Into the Woods, Then Out of the Woods, and Home Before Dark!

You've changed
You're thriving
There's something about the woods
Not just
Surviving
You're blossoming in the woods...

- It Takes Two, Into the Woods

This weekend was DeepMind Darkwood, the erotic hypnosis retreat in western Massachusetts. It was the second time I've gone. My last time was 5 years ago. A lot of stuff has happened in that time!

My first time was within my first year of knowing that hypnokink exists, and it was my first hypno con of any kind - I wouldn't go to my first NEEHU until the following March. I was in way, way over my head. I came in without any play partners or good friends, I had barely ever hypnotized anyone, and I was just freaking out most of the time. (I looked up my old blog entry to remember the date, but I don't dare read it!) I still found it mindblowing and valuable, but this time I was so much better positioned to dive into its cultish charms.

This time I knew so many more people, including close friends from the Boston scene (thank you again DigitalSwitchGamine and AndSleep for the ride!) and most of all I got to share it with my wife khatsha.

40 people in a wooden lodge in a big clearing in the woods, 36 hours, no classes, mostly collective activities. There is nothing remotely like Deepmind. Every year LeeAllure and MrDream set out to engineer a very specific atmosphere, that might not work for everyone, but which I found both cozy and invigorating - a wonderful invitation to relax, open up, and try new and scary things.

Scary things: yes there were still occasional moments of anxiety and missed connections, and we certainly put to use our couple skills of calming each other down (that get heavily exercised at every con - cons are the greatest, but also stressful!). But we came out having learned new things about ourselves and each other.

Some of the best moments, and achievements of Lee and Dream that I want to call out:

• Opening and closing ceremonies. Simple yet lovely, they grounded me in the present and made me feel connected to everyone.
• Something called the word cloud (?), which is hard to describe but involved people running around in the dark on the lawn yelling things that are part of hypnokink like "DOLL PLAY!" or "ORGASMS!" and it gave me warm feelings.
• Speed trancing! I'd avoided that in the past at NEEHU, but now that I've done it, I see it is genius the way they set it up, and we are going to steal it for BEHIVE. I had so many great hypnotic encounters and so many good conversations in a short span of time - each one only 6 minutes.
• Plentiful and delicious food along with cozy communal dining, signalled by a dinner bell that brought me right back to summer camp.
• Breaking into groups and creating group trance activities, for three of the modalities, which took up the bulk of the day on saturday. It's really striking how little there was that felt like a class, and it made me realize how I can sometimes get into passive, cautious, overintellectual mode sitting in classes at Charmed, NEEHU etc, rather than putting energy into creating new things, both 1 on 1 and in groups. Deepmind insists that you come to do.
• For one such activity, digitalswitchgamine's droning collective "sound bath", which definitely felt just as cultish as I wanted the weekend to be. Any lost tourist happening up the road just then would definitely have been justified guessing they were were about to see or be part of ritualistic murder.
• Outfits! So many people brought their A game and showed just how alluring they can be. The 15 minutes it took for two of us, using half a tube of lube, to get khatsha into her latex dress? Well. Fucking. Worth it.
• My performance at (alcohol-free) dizzy bat, which I can confidently call the worst ever, wherein I ran in a tight circle and fell down possibly having recrossed the starting line
• Gorgeous weather. That wasn't their doing (I think??), but we got lucky with a couple of perfect golden September days outdoors in Massachusetts. Even the route there and back was beautiful.

Amidst all that khatsha and I got to watch and do some wonderfully twisted and pleasurable scenes, and enjoy many quiet moments of togetherness with likeminded pervs.

Thank you to the organizers, the volunteers, and everyone who came and made it so special!