The Hypnosis Lounge at the Flea - Wasn't that a Time!

I just got back from the winter Fetish Fair Fleamarket, and I'm both overwhelmed and in a state of delight about the hypnosis lounge. Over the course of three days, and 13 hours, there were 516 visits to the lounge! Some of those were repeats, but it was still a hell of a lot of people! Given these numbers, we're glad we asked New Hampshire Hypnokink to join in, despite not being affiliated with NELA - they did a great job of organizing the one-on-one sessions and many other tasks. khatsha was the organizer on the BEHIVE side, spending many weeks organizing volunteers and hashing out how the lounge would work.

Also given the growth, we knew we had to change the model from last year, which was only one-on-one. Five hypno tops were run ragged answering questions and doing trances with 150 visitors - which seemed like a big number at the time! This time, the majority of visitors participated in the group activity developed at our munches called the Koala box. Anyone could write suggestions on pieces of paper and stuff them in the box, while they were continuously pulled out and read aloud. They became the seeds for many hypno scenes, negotiated between the people who raised their hand to top or bottom.

In sharp contrast to last year, and to the number of one-on-one volunteers, there were 16 distinct hypno tops! Including two first-time hypnotists, who did an excellent job under the coaching of lounge volunteers.

Of course most of the visitors were newbies who were curious about hypnosis, and I loved that via the koala box they got a chance to observe a wide range of types of scenes from a wide range of hypnotists, including non-male tops more than half the time, and also to get rich first-time experiences, with careful (and supervised) negotiations.

The biggest thing that went wrong was the acoustics - something about the room made even a few quiet conversations into a din. It was very hard to hear the more soft-spoken hypnotists and hypnotees, and I deeply regret that we couldn't serve visitors with hearing or auditory processing difficulties very well. It would also have been nice to have some type of official socializing, to chat and answer questions like we do at the munches. On the other hand, almost any other format would have been much worse for acoustics in that space: 20-35 people were typically watching the koala box scene quietly, while 2-3 one-on-one scenes went on in the other half of the room.
 
But we worked on it from one day to the next, and figured out both how to make it more dynamic and let as many people as possible get close and listen. Next year we are planning to continue building on the format, and trying for different types of spaces.

I was in the circle for almost all of the 13 hours, and by far the best moments were either seeing the look of amazement and joy when a person came out of their first trance, or else the look of glee on hypnotists' faces as their wicked suggestions took effect. But some other highlights were:

• Three separate Alien-based horror scenes
• Several examples of setting up chains of people to drop into trance like dominoes, or hypnotic group giggles
• Wholesome suggestions, involving cute stuffed animals or gaining magical powers
• Not so wholesome suggestions, involving writhing around in pleasure or pain, orgasming, or self-fondling
• People who spent hours watching, watching, watching, and then finally got the nerve to jump in and try it for themselves. Including one who claimed to be a beginner and then blew our minds with his fresh, powerful style from the yoga world!
• Hypnotists taking challenging suggestions and turning them into something wildly creative

It was an exhausting weekend, with very little chance to see the wider Flea, but I feel great. As I said, the lounge is in flux and evolving rapidly, so we'd be grateful for feedback and ideas about how to make it better. Many, many thanks to khatsha and HypnoStory, to the NELA organizers, and to my fellow volunteers and hypnosis enthusiasts (including 14 BEHIVE regulars!) who worked so hard to make it a success!