Tangent - Girls - Part 3

And the stream of consciousness continues.

I think it can be safely said that trust in one's hypnotist is a huge component of a successful trance. After all, you're putting something very valuable into someone's (possibly a stanger's) hands. And it seems that there is a near instantaneous decision on the part of the subject as to whether his or her trust will be given. I know that, having spent some little time on YouTube exploring different videos, that for me it only takes one or two sentences to decide if I am really going to commit to the experience or not. (And no, I don't watch the vids, I just listen to them. Honestly, the things people will put on a screen thinking your attention will be caught or your eyes will tire out are really amusing. As long as you don't have to look at them. I have a very nice paint splatter on my wall that works just as well, thanks.)

When I first started experimenting with hypnosis, I was genuinely curious about whether or not it would matter if the voice was male or female. The first files I listened to were all male, but but when a new female voice was recommended to me, I had a listen and was hooked immediately. There's something about a sing song intonation that, when coupled with a pleasant tone, really works for me, but she would have had me without that. Identical scripts read by different voices have different impacts of course, but what ever it is that makes one more effective than the other is harder to pin down.

Nowadays I'm mostly tranced by reading, which, as I have mentioned before, is something that I really didn't think would work. So it was incredibly surprising when a block of short, badly formatted text put me under. I was not completely unaware of who I was dealing with; I did, after all, read his profile, so I had a name, a pic, and an idea of his interests before I began to read. Did this effect things? I really don't know. Nor do I know how my mind decided that it was okay to make a personal connection with someone based on that scant information and a few lines of text. And no one I've asked has been able to explain just how that instant decision is made. I can't explain, and I'm the one who made it! Answers I've received from other people range from "I don't know" to "don't ask me because I can't tell you," so I guess I'll have to live in the dark on this one.

But wait you say! Isn't this blog supposed to be about girls? Where's the girl?

So I made a friend (SD) who agreed to put me under as part of research for this blog. I questioned whether or not I would go down deeply for her, if at all. Would it feel different? Without an audio track, I wouldn't be able to say that the intonation or the timber of her voice had been appealing as I had with the YouTube video.

Um. Well. Yes.

Quickly and deeply. Very deeply.

She engaged my trust completely and utterly. I came out of trance feeling wonderful (well, REALLY wonderful, if you know what I mean.) (And you do.) I remembered everything, which somehow made the experience more intimate, including the trigger she left behind should we play again.

Sadly, I didn't have the foresight to save a transcript of that session. Not sadly, the next day, with complete success, she used the trigger "just to test it out." And the next day, reinforcing it. Which brings us to this morning, New Year's Day, upon which I have gotten up obscenely early in order to write before I go to my day job. I was in the middle of posting a story on a different site when I glanced down at the chat window and saw my trigger from SD. And dropped incredibly deep instantly. It felt like that moment on a roller coaster when you start to fall and your stomach doesn't quite move with you for the first moments. With a few innocuous words she took me so deep I had tunnel vision. Deeper, if I'm honest, then anyone else has been able to do that fast. Some of that has to do with what I know her expectations to be; she prefers sensual to sexual which makes an experience with her unfraught with some of the expectations I find elsewhere. Some of that has to do with the fact that we have become friends and I trust her. But a lot of it has to do with that connection, that rapport, that came into existence after reading the first words of her induction.*

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* A little insight into just how suggestible I am--while describing this experience I went back under from the memory. This happens to me a lot.

Tangent - How Hypnosis Makes Me Feel

You didn't really think I was going to continue where I left off yesterday, did you? Silly, silly you! I can't really, because there's backstory to the backstory, and before it will make any sense to discuss my eventual sybaritic bed-nudity (also the name of my next band, natch) the wonders of hypnosis must be discussed.

I've heard a lot of strange assumptions about hypnosis from people who were otherwise very bright and informed, but had gleaned most of their info from movies and tv shows. And bad novels, comic books, and hearsay. Also good novels, fake scientific papers, and of course, the internet. My favorite misconception about hypnosis is that it is mind control. Thanks to movies like "The Manchurian Candidate" people have gotten the idea that it is possible to completely control someone through hypnosis and turn them into an ice cold assassin. Um...no. Well maybe if you were already wanting to be an ice cold assassin. Who wanted to assassinate the exact same person that the hypnotist had chosen. 'Cause evil hypnotists often place Craigslist ads searching for want-to-be assassins, right?

Hypnosis is a heightened state of relaxation and concentration. For some people, (like me), an INCREDIBLY heightened state of relaxation and concentration. A lot of my success lies in the fact that, like Fox Mulder, I wanted to believe and went into my first experience with hypnosis determined to follow instructions exactly. Following instructions exactly is important. So is knowing that there isn't a "wrong way" to experience hypnosis. It also helps to remove sources of distraction like screaming children, head-banging room mates, or caterwauling...er...cats from the room. And I personally like to use headphones because then it sounds like the hypnotist's voice is inside my head with me. Having a good imagination is a plus, as is being smarter than average. "What?" I hear you saying. "I though some people were too smart to be hypnotized!" A lot of people who comment on hypnosis videos think so too. My favorite comment yet is from the gentleman who claimed that he couldn't be hypnotized because he was "mentilly superier." His spelling would lead the objective reader to disagree with him, but I digress. Smarter people are often easier to hypnotize, because they (here it is again) follow directions. And that's all you have to do to be hypnotized: sit comfortably, listen, and follow the directions that you are given.

I am not exaggerating when I choose to use all caps to describe my relaxation during hypnosis. There is always a moment during the induction where I feel like an over-inflated balloon that has just had its knot undone. Or like someone has pulled the plug on whatever current it is that animates me. I've tried being hypnotized in my desk chair several times now and most of the time I end up falling out of the chair. And the times I've fallen out of the chair I've stayed in the same position I fell in for the entire session because I felt so damn relaxed that it didn't matter that I was twisted up on the floor. I want to make it clear though, that if I hadn't been comfortable I could have, and would have, (and have, although it was while still in the chair) moved. NOT mind control. Occasionally, on times where I've gone extremely deep, I've felt like I was completely paralyzed, with some sort of uniform weight or field holding me down. But I still could have moved if I'd needed to. And if something happens during hypnosis that scares you or disturbs you enough that you don't want to do it anymore, that's game over. I've been shocked out of trance once, and it happened because I'm extremely literal minded sometimes, and thought I had been told to pick both my feet up from the floor simultaneously. While standing up. Snapped me right out of trance because I was following what I was hearing exactly, and the part of me that would have interpreted instructions more logically was a mile behind the action. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I did a "getting attacked by a vampire" video, (just to see if it would work, really), that scared me so badly that I shook for almost an hour afterwards. And I don't get scared of shit like that normally. I'm the one who (even at 5 years old) has always had an over-developed sense of the difference between fantasy and reality. Horror movies? Please! Scary books, ghost stories, whatever. The scariest thing I've ever seen on tv was an episode of The X-Files where a swarm of bees was released in an elementary school play yard. And I'm not scared of bees either, but that shit could really happen! So vampires, either the scary kind or the sparkly kind, don't really do it for me. Actually the sparkly ones are kind of scary, but not in the way that they're meant to be. So the vampire hypnosis was kind of a test for me, to see how much I would let myself be influenced.

And vampire hypnosis led to slave hypnosis.

 

The Backstory - Part 1

Flashback, two hours ago. It's just before two in the afternoon and I'm still in bed, enjoying the way my expensive-but-worth-it sheets are sliding over my naked body. I'm still in bed because I had a very late night, and normally I would be exhorting myself to get the hell out of bed already! But not today, and not for the last three weeks or so, because I have discovered that sometimes staying in bed is the very best use of my morning. I have been awake since noon, after being briefly awakened at nine and rolling right over and going back to sleep. It's a quirk that I want to think is unique to me, although I know it's not; when I am awakened unexpectedly like that the sleep I have after is always deeper and more restful than what came before. I've learned not to feel guilty about taking advantage of it. In many ways, sleep is my drug.

So, it's noon, the sun is high (probably, this is Oregon and I can't actually see the sun) in the sky and I am eager and excited to get on with what for the last three weeks has been the first action I take every day. The bed is cold; I have an electric mattress pad that I use every night but it cuts off automatically around eight. I have yet to shuck my pajamas so I'm not uncomfortable, but I keep my room cold and my bed warm so there's no contest about where I'm staying. I pull my handheld over (that's iPod for those of you with dirty minds, get yourself out of the gutter, we're on the edge, but we've yet to go over), plug in my headphones and prepare to relax.

Three weeks ago I decided to write a novel featuring hypnotism. Although I'd definitely zoned out while driving and had hours disappear while playing video poker I'd never officially been hypnotized. (Think video poker isn't mesmerizing? Ha!) Obviously I couldn't write about something I'd never experienced, so off to YouTube I went. I cleverly did a search for "hypnosis" and spent an hour looking through all the different choices that came up. It turns out that hypnosis is very popular on YouTube. There are videos ranging from simple relaxation to help with homework to help with sleep to help with pain to help with orgasms. We'll get to that last one later. I finally chose a video , based completely on the fact that the user pic was unthreatening. (It's a pretty pink and blue spiral.) I read a lot of comments on the videos, figured what the hell, and sat down to experience my first ever hypnosis video.

And then I had to go lie down on the bed. The hypnotist recommended that anyone watching the video do so while either lying back or down, and my desk chair is wobbly. So, handheld with headphones, and a short induction video. Fifteen minutes later, I feel fantastic, and do a longer induction video. Thirty-five minutes later and I feel so relaxed it's like every bone has been sucked out of my body. Well, shit, I, apparently, can be hypnotized. So I listen to a video called "can't stop laughing" and afterwards (surprise), I can't stop laughing. It's the weirdest thing, because the whole time I'm listening to the video I'm thinking to myself that there's no way this can possibly work, but that part of my mind is sitting off to the side observing my reactions to the hypnotist's words. And every single time he talks about laughing or smiling or giggling my body dutifully laughs or smiles or giggles. It's bizarre, and makes me feel fan-fucking-tastic. I'm officially sold; hypnotism is amazing and I want to experience it again and again and again.

Oh, yeah, I'm meant to be writing a book. But I have a new perspective on it now. Before experiencing hypnosis I had thought that my protagonist would be the person being hypnotized, but now I'm thinking the story should be told from the perspective of the hypnotist. And that means that I'm going to have to try every single one of these videos. And videos from other hypnotists as well, but as long as I'm on this page...

How does this lead to my being naked in bed at two in the afternoon, enjoying the feeling of my sheets as they slide across my skin? Don't you wish you knew!