Ten Highlights and Ten Quotations from My NEEHU 6

This will be my only con of any kind this year: 6000 km from northern Italy to attend The New England Erotic Unconference 6 in Hartford, Connecticut, and 6000 km back. (Not to mention a little 2000 km round trip detour to the London Hypnosis Workshop first, for just 48 hours, all of them spent in the workshop, in the airport, or on various trains. Could anyone less curiously persuasive than Lee Allure get me to do something that nutty?)

This year, my second NEEHU, I learned from the lessons of last year and planned so I could be there for every minute of it. From the hotel room party on Thursday, to helping carry food into the dungeon on Friday morning, to the play party on Saturday with everyone in their finery, to the post-con swim and hot tubbing on Sunday night, to the sleepy Monday morning breakfast. Epic. I highly recommend this. Every minute, I was soaking up being with these special friends, and the new friends I was making: people who don't just get my big passion, erotic hypnosis and mind control fantasy, but live it - in many cases every day.

In all I didn't do a lot of hypnotizing, in fact less than I did in the three days prior I spent in Boston reconnecting with friends. I put it down to being more thrashed by the travel than I expected, and also to how development of my skills, confidence, and relationships has been on pause, or nearly so, during my year away in Italy. I felt the sacrifice of that in my gut. But at the same time, it has led to unique experiences like going to kink parties in Milan and being hypnotized in Italian, (not to mention mountains, gelatos, cappuccinos, and learning my first foreign language). At least NEEHU was a chance to take a big step forward. Right now I'm bubbling with ideas and technique from the classes and informal chats, and more importantly the sheer inspiration of seeing all the hundreds of pairups of subject and hypnotist - 145 people in all! - with uncountably many instant inductions and hypnotic orgasms.

The highlights could just be a massive list of all the people I loved spending time with - especially the ones from New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, and New Hampshire, you know who you are. It was like a summer camp reunion. (or a Camp Mindfuck reunion!) Instead, here are the first ten highlights that come to mind - and that should be safe to talk about:

* Convincing a number of people to rate hypnotic animated gifs on the prototype software I wrote, especially lizzy-doll and GleefulAbandon, who both rated an entire set of 100, and with whom - and I swear this was not my evil scheme! - I could see the unmistakable eyelid fluttering and body readjustment of heading into trance while viewing certain gifs. Wow was that sexy! It got so I could easily guess which ones they were going to give a "5", the highest rating for how "hypnotic and compelling" they found it. Here's lizzidoll's list (I got permission). Not only did they both have neat insights into what makes a gif hypnotic, lizzy-doll made a concrete suggestion that made my software better!

* ZanyM's striking and hot breathplay class, in which she Darth-Vader-Force-choked the comely Vox from across the classroom. Even more fun was the sequel on a hotel elevator ride, where she and her padwan had a force-choking battle. (only hypnokinksters in the elevator, I should mention)

* Buying my favourite brand of hypnosis porn directly off the hard drive of the man who makes it, Lex of entrancement.co.uk. Not to mention getting to hang out with him and confirming he's just as funny and cool as he seems in his videos. There's a farm-to-table porn experience! Especially cool to talk to him not just as a fan but as a colleague - for example getting valuable tips on hypnosis with people with a lower level of English.

* Seeing firsthand at least three powerful examples of hypnosis changing people's lives for the better, outside of the bedroom. Migraines, confidence, self-discovery, just for starters. Like this account by Amitus (fetlife account required) - I was one of the people from DMDW who didn't recognize him. I'm not interested in doing hypnosis as therapy myself, but it gives me warm fuzzy feelings to see how people's involvement in hypnokink has genuinely helped them.

* Being invited on my first ever panel, the Hypno Bloggers Roundtable, and feeling closer to the people behind the blogs I love and have learned from so much: Daja, DJPynchon, AmHypnotic, SpiralTurquoise, and Sleepingirl.

* Hypnosis kitsch everywhere, from the crystals and glowy spheres at the merch table, to the clever t-shirts, to at least a couple of custom hypnosis license plates. 

* North American pop culture nerding out all over, from the essentials like Harry Potter and Star Wars to beloved personal classics like Saga and The Tick. It was really great to be around people who were affected by the death of Terry Pratchett. At one point in the car some dork was like, now we should decide, which house in Harry Potter does each House in Game of Thrones map to? ...Actually that was me.

* Lee triggering 3 people to orgasm simultaneously in a Chinese restaurant. Not just once.

* A bunch of cases of laughing harder than I have in weeks. Like whole body, deep belly laughs. I can't even recall why (not hypnotically-induced!), I can just remember how it felt.

* AmHypnotic saying to me in the Dunkin' Donuts, "We are the ones on the cutting edge of hypnosis. Not the therapists, not the stage hypnotists. Because we value novelty, we are the ones who are continuously pushing it forward. They'll never catch up with us."

Things that I heard at the con, presented with no context:

• "So that's eyeball bondage. We have 15 minutes. Any questions?"
• "Instead of 'harem', I think she prefers 'entourage'."
• "Oh no, I'm a switch now!"
• "What can I give you that you won't take?"
• [Quoting a weird audience question:] "Can you hypnotize someone to make them your friend?"
• "Forest_sprite is the floppiest of floppy puppies."
• "I want to know what was going on in the hotel room with the blood curdling screams...and why they needed so many towels."
• "I just changed your circle to a Venn diagram."
• "I saw inside out chickens being sucked out of the 5th dimension."
• "I feel like you're not yet as evil as you want to be."

I feel so lucky that I was at a point in my life where I had the time and money to do this. It topped up my soul. So much gratitude to mephki for organizing it, and for all the other people who worked hard to make it amazing.

I see I ended my NEEHU post with this last year, but it's playing in my head, and it's so appropriate:

I Got Hypnotized in Italian

It happened during Lee Allure's Introduzione All'Ipnosi Erotica workshop this Saturday in Milan. A woman in my practice group was holding both my hands and then did an expert move - not the one Lee had taught us - that sent me tumbling into trance. ("who are these people?" I thought. "I need to get to know them!")

As I drifted, I realized at some point that the words reaching me in outer space were in Italian. Had she been talking Italian the whole time? But the rhythm of hypnosis was so familar, and each word revealed its meaning to me one by one, like a bubble popping. That was a cool feeling! I felt proud of my mind for retaining and using my Italian, even in a state of trance.

Still, I wonder: is this really the same as simply receiving language? Could this conscious process of translation interfere with the depth or the suggestions? What happens when there's a word I don't know? I would love to explore this as a subject more.

I also had my chance to do more hypnotizing of people who aren't fluent in English. Although I know many forms of non-verbal induction, I never realized how critical the pre-talk is, and the feedback afterward. Not being sure how many of my words were making it through, or how well I was understanding my subject, felt like trying to do a delicate job wearing big clumsy gloves. In general, this weekend I learned how much I lean on my verbal skills to connect with people and get in sync. I'm shy, except I normally have a lot of confidence in my words, my cultural references, etc. Practicing communicating powerfully without the vocabulary, and shared culture, should help me a lot as a hypnotist - and a communicator in general.

In several cases the trances were with first-time subjects, and that's where I really felt the challenge. In one case I was practicing a butterfly induction (another first!) with a man in my practice group, to no avail. Then the fourth member of the group murmured to him for a long time, and helped him reach a light trance. ("who are these people?") I couldn't really hear, but no doubt he was talking him through beliefs that were limiting his ability to let go.

That was a big theme this week, of people expressing doubt about their ability to go into trance or manifest suggestions. Over and over I listened to Lee deal masterfully with these insecurities (including my own when we did hypnosis together!), but it still seems like a problem that needs plenty of attention and thought. I suppose the real answer is that pickup play with beginners is the "hard mode" of hypnosis, and that it works better by developing subject skills, and customized approaches, over a recurring hypnotist/subject relationship. I've certainly seen rapid growth in confidence and responsiveness in people I've worked with over time, and I heard Lee tell someone that even one night's sleep does wonders, since the brain practices in REM.

My hypnosis got a tiny bit better with further trances, and I even heard myself switching to Italian here and there! "Più profondo, più profondo..." "Adesso, svegliati." There's so much to learn about cross-language hypnosis, but luckily I'm finding that I enjoy the hell out of practicing and want to do more - which is what you need for learning anything.

In any case, Lee's event was fantastic, with at least 30 Italian kinksters coming away with a grounding in erotic hypnosis and how awesome it can be. Sleipnir8 and Eve-01 did such a great job of organizing it on the Milano side, and it was a pleasure to spend time at the warm and welcoming household of SMdiClasse and plastika. I'm so grateful to everyone who helped make it happen! I really believe this could be the start of something big.

I went to play parties in Boston, but this weekend was also my first true public BDSM party - which I never pictured being both in Italian, and in a nightclub decorated to look like Captain Nemo's submarine. I was well outside my comfort zone, but thanks to some very sweet folks who had been to the workshop, I had a great time.

Plus I got to hang out with Lee, over several days of terrific conversation and company, that came with the privilege of introducing her to my little mountain town. And to the ways of Italia - where the bank closes at 3:30, but the Gelateria next to it is open at 11:30 pm on a Thursday. In February. Lee is great at noticing the hypnotic swirls in building decorations and shiny objects in shop windows, to the point where she got me wondering if fun hypnosis is so new to this country after all...