open your eyes, but stay in trance. When you open your eyes, you’re immediately going to find that your gaze is helplessly drawn to your purple strap-on dildo. The harder you try to look away, the more you find you just can’t stop staring at that dildo. You can blink as normal, but when you’re not blinking your eyes are stuck looking at it.

Now I want you to bring to mind that time earlier when I was touching your clit. You can let the memory come back of how good that feels. Maybe you’ll think of a particular instance, a way I was touching it that felt very good.

Now I want you to imagine the feeling when I’ve stopped touching it, but have my finger poised over your clit, ready to touch it again. Your clit is erect and engorged with blood, begging to be touched and stroked, but I’m not touching it yet. It wants so badly to be touched. It wants to feel my finger on it, but my finger is just hovering above it.

(Hover your finger above the tip of the dildo.)

When I stroke the tip of the dildo, I wonder if you can imagine that I’m stroking the tip of your clit, that clit that wants so badly to be touched. And now as I stroke and circle the tip of the dildo with my finger, you can imagine that same touch on your clit. It feels so good, so arousing, exactly what your clit was begging for.

And as I continue to stroke the tip of the dildo, you can imagine that feeling getting stronger. More vivid, more arousing, as I continue to stroke and circle the tip of the dildo. Stronger and stronger, more and more arousing, each touch feeling just the way you like it to feel, as I run my finger around the tip of the dildo.

If you are feeling the pleasure at your vagina, I wonder if you can imagine that feeling actually moving now, as if your clit is travelling up the shaft of the dildo, until you can feel those pleasurable feelings of a clit being stroked right at the end of the dildo.

And even as the pleasure continues to build and build, your body continues to relax and sink into the bed, your arms and legs feeling heavy, your mind staying so deeply entranced even while your eyes stay open.

Watch as I run my finger along the top of the shaft of the dildo. As I do this, you can imagine feeling that finger running along the top surface of your vagina, from the front to the back. As I stroke my finger up and down, you can feel me stroking the top surface of your vagina, back and forth. Now when I stroke the sides you can feel that on the sides of your vagina, and a touch on the bottom side you can feel on the bottom surface of your vagina. When I stroke it with more than one finger at a time, you can feel all those places on your vaginal walls being stimulated, and it feels absolutely wonderful.

As I rub the tip of the dildo more and more you can feel the pleasure building up, building and building. If I keep this up long enough, you know that you can have an orgasm this way, just as good as the one you had earlier. Remember how good it felt earlier when I made you come with my fingers.

As I run my finger around behind the ridge of the dildo head, you can imagine you feel my finger running around the entrance to your vagina. And as I stroke the shaft with my fingers you can feel it all the way along your vaginal walls.

(Then just keep rubbing the tip, and stroking up and down the shaft, and anything else you can think of. I improvised this, and it is a reconstruction from my memory. It is of course just one of many approaches that could be taken to create this effect. But I can say that the results were powerful and amazing: the pleasure was obvious and intense, and it was a completely novel sensation. The feedback later was that my hypnotee had felt the pleasure external to their body, and like it was really their cock. Apparently the suggestions related to the shaft were the most helpful in that last sensation.

Two things I wish I had done once I established the mapping of pleasure onto the dildo: direct my hypnotee to touch and stroke the dildo; and lick the tip of it myself. It was already a lot for me to handle, to be manually pleasuring my very first cock that wasn’t my own, but come on. Put it in your mouth.)

Early Indications: Books

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Dinner with an Evil Hypnotist

Last week the September Boston HypnoMunch got a serious buzz from the presence of Lee Allure (twitter link), someone with a unique perspective as a professional, full-time erotic hypnotist. The first one I've ever met (although her friend and collaborator who came last month, Chewtoy, is working on it). She's put together a sizable following with her sexy mp3s and live sessions, and it was clear that her passion for and fascination with hypnosis must play a big part in this success. She's someone who's always learning, and always getting excited about new ways to make her partners feel helplessly controlled. I feel comfortable calling her an "evil hypnotist" because that's how she referred to herself at dinner. She's also a moderator of the League of Ethical Evil Hypnotists group on Fetlife (their amusing "Muhahahahaha test"  clarifies what they mean by "evil" - it's the fun kind).

At dinner at the Bertucci's we talked about Lee's love of getting people who insist they aren't really hypnotized to take photos of themselves holding notes that say "I am hypnotized" that they later can't remember taking (which I was delighted to learn was Chewtoy's inspiration to write one of my favourite stories, Wish You Were Here). We talked about good and bad ways to give positive feedback to the trancee, and how hypnosis resembles stage magic in the culture of sharing techniques and flourishes. A real highlight for me was listening in as Lee compared notes with one of our most avid hypnotees about the trickier points of achieving short term amnesia. It really made me excited for how this little community can inform each other. With another of our members sharing notes about therapeutic hypnosis training he'd received, this was the best munch for me yet in terms of information.

Despite my efforts, we didn't manage to line up a post-munch practice space (though we will have one next month), and the park was out of the question at that time of night. Inspired by Lee's confident assertions about being willing to hypnotize people in public, I suggested we move to a nearby coffee shop, where I was hopeful we could find a private corner in the large space. Nearly everyone from the munch came, at least 12 people! Although there were a couple of other people in the vicinity, Lee pointed out that people don't pay too much attention to what others are doing, and this turned out to be completely right. They were too busy with their own conversations or studying to notice any hypnotism that was going on, let alone be bothered by it.

After a little bit of group conversation, Lee started drawing the palms of her hands together, and capturing the attention of the two members on either side (who, by coincidence or likely not, were two of the most responsive hypnotees in the group). As her hands got closer together, and she kept up the flow of hypnotic words, two heads sank down on either side under the bright cafe lights. That was impressive! Her eyes closed too and she began to giggle at a certain point, which reminded me of how two people I had worked with had giggled as they went into trance for the first time, expressing some discomfort with the novel sensation. Afterwards she said that she had indeed been practicing going into trance a little herself while hypnotizing others, so that made sense.

She brought them back up, and we all stopped holding our breath and broke the silence, allowing the general discussion to continue. Talk turned to visual hallucinations, and Lee was willing to demonstrate with the gentleman to her right - who is a big fan of her videos, so it was great that the evening turned into basically a dream come true for him. She hypnotized him with the intriguing pendant featured in this video, getting him to focus on counting the holes in it. After some deepening, she suggested that every time he closed and opened his eyes, one of our member's scarves would appear to be a different colour. This was given as a post hypnotic suggestion, and it worked! He reported each colour as he closed and opened his eyes, clarifying that the colour appeared in the woven threads, not painted on or superimposed, with the pattern remaining the same.

A mini debate came up when Lee was musing about methods for making her trance partners more addicted to hypnosis. I and another member of the group objected to this, since I have a strong concept of addiction as something that is destructive and consuming - not part of the positivity I want to be the only result of messing around with hypnosis. The other member comes from a clinical background, and also had personal experience with observing addiction. Lee clarified that she was interested in creating the tantalizing feeling of being "addicted" for her clients with that inclination, not the real thing. I think it must be a risk that if you spend so much time with partners who love the "dark fantasy" side of hypnosis, that is, who love feeling trapped and enraptured by a powerful dominant female hypnotist, your language changes a bit to something that might sound disturbing, if it's not understood that this is all based on consensual fantasy. I imagine it's similar to people who spend a lot of time within a D/s, master/slave dynamic. I definitely think that some other online hypnotists lose track of this line, and for example try to implant suggestions that their clients will need to buy all of their mp3s, but Lee clearly labels her wares (as in her "Dark Side" mp3s) and provides plenty of warnings and safety measures.

In any case it was a treat to hang out with such a skilled and knowledgeable hypnotist, who also has considerable personal magnetism. Especially if you're a hypno submissive, you should check out her store, and if you're in the vicinity, events that she attends and teaches at such as the Dark Odyssey events and her own Deepmind Darkwood (aka Camp Mindfuck) in western Massachusetts. I'm looking forward to our paths crossing again.

Hypnosis Study Group: 100 Things To Do With Someone In a Trance

Nicely well attended study group today, even though we pulled it together at the last minute. I feel like this microcommunity within the kink community is gaining momentum, and that there's a real hunger here for learning and discussion and practice of erotic hypnosis. That's so exciting to me.

As one of the activities, I led a brainstorming session where as a group we tried to generate 100 ideas for hypnotic suggestions in as short a time as possible (in practice about 15 minutes). The rules were that there was no discussion of the ideas, and that I would write down anything to add to the list as displayed on the big screen tv, no matter how silly or weird, or even if they were repetitions of earlier ideas. At about the halfway point I even specifically asked for some unethical suggestions, to keep the creative energy high. So for that reason (that it could be accidentally or deliberately misinterpreted) I won't be posting the whole list. But here are some of my favourites, either because they sparked some thinking or just amused me:

10. Time travel

18. My magical ass

26. Modifying pleasure perception

30. One type of food into another

32. Modifying how you perceive fun

48. Singing on command

51. Converting someone to Jehovah's witness

56. Expanding erogenous zones

59. Tentacles

65. Imagine fucking every person when they meet them

68. Everyone in the room is speaking a different language

73. Fixation on David Bowie's crotch

77. Not see themselves in reflections

88. Mighty tantric carrot [?]

91. Incubus or succubus

99. Belief that you're a Star Trek character
 
(and one more that came up afterward: perceiving everyone around you as singing, as though you had stepped into the world of Once More With Feeling). I was really grateful that people got into the spirit of it, and felt my belief in brainstorming reaffirmed: that by generating a large volume of ideas, without regard for practicality, appropriateness or any other constraints, neat things are bound to come out, including a few ideas that perhaps no member of the group could have reached on their own.

More things that I got out of the meeting: Advice from PhotoJoseph that to install a post-hypnotic trigger, it's best to give people the effect of the trigger strongly in trance, and only then associate it with the trigger condition that will be used out of trance. New sensory associations usually accompany the real sensations, rather than replacing them (e.g. celery tastes like foie gras - still get all the celery sensations, with a foie gras overlay). It might work to suggest to someone that they have a particular dream, and that some of the group's members have had good effects from suggestions that they would wake up in the morning fresh and energized - two uses of hypnosis I had not considered.

The meeting got pretty chatty, and could have used more structure, but I think we did a great job of pulling together a worthwhile session despite both our first choice and our backup choice for presenter cancelling. And it's always great to spend time with fellow hypno fans.

First Skype Hypnosis

Yesterday I had my first experience trancing with someone via Skype. A lot of people I've met do much or even most of their hypnosis remotely, whether by text chat, voice, or video. (one friend of mine is trancing with one hypnotist in France, and one in Australia!) At this point in my development I'm not interested in text or voice - too little feedback for this beginner, and not so rewarding - but video seemsed like a better prospect. My partner was Chel, and it was nice to connect with her in this way remotely, so soon after our last visit.

It took a long time to get the connection set up, the lighting good, and the laptops in position (I told her on her lap wasn't going to work!) By the time we had chatted a little bit to get used to it, it was at least 40 minutes in. I got started on the induction she had enjoyed before, progressive relaxation plus metronome, and soon she was on her way into trance.

Overall, she said the trances were not as deep, and the sound-based reinduction trigger I gave her during the first trance (the same phrase plus a finger snap) did not work the first time, as it did when I was with her on the bed and put my hand on shoulder. This demonstrated to me how a lot of hypnotic power is gained by the hypnotist's physical presence, and touch. The reinduction trigger did begin to work after that, but at least the first few times she said it felt like she had to "get behind it and push".

More hiccups. Chel was able to feel the sensation of a paddle on her backside the first time I suggested it, and it was gratifying to see her whole body flinch. But that amount of movement took her much of the way out of trance, since she associates immobility with being in a trance. So even though she flinched with the subsequent strikes (including both cheeks at once, try that in real life without a friend to help!) they felt fainter - an interesting demonstration of a direct relationship between focus and strength of sensation. She was also distracted by the conflict between feeling her bottom on the chair and the paddle sensations.

Then came something I most certainly should have prepared for: Skype crashing while Chel was in a trance. I frantically redialed. She picked up, and I found that all was well: she said she had felt nervous at first, when she realized we were cut off, with the thought that she would be "stuck in trance", but the idea was so absurd that she laughed herself out of trance. I got lucky this time - someone else could have experienced more distress. I must have special suggestions for this eventuality.

Another tip is that if you want someone to hallucinate hearing a song, make sure they actually have it memorized: Chel was quite frustrated trying to remember how "Blue Monday" (a very long, complex song) went. It definitely woke her up trying to piece it together.

The last trance we did was where things got sexy, but she felt barely in a trance at all (which would mean that she made it sexy herself!) For example she didn't at all feel the illusion that her hands were a stranger's hands moving on her body. Apparently something I had noticed, a churning sound caused by Skype feedback, was also on her end and had made it difficult to focus. Two takeaways from that: I did a poor job of picking up on her level of trance, and you should use headphones or at least external speakers to avoid feedback.

On the one hand it was a chance to do hypnosis with someone I'm very close to, and where we had some sexy times towards the end. On the other, apart from the technical bloopers, I really missed many things I wouldn't have even thought of: the tiny changes in facial expression that skype didn't capture, and the almost-subliminal breathing sounds, and other small things that both help me to monitor the trance, and serve as my reward even when suggestions don't work out. And of course touch - it was a real letdown to not be able to cuddle or even hug at the end (literally the first time I haven't hugged my trancee after a session). Afterwards I felt further from her than I expected to. (I also felt exhausted - I'm sure when I'm better than this I'll use much fewer words) I realize a lot of the things I'm bitching about are just part of cybersex, but I guess I've never gotten into that.

As my skills develop, I'll have more flexibility and resourcefulness to make online trancing go better, not to mention avoiding these beginner mistakes. I also might find more motivation for doing it, but for now it doesn't have much appeal to me.

Serious Scientific Proof of the Reality of Hypnosis

I don't have any lingering concerns about the reality of hypnosis, now that I have had firsthand experiences. First and foremost, all those hours I've spent hypnotizing people and being hypnotized would be extremely boring if nothing was happening. Second, I've seen people respond to suggestions completely unselfconsciously, in a way that would be out of character for them to fake. And then there was this experience.

But before I had any experience of hypnosis, I longed for objective proof of its reality, taking a particular form: showing that hypnotized people can do something unhypnotized people can't. This is more convincing than showing that a hypnotized person can't do something, since they just might not be trying hard enough. But if someone not in a trance can't do it, then it can't be faked.

I recently ran across a paper by chance that has that very evidence, Kallio et al. 2013. Luckily it's in an open-access journal, so you can read it easily. This paper shows that one highly-hypnotizable participant can make eye movements, while in a trance, that unhypnotized people, and herself out of trance, can't make. In one task, participants look at a dot in the center of a computer monitor, while their eye movements are recorded. Then the central dot disappears, and another dot appears, and they must look at this new dot. Their hypnotee, TS-H, when hypnotized, instead of moving her eyes right to the new target, would move her gaze in intermediary short jumps towards it. The control subjects were told to mimic this pattern as well as they could. They absolutely could not. Most of the time their eyes went right to the new dot when it appeared. And the same thing went for TS-H, in those trials where she wasn't hypnotized. You can watch videos comparing the hypnotized eye movements with the unhypnotized.

The second thing TS-H could do while hypnotized that unhypnotized people couldn't imitate was to avoid responding to sliding black and white vertical bars with what is called an optokinetic reflex. This is a pattern of eye movements where even though you are trying to keep your eyes still, they still slide with the background, then jump back into place. You can see it in action in the movie of the control subjects (who were, again, consciously trying to imitate the hypnotized eye movements), and then be amazed at the movie of the hypnotized TS-H with the grating, showing a reduction or elimination of this reflex. And again, she was unable to reproduce the result herself while not hypnotized.

There were a couple of other dramatic observations they made of the hypnotic state which don't fall into this unfakeable category. TS-H's blink rate slowed down to 10% of normal, and her pupils were actually slightly - but significantly - smaller. All these results are making me want to experiment more with what they call the Hypnotically Induced Stare - I generally don't have my hypnotees open their eyes, and when they do I haven't been paying so much attention to the blink rate and eye movements. It's not clear whether all hypnotized people are supposed to have this phenomenon, in fact they make some muddy statements about this.

The subtext for me is the fact that they found someone with such a powerful, reliable hypnotic state that they could do precise experimentation with it. TS-H is literally off the charts hypnotizable, and able to go in and out in a split second. In the experimental trials where she was supposed to be hypnotized, all they did was to give her the post-hypnotic trigger word "hypno" immediately before. You can watch the intriguing video of her going in and out of trance on command. She also has spontaneous amnesia of all of her trances, which seems to be quite unusual - and useful in another cool study from Kallio's lab, where she is meant to be blinded to which hypnotic condition she is operating under (conditions such as "the square shapes will appear blue". Success with posthypnotic visual hallucinations are another rarity!)

Yes, they have done at least a half dozen studies with this one participant, often with all the hypnotized data coming only from her. A strange relationship, reminding me of many long term scientist-case-study relationships. While it's hard to say how applicable her behaviour is to the hypnotic states most people experience, I find this evidence objectively convincing that it is a distinct state. And it would sure be fun to trance with someone that insanely hypnotizable.