Why Keep Trying with Someone Who is Hard to Hypnotize?

I only get to see Chel (not her real name) at long spaced intervals - she lives over 700 miles away - but whenever I do there's a powerful emotional and sexual connection. She's the first person I ever hypnotized, tremblingly and poorly (from Peter Masters' book). When I saw her recently I was so excited to show her how my skills had grown.

It didn't go well. She busted out of the fixation induction before it was done, and found the Elman induction annoying. I got her just barely under with 7 +/- 2, which I thought would be good for her highly analytical mind - but she said later that even while trying to monitor 8 things at once, she still had left over capacity to question to herself whether anything was happening! None of the deepeners I tried had much effect. I set myself to talking her hand into feeling light and lifting up off her leg, which it did eventually, but not for many, many minutes and only a little way. Then I suggested she would feel frozen in place for 30 seconds when she woke up. This didn't work even a little bit.

Hypnosis play is always sexy for me, and so was this, but at that point I was ready to set it aside for the rest of the visit, and focus on the many other hot and kinky activities we had available to us. But later Chel came to me and said she wanted to try it again.

Why keep going with someone who had told me from the beginning she scored low on tests of hypnotizability - and certainly hadn't had much success with my (still immature) hypnotic skills? I realized that Chel actually has many wonderful qualities for a hypnotee: she has sharp self-insight and a commitment to honesty (she always told me exactly what went well or didn't work at all), and she has a powerful imagination. Most importantly, we have a close, trusting relationship - and she's excited about doing hypnosis.

So we tried it again, but with a very important change: I listened to what she'd been trying to tell me all along, about what she wants out of hypnosis. In fact she had given me a hugely important roadmap, that I had ignored, in her description of her self-hypnosis episode, in the hot-and-heavy email exchange leading up to the visit. She had described lying on the bed and imagining her body becoming heavy and immobile, and how much she'd enjoyed the mental place of being out of control. She had repeated the hypnotic mantra we'd chosen together, and felt helpless and submissive.

Wiseguy doesn't like the progressive relaxation induction, and one of his objections, that it makes it impossible to do active things, certainly seemed to be true with the floating arm test (she later told me she had felt resentment about having to move). But clearly it was called for at this time. I had her undress and lie down, and also started a metronome sound on my phone, since she is auditory and had enjoyed that in the very first trances we'd had. I relaxed the muscles in her body from her feet up to her scalp, repeating suggestions that her body parts would feel heavy and sink into the bed. Finally,  Chel was deeply and pleasurably entranced.

I gave her plenty of the suggestions she enjoys, of being helpless and unable to move, which made her moan in pleasure. I also suggested that her skin would become more sensitive, and she gasped at my hand stroking her body and tweaking her nipples. I took a risk and decided to introduce a reinduction trigger (we had negotiated this as a possibility), something that hasn't worked with every hypnotee I've tried it with. The language I used kept coming back to her trust in me, and how falling into trance is a way that she can submit to me. I also used a touch association, my hand on her shoulder, which I haven't done in the past but which I think can add a lot of power. I also told her to take all the time she needed to incorporate it deeply into her mind, and to give a nod when she was ready (she later said this had been a big help).

I didn't give myself too much time to think about it when she came out of trance, but gave her the trigger quickly. She seemed to consider it for a moment, and then her eyes shut and her head relaxed to the side. I'll never get tired of seeing that. I brought her up and she was just as pleased and amazed as me. We kept going, over and over, in and out of trance, with me quickly deepening her with a stream of relaxation suggestions whenever she responded to the trigger. That busy analytical mind turned out to be a great ally, since it loved to instantly let go, when it felt trusting enough to do so. And it loves the feeling of trance: "I feel so pampered," she said.

Although the suggestions we worked on all had in common that they did not require much body movement, there was still an incredible amount of fun to be had with just a reinduction trigger. So paralysis, sensitization, guided imagery, and repetition of the mantra (her own mind decided that it would get harder and harder to say clearly the more hypnotized she got, which was exciting to listen to) And then later on, the trigger allowed for her to go into a trance sitting in a cemetary, on a bench with my arm around her. This trance turned out to be one of the most beautiful and moving experiences I've ever had. If we don't decide it was too personal, I will probably write a separate blog entry about that.

Every time I get to do an extended hypnosis session with someone, that's my school, more than any workshop I could ever take. There's a lot of lessons I learned from trancing with Chel, but the biggest one is that anyone who is drawn to hypnosis can be a good hypnotee: it's only a matter of listening, experimenting, and tuning into what they want and expect out of hypnosis. And that like D/s, the deeper the trust gets, the more powerful and amazing the hypnosis gets. And that kind of extraordinarily deep trust, where things start getting amazing, is something you're only ever going to get with a few special people over the course of your life.

The Hypnotee Guides the Way

Had an interesting experience which underlined for me how paying attention to the hypnotee's experience is all important. I was guiding her through the "floating in space" deepener, describing how she was drifting out of her body, up through the ceiling of the house, and into the sky. I described Boston from the air, then the whole northeast, then all of the united states, ending up with the image of peacefully floating way up there above the world with a gentle night wind brushing past. 

After the trance, my hypnotee told me that she had struggled with it, because my words weren't matching up with her imagination. She was floating up very quickly, and when I said, e.g., "you can see the lights of the skyscrapers of Boston", she thought she had blown past that height a long time ago. She experienced a readjustment - maybe even a drop! And that disrupted the trance a little. How strange is the subconscious, that it accepted my suggestion that she would float up out of her body and into the air, but insisted on picking its own velocity?

This was great feedback, because then for the second trance I first of all, took into account that she would rise up much more quickly, and second, added language that she would pick her own pace, and hit certain heights when it felt natural for her. The deepener was much more effective for her without the distraction of the height mismatch.

So, listening is 90% of how you get to be a good hypnotist for a particular hypnotee. Later I guided her through a hot hypnotic bondage visualization, which I based entirely on repeating imagery from a specific bondage scene she had just told me about. (and luckily the sound of someone receiving a good spanking just outside the door was something that her subconscious mind could actively incorporate into her experience!) I think this approach can be a reliable standby: listening to a treasured sexy memory, and then using hypnosis to help the hypnotee reexperience it vividly. The more details from the interview I can incorporate, the better. The hypnotee guides the way.

Beautiful Inductions by Jukebox

My friend pointed me to this writing, which is part of the weird and fascinating branch of hypnofetish that is written inductions. The idea is that just by reading the text, you can find yourself falling into trance, and even following suggestions.

Could such a thing possibly work for you? The only way to find out is to try it:

Zero (this contains an induction, suggestion to masturbate to orgasm, and then wakeup; no permanent triggers)

I think this must be a particularly powerful and beautiful example, and unusual for its use of math concepts, in a way that isn't jarring. Although I'm not a very skilled hypno bottom, or inclined to trust my mind to a stranger on the internet, I still feel the pull of the words in this file - with masterful use of indirect language patterns - and parts of it give me chills. Like the part where he uses zero like twelve times in a sentence.

Is this something I could use in my face-to-face trancing? It's not a good idea to read scripts while hypnotizing, and the full structure of this seems too intricate to memorize. These kind of scripts have to be tight to keep the reader enraptured, with more of a demand for originality and artistry than an in-person induction. Still, I can steal ideas and phrases from this, and maybe construct a streamlined version. In a broader sense, I think this is a welcome corrective to me starting to think of inductions in very utilitarian terms: what is the shortest distance to get a particular hypnotee into a trance. It's a reminder that inductions have different flavours (addressing one of my obstinate questions!), with unique pleasures, and that you can make much more of them, either to make your suggestions more effective, or for their own sake. And there's powerful imagery in here, and excellent mind tricks. I hope to eventually get to the level of skill as a hypnotist that I can write them myself.

The author, Jukebox, I already know well as this incredible geyser of creativity on the Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive. Literally dozens of my favourite stories turn out to be his, as some of the cleverest, best executed, and hottest on the site - and fact, if everything but the Jukebox stories was deleted, there would still be enough to keep a hypnofetishist satisfied for years. Now this is a delightful new dimension of his writing talent for me to explore. I always skipped the inductions when this was all fantasy, but now that I'm learning to be a hypnotist for real, there's plenty to learn.

Actually, upon reading a few more, I'm not at all sure that these are necessarily meant to entrance the reader - for example the scripts that suggest closing your eyes, which would seem to pose real difficulties. And some of them have posthypnotic triggers tied to the hypnotist, who of course is not present. I actually think that contrary to what I wrote above, hypnofetishists would very much enjoy having these read to them, or, more likely, to read and enjoy the fantasy of falling into trance. But I still put in warnings just in case. There isn't any other junk in these besides what I mention.

I'm most impressed by the different themes and moods of these inductions. For example, here's one based on falling snow:

Winter Wonderland (undressing, masturbating to orgasm)

And another based on falling leaves in autumn and the general theme of changing of the seasons :

Changes (orgasm)

This one is based on taking a journey :

The Long and Winding Road (masturbating to orgasm)

Here are links to the rest of his induction scripts that I found, since there's no easy way on the site to just select them:

Deeper and Deeper (orgasm)

Every Breath You Take (masturbating to orgasm, orgasm)

Here Comes the Rain Again (undressing, masturbating to orgasm)

Imagine (undressing, orgasm, amnesia for the session)

Relax  (undressing, masturbating to orgasm)

Surrender (undressing, masturbating to orgasm; heavy D/s theme)

You're the Inspiration (masturbating to orgasm, rereading the story)

(I'm noticing a theme here! You could argue that if someone points their browser to the EMCSA they are probably looking to get off anyway, but I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of highly hypnotizable people possibly being drawn into a sexual experience they didn't consent to)

Hypnotic Orgasms are Real

It's a bit silly that I was still asking the question of whether hypnotic orgasms are possible. That is, considering the amount of time I've spent reading first-hand accounts and watching videos (not purely for academic interest I must confess), not to mention seeing it in person at Wiseguy's amazing Boston-area event. But like with non-hypnotic orgasms, the first hypnotic orgasm I made happen felt like a very big deal, and obliterates that question for me once and for all.

That's really the message of the post ("HURRAY!!!"), but I'll give a few more details. There was a lot of fooling around beforehand, some hypnotic and some not, which probably helped. I asked my hypnotee if orgasms were something they struggled with, or that had been a point of contention in relationships - for some people just the concept of a partner wanting you to have an orgasm can be tied to a lot of anxiety or annoyance, and I wouldn't want to even try for it if that was the case. They said no. I had consent to go as far as an orgasm, but I didn't mention this was my plan for this particular trance. I knew it would feel good no matter what, and wanted to avoid pressure to perform a certain way.

I took them into a trance lying down on their side, with only a little bit of deepening. I used the approach from the "Come on command" section of Wiseguy's book (minus the long-term trigger), which involves directing the hypnotee to remember a specific, powerful orgasm, and to immerse themselves in the memory. Then I just kept repeating suggestions that the memory was getting more powerful, and the arousal and pleasure was growing, stronger and stronger, and that they were capable of having that orgasm all over again - but not until I said so. After a little while of this, perhaps even only a couple of minutes - I lose track of time myself when I'm guiding someone in a trance - it looked like they were close. I asked them if they were ready to come, and got a nodded "yes". I put my hand on their shoulder and told them to come now. Afterward, I told them to just enjoy the sensations, and bring themselves out of trance as slowly as they wanted. I would say the trance from beginning to end was probably less than 20 minutes (not counting cuddles afterward).

I'm happy to be familiar with the sights and sounds of an orgasm, especially when there's an obvious come-down afterward, so I was quite sure it had happened. But I still did the ungentlemanly thing of asking them afterwards ("it's ok," they said, "it's for science"). Confirmed - though it wasn't as strong as the one they'd had in mind. But they enjoyed it.

I made someone come just by talking to them. No touching at all, until I put my hand on their shoulder. That was such a powerful sexual experience for me, and stood out even among all the other very excellent moments of that evening. It's just the beginning, but I'll never forget it.

My Hypnotist Ethics (version 1)

By posting my rules publicly, I know that they can be used to critique me, but that's actually a feature since I believe in everything in here, and should be called on my mistakes. I expect that it will evolve over time, in particular that new things will be added, but I think most of these will hold.

I only include things that I think are both possible, and conceivable that they might come up for me (e.g. I don't need to say, no commanding people to be my assassins, or to only be able to go into a trance with me)

The principle underlying all of these is this: Hypnosis is play, and everything besides a simple trance-and-test is heavy play on the order of flogging, bondage, or serious D/s, that requires a high level of trust and consent. Trust consists of two things: belief that the other person knows what you're comfortable and uncomfortable with, and belief that they won't intentionally do things that you're uncomfortable with. There’s room for fucking up on the first point, but not the second.

Here are my current rules:

1. No hypnotherapy, with the sole exception of helping someone to calm down in the moment or take a mental vacation.
2. No suggestions that the person wouldn't feel comfortable with if they heard them while not in a trance.
3. No hypnotic amnesia lasting beyond the current session. With that exception, actively helping the hypnotee to remember every part of the trance every time.
4. I will always do a pretrance check for phobias and other aversions, and do my best in general try to discover any areas that might be uncomfortable to go into (while being prepared to deal with unexpected ones that might come up).
5. Each new class of suggestion must be negotiated out of trance, as well as major escalations in them. For the first few trances, I will describe the suggestions in detail and get consent for all of them.
6. Any long term hypnotic triggers must be extensively discussed out of trance, and also negotiated with any committed partners of the hypnotee.
7. No sexual, humiliating, or dominating suggestions unless those are established parts of our relationship out of trance.
8. In particular to be sensitive to what each partner might find humiliating, which may be context-dependent, and never to push on that limit.
9. No using hypnosis to seduce. It has an inherently seductive aspect, in that it's intimate and shows off a skill, but no attempting to use suggestions to change the way someone feels about me.
10. No attempting to change anything about a partner (at most, adding bonus features, e.g. hypnotic triggers).
11. Never to make a trance partner feel bad for lack of response to a type of suggestion, or for not wanting to try a type of suggestion.
12. No hypnotizing people without consent, e.g. using sneaky language, or using my partner's reinduction triggers without asking permission first. Exception: if we have negotiated that type of relationship.
13. I will stay tuned in and focused on the person I have hypnotized, looking for any signs of discomfort. Over a long trance I will check in verbally on a regular basis. I will never leave the hypnotee alone for more than a minute or so. If I see another hypnotist not paying attention, to first look out for their hypnotee, and then confront them about it.
14. I will actively police my local community of hypnotists online and offline, and confront people about behavior that I see as unethical (not necessarily to the extent of this ethics)
15. I will keep tabs on my hypnotees for a period of time after the trance, and check in with them, to see what they need.

NEHG Study Group Meeting

This week I went to my first meeting of the New England Hypnosis Group study group (their 2nd), which is another great initiative by Photojoseph to promote hypnosis in Boston (along with the HypnoMunch). The idea is that everyone reads a couple of sections from Mind Play by Wiseguy, and then we have a presentation and discussion focusing on specific topics.

There were 12 people in a private apartment, including a good mix of people who were primarily hypnotists and who were primarily hypnotees.

The topics we talked about were myths about hypnotism, abreactions (the rare negative emotional reactions people can have during hypnosis) and how to deal with them, the eye fixation induction using shiny objects, the floating-in-space deepener, and a little bit of short term amnesia (the pop quiz). So we covered a ton of ground - it went a little long, but I certainly got a lot of education value. Some of the interesting things that came up:

•  Good questions to have in any pre-chat are phobias, allergies (which are things that are fearful for very real reasons), and anything else that should be avoided to have the most pleasant and awesome trance experience.
• Probably a good idea to get those negative questions out of the way first and then discuss the positive things the hypnotee wants out of a trance, so the phobias etc are not the last things on the hypnotee's mind when they go under.
• In discussing how the subconscious mind does not process negatives very well, one attendee suggested a very poor suggestion would be, "You're in a room, and there's no snakes." (hilarious)
• One attendee had actually had an experience of having a bad reaction under hypnosis - underlining how rare it is, that she was the only one in the room with firsthand experience -  and described how well the hypnotist had calmed her down and led her out of it.
• One attendee suggested that we reread the section on dealing with abreactions every time we refer to the Wiseguy book, so as to always have the steps close to the front of our mind.
• The floating in space deepener posed obstacles for the minds of some of the people in the room: one was concerned about the lack of oxygen up there, while another was nervous about burning up on reentry. I reflected that while you can't control what your hypnotee's mind will bring into the mix, the more you learn about the idiosyncracies the better an experience you can create.

After the lecture/discussion, there was an opportunity to get some practice. I hypnotized Photojoseph, who was an unusual hypnotee in that he would make adjustments and occasionally speak as though not in a trance at all. But he assured me that he had gone some ways into trance - he just has so much experience that he has such a strong idea of what he wants to feel like at each point. He had a nice experience floating up into the sky, although I need to spend some quality time with Google Earth if I'm going to describe what you would see properly. He chuckled through trance at me mentioning Washington DC before we had covered New York City.

I also had the chance to test the reinduction trigger I had been working on with a partner. We were both a little disappointed that it no longer had any effect, despite it working very well in the initial session only 72 hours earlier. But I take it as valuable feedback, and I will be very curious whether certain things will make it more long-lasting, like simple repetition of the trigger-installation, the technique used for introducing the trigger, or the aptitudes of the partner - perhaps some are able to hold onto suggestions for longer than others.

I would recommend this series for anyone seriously trying to learn hypnosis, or to be a good hypnotee by learning about the hypnotist perspective. Unlike the munches, which are primarily about connecting people and giving basic information, the emphasis is on sharing our experiences on focused topics. Also unlike the munches, there's a chance to put these ideas into play in private. It is meant to be held on the 2nd monday of each month. The next event listing doesn't seem to be up yet, but you can check the listings on the fetlife New England Hypnosis Group page.

Early Indications: Film and TV

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Hypnosis is Not Mind Control

Things that can control your mind in fantasy: Magic spells, potions, subliminal audio tracks, electromagnetic waves, enchanted objects, mind control drugs, helmets with flashing lights in them, telepathy, nanobots, hypnosis.

Things that can control your mind in reality: There aren’t any.

I’m not 100% positive about that, although the history of people trying to develop mind control seems to suggest it’s the case.

But what I am sure about is that hypnosis is not mind control. It can’t be said often enough. Here’s my best understanding so far of what hypnosis is: it’s a very focused form of concentration, where your own imagination can make things real for you - including rules like “you can’t pull apart your hands” - that you would normally be too distracted to experience powerfully. But there is a part of you that is in control always, and suggestions it’s not ok with will be rejected. I have observed this firsthand, as a specific test with a very responsive trancee, where she was asked while in deep trance to cluck like a chicken (one of her hard limits). Absolutely nothing happened. The best way to reassure yourself is to experience trance, and discover that you mostly feel like yourself, and mostly feel in control.

Sometimes this is overstated: the so-called “hidden observer” that is ready to veto suggestions and potentially pop you out of trance has limits, is not your full conscious intelligence. It’s a little dopey. My current model is that the risks during trance are similar to when someone has a few drinks in them. A little more gullible, a little more uninhibited. Less prepared to physically resist an assault. But I think ethical judgments and risk assessments can be made on the basis of the alcohol analogy.

I think it’s also possible for a sociopathic person to abuse a trusting relationship with someone to use hypnosis, over a period of time, to help nudge someone towards doing things they’re not ok with or bad mental states. But this is true of any intimate trusting relationship, especially D/s relationships, and I would not see hypnosis as giving someone too much power beyond what a regular psychological manipulator (someone who plays “mind games”) could achieve. And if such a thing is tried, since hypnotic amnesia is not very effective or reliable - people usually remember what happens during a trance, and effective suggestions to forget things usually wear off at some point in the future - the person is likely to be caught.

I enjoy mind control fantasy. But if hypnosis was mind control, the ethical issues would be horrendous. I’m very glad it doesn’t work like that. For people whose subconscious likes the idea of feeling out of control, which is true of a lot of hypno bottoms, it can give them that experience, but it is an illusion. The ethical issues and trust concerns are much closer to those surrounding intoxication and psychological manipulation - which are serious, but ones that we already understand and have tools to deal with.

A Great Week of Hypnosis

This has been an incredible week. I've finally had a taste of the longer one-on-one hypnosis play sessions I've been craving, and it has been so gratifying. Really getting to know how someone responds, and what they like, is a powerful experience that is teaching me at an accelerated rate, especially with getting such wonderful, insightful feedback. The term "play partner" bugged me when I first got into the kink scene, but it's a useful one, for people that you are genuinely building a relationship with, although one with only very loose commitment on both sides. This is a third place, between brief trances with new partners at workshops and parties on the hand and a committed long term relationship with hypnosis in it on the other, and it's working for me now. I had an excellent discussion about such relationships with two popular Boston rope tops, which helped to set my head on straight.

I'm having a weird feeling of disconnection, that I guess everyone who gets the opportunity to dive into their kink gets. This thing that is occupying so much of my brain and time, and where I'm really excited about my growth and new experiences, is something I can't talk to 90% of the people in my life about. There's a giant redacted paragraph in the middle of my for-public-consumption life. But when I think about it, I'm sure that's true in general for plenty of people, if not the majority.

I've realized there are a lot of obstacles to posting detailed scene accounts, even though I have permission, but I wanted to mention a few interesting and/or hot things that came up this week:

• The sight of someone struggling against a trance trigger, and failing, is everything this hypnofetishist dreamed of. [to be clear, in these cases the trancee really wanted to go under again, and it was my request that she try to resist it, which she wasn't so happy to do.]
• Another thing I will never get tired of is the sound of women's voices while deeply in trance. Getting people to listen to how hypnotized their voices sound can be helpful in convincing them they're in a trance, and so relax into it.
• I got to try a number of tasty inductions and deepeners for the first time, including what Wiseguy calls Floating in Space, which creates a beautiful set of mental images for the visual trancee. This made me think about how there could be many more very poetic and vivid mental journeys trancees could be guided through, limited only by the hypnotist's imagination and understanding of their partner's imagination.
• One hypnotee said that she found the staircase deepener didn't work for her so well. Upon thinking about it, she realized it was because she had had an ankle injury for several years, and so stairs were associated with discomfort. So from then on I switched to a different deepener. A great example of the mental and physical diversity of hypnotees, and how important it is to have plenty of alternatives to turn to in your toolbox.
• A fun alternate take on hypnotic bondage was magnetic hands, that stuck to any nearby surface and could be turned on and off (I'm sure I stole this from somewhere). When one of my hypnotee's hands was stuck to her face, I pulled on her wrist and her head started to come with it!
• I was blown away at the hit rate for different types of suggestions, for which I credit the great aptitude of the partners I was working with. But in agreement with things I've read, eyes-open visual hallucinations seem to be really, really hard.
•  Right now I am deprioritizing flow, drama and masterfulness in favour of a very high standard of consent, particularly considering these are quite new relationships, and I'm still figuring out my approach to ethics. (as an example: I'm asking permission before almost every use of an induction trigger) Not to mention, flow, drama and masterfulness will take a ton more experience.
• Always impressed by how much it feels like I am truly in collaboration with my partner's subconscious, which often has plenty of ideas of its own. For example, I started to go to a blackboard deepener after a staircase deepener for one partner, and her subconscious spoke up, to my surprise: she said "there's no blackboard in the cellar!" She told me later she had clearly pictured a washer and dryer in there, but no blackboard! However when I told her to find a door in the cellar that led to a room with a blackboard, that satisfied her.

I'm Glad it Doesn't Work Like That

This is something I've noticed at a couple of hypnokink workshops, where the presenter seems to otherwise have some grasp on ethics. It's in the part of the early patter where he's saying that hypnosis doesn't work like it does in the movies: it's not mind control, it can't make people do things they don't already want to do on some level. Then he goes on to say something like: "If it did work like that, I'd be a millionaire, and polygamously married to Emma Stone, Scarlett Johansson, and Olivia Wilde!"

So, you'd be a rapist?

An MC Short Story: Schlong

Here is a ridiculous hypnotic fantasy I wrote. As far as I know, this is not possible in real life, definitely not to this extent. I also want to say it's from a point of view that's very naive of transgender perspectives - it's just an idea I found hot. This one has no nonconsensual sex; in EMCSA terms it would be coded "mc ma".

SCHLONG
By Divney

The Obstinate Questions

As I begin to learn about hypnosis, there are a few questions that I think are going to be with me for a very long time; never getting solved, but always leading to fruitful observations and ideas.

1. What is depth of trance, and what is its importance?

2. How do hypnosis and dominance/submission interact and enhance each other?

3. How powerful and bizarre can hypnotic delusions and hallucinations get?

4. What's up with conversational hypnosis - can it work with people who aren't always about to go into a trance anyway? How can it be learned?

5. Besides "depth", what are the dimensions along which trances vary subjectively - their "flavours" - and how can I manipulate them for my partner's in-trance enjoyment?


I'm sure this list will grow...

Where I'm At

All going well, by the end of the week I will have had some major new experiences, so this is a good time to take stock.

I have hypnotized 7 people. Five women, one man, and one genderqueer person. Some very deeply, some not very deeply. So far I and my trancees have achieved the following hypnotic things together, at least to a minor extent:

- 4 or 5 different types of induction
- Auditory hallucination
- Touch hallucination
- Body freeze
- Mannequin
- Sexual pleasure
- Arousal
- Selective amnesia

And here are the major things I have not yet achieved with a trance partner, but would love to:

- Visual hallucination
- Hypnotic orgasm
- Trance trigger
- Struggling to resist trance trigger
- Remote erogenous zones
- Hypnotic bondage
- Role play/delusions
- Mantras
- Submission triggers
- Rapid inductions
- Sensitization
- Blank trigger
- Unusual trigger conditions (time, other external event)


It's a little juvenile to think of it in terms of a checklist, of course these are only the first baby steps to becoming a good hypnotist, but at this point it's very exciting to me to contemplate all the "firsts" to come.

What to Expect from the Boston HypnoMunch

Every month in Cambridge, Massachusetts I help to run a low key get-together for erotic hypnosis enthusiasts, under the banner of the New England Hypnosis Group. If you're not familiar with the concept of munches, the idea is that it's a way to meet people face to face who may share similar kinky interests, in a nonsexual, public setting. In our case, a table at a restaurant. I think this is a brilliant invention that helps to overcome a lot of the justified nervousness people might have in making first contact with strangers who are into some freaky shit (even if it's the same freaky shit that you're into!)

But it still takes a lot of courage just to show up for the first time. I know, I remember how nervous I was my first time going to the Prudential munch, way back in November 2012. I passed the entrance to the food court 2, maybe 3 times before I got the nerve to go in. We had a bunch of new people last night, some who had never been to a munch of any kind before, and I really applaud them for stepping into the unknown. To make it a bit easier, here's some information from the hypnomunch we had last night, to give you an idea of what to expect. There have only been 5 so far, so it's hard to say what's typical, but this didn't seem so different from the others I've attended.

We had a long table at the back of an italian restaurant (with appetizers paid for by our sponsor organization NELA!) Eventually there were 15 people, including 7 male-identified people, 6 female-identified people, and two folks who identify as gender fluid or gender queer (this is my best attempt to characterize based on people's FL profiles). There was a wide age range, with the median probably being around 30. It was a great mix of hypno tops and bottoms, people who do hypnosis online or not, and people with a lot of experience, a little experience, or just curious.

The munch starts at around 5 pm, and we chatted and ate food until around 7 or maybe a bit earlier. The conversation around me was about half hypnosis stuff and half everything under the sun: medieval playwriting, how Harvard square used to be cooler, Canadian accents.

A new thing we are trying to get going is the option of some low-level play after the munch, i.e. hypnotic trances without a sexual component (except in how all hypnosis is sexy to hypnofetishists like me). The idea is that you can peel off at that point, the official end of the munch, or continue if you have the desire to try trancing with someone or seeing it done. In this case, 10 people elected to continue. The actual space for this to occur is a problem: we all walked to another local restaurant where there was supposed to be a meeting room we could use, but it turned out they don't formally book it, so there were people already in there eating who they couldn't displace. So, no privacy.

Instead we wandered into a local park, and split into two groups at the picnic tables. I did one trance and PhotoJoseph did another, with suggestions including a freeze trigger, a giggle trigger, and the sensation of a feather brushing the nose (all temporary).

So, simple and fun stuff - both because of the setting and the mandate of the post-munch, we didn't get too far into it. The park worked out ok, except for some mosquito bites, but rest assured we are working hard to find a better space, where you don't have to go into trance sitting on a wooden board. The post munch ended around 8:30 due to darkness, and we all walked back to cars/subway together. Lots of great talk on the way back about hypnotic technique (and fun periodic deployment of the freeze trigger).

I feel so grateful to be living here at the moment, which has to be one of the best places in North America for erotic hypnosis, thanks in no small part to PhotoJoseph's efforts in getting this munch off the ground.

If you're in the area and any of this sounds good to you, you should come check one out. We would love to meet you. The next one is on Saturday, November 23rd at 5 pm (Fetlife event link)
and you can always get updates about them from the New England Hypnosis Group fetlife group.

The Chicken and the Car Crash

"I just don't want to be made to cluck like a chicken!" This is usually said as a joke, but there is a very real fear behind it: that a hypnotist might make them do something humiliating without their consent. This is one of the reasons I think the existence of stage hypnotism is incredibly harmful to hypnokink people like myself. It lets people know that it's real, and maybe even sexy, but there is also a widespread acceptance of stage hypnotists giving people types of suggestions that they haven't negotiated, and that many people would find humiliating. This gives people an understandable fear of hypnosis.

I haven't actually been to a stage show, but my friend gave me a typical example, from when a stage hypnotist came to provide entertainment at his middle school. After this grown man selected the most suggestible of the 13 year olds (already creepy), he proceeded to give them suggestions to act out in various ways, like impersonating celebrities or having different sensations, provoking laughter from their classmates. (by the way, this gave me some insight into how real hypnotism could be possible under such high pressure, low trust conditions: he conducted tests to find the most responsive 5 out of a room of 500) At the end, he told the people on stage that they wouldn't remember much, except that they did some silly, fun things in front of their friends, and should feel good about it.

I realize that I'm painting this in the worst possible way, and there are things that might make it not quite so gross: maybe the people onstage wanted an excuse to act out of the ordinary and be the center of attention, and probably the hypnotist had some patter to make them feel special for having volunteered and getting laughs. Nevertheless, there was probably a huge portion of that audience who laughed and thought to themselves that day, "I will never try hypnotism." I won't even get into the problems with using amnesia that way, or the way social pressure and authority are wielded to get compliance.

A lot of standard hypnosis tricks and demonstrations are based around making someone look foolish. I   really started to realize that thanks to one of my first trance partners, who specified that she does not want to be humiliated in any way. I give her so much credit for, first, having the self awareneness to know that about herself, and second, having the courage to insist on that. So many people would just have felt very uncomfortable with certain suggestions in their first trance session, but not known why, and just avoided it ever after.

So it's a challenge, but I want to rewrite the standards of hypnosis to involve no humiliation without consent. Of course some people really dig a little humiliation, and that can be a fun and erotic part of hypnosis play. But many people don't, and there are still plenty of pleasurable and fascinating effects that can be achieved that don't have that element to it - always keeping in mind that different people find different things humiliating, even things such as forgetting numbers or uncontrollably falling into a trance in front of others (although it seems like even humiliation fans draw a hard line before clucking like a chicken, further demonstrating how it's terrible PR). I pledge to always include that as part of my negotiation before a trance.

As for the car crash, this same friend that I was talking to last weekend told me that his other exposure to hypnosis had been in high school, when a hypnotist had taken a group of students into a trance onstage and led them through a scenario where they were driving drunk and killed one of their friends. This produced realistic reactions of shock and grief onstage. It was part of a travelling presentation to  fight drunk driving among teens. I have no words for how horrifyingly unethical this is - it's stunning that it happened in the early 1990s, and not the early 1960s. Can you imagine getting permission from a research ethics committee to do this to people? And I am positive they did not agree to have such a traumatic experience. I suppose this is another example of how young people's rights and autonomy are not taken seriously. There's not a problem with hypnosis here: there's a problem with lack of consent culture.

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