Hypnosis in Media

Archive for January, 2015

Do you find that there are certain words or phrases (not triggers) that send you deeper into trance?

I find that using the word “sleep” and relat­ed ref­er­ences such as “feel­ing sleepy” have a cer­tain hyp­not­ic effect on me. (Yes, how stereo­typ­i­cal.) It must be con­nect­ed to my ear­li­est inter­est in hyp­no­sis, when trance states and sleep were accept­ed to be con­nect­ed, at least (and yet today) in pop­u­lar thought.

What advice would you impart to a new hypnotist or subject?

Prac­tice.

Prac­tice, prac­tice, practice.

Induc­ing a trance, phras­ing sug­ges­tions, know­ing that to do regard­ing abre­ac­tions, all these things involv­ing hyp­no­sis must be prac­ticed to ensure com­pe­ten­cy. All of these things are skills that can be improved with practice.

That goes equal­ly for sub­jects. Not every­one is a great sub­ject at the begin­ning. Being hyp­no­tized is a skill that can be learned and improved with prac­tice. (This I know from experience.)

Have you ever had difficulty going into a trance/hypnotizing someone? What happened?

Have you ever had difficulty going into a trance? What happened?

For the longest time I had a very poor opin­ion of how I was react­ing while hyp­no­tized. On some emo­tion­al lev­el that I intel­lec­tu­al­ly knew was wrong, I was cer­tain it was only a shal­low trance, I was­n’t deep enough, main­ly because of the emo­tion­al expec­ta­tion that I did­n’t feel that I was that deep. It took some con­sid­er­a­tion to make me real­ize that, pri­mar­i­ly, lev­els of trance depth were a mea­sure­ment that did­n’t seem to be real­ly prac­ti­cal in appli­ca­tion, at least in my sit­u­a­tion. Instead, I real­ized it was lev­els of accep­tance and com­fort instead of depth that made sense to me.

That was demon­strat­ed to me when I vol­un­teered as part of a demon­stra­tion on hyp­no­sis. The demon­stra­tion was a sug­ges­tion for sit­u­a­tion­al amne­sia, where I and anoth­er vol­un­teer would expe­ri­ence tem­po­rary amne­sia when asked sim­ple ques­tions. We both respond­ed per­fect­ly, but made it all come togeth­er for me was that both of us were giv­en slight­ly dif­fer­ent sug­ges­tions, and I was sur­prised that I respond­ed to the sug­ges­tion I was giv­en with­out real­iz­ing the dif­fer­ence. (Basi­cal­ly, the oth­er vol­un­teer only respond­ed with amne­sia when ques­tioned by one par­tic­u­lar per­son while would respond with amne­sia when ques­tioned by anyone.)

Have you ever had trouble hypnotizing someone? What happened?

I men­tioned ear­li­er that I have had some train­ing, and part of that was prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence in trance induc­tion. I was­n’t exact­ly bad but giv­en my his­to­ry and knowl­edge about the sub­ject, I would have expect­ed to do much better.

Was it ner­vous­ness? Cer­tain­ly giv­en that I am some­times a very pri­vate per­son and try­ing to hyp­no­tize some­one I only sat near in the class­room did­n’t help. How­ev­er, if I have the oppor­tu­ni­ty for some prac­tice time again, I would cer­tain­ly take advan­tage of it, espe­cial­ly if there was some­one there whom I trust­ed to act as a men­tor or instruc­tor. The best way to get around that ner­vous­ness is prac­tice and experience.

How do you feel about mind control story captions? Tasteful when done right or oh so very tacky?

Cap­tions can be both or either or nei­ther to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. As a writer myself and hav­ing writ­ten a num­ber of them for my sto­ries, I know they are sim­ply adver­tis­ing, which is large­ly why I don’t put much cred­it into them.

In a consensual situation, do you prefer to be aware or unaware of an impending trance?

It real­ly depends on the pur­pose of the situation.

I would nor­mal­ly pre­fer to be aware of an impend­ing trance sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly because of the sense of expec­ta­tion involved. Plus, I believe that active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ing in the impend­ing trance implies a deep­er trance state and more sat­is­fy­ing trance experience.

How­ev­er, in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions where part of the sit­u­a­tion is depen­dent upon being unaware of an impend­ing trance (for exam­ple, a sur­prise encounter with a friend­ly hyp­no­tist who I pre­vi­ous­ly gave per­mis­sion to trance me at their dis­cre­tion, of which there are a few, or to go a lit­tle more fur­ther, a pre-arranged fan­ta­sy sce­nario involv­ing a mys­te­ri­ous hyp­no­tist) then I would cer­tain­ly pre­fer the latter.