Guest post: Tick Tock (A Post-Hypnotic Clothing Fetish)

This blog has been more intellectual and less sexual lately. Let's change that. I got the idea from Lee Allure of giving partners new (temporary) clothing fetishes via post-hypnotic suggestion, but the results were hotter than I could have ever anticipated. This is not erotic fiction; this really happened. (email posted with permission)
--
It began like any normal day.
Not wanting to get out of bed, rushing my way out the door.
Jumping on the bus. Headed to work, another drone day.
And then I saw a cute guy on the bus, he was texting on his phone. Hands up and shirt cuffs pulled back due to the reach of his arm.
There it was, his watch. For me to blatantly see. It was instant, and until that moment the thought of a watch did not even cross my mind, but at that very moment my pussy twitched and my mind went elsewhere.
I smiled, a pleasant reminder that you were inside my mind. That you gave me the desire to run my hands down this strangers dress pants.
As I continued on to through the subway I saw two more watches. Both on men that normally wouldn't excite me. But it was uncontrollable, much like smelling the cologne of an ex, it conjured up memories of me being on my knees servicing a man. It made me squirmy and giddy.
It wasn't until my lunch that I saw two more watches, this time two coworkers that I am not attracted to at all. They both smiled and said hello, and I smiled and noticed their watches. Right away an image of them sharing me popped into my head. Getting tagged teamed on both ends, holes filled by these two coworkers. As I drifted into my dirty thoughts the elevator dinged and opened, back up to my desk I went.
That is where I ran into my crush. Dressed dapper as always and giant smile he came over to greet me. My eyes automatically darted to his wrist, hoping he was wearing a watch, and to my pleasant surprise he was. It was very visible, eloquent and being paraded in my face. His hands moved when he talked and my eyes followed his watch's every move. I'm sure I had a very naughty grin on my face. and don't remember a word of our conversation. All I could think about was his hand deep in my cunt and his watch rubbing against my wet swollen pussy. Hoping hed go deeper and deeper to get the watch inside me. I wanted to watch my juices drip off his watch.
Anyways the conversation ended and I drifted back to reality, amazed at my ability to carry on a conversation while being so aroused and distracted. I stopped by his desk again later that day to say hello again ;)
I biked home (left my bike at work the day before cause it rained). On my way home I stopped by a roti shop for dinner.
I sat and enjoy the local alternative paper while I ate dinner. Went I got up I noticed how wet my pussy was, dripping actually. I wondered what had gotten me so excited. So I turned to take a look at the old man who served me, sure enough he was wearing a watch. Again instantly my mind melted and that amazing feeling of being controlled and aroused crept over me.
Later when I was at home, I was surfing through the web and came across a really awesome tattoo which lead me to think about a tattoo ive been dying to get, a pocket watch. With out even thinking about it I started googling pocket watches and some how ended up here ... https://www.google.ca/search?q=droste+watch&rlz=1C1CHFX_enCA553CA553&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Jf5JU6rHDoKE2wWIvoHYAQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=651
It was an amazing way to end my night, as my eyes and pussy were beyond satisfied and dreamy.

The next day I biked to and from work, so the possibilities of watches popping up on my way to work were very limited.
And at work I was very busy so I didnt leave my desk as often, again limiting my watch spottings.
But I did see two random watches as I walked around the office. Older gentlemen that caused images of their cum all over my face seem real. I went back to my desk to secretly playand tease my pantiless pussy for a bit before getting back to work.

As for today, I didn't notice any watches on my outing today.
And went to a very busy market and took public transit twice. So I am assuming the 2 day reference was strong enough to wear off automatically.

The King Game: How to Be Submissive, How to be Dominant

In my post last night about improv and hypnosis, I mentioned that one of the best resources for improving your D/s is reading about status in books about improv, and especially Impro for Storytellers by Keith Johnstone. I want to prove it with this amazing passage about teaching a class of improv students how to play large status differences. You will definitely think about your own D/s experiences reading this, but I will share a couple of thoughts at the end.

THE KING GAME
If the master is not happy, he snaps his fingers and his servant dies (to be instantly replaced by another servant, ad infinitum). The game is a competition to see which servant can survive the longest, and it makes the players exquisitely attentive to each other.
...
I place a master on a throne, or arrange him/her comfortably on a sofa with lots of cushions and grapes and other comforts. Then I say, 'If anything irritates you, no matter how minor, snap your fingers and your servant will die and we'll send in a replacement.'

I appoint a timekeeper to time how long the servants survive.

'We'll call fifteen seconds good! And twenty seconds excellent! Anyone like to try for twenty-five?'

This gives the masters permission to be severe, but even so, some will frown and allow their servants to make blunder after blunder. I interrupt such scenes and point out the moments when the master became irritated:

'You wanted to kill him after three seconds because his demeanour challenged you, but you thought that wouldn't be fair. Then you wanted to kill him because he cringed. Then you wanted to kill him because he asked you what you wanted. Then you wanted to kill him because he passed right in front of you on the way to the drinks cabinet. Then you wanted to kill him because he took a position behind you that made you feel uncomfortable. How will our servants learn if you're so forgiving?'

Often the masters have no idea that the servant is annoying them.

'Are you biting your lip and frowning?' I say.

'Er . . . yes.'

'Well, that's a sign that you're not happy, so kill your servant!'

Or I'll say, 'You're shirting about on your throne. Snap your fingers if you feel restless and we'll try a new servant!'

'But he hasn't done anything wrong!'

'The servants have to make being onstage a pleasure, and yet you're visibly unhappy. The sooner you kill a bad servant, the sooner we'll find one that it's a pleasure to work with!'

Or 'You didn't like it when she shoved her elbow into your face.'

'I wanted to give her a chance.'

'Don't give her a chance. She's been pestering you from the moment she stepped onstage, isn't that right?'

'Yes.'

'Well, if you don't kill her, she won't improve.'

'What did I do?' she says, astonished, because she'd thought she was succeeding.

'Well, for a start, you took big steps and waved your arms about. No servant is allowed to do that. It looked as if the regular servant was ill and they'd brought in a scullery-maid.'

I turn to the master: 'Then she stood over you and made you feel so uncomfortable that you crossed your leg away from her (an unsuccessful James Bond did that when the baddie approached him), and then she held eye contact, forcing you to look away. And then she asked if there was anything you wanted and you didn't like having to make a decision.'

'True!'

I'll often ask the servants if they know why they were killed.

'No idea!'

'Perhaps the master can tell you.'

The master may not know either - masters are told to kill on impulse, but sometimes they'll say things like 'You weren't respectful!' or 'You were too servile!'

If masters kill on impulse, I can usually tell them why they were irritated, and this gives them insight:

'The servant asked you if you wanted anything - that's why you killed her.'

The servant protests: 'But I'm a servant! Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?'

'Servants are paid to take the weight of trivial decisions away from the masters.'

'That's right!' interrupts the master. 'You were supposed to know what I wanted!'

The servant still looks baffled.

...

After the students have floundered for a while I advise them to:
*  Enter with a purpose
*  Never say, 'Is there anything you need, ma'am?'
*  Be physically and vocally discreet
*  Convey that the space belongs to the master and that you intrude into
it only when necessary
*  Don't look servile - or as if waiting to be punished
*  Don't out-stare (out-status) the master
*  Don't leave awkward pauses

One of the things this makes me think about is how hard it is to listen to what I want as a dom, and insist on it in a scene: someone may be acting out submissiveness to me, but they might not be doing it in the way I prefer. And it can be subtle issues of body language and personal space - I might sense "impertinence" without being able to put my finger on it. And we all know that there are some kinds of grovelling and offering of services that can be pushy and offputting, if only subliminally.

There's a bigger philosophical issue here about D/s: should my goal be to train someone how to be the most pleasing possible submissive to me? For some submissives, that's their dream. They might have hard or soft limits - for example, not liking the word "obedience". But that's not really challenging, since within that, they want their behaviour to be shaped for my maximal pleasure.

On the other hand, many submissives may have a certain image of submitting that is their kink (like "looking servile"!), but it may not be precisely what I find most pleasing. For example, the idea of receiving corporal punishment for misbehaving. Or say being made to sleep at the foot of the bed. Neither are a big part of my fantasy life. But given that the reality is that we are equal, consenting grownups, negotiating what we want out of the relationship on the basis of some shared kink, there should be room for talking about that too. Although it gets more complicated when it comes to the idea of being picky about their micro behaviour, as in the Johnstone passage. But I'm interested to hear from people how they deal with this paradox in their D/s relationships (maybe the central paradox for D/s): how to be the king or queen, while still ensuring the other person is getting what they want.

Improv, Hypnosis, and Creativity

During the year and a half I was taking improv comedy classes at Improv Boston and Improv Asylum, I was constantly struggling to achieve better focus, and get out of the way of what my unconscious mind wanted to produce. I learned really quickly that though I wanted to think things through and pick the best possible idea, a) that takes too long, and b) often the weird thing that just pops out of my mouth is way funnier and more interesting. I made contact with IRL hypnosis at the tail end of this time, and soon had the idea that hypnosis could achieve some of the same aims, since it involves relaxed focus and losing self consciousness. Recently I got to try this out!

Every improv class involves at least a half an hour of playing a variety of warmup games - a bunch of mid-20s to early-30s adults paying a lot of money to do activities you might see at a children's birthday party - because that's what it takes to leave the buttoned-up everyday world behind, and to be  spontaneously creating without judgment, as well as tuned into one another. But maybe hypnosis could substitute for the warmup.

For example, simplest game in the world: word toss. Classmates stand in a circle, and "toss" a word at each other. The objective of the person who receives it: look at another classmate and say a word. Any word at all. It just has to be fast. This game is incredibly difficult for adults. It instantly makes you realize all the layers of filtering we normally employ, to protect our self image. The choice of word could be fraught with peril: will it reveal something terrible about ourselves? Like that we're deranged, or not creative? And so the pause gets longer. Even though *any word is ok*. I'll bet this game would be a total disaster at most dinner parties - it takes a group of people very explicitly committed to not judging each other's output, and even then it takes practice.

So word toss was the first thing I was eager to try when I got a chance to do hypnosis with my former improv classmate. She's the first person I've hypnotized who does not know about my hypnosis fetish. I wrestled with myself about that, but ultimately decided it was ok, because a) she initiated, coming over and excitedly asked me if she could try hypnosis when she overheard me talking about it, b) I don't have the hots for her, c) her boyfriend would be there for the whole thing, and d) I was motivated to trance with her for reasons other than my fetish. But this is a broader issue that will come up in the future and I'll have to think about: whether it's ok to do vanilla hypnosis with people who don't want to know about my sex life, considering that I am bound to get a (usually mild) kinky thrill out of it.

Besides the warmup games, I was fascinated by the idea of improvisational storytelling. The book that got me to take improv classes, and which hit me like a lightning bolt out of the blue, was Keith Johnstone's Impro for Storytellers. This book is not just about improv comedy - the modern version of which Johnstone had a huge hand in founding - but about much bigger issues of performance, creativity, and the nature of stories.

Johnstone's most important message, that blew my mind, is that most people's problem with creativity is in trying, consciously, to come up with something good. Decades of getting graded on our work - and judging other people's work - has actually harmed us in that respect, and made most adults afraid to create anything at all. But no matter what age, we can find our way back to it with help. He describes an exercise in guided storytelling he does that certainly sounds a lot like hypnosis, in his other book Impro (you can read the entire chapter at the moment here).

If I get you to lie down, close your eyes and relax, and report what your imagination gives you, then you'll probably go into a deep state of absorption, and instead of 'thinking things up' the experiences will seem to be really happening to you. Afterwards, if I ask 'Did you feel the floor?' then you'll probably say, 'There wasn't any floor.' If I say, 'Did you experience your body?' you'll probably answer, 'I wasn't in my body' or 'I was in the body I had in the story.'

He writes that the participant "should have the experience of imagining something 'effortlessly', and 'choicelessly'. He should understand through this game that he doesn't have to do anything in order to imagine, any more than he needs to do anything in order to relax or perceive." His method is to ask a series of prompts that guide the person's attention to different aspects of the imagined situation. And it is as though the person only has to look and see what's there to answer the question, rather than deciding on it or making it up. This is long, but I wanted to include his transcript of this in action because I find it so fascinating:

'What sort of stories do you like?'
'Science fiction. Well . . . Tolkien. Stories like The Hobbit.'
'OK. Imagine a lake surrounded by mountains.'
'Yes.'
'You are swimming in the lake.'
'Yes.'
'Can you see any fish?'
'Yes.'
'Large ones?'
'No.'
'Shoals of little ones turning and darting?'
'Yes.'
'There is one particular fish. What do you do with it?'
'I catch it.'
'You swim back to the shore and three hooded figures are waiting for you. What do you give them?'
'The fish.'
'And what do they give you in exchange?'
'A stick.'
'What do you do with it?'
'I point it at an oak tree and it vanishes.'
'And then?'
'I point it at the three hooded figures and they vanish too.'
'You set out through the woods. Does the path lead up or down?'
'Up.'
'What do you hear? Is it from your right or your left?'
'Left. Someone crying.'
'You look down into a clearing and see a woman surrounded by . . .?'
'Little men.'
'What's she wearing? Anything?'
'She's naked.'
'The little men see you?'
'They're coming at me waving sticks.'
'The woman calls to them?'
'She says it's not me who did it.'
'Was it someone from the castle?'
'Yes, he threw her out naked into the forest'
'Do you help her?'
'Yes.'
'Do you go up the path?'
'I put my cloak round her and we set off to the castle.'
'It gets dark?'
'Yes.'
'And you are going to sleep?'
'We cover ourselves with leaves and we lie about eight feet apart.'
'You're fast asleep when you wake up to feel her touching you.'
'Yes.'
'What's she after?'
'The stick.'
'Does she get it?'
'Yes.'
'She points it at you and what happens?'
'It goes all grey and wintry.'
'What do you see in the mist?'
'A huge oak tree, and three hooded figures leaping about and shouting.'

This callback, or "reincorporation", of earlier material provides a satisfying ending, and was apparently really funny when it happened. I studied this carefully. Clearly the questioner has a very active role in helping the story come into existence!

I feel the allure of this mode of creation. Although I'm not now an improvisational comedian, the book and the classes were a tremendous inspiration to me, and gave me something I desperately needed. It  had an immediate, concrete impact on my behaviour, in that I sat down and wrote a dozen comedy sketches and 20 short stories over a period of a few months, after being absolutely terrified and paralyzed to do the slightest thing "creative" since as far back as middle school. This sentence alone was enough to free me:

It's hard to write a great poem about a sunset. What a ridiculous idea. Just write a poem and see what comes out.

Most of what I created will never see the light of day (the stories are all  mind control pornography - surprised?), but thanks to Johnstone I couldn't care less. It was great.

In looking for the dialogue in Impro, I discovered another fascinating connection with hypnosis, in discussing the possibility of an unexpected emotional reaction, or "abreaction" - and he uses that term!

Once the basic technique is mastered, I let students try it again. This time they'll be bolder. They'll encounter other people, they'll have adventures, but I'll still guide them away from 'bad trips'. I'm using the game to demonstrate to the student that he can be effortlessly creative, not to teach him that his imagination is terrifying and should be suppressed! People cån get upset playing the game, but if they weep you can cuddle them, which makes them feel better. When people abreact I always establish that (1) it's good for them; (2) they'll feel marvellous in half an hour; (3) it 'happens to everybody'

Pretty plausible sounding advice, and not redundant with the tips in the major hypno books!

After plenty of pretalk and negotiation (though I didn't call it that), we did a couple of simple beginner trances, and then started the word toss. I got her boyfriend, also an improviser, involved as the one giving her the words to respond to.

The results were inconclusive. She didn't seem to hesitate over her choice of words, but they also came slowly - as words tend to do in hypnosis. I think the choices may have been a little less inhibited, less screened. For example, when he said "work" she just went "eeeugh", which certainly reflected her un-hypnotized feelings.

Then I had her do a word toss with herself. This is surprisingly hard to do normally, since you can get tripped up thinking about the pattern your words are making. So I suggested that she would hear herself say the last word and respond to it, but then let that last word go, fade away. From what she said afterwards, this "amnesia-lite" suggestion didn't work, but she still powered along, steadily giving out the words.

After more chatting out of trance, we decided to go ahead with the story. I did my best to imitate Johnstone, and even quickly reread the passage above seconds before the trance. Since she had pointed out that many of her word-toss words had related to a vacation in nature, that's where I started.

"You're in a wood. Is it a dark wood or a light wood?"

"Light."

And we were off. She saw markings on a tree trunk, heard a sound, and followed it into the bushes, to find an old man with a fishing rod, that had a boot on the end of the line.

I quickly discovered that guiding such a story is a skill that will take practice. I felt myself get worried that it was getting boring, and heard myself saying things like, "he says something unusual, what is it?" I don't know if that's against the spirit of the exercise. There were also times when I was concerned it might get scary, and wondered how much control I really had to steer the story away from distressing material. No matter what I tried to give her positive feedback and make it clear that whatever her imagination created was valid.

It was quite wonderful to see her calm, confident answers to my prompts as the story continued, and many times she offered details beyond the prompt. That surprised me because I think of hypnotized people as having a hard time initiating action. Eventually it unfolded into an eerie little tale, involving a small boy marking up the forest with strange symbols, and the old man as his servant. It wasn't a "proper" story, partly because it was so short, but it had a dream logic that I found compelling too, and there was a moment, just like in Johnstone's example, where we both knew the story had come to a natural ending. An oddly emotional ending.

I finished up with just a few more prompts to focus on the forest, with the late afternoon sun filtering through the treetops, to give her a bit more of her vacation.

She was enthusiastic about the experience, and told me how every detail of the scene had been vivid to her - that she could tell me exactly what the old man had been wearing for example. She had self-identified as visual before we began, and that certainly seemed to be true. I think visual people naturally get the most out of guided imagery, and for them it can be an extremely powerful and enjoyable experience.

I'm pleased with the session, and I want to do more someday. There are many other improv games that could be easier or more compelling in trance. (It's no coincidence that the Upright Citizens' Brigade Theatre's slogan is "DON'T THINK"!) I think of word-at-a-time stories, or some synchrony/rhythm games. Games involving high energy or initiating actions might be hard for hypnotized people.

But I think there's lots of potential for getting into characters, improv style, which of course massively overlaps with hypnotic roleplay, e.g. as discussed in Wiseguy's Mind Play. Stage hypnotists do this all the time, and also do activities where audience members interact with imposed personality traits. But I think this would be fun and funny to play with in less pressurized, more intimate settings, particularly for shy people who would normally feel too self-conscious to do any kind of performing. (which kind of makes my improv training like a months-long, thousand-dollar hypnotic trance, to convince someone as shy as me they could be onstage performing for an audience - with no script)

And where appropriate, improv character play can have a kinky dimension to it. For example, check out this hilarious audio file of a bright and literate college grad who has been hypnotized by her dom to talk like a ditzy valley girl (temporarily, and consensually). So I'm excited about both the sexual and the non-sexual possibilities. Being in the moment, not preparing or overthinking, letting go of mistakes, letting your unconscious create and accepting what it comes up with - these are all ideals of improv that trance can help anyone access.

As an addendum, a couple of people have asked, did improv training help me as a hypnotist? A little bit. Most of all by teaching me that you have to make choices, and commit to them. It may not always be the best possible choice, but the speed is important. You just have to respect the flow, and value it over everything being perfect. And often what your unconscious offers is better for that moment than if you had all the time in the world to think it over. Another way it might have helped is by the importance of truly tuning into your partner, and not letting your own plans take you out of noticing what is happening right now between you, and where the scene wants to go next. But thankfully for the sake of my slow brain, the pace of hypnosis is slower, with a little time to think - and unlike improv comedy, there is some room for thinking up wonderful ideas during the day, that you write down and then delight someone with!

One final note, because I love this stuff. Even if you're not interested in improv, Impro for Storytellers is one of the best books you could read about D/s: Johnstone was a researcher on status, and how it is deeply woven into every interaction we have, and D/s is about playing with status differences. In fact, with ridiculously large status differences - much larger than are usually "allowed" to be seen in everyday life, which is probably what makes D/s feel taboo. You just don't see people grovelling at someone's feet in mainstream American society! (at least not literally.) As a simple example of Johnstone's concrete discoveries, if you want to appear more dominant, at least for a few minutes, hold your head still, keep your hands far away from your head and face, make strong eye contact except when it could be interpreted as checking for approval, and make few unnecessary movements, with the movements you do make smooth and decisive. Anyone you have ever seen successfully portraying "dominant" has incorporated this body language.

NEEHU 5 Scene: The "Suddenly Susan" Suggestion

"Whenever I and only I say <word>, until I say that word again, you will find that any little movement you make brings you pleasure and arousal - every little twitch, of any muscle, anywhere in your body, will send a thrill of sexual pleasure through your body. And this will also be true if someone else moves your body - little movements of your body will give you little thrills of pleasure, while big movements give you big pleasure. There is no way to avoid the torment of pleasure that any little movement will bring you."

I got the idea for this suggestion from a sitcom episode I saw 14 years ago. Here's the relevant scene at 14:45:

The key line, that stuck with me, was "Because if I move, I'll have an orgasm."  (And when I tracked it down, it turned out to be from Just Shoot Me not Suddenly Susan - who knew those were two distinct shows. Also, holy crap was Wendie Malick sexy!)

I'm so happy it came back to me while I was spending time with a delightful new trance partner on Sunday afternoon at NEEHU 5. She had expressed an interest in erotic control, which I was of course thrilled about, but had to think around a bit for something that would be fun and appropriate in the fairly public area of the con we were in, literally called the Fishbowl.

When I brought her out of trance, sitting beside me on the couch, and gave her the keyword, I could see the effect right away. Her eyes went wide, and I could see her tense up in an effort to stay still. Then about a second later there was a twitch, followed by a gasp, and then a wriggle, and more gasping. It's impossible to remain completely still, over long periods of time, and then the physical reaction to the pleasure would cause its own ripple of pleasure, that would just accelerate until she managed to settle down again. But that wouldn't last long. I couldn't believe what a hot show she was putting on for me. I had turned her body into a sexy perpetual motion feedback machine.

I lifted up her hand, which elicited a loud moan and shivers. Then when I let go, it stayed there in the air. Somehow I didn't realize that it would have the same effect as a mannequin/freeze suggestion - she couldn't lower her hand without more erotic torment. So I played with that for a while.

I released her then, and she sagged into the couch, clearly buzzing. I checked in and then asked her to stand up with both arms outstretched, and gave her the trigger again.

"Arms get tired after a while, you know," I said as she visibly struggled, quivers breaking out all over. "Especially when I do this." And I rested my hands on top of her hands. After a while I started gently increasing the pressure. When she let her arms go she made wonderful noises.

Then I started taunting her. "You're free to move you know. What are you afraid of? This is all in your head. Here, walk over to me." After more prodding she took a deep breath, and began the lurchingest, hip-rolling-est, sexy Frankenstein of a walk. She only made it two laborious steps before I took pity and told her to stop.

Count this as a success. Mostly thanks to the wonderful brain of this play partner, which took the suggestion and revelled in it. There's nothing really new, and in fact I recently realized the same idea can be found in Lee Allure's awesome "Big Trigger List" but the "Suddenly Susan" feels like me. And will be making future appearances. More than anything else about this suggestion, it was the look in her eyes: that inward focus and struggle, trying to attend to everywhere on her body at once and keep it all managed, only to have cascading pleasure come and wipe out all that control.

Guest post: Trance & kinky exploration

Not much I could add to this, except that I love it and aspire to write something as beautiful about hypnosis someday. By thewindow, reposted with permission from her Fetlife post.
--
I think of the center of the flame of my purple pinecone shaped candle, and can feel a tiny pull towards some inner state I’m starting to explore, a launchpad for both stillness and for infinite possibilities.

I recently did a hypnosis scene with Divney and my boyfriend where Divney hypnotized me to feel deeper pleasure, weakness and trance when my boyfriend bit me. (My recent vampire erotica was originally supposed to be a basis for the scene but we scaled it way, way back since it involved a lot of tricky parts and it was my first time in hypnosis.)

There is so much to write about this that was exciting: Playing with other people for the first time as a couple! Feeling super safe and encouraged to prioritize safety, even when playing with altered states of consciousness! But what I’m feeling pulled to write about now is the connection I’m feeling between hypnotic trance and the exploration of kink itself.

I’ve had an on-and-off-again meditation practice and have had some guided imagery done by different holistic practitioners, and I’m told that helps with going into trance. But this was my first time doing hypnosis except for mucking around with some friends as a teenager using the methods from the film Dead Again (so you know it was Totally Legit).

Trance was such a wonderful and wild space to be in. Divney had me stare into the heart of a flame as the initial induction. The impossibility and density of the center of a flame was the perfect space to get visually lost in. Days later, I still conjure up the image sometimes to tap into a more grounded space.

The internal space I found, and the relationship I found myself taking to the suggestions and directions Divney guided me to while I was in trance, reminded me a lot of an experience I had a few years ago. A friend and I were scoping out the chapel at the Harvard Business School as a possible location for a film he was shooting. It has a tiered koi pond with triangular glass walls as its lobby and the chapel itself looks, sounds, and feels like it’s inside a giant boulder of quartz. It was such a beautiful and surreal place that my senses and contemplation were heightened anyway, but these only got stronger as we went downstairs into a pitch black basement. After a short time I felt like I had my bearings, even in the dark, but suddenly realized what we had thought was a wall was actually an opening into yet another (pitch black) space. Eventually we found our way to a tiny room where all we could see were a few red LED lighs and a red clock counting down something like 18 hours.
 
With the architecture, the room that seemed to suddenly appear, and the countdown, we started telling each other stories. We were in a submarine. The world around us was a nuclear wasteland, and in 18 hours it would be reborn. We were in the security vault of a bank. We were on another planet.

After about an hour of this, I got to a space where I really wasn’t sure what we would find if we left that pitch black space. Seeing the koi pond seemed just as likely as seeing the bottom of the ocean, as seeing a Martian landscape. And I wanted to find those other things if I looked, wanted reality to be malleable, wanted my imagination to be so rich that it would come to life.

Going into trance felt very similar to that. A mental space where I could get lost in the center of a flame, where I could drop into spaces of myself yet unexplored, where maybe I really couldn’t open my eyes when Divney told me it would be too difficult to if I tried.

And part of me knew that I could open my eyes, could turn down the suggestions, just like a part of me knew that when we exited the basement, we’d be back in the chapel, no nuclear winter to be seen. But we hung out so long in that basement because we didn’t want our imagination to be disconfirmed. My beliefs and my wishes twisted and wove together.

And similarly, I so loved savoring the trance and wanted to revel in it because it meant limitlessness, infinite possibilities, spelunking of the soul, giddy wonderings of what new directions I could ride that belief/wish line towards.

After the wonderful evening, I was reflecting to Divney how our scene felt like embarking on a journey, of trying hypnosis, of playing with new people – and realized that, well, every moment in the kink scene I’ve had feels like the beginning of some journey. It’s all continuous, but each point of growth and learning and exploration is the start of its own trajectory that will have its own storyline, its own narrative, even if it’s a part of other narratives too.

And lo and behold, last night I turned to start reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön, a Buddhist nun who often writes about meditation (hello hypnosis-relatedness!), and the first chapter is all about journeys and the newness they bring. From her book:

When we begin our exploration, we have all kinds of ideals and expectations. We are looking for answers that will satisfy a hunger we’ve felt for a very long time. But the last thing we want is a further introduction to the boogeyman…. The truth is that when we really begin to [explore and face the fears that inescapably arise], we’re going to be continually humbled. There’s not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. (p. 2-3)

Wow! Just like the fortune cookie message where you insert “in bed” after everything, try inserting “in/through kink.”

Yes, I’ve hungered for a long time. I’ve hungered for my fantasies. I’ve hungered for liberation from the boogeymen I’ve faced that left me suppressing my sexuality for so long. And of course, there are new boogeymen, from the large one of the specter of rape culture to the smaller ones of how you’re never quite prepared for the next day drop after a con or a scene or a party. And yet these unsettling and sometimes frightening things only arise because I have the courage to take those steps forward, to have new firsts, to have new experiences, to have new beginnings of journeys I didn’t even know were possible.

Each step I take in my exploration of kink and in the kink scene is a step towards the satisfaction of my hunger, towards fear, towards the unknown, towards limitlessness, infinite possibilities, spelunking of the soul, giddy wonderings of what new directions I can ride the blissful blending of reality and desire towards. I’m so excited to have had such a wonderful and empowering experience with hypnosis with Divney and my boyfriend – where even as I was being guided towards something specific, it felt like my going there came from a place of amazingly expanded choices – bringing in yet another means that so directly will help me explore kink in this open, vulnerable, powerful way.

Favourite Hypnokink Posts on Tumblr

There's a hypnokink party happening on tumblr! Every day there's likely to be one or two thoughtful posts from people doing hypnosis in real life. And for every one of those, dozens of hypnofetish porn posts - mostly vanilla porn pictures with mc flash-fiction captions about how the person in the photo is hypnotized.

Tumblr, for old people like myself, is kind of a cross between your facebook newsfeed and a blogging platform. In fact you could just use it as a blog, but the interface affords easily scanning through new posts from all the people you "follow", and with one click "repost" items on your own feed. It also helps you easily share images and posts from other websites. You can add commentary to what you repost as well, which gives a welcome (if sometimes tempestuous) element of discussion.

But primarily it seems like a way to soak yourself in new content about your interest at will. Well, your interest along with a ton of jokey gifs, vanilla porn, personal status updates, and fan content (brace for Hannibal and Doctor Who). The volume is awesome for me as a hypnokinkster, but in that firehose blast, it's hard both to find and to hang onto the blog-like posts where someone took some time to describe a hypnotic experience or idea.

Therefore, this post will serve as an index to those tumblr posts I've run across that have what I'm looking for: are surprising, informative, and creative, and are based on personal experience with hypnosis. I've long looked for IRL hypnosis discussion community, finding only some Fetlife groups and a little on mcforum so I'm so excited that there is this rapidly expanding community online. All these tumblrs are worth following (note that I definitely don't endorse everything these writers post), represent every combination of top/bottom and male/female (for starters), and most are less than a year old, so it's exciting to see where this is going. (note that this does not include the wonderful blogspot-style blogs on my sidebar, like sleepingirl's and spiral turquoise's, because it's much easier to find the good stuff in there - hope to devote future posts to my favourites of theirs.)

This is also my wordy way to say I've joined tumblr: deeperforme.tumblr.com. Basically using it to advertise my blogspot posts, but maybe it is more convenient for you!

AmHypnotic: You Did Nothing!
HS: How does one tell if they're in trance?
HS: Wrench Wench
HS: Hypnosis techniques: Amnesia
HS:Little Bird’s Mantra
HS: Hypnosis vs Trance
HS: Why I do it
AmHypnotic: The Kind of Moments I Love in Hypno Kink Play...
AmHypnotic: Tips from a Hypnobottom 4 Commentary
AmHypnotic: Consensual Nonconsent, Mind Control, and Hypnofetish...
AmHypnotic: Look Into My Eyes, a musing about my favorite D/s style induction...
HS: On The Importance Of Trust
TSLIB: Hermione Granger as a hypnotist
TSLIB: Too elaxed for the letter R
TSLIB: January
TSLIB: How to Write Good (for hypnosis)
TSLIB: The Doge trance
TSLIB: Scientists discover most relaxing tune ever
TSLIB: Bat Trance
TSLIB: Robots and Emergent Behavior
TSLIB: It’s really frustrating being a female hypnotist on Omegle.
DOASF: What is some advice you wish you could give your younger self?
DOASF: Tips from a Hypnobottom (whole series)
DOASF: Like a sexy, involuntary improv class
DOASF: Sex chair
HV: Hypnotic bingo
OIP: what goes on in your mind when hypnotized
HSurrender: Resistance is Futile
TSLIB: Commentary on sir-with-the-pendulum
Serena: Trance time with Spiral Turquoise :)
subject-e: Playing on the edge of the Void
POM: Text induction
Dommestic: How does proximity to last orgasm affect depth of trance?
Daja: Lessons Learned at NEEHU
Hypnotic-tale: Proper Hypnosis Session
HV: I can do this by myself...I often do
Charlequin: Consent and Negotiation
HS: Why I am Proud of my Subjects
DOASF: One of the most emotionally intense scenes we’ve ever done.
DOASF: Bimbofication by talking like a valleygirl + audio!
Charlequin: The Story of You 
TSLIB: What would you recommend for our first experience?
Hypnotic-tale: Trigger and suggestion post!
HS: Hypno-Guns and Other Things

NEEHU 5 Scene: The Hypno T + a Divney/Ashman Joint

"Whenever you look at the middle of the spiral on my t-shirt, it will seem like the most fascinating thing in the world, and you will find that your eyes get stuck looking at it. You'll lose your train of thought, and all your attention will be drawn to it. With an effort of will, you'll be able to tear your eyes away, but it will take more and more effort the longer you stare at the spiral. Eventually your eyes will just be captured. And once that happens it's only a matter of time before the spiral sends you into a deep trance, as deep or deeper than this one."

After a few repetitions, safety suggestions, and time for her to accept it completely, I snapped my fingers: "Wake up!"

I had a good feeling about this one, because GleefulAbandon and I had already used my t-shirt for an eye fixation induction twice that day, so she had the experience of staring blankly into the spiral on my chest - which is a wonderful, arousing sight from my viewpoint. Best Zazzle purchase ever.

But I underestimated how delightful this would be. We chatted a little bit post trance on the couch, while I kept a cushion over my chest. Then in the middle of her talking I dropped the cushion and she went, "oh." Her eyes widened slightly, and she was clearly stuck. After a few seconds, she went "Ah!" and looked away grinning sheepishly. "Pretty good, right? Look again."

Something I enjoyed immediately was watching her brain go to work on the problem - of course, that same brain that was playing this trick on her. She wanted to experiment, and discovered that if there was a fold in my tshirt she could position her head in such a way that the center of the spiral was invisible, and so she wasn't captured. The same if I just covered the center with the palm of my hand. But then I would straighten the fabric, or take my hand away, and she would be stuck again. I loved watching her go, "I can totally still look away! It's not too bad yet..." and then either breaking away, with great apparent effort, or go, "uh oh, nope, I'm stuck". For a hypnofetishist, those long periods where her eyes were stuck but she wasn't yet hypnotized, but it was now inescapable, and those slow eye blinks and slumping down were coming with time, were just gorgeous.

Part of my inspiration was knowing that GleefulAbandon is someone with a busy, curious mind, so that if she knew she wasn't supposed to look at something, she couldn't help but take a glance to see what it was she wasn't supposed to look at - and get stuck. "This shouldn't be so hard, you can just look me in the face, right?" And then her eyes would flick down, and that would be it.

We had a lot of fun playing with it on that couch. But the best part was the rest of the night in the dungeon, each of us on our separate business. I would stroll past her while she was talking with a group of people, and she would go "Ah shit!" and be stuck looking my t-shirt. Sometimes I would walk on, breaking the spell, and other times I'd stand there and she would be forced to explain to the people around what was happening to her. (I made sure to say to her at a couple of points, let me know if this gets old and I'll turn it off) Some of those people would help, blocking the spiral to snap her out of it, and some would hinder: like when her dom held her arms behind her and forced her to stare until the trance came on (hot), at which point she collapsed forward onto me - the first time I've had to catch someone like that.

So this was a series of lightbulb moments for me: a type of suggestion that works great in a public dungeon, and where other people can play along too. In particular that person's partners. It was the funnest. It was like a Warner Bros cartoon at times: she would be sitting chatting with someone, and I would sneak up and stand where she would see the spiral close up when she turned her head. "Ah shit." I had to get used to talking to her with her head or whole body completely averted, or with her holding her fist in the air to block it.

Later, we were chilling out talking about Howard Ashman - we both love musicals, and Menken/Ashman in particular - while I tried to decide on another fun post-hypnotic suggestion. Suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors came up, and the line, "He'd snap his fingers and me, I'd say 'sure'!"



And then I had it. I reinducted her and told her that when I snapped my fingers, she'd say "sure". It was great to see someone crack up in trance, even as the suggestion sunk powerfully into her mind.

There was a sort of a startle, or indignance, each time she found "sure" popping out of her mouth, that I enjoyed each time. Highlights included people trying to figure out what was happening ("Is she saying 'shore'?"), her attempting to explain the song reference while I snapped throughout ("He'd snap his - sure - fingers - sure - and me I'd say - sure - sure. Ah!") and combining it with her exasperatedly getting captivated by the spiral: "You're having fun, right?" <snap> "Sure."

There were other great hypnotic experiences at NEEHU, but I wanted to get this one with GleefulAbandon down first and in detail, because of how it points the way to future hypnosis I want to do: themes of struggle with the self, games, and public stuff that is fun for others too. Really happy we made this connection.

NEEHU 5: People and Place

I'm still buzzing from the New England Erotic Hypnosis Unconference. Fears that I might not make new friends or have any hot scenes were unfounded. Will write individual blog posts about some of the scenes, but I wanted to say a little about the environment and the people - the kinds of things I would have been curious about as a lonely hypnofetishist in Canada, not knowing I would ever connect with so many others of my kind.

NEEHU 5 had about 150 people, which means I have no doubt that it was the biggest gathering of hypnokinksters in history, anywhere in the world. If Deepmind Darkwood was the valley of the hypnokinksters, this was the home planet. Deepmind Darkwood really did do its job though, of giving the attendees a bond in a short period of time, just like we had been to summer camp together. So I felt a sense of real joy at being reunited with MrDream, ZanyM, Lee Allure, GleefulAbandon, Chewtoy, mephki, Lady Ru'etha and the rest. Then there was the chance to get to know awesome people who I only really knew, and admired, from their blogs: Spiral_Turquoise, HS, AmHypnotic, and Ms_Mesmer. Along with my Boston buddies and more great new people, it meant that for the first time I had that warm con togetherness feeling that I have heard friends report who have a regular science fiction convention or ren fair they go back to every year.

I want to paint a picture of the physical environment. This was my first time in a dungeon (something that is not allowed to exist in Massachussetts), and it was really not so far off from my imagination - it was nice touch that many walls were painted in faux-stone! It had obviously been a crummy office space in a warehouse district, where many of the walls had been taken out, the windows covered, and many wonderful devices and comforts brought in. With the lights on, the effect was a little like the afterschool teen clubhouse I remember from my youth, what with the couches and linoleum. But with many more wooden contraptions with straps coming out of them. It was a constant source of pleasurable vertigo to sit in a class looking idly up at the drop panel ceiling with the fluorescent lights and small water stains, to look down at the giant St Andrew's cross the presenter was standing next to, and remind myself he or she is talking about erotic hypnosis.

Those pleasant dissonances abounded, like the awarding of lovely printed certificates of appreciation with names like DrHeadcrash and DirtyOldMan65 on them, or the well-lit bag room with riding crops all in a row, or the christian rock band rehearsal coming through the ceiling at a couple of points. I'm really in a sex dungeon! I would tell myself. And it is comfortable and fun! There were plenty of rooms with quiet corners to trance in (often filled with people trancing!), a giant chain spider web, and a coffin (love that!). But even more of what made it comfortable was due to the organizers' terrific efforts, with snacks always around and a little blanket fort area for chilling out.

Nearly every class slot I would experience physical pain about not being able to be in two places at once, and I still grieve many of the classes I gave up to the gods of multi-track programming. But the real con was in the hangout and the people: the hypnotist who came all the way from Ireland and talked about blending traditional storytelling with hypnosis; the 21 year old pro hypnodomme who excitedly showed us the art for her new "epic fantasy" recordings; the equally painfully young dapper gent in a villainous goatee and grin who told me the most nightmarish ideas for hypnotic suggestions I've ever heard (which delight his masochist partners); another hypnodomme who had started it as an additional stream of income after retirement (but 21 years of recreational hypnosis), and was just now joining the kink scene; the West Virginian couple figuring out how to work with the wife's love of getting powerful hypnotic orgasms from people over the internet; the gentle, nerdy fellow in a long term loving relationship who's singlehandedly written most of the evil, hot, top quality mc porn that's out there. There's a theme that kept emerging, of love and affection, as much as sex.

Not that it wasn't sexy. Hot people in various states of undress, hot trances, plenty of visions of people writhing and moaning in a hypnotist's arms as he or she whispered in their ear... and then there were truly wild sights like the trance based on Doctor Who's Weeping Angels, which has already received a great writeup. (So many Doctor Who references that weekend...)

That's a start, anyway, on three days that changed my life. Now that I've been turned on to Hypbook, and have so many more hypnokinkster friends on FL keeping my feed active, the end of it was not such a sudden shock. But I'm sad thinking about how I'll be leaving soon, with my return to NEEHU uncertain, and so I have to make this charge last.