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.
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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.
--
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.
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