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h-sleepingirl · 4 days

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It is weird, like -- hypnosis is SO much a "learn the rules before you break them -- and you actually kind of HAVE TO break them eventually" topic. The established norms or "rules" we have are a real hodgepodge, from all over the place: academia, therapy, stage/recreation, the erotic community itself.

I've been jokingly saying I'm anti-science lately, but that's the same (ironically) as how some people are anti-NLP: frustrated with the methodology, more frustrated with the way people who use it can behave or repeat it as gospel, but ultimately incapable of dismissing the way it has shaped our techniques/views/practices.

Hypnosis as it currently exists is REALLY young. And I think everyone with a little distaste for academic models feels some of that burn from the more historical ones like hypnotizability scales. That was the 50s! 70 years ago! Academia around hypnosis IS evolving past that. Is it "there yet"? Not in my opinion, no. But yeah, absolutely there's value in humans striving to study psychology more effectively, including hypnosis.

In my ideal world, people coming into hypnosis have extremely well-developed critical analysis skills, and/or there are resources that teach that. I want an individual to be motivated to read the study and background that a piece of repeated information comes from, and come to an informed conclusion about its actual relevancy and accuracy. I know this is too much to ask!!! Very very few people have the experience or the desire at all to want to wade through that stuff. I think the very best I can do is package accessible information in a way that hopefully gets a person a) to a level of experience where they feel COMFORTABLE questioning information, and b) to a level of knowledge where they have the SKILL to question information. I think over the last year or so I've been getting closer to doing that in a way that actually encourages that habit and skill, but we'll see how my next book is received!

Our community is a very strange limbo and I agree, I don't want us fully cut off from academic resources or the idea of legitimacy. I mean, I wish there was a way we could contribute to academia too, because I do really believe we have made strides in hypnosis that academia hasn't and can't. It's a very delicate balance. At the end of the day, I just want people who do hypnokink to be able to access the full breadth of what I know hypnosis is capable of. That comes from this feeling of facilitating or experiencing absolutely reality-warping, brain-breakingly good stuff -- stuff that is so crazy good it is impossible to not-understate. IMO, critically-assessed knowledge is what allows for that, including of safety.

Sorry to add so much to your post but you got me thinking too!

Legitimacy vs Selection Bias in Hypnosis

This has been on our mind a lot recently. It's mostly been sparked by the recent Mindless Banter podcast run by @theleeallure @enscenic and @hypno-sandwich where the three hosts spoke about how they dislike academic models of hypnosis and a recent post by @h-sleepingirl discussing why they herald hypnotic education.

One thing that is always going to be true about the advocates of our kink who have been involved with the community for a long time is that we are going to be experienced and capable hypnotists and/or hypnotees.

Likewise those who join and find themselves brought in to the fold tend to self-select; if a person is not able to find any success or joy in hypnosis because it's not working or they do not gel with the styles taught and practiced then they will not hang around.

This means that we have a functioning ecosystem of people who know the lingo, who are primed to react as they should and tend to have things work for them.

Which is great! It makes it so much easier to work out when everyone is on the same page.

But it also creates an insular community.

I've written before on why the insular nature of our community worries me.

One of the lines I wrote in that post was this

One of the big differences between the online erotic hypnosis community and the NGH (National Guild of Hypnotists) who rue our existence is that we do not require legitimacy to function when they themselves exist in a half-truth state where when receiving both of my certifications it was impressed that we needed to perform an uneasy dance of providing services without practicing medicine because hypnotherapy is not licensed psychology in the same was that chiropractors are not performing medicine.

Legitimacy is the idea of taking what we do, what we are, what we believe and what we practice and trying to make it valid to those outside of the community. It's performing studies, it's building a framework of hard rules, it's about pretending that we understand how the brain works beyond the anecdotal evidence that we witness it every day within our corners and communities.

Fact is, hypnosis is a malleable and belief-based practice that rests right in the middle between faith and science. As mentioned in the above linked post, trance can be detected on an EEG:

Source

Our last post on this topic just spoke about accepting that we exist in a soft science where what we believe, how we approach our beliefs and what ideas we allow to take root in our minds will have a firm impact on how the minds of the hypnotists and hypnotees we interact with.

Today I want to talk about why keeping the education and the science involved in the conversation is important.

Because, like the Mindless Banter crew, I have reached the point of my career in hypnoplay where should Dawn wish to induce a trance she need only find a partner, lay out what will happen and perform. The rest of it just happens.

Once you reach a level of confidence and community, it pretty much takes care of itself. The interaction between a hypnotist and a person who has never experienced trance before and the interaction between a hypnotist and an enthusiast will play out differently.

What I mean by this is if Dawn is approached in DM by someone who wants a session she will be able to pick up a number of tells without even noticing it on their confidence and experience. Someone shy, unsure and untrained will not dive straight in. Which makes the encounter less likely and even if it does happen it comes from the power dynamic of a teacher and student rather than two enthusiasts going to town.

This is normal and it's not a bad thing. It just means that the typical educator in the hypnokink community is typically aware of the "weight class" of their hypnotees which paints their expectations of how things will go and allows for a line between the way hypnosis is taught in 101 and how it is practiced in enthusiast circles.

It's why Progressive Muscle Relaxation is something which gets scoffed at a lot in our circles. The typical enthusiast does not need to spend 20 minutes on an induction when their typical partner is someone they can hold the shoulders of, stare at with intent and give permission for the hypnotee to drop.

That isn't to say that experienced hypnotists only play with experienced hypnotees. It just means that the majority of the play from those who educate does not match the material that we teach to beginners. Not a bad thing.

But it does breed this divide I mentioned. Between the experience of those who do this all the time and what is "academic".

So, besides helping new people into the community or playing in pure theoretical space, why must we keep the academic approach involved?

Well, first... the science does inform what we do. Yes, a lot of this is based on belief but there is a large amount of the science which is just fact no matter what we do. The neuroplasticity of traumatized brains is a topic we type about a lot given our dissociative disorder. I mentioned in my Dissociative Disorders and Hypnosis post that there are multiple studies that there's a higher hypnotic suggestibility in those with conditions that include dissociation as a symptom. The fact that this was being taught in a 101 class was why I made that post to begin with.

From my Mind Makes It Real post I mentioned that we need to be aware of the truths to keep ourselves in check. We should always be wondering "am I wrong?" about everything and the moment one lets go of the academic framework and commits to the loose ethos of "it just works" you lose a little bit of that footing and external perspective. We're an insular community and there's an element of "the popular ideas win out", not to stress a point too much but the whole hatred of the progressive muscle relaxation induction is a good example of this. I know a few community leaders who reflexively rant any time they hear it. These people have the ability to control the con schedule. They teach classes and part of their lesson is their personal disdain for that approach. This goes into the minds of those who were taught by that person and becomes part of the internal dogma. Suddenly you have a situation where a minority of people in the community need to defend the PMR.

I do not actually care too much about PMR but it really is one of the most accessible entry level trances and the disdain for it is a little gatekeepy, if I am being honest. I don't think any individual means for it to be something they keep out of the community but enough individuals following a trend creates a community concept, a widely held belief.

And hypnosis is entirely about widely held beliefs. Thus it is now a fact that PMR is boring and ineffective and there's more fun ways to do trance. That is an example, hopefully one that is understandable to an audience who are also into hypnokink (apologies to my non-hypnosis Tumblr followers, I hope if you're reading this you enjoy this peak into a little internet sub-culture).

Which brings me to legitimacy.

Do we really need it?

Hypnosis is both science and fantasy. A person attending a hypnokink convention could treat hypnosis with the technical skill and care that one would approach as roleplay, learning all of the different terms and all of the safety procedures and treating it as a psychological version of what can be physically observed.

But you may also have someone who treats hypnosis as roleplay and improv with a framework not too dissimilar from a tabletop sourcebook for D/s shenanigans that they can learn and play within much the same as a D&D player can switch to World of Darkness. I guarantee there are a large number of people in the hypnosis community who do this and they're not wrong for doing it.

But as I mentioned above. Hypnosis is a scientifically observable phenomenon and it is dangerous if abused. Heaven knows I know that more than most. One must not believe in the dangers for them to be real. An immature hypnotist is a danger to a hypnotee regardless of if they think they are roleplaying or performing edgeplay. And the same is true for a hypnotee, too. If one believes it's all roleplay then their limits and safety will be at a different level than someone who is aware of the risks.

One need only look to the dark corners of our community where covert hypnosis is practiced eagerly, recruitment is a game and personality erasure is an aesthetic to know that there are uncomfortably large swaths who are practicing hypnosis from the perspective of fantasy. I do not want to pull out the news articles about how Disney Deer brainwashing ruined people's lives again.

The good news is that within the educator/convention going portion of the community we do teach this stuff. We do make everything clear. We're not currently in a community where academic approaches are shrugged off.

But it makes me uncomfortable when experienced educators in the community forget how far their words reach and dismiss the academic for the sake of "what works".

We do not need to seek legitimacy for the eyes of those outside of the community. We do not Demand To Be Taken Seriously. We have a community where people are welcome to join or not join. We do not need external legitimacy.

But we need internal legitimacy.

We need the people who practice within our care to know that they're practicing with dangerous tools that can and will mess a person up if treated without proper care.

Safety and education require we keep room for the academic and seek to legitimize what we do or those who look at hypnosis as pure fantasy will not be able to recognize the risk.

At least, that's my opinion.

For more of our ramblings on hypnosis and the hypnosis community, please check out our Hypnokink Writing tag for other bits of education and commentary like this <3

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h-sleepingirl · 10 days

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Hi! "Non-state" refers to a type of model or theory about hypnosis and how it works.

"State" models generally say that trance is a distinct state of consciousness/mind, with qualities that affect how someone responds to suggestions. For example, a state model might say that you hypnotize someone and then they are more suggestible.

"Non-state" models generally say that trance either isn't real, or isn't a unique state of consciousness, or doesn't really affect the way people respond to suggestions. A non-state model might say that a person responds to a suggestion because of expectation, enacting the "role" of "being hypnotized" (even if they're not aware of it), conditioned responses, and other "non-trance" psychological processes/phenomena.

Neither of these can be fully proven true or false -- we have some limited brain scan stuff that indicates changes when someone is being hypnotized, but we also know that people respond just as well to suggestions "out of trance" as "in trance." There are really useful and not-useful things about each perspective. More modern literature to my understanding also takes a more middle-of-the-road approach (as do I personally).

Hope this helps!

Maybe I don't emphasize this enough but one of the reasons I push constant hypnosis education is because the less you understand about hypnosis, the less capable you are of playing safer. More advanced knowledge = more advanced safety.

This applies to BOTH hypnotists and subjects.

There are certain beginner concepts that I would call "safety dead-ends": "This unwanted response happened because some part of you secretly wanted it." "Suggestions work because hypnosis makes someone suggestible."

Untrue, incomplete understanding limits safety SO MUCH.

"What makes me/my partner actually feel suggested IQ drain?"

It is: motivated by/creating desires, a role-enactment, a creative act, partially unconscious, draws on/creates associations, builds patterns/habits/familiarity, a learning experience, and much more.''

The more you actually understand what is happening in hypnosis -- not treating it like a magical black box -- the more you have control over identifying and mitigating risk, as hypnotist or subject. It is why I often push a non-state model of hypnosis.

This connects to something I was talking about re: suggestions -- simple statements where you are relying on someone just being convinced something might happen are not very helpful/effective.

"You will only respond to this trigger in this scene." Why?? Prove it! Help them!!

Triggers are associative conditioning. How do you ACTUALLY mitigate and replace a conditioned response? What is ACTUALLY happening both from their subjective perspective, and psychologically? What makes them keep responding to it? How could you change those aspects?

Writing about this more in depth for my upcoming "intermediate+ hypnokink" book :)

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h-sleepingirl · 10 days

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This applies to BOTH hypnotists and subjects.

Untrue, incomplete understanding limits safety SO MUCH.

"What makes me/my partner actually feel suggested IQ drain?"

This connects to something I was talking about re: suggestions -- simple statements where you are relying on someone just being convinced something might happen are not very helpful/effective.

"You will only respond to this trigger in this scene." Why?? Prove it! Help them!!

Writing about this more in depth for my upcoming "intermediate+ hypnokink" book :)

#hypnokink #hypnosis #brainwashing #my writing

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h-sleepingirl · 2 months

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(Headphones for best listening)

I write a lot of songs for my lovely hypnotic boyfriend that I don't share publicly. But I want to share this one. It's about his musical influence on me and a hypnotic spell he cast recently.

I'm really not a great singer or guitarist (and it's obvious I didn't pitch correct anything lol) and it's extremely scary to share this but I think I'm really proud of my songwriting here. (Plus it was an excuse to take sexy guitar pictures.)

❤️

#my music #hypnokink #hypnosis #mind control

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h-sleepingirl · 2 months

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I really, really appreciate the feedback on this so far <3 Next day rebloop

Milton Erickson and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar... (Essay)

Finally, I've finished this essay about connections I'm finding between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy. It's ~4.5k words, extremely "me," and I'm really thrilled to share it. Enjoy!

My weakness is getting deeply invested in very niche topics.

Hypnosis was my first and most lifelong obsession. It was my confusing, shameful sexual fetish that I eventually took by the horns and -- through my desire to learn as much about it as humanly possible -- turned into a job. But not a normal sex work job where I do hypnosis for money -- a weird job where I just teach about it. The kink community, and the further-specific niche where people want to hypnotize each other during intimate experiences, became my home.

But the value of study doesn't really come from the quantity of people I'm able to engage with. It comes from the way it enriches my life. It creates and benefits from the capability to see overlaps between all of my various interests.

On the surface, it may appear that two skills have no relationship. But the deeper you get into each one, a synthesis appears.

At a certain point when you are learning hypnosis, all seemingly-unrelated information seems to fit effortlessly into your hypnotic knowledge. You can listen to a song and suddenly you learn something new about how to hypnotize someone. Maybe it was a lyric that gave you an evocative emotional response; maybe it was a pattern in the music that you thought about replicating with the rhythm of your hypnotic language.

Over a decade into my own hypnosis learning, I got very lucky and found a second passionate home in communities of Jewish text study about a year ago. I started from almost zero there and found myself again to be a greedy novice, obsessed with digging into it.

Of course, as I got further, it became that I read a page of Talmud (a text of rabbinical law and conversation) and suddenly I learned something new about how to hypnotize someone. And as I progress, it is starting to go the other way: I learn about Torah study by reading about hypnosis and intimacy.

There are two directions this essay can be read. “How can intimacy and hypnosis teach us about Jewish text?” And, “How can Jewish text teach us about intimacy and hypnosis?” One half is of each part written by me as an authority, and the other half is by me as an avid novice. The synthesis of these two parts of me -- just like any synthesis between concepts -- may perhaps create something new.

Models

I’m sure most communities have a version of the idiom, “Ask three people a question and get five answers.” For a long time, this was a source of frustration for me in the hypnosis community. Is hypnosis a state of relaxation and suggestibility? Kind of, but also no. Is it more accurate to say it is based on unconscious behaviors and thoughts? Well -- kind of, but also no.

So what is it? Well, it’s probably somewhere in the overlap of about 20-30 semi-accurate definitions and frameworks for techniques -- what we’d call “models.” Good luck!

Why is hypnosis so impossible to define and teach? How have we not found a model that we can all agree upon yet? I think many people share this confusion, and it's complicated by the fact that most sources for hypnosis education teach their model as the model. It makes sense -- it would be difficult to teach a complete beginner a handful of complex frameworks with which to understand hypnosis when that person is just trying to muddle through learning “how to hypnotize someone” on a practical, basic level.

…Or would it be? By the time I got involved with Jewish study, I had long given up on chasing the white whale of some unified theory of hypnosis. I was firmly happy with the concept that all ways to describe hypnosis are simply models -- and all models are flawed, while some models are useful. I was delighted, when entering Jewish community spaces, to hear the idiom, “Three Jews, five opinions.”

This concept is baked into Jewish text study, in my experience. You can look at any single line in Torah and find innumerable pieces of commentary on it, ancient and modern, with conflicting interpretations. Torah and other texts are studied over and over -- often on a schedule -- with the idea that there is always something new to learn. And this happens partially by the synthesis of multiple people's perspectives adding to and challenging each other, developing new models. My Torah study group teacher always starts us with a famous line from Pirkei Avot, a text of ethical teachings from early rabbis: “If two sit together and share words of Torah, the Shekhinah [feminine presence of God] abides among them.”

The capacity to develop and hold multiple interpretations at once enriches your relationship with the text. So too do I believe that being able to hold multiple interpretations of what hypnosis is and how it works enhances your skill with it. It is not a failure of the system -- it is the best thing about it.

Intimacy

It is intentional to make the distinction of “relationship with the text” -- not “relationship to the text.”

My job on the surface is to teach hypnosis, but the meta goal is to simply teach something that helps people develop profound intimacy with others. I think that hypnosis is a kind of beautiful magic that is well-suited to this, but it’s not the only path to take.

One of my favorite educators, Georg Barkas, describes themselves as an intimacy educator who teaches rope bondage. Their classes and writings are highly philosophical and align closely with my own ideas about intimacy -- as well as my partner’s, MrDream, from whom I’ve learned so much. I frequently cite Barkas when I talk about hypnosis because I feel the underlying ideas they have about rope bondage are extremely applicable to all kink and intimacy -- and I will continue that trend here.

Barkas recently published an excellent essay looking in detail at the concept of intimacy itself. They posit that our first thought of intimacy is usually about a kind of comfort-seeking and familiarity. That’s contained within the etymology of the word, and socially it’s what many of us think of when we define our relationships as “intimate”: settling in to engage with a partner who we love, know, and understand.

But, Barkas asks, what if we place this word into a different context? They talk of how in scientific endeavors, the goal of “becoming familiar with” is unpredictability and discovering things that are surprising and unexpected. This perhaps offers a different view of intimacy: intimacy where you do not engage with your partner as though you know everything about them; intimacy where being surprised by them and learning something new is the goal.

My partner MrDream teaches about this often in hypnosis education: approaching a partner with genuine curiosity and interest -- “curiosity” implying that you don’t know what to expect, with a positive connotation. There is a kind of delicate balance between being able to anticipate some aspects of what is going to happen hypnotically -- to have a general grasp on psychology and hypnosis theory -- versus holding tight to a philosophy that neither you nor the hypnotic subject really knows how they are going to respond. The unexpected is not to be feared, but celebrated and held as core to our practice. Hypnotic “subjects” (those being hypnotized) who can relax their expectations will often have more intense experiences.

Thus we come to the first time in this essay where I mention Milton Erickson, my favorite forefather of modern hypnosis. Erickson was a hypnotherapist active through the 1900s and is famous (among many things) for presenting a model of hypnosis that wasn’t necessarily an authoritative action done to a person, but a collaborative and guiding action done with a person.

In his book “Hypnotic Realities,” he talks about how his view of clinical hypnosis is defined by how the therapist is able to observe each individual client and directly use those observations to continually develop a unique hypnotic approach with them. The client’s history, interests, and modes of thinking are utilized for the trance, as well as any observable responses they have in the moment. For example, a client with chronic pain may have the frustration they express over that pain incorporated into the trance. This is in deep contrast to hypnosis where the therapist comes in with any kind of “script” or formula to recite ahead of time.

It’s important to Erickson’s model that the therapist doesn’t know exactly what to anticipate, and it’s also important hypnotically that the same is true for the client. A common “Ericksonian” suggestion is, “You don’t have to know what is going to happen, and I don’t know either.” In order to develop the most effective approach with each patient, Erickson would enter into a session with some presumed knowledge, but ultimately learning -- not assuming -- how to best hypnotize each individual person.

We circle back to the phrase, “a relationship with Jewish text.” In my opinion, engaging with Torah is exactly this kind of intimacy. Torah is something we come into in order to poke and prod at it, to interact with it and to see how it interacts back at us. The teacher of my study group always cites a model where Torah itself is a participant in our partnered learning and group discussions. We ask it questions, we push its boundaries, we strive to glean something new and yet unseen. A line that may seem simple on the surface can reveal much more when we explore its context or put it into a different context entirely.

This is easier for me to say as someone who is coming into learning Torah for the first time, but I am able to look ahead to when I will be fully familiar with the text and still be able to take this expanded definition of intimacy with it. Not coming to it without a sense of comfort, but still engaging with curiosity. MrDream teaches a model for hypnosis that is based on the idea of exploration -- exploring your partner no matter how long you have been with them. You are always coming to them as a different person, shaped by your ever-growing experiences and identity, and your partner changes as a human as well. I believe Torah is also dynamic in this way, as the context within which it exists -- and the way we interpret it -- is constantly shifting.

Ritual

I have been engaging with spiritual ritual on and off for as long as I’ve been learning hypnosis. The concept of magic has always been alluring to me -- not from a motivation to meet specific goals, but for something more difficult to pin down. I like that ritual, in an esoteric framework, is about looking at various metaphors between ingredients and actions; a candle representing an element of fire which may in turn represent intensity, or purity, or something else. Drawing meaningful connections between concepts like this is a skill I’ve developed in parallel with hypnosis, as well.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is also interested in esotericism -- we were sharing our frustrations with various books on magic and ritual. We wondered why so many sources would go on to teach prescriptivist formulas and associations, and not much else. Do this, and that will happen. This symbol represents that. My friend and I agreed that the ritual value of ingredients comes from how you personally assign meaning to them -- but why was everything always trying to teach us their meaning, as opposed to teaching us how to cultivate our own associations?

A week or so later, I happened to go to an excellent class that explored whether or not there was a place for smudging and smoke use in modern Jewish ritual. The teacher first took a careful, measured approach towards looking at indigenous smudging practices and the concept of appropriation. What followed was 30 minutes of history and text exploring examples of smoke in early Judaism, and then 30 minutes of a handful of interpretations of what “smoke” could mean and represent with relation to Jewish ideas -- directly practical to modern ritual. It was utterly excellent and immediately profound for me, as someone who has been yearning to blend my experience with esoteric ritual with my relationship with Judaism.

Observant readers will note that through this essay I speak passively about Judaism -- I am a patrilineal Jew, which for better or worse means that it is not a simple matter to say, “I am ‘fully’ (or ‘not’) Jewish.” (I am in the beginnings of working with a Conservative rabbi -- who affirms that I’m Jewish -- to make my status halachic [lawful], which is deeply exciting.) Opinions on that aside, a relevant piece of information is that the Jewish holiday we celebrated most consistently when I was growing up was Chanukah. While a lot of Jewish practice has been something I’ve been striving towards as an adult, Chanukah has always been “mine.” It was fast approaching after this class, and I felt motivated to use my newfound knowledge to make more ritual out of lighting the candles.

I was deeply surprised when all I did was light a stick of incense before saying the blessings over lighting the menorah, and my experience transformed into something intense. I smelled the incense and couldn’t help but think about what I’d learned about the Rambam’s commentary that incense in the time of the Temple was about making the Temple smell sweet to pray in after the burning of sacrifices. I thought about what I’d learned about the presence of God being smoke and clouds to the ancient Israelites. I thought about things I’d learned from other places -- hiddur mitzvah (the value of beautifying a practice), and a midrash (parable) about God loving the light and rituals we do in a very personal way simply because they are from us.

Esoteric ritual has often felt to me like exerting effort in making the associations of ingredients work for me. But this was effortless. I was doing something that was entirely my own, solidly founded by the broad and deep study I’d done, by my personal relationship with the concepts, by my identity.

In other words, the power behind this ritual came from knowledge, and the knowledge came from my intimacy with it. And that intimacy was not just with the study I had done -- it was also the process of being surprised in real time by what I was learning through the ritual itself.

Hypnosis gains “power,” in so much as we let ourselves use the term, through these same acts of intimacy towards knowledge. It operates directly based on various ingredients: how much we know about hypnosis theory itself, general psychology, the person we are working with, and ourselves. Hypnosis is a ritual -- it is setting aside special time to do something with a collection of ingredients that you have personal associated meanings with. If you can’t connect to those deeply enough, it won’t reach its full potency.

Knowledge, Perception, and Unconsciousness

One of my favorite concepts to teach in hypnosis is, “A change in perception equates to a change in reality.” This is derived from Erickson by MrDream, and it’s something he and I have had a lot of conversations about to refine. The implication of this is not something as trite as hypnosis having the power to change a person’s perceived reality. It is the concept that if you look at something from a different perspective, you gain various different capabilities.

For example, when you are feeling stuck in a situation and you think about what a close friend of yours would do if they were in your shoes, you gain the capability to see more options, to change your actual view of the reality of the problem and therefore change your actions towards it. In hypnosis, this could be the difference between simply telling someone to relax their legs versus another perspective of telling them to imagine what it would be like if their legs just started relaxing. It could be the idea that when a person does feel relaxation from a simple suggestion, their perception changes on what is happening -- they build more belief in hypnosis, and that belief in turn makes the next suggestions easier to buy into.

Erickson’s model of hypnosis is predicated on the idea that hypnosis itself matters, that hypnosis is a time within which someone’s reality changes. In his ideal hypnotic context, the subject feels like they no longer can expect things to behave as they usually do in their “waking” reality. They are thus opened to many different kinds of new experiences and capabilities. To Erickson, perception matters -- by itself, it’s a primary driving force behind literal change and response.

This ties back to our idea of intimacy -- just as I aim to approach my partners with this profound curiosity, just as I aim to approach Torah, I want to have this intimacy of the unexpected with trance itself. I want to allow myself to be surprised by hypnosis, by the things I don’t yet know about it even after more than a decade and thousands of hours of trance. But more than this, in an Ericksonian sense, simply changing my perspective to this motivation is one of the things that lets me get there.

I went through a guided study class about Shabbat (Judaism’s weekly sabbath of rest) with a partner, and so much of the class was in the abstract that it at times felt difficult for me to latch onto. We were learning all of this background context about a view of Shabbat where instead of spiritually striving and reaching on that day, you come in acting as though your spiritual work -- like your other work -- is “finished.”

In one session, we spent a chunk of time parsing through how we could interpret that as actionable. It felt like it just wasn’t clicking for me -- the midrashic texts weren’t offering enough for me to feel like I could make judgments on questions like, “Does this imply I shouldn’t meditate on Shabbat in this context?”

It wasn’t until I slept on it that I found a very simple piece of the puzzle: putting aside the questions of concrete actions, in an Ericksonian sense, the internal act of shifting my perspective would absolutely change the way I behaved and interacted with the day. It would become more indirect and unconscious -- instead of carefully analyzing my actions as I might with other Shabbat prohibitions on work, I could simply let myself act in ways that fit that perspective of “spiritually resting.”

The abstraction of the class made more sense -- perhaps it wasn’t trying to give us direct answers, but rather create a psychological environment for us that was well-suited to this more unconscious processing. Or rather, in addition to the sort of typical conscious halachic interpretation. If I allow myself an opinion here, I’d say that I care about halacha as actionable, but as always, I tend to care more about feelings and what’s internal.

This also lent credence to ways this class and the class on smoke and ritual changed my experiences. I was not given a set of actions to take, but rather a variety of perspectives that unconsciously made me think and behave differently. The concept of “knowledge is power” is both true and alluring in many different contexts, and yet had often fallen through for me in most ritualistic frameworks. The way that it succeeds, I believe, is when you develop a relationship with knowledge that actually changes your internal perspective and perceptions.

Limitation

With this we return to the concept of models and interpretations. It is serendipitous to be going through these experiences at a time where I am avidly working on my next book -- the thesis of which is that in order for us to progress as hypnotists, we must get comfortable moving fluidly between many differing definitions and frameworks (models) of what hypnosis is and how it works.

It is as the Ericksonian principle would say: If you take a perspective on hypnosis that boils down to “hypnosis is about relaxing the conscious mind,” you will do hypnosis according to that perspective. You will use relaxation-based techniques and make an effort to get someone to think “less consciously.” If you instead take a perspective that is “hypnosis operates based on activation of the conscious mind,” you may do hypnosis that causes someone to think and process in a more stimulating way.

Both and neither are true, and they can coexist. I believe that most models can be useful -- some more useful than others. But the best thing you can do is to not assume that one model is the most correct one -- instead, it is to develop the capacity to work within many at once even while being aware of their boundaries.

Jewish text, in my experience, provides models -- perspectives that themselves give guidance on how to understand things and act. I think especially about midrash and stories that are explicitly intended to fill in the gaps or give an alternate view on something. The question of, “Is there one correct way to do/see things” is more complicated here, but there are areas -- especially in those subtle shifts of mindset for ritual or interpreting text -- where the answer is still “no.”

My time so far in Jewish study supports this in a different way. There is a human element of collaboration and challenge. Learning as we do with a chevruta (study partner) adds another person to the relationship -- it is no longer just between you and the text. There is another human who you are building something with, and it is “intimate” according to our exploratory definition in an even clearer way.

The purpose of a “scene” inside of kink (a “session” of kink play) is to operate in a semi-limited framework -- limitations exist on who is involved, where it begins and ends, how partners communicate, and what themes/topics/activities are involved. These limitations -- though they may be quite broad -- are partially what allow for intense experiences. A scene needs to exist in a different “space” than our daily lives, and it needs to operate by different rules and involve different ingredients. Here, we also see overlaps with the definition of a “ritual.”

This doesn’t just facilitate intensity (and safety) -- it facilitates learning something new about your partner. By taking your relationship and putting it into a limited context, it allows you to observe it in a more careful way, where novel changes can be more obvious.

Studying with a chevruta is much like this. I have had study sessions where my chevruta and I are meeting for the first time and the only thing we are aware of sharing is our desire to dive into a piece of text. I’ve also had chevrutas where we know each other outside of study, and some of our time is schmoozing and catching up. But in all cases, we are limited in scope, and that limitation creates ease of access towards the common goal of expanding our knowledge and relationship with the text. We are focused; we are motivated. We are creating something that we can only create through who we are as individuals and what we are doing as avid learners.

This has surprised me at times with its tenderness and intensity. Building well-founded interpretations with someone is in and of itself very intimate -- not sensually, but humanly. It has given me something I have always wanted -- an intimacy that is pervasive not just in application of knowledge, but in the development of it. A feeling of sacredness and joy from being able to see so many different perspectives.

I long for this connection, this alchemy. Yes, all models are limited. But within those tight, restricting limits is the potential energy of creation.

“And I Must Learn”

There is an infamous story in the Talmud, in Berakhot 62a, where Rav Kahana hides under the bed of his friend Rav Abba. Rav Kahana hears Abba and his wife giggling and starting to have sex, and remarks out loud that Rav Abba is acting like someone who is famished. Rav Abba, mid-sex, understandably says, “Kahana, why the fuck are you under my bed listening to me fuck my wife?” Rav Kahana replies, “It is Torah, and I must learn.”

There was a version of this essay that began with this tale. I am enamored with the vast overlaps I can derive from its briefness: that intimacy can be studied sacredly both as a general concept and specifically with your partner; that we are obligated to learn ourselves, our partners, and general human desire; that there can be a thread of wholeness in every action of your life if you give every action sacred attention.

Even this, though, is a limited-context interpretation. The rabbis of the Talmud were certainly not sex-positive, especially not as we currently use the term. The surrounding triptych of conversations is similarly humorous but seems to comparatively describe sex as dirty or gross, and this bit of text cannot really exist separately from all of the places where there is halacha derived about sex that is about controlling women’s bodies or preventing queer and trans people from being able to live authentically.

But -- we are allowed to interpret like this. We are allowed to play with context and see what we discover.

For me, this is about finding the connections between my actions and my interests; parts of me that synthesize the whole. It is about developing intimacy with Torah, with my learning partners, with my romantic partners; with the people within the writings, with the authors, and with the readers.

Reading Torah is the same as hypnotizing someone is the same being intimate with someone is the same as doing a ritual. All things on a broad enough scale overlap this closely. There is value in this “zooming out” to a wide enough context to see the connections that exist -- just as there is value in celebrating the limitations that arise, models nestled alongside each other, when you “zoom in.”

We need both to be able to treat our learning -- all forms of it -- as something special.

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h-sleepingirl · 2 months

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Milton Erickson and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar... (Essay)

Finally, I've finished this essay about connections I'm finding between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy. It's ~4.5k words, extremely "me," and I'm really thrilled to share it. Enjoy!

My weakness is getting deeply invested in very niche topics.

On the surface, it may appear that two skills have no relationship. But the deeper you get into each one, a synthesis appears.

Models

So what is it? Well, it’s probably somewhere in the overlap of about 20-30 semi-accurate definitions and frameworks for techniques -- what we’d call “models.” Good luck!

Intimacy

It is intentional to make the distinction of “relationship with the text” -- not “relationship to the text.”

Ritual

Knowledge, Perception, and Unconsciousness

Limitation

I long for this connection, this alchemy. Yes, all models are limited. But within those tight, restricting limits is the potential energy of creation.

“And I Must Learn”

But -- we are allowed to interpret like this. We are allowed to play with context and see what we discover.

We need both to be able to treat our learning -- all forms of it -- as something special.

#my writing #hypnosis #judaism #hypnokink

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h-sleepingirl · 3 months

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I am opening for inquiries :) Will take a limited number of my choice over the next few weeks as time allows.

Please DM with your ideas or questions! I will let you know if/when I accept them to work on!

See examples at https://readonlymind.com/@sleepingirl/ :)

#commissions #erotica #my writing #hypnosis #mind control

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h-sleepingirl · 4 months

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I'm leading a text study on Milton Erickson at Charmed this coming weekend, and there's been some discussion around learning from Erickson so I wanted to make this little guide of tips I'd give to someone trying to read his book (my favorite) "Hypnotic Realities"! A lot of this is relevant to other hypnosis books too!

If you're coming to Charmed, we're going to have an excellent time at the class! Hope to see you there!

#hypnosis #hypnokink #erotic hypnosis #my writing

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h-sleepingirl · 6 months

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Hypnovember 1: Dazed

A liminal space

Not quite awake

Half-lidded eyes

As hard as she tries

She cannot think straight

A stumbling gait

Following, dazed

Bound in a haze

The pleasure of thoughts

So easily lost

Her small inner voice

Does not have a choice.

#hypnokink #hypnosis #my writing #hypnovember

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h-sleepingirl · 6 months

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For Hypnovember I present... ✨

A progressive prompt list where you can pick one to do weekly, string a few days' together in a week, or do one every day!

Or just do whatever you want!!!

Have fun :) Feel free to tag me if you use any of these, I'd love to see what you make! ❤️

#hypnokink #hypnosis #hypnovember #brainwashing #mind control

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h-sleepingirl · 8 months

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Anyways, I've been COMPLETELY obsessed with BG3 and our perfect little cunty vampire companion. So I wrote an indulgent Astarion/Reader mind control fic. Enjoy!

#astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate astarion #bg3 fanfiction #bg3 fic #mind control #my writing

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h-sleepingirl · 9 months

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90s hypnosis anime movie

#hypnokink #hypnosis #mind control #my art

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h-sleepingirl · 9 months

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Eden doodle. I need to be stopped

#hypnokink #hypnosis #brainwashing #bimbofication #bimbo #mind control #my art

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h-sleepingirl · 9 months

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>:)

Thank u

Abuse >:) I won't even toggle anon

(CW: Abusive dynamics and abuse (per the prompt) - skip if that's not your thing!)

“Again.”

I flinched instinctively, my stomach dropping when I heard laughter instead of the tell-tale snap of a riding crop and the associated pain. I felt nothing but deadened, faded welts, the chill of the floor against my knees, and a queasiness in the pit of my stomach.

“Oh darling,” Trina cooed. “What’s the matter?”

“N-Nothing,” I stammered lamely. I pulled my wrists against the restraints, the chains clacking against the pipes and the sounds echoing throughout the basement.

“Why it almost seemed…” She ran her fingers gently down the raised welts across my chest. “…like you didn’t like me.”

“That’s not true!” I blurted out. “I love you, Trina, I do, I just-” I hated disappointing her. “…Can we maybe move out of the basement at least? It’s cold and I like your bed better,” I pleaded in a desperate attempt to have boundaries. And yet, that wasn’t what I really wanted. My skin burned, my muscles ached at the position I had been holding for what felt like hours, and I was ready to stop. I never even wanted to start it, at least not tonight.

But starting here could be the first step.

“Baby, you know I can’t do that.” Trina looked concerned. “Last time, well…you know you’re a screamer, right?” She played at shyness, though I knew she had delighted in my screams at the time. “Last time we were playing, the neighbors heard, and that was a whole thing…and you’ve only just barely made up for it.” Her eyes looked like they were shimmering with tears.

The queasiness again. I looked back down. “…I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She pet my hair soothingly. “That’s why we’re down here.”

“I—” I swallowed a lump in my throat. Asserting boundaries. No is a complete sentence. My comfort is a priority. “I don’t want to…'play' anymore. Can we be done? A-at least tonight?” Hesitation had crept through into my voice in the last sentence, but that was the most I had said as a challenge to her in what felt like ages, and a part of me was proud.

“You what?” Trina frowned.

I grimaced from the wave of nausea that slammed into my battered body. Alarm bells went off in my brain, as if I’d made a horrible mistake, as if I’d just committed such a grievous wrong that the very core of my being shuddered in disgust.

“I just mean, I mean we’ve been doing this for a while, and aren’t you tired? We could both take a break!” I desperately recanted, anything to get rid of that feeling.

She stood there, frowning at me, my physical discomfort growing exponentially, my body attempting to curl inwards in agony, if only my arms hadn’t been tied to the pipes.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I started mumbling, tears wetting my cheeks. “I won’t do it again.” Shame and humiliation and a rush of chemical pleasure flooded my veins, my body sinking into a sigh of relief, the pleasurable throbbing of my body. Fuck.

“That’s a good girl.” Her face broke out into a wide smile. “I’m so glad you understand. You know, I hate being mad at you. And it’s not right for a relationship to just be one-sided. Fighting is healthy for relationships. I want you to be able to challenge me on things, and then when you’re done and we both come to a solution, I want it to feel good for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes,” I whimpered, my toes curled and fists balled up trying to bear the pleasure that threatened to overwhelm me.

“Aw baby, it’s okay!” Her sickly-sweet voice dug its claws into me, comforted the inner turmoil in my mind. “Just relax, okay? I know you’re so good at doing that for me. Doesn’t it feel better to just, drop it? To relax?”

“Yeeesss…” It came from the back of my throat in one long sigh, like I was relieving my stress and losing a part of myself with every deep breath. It came from the back of my throat like all the other times I’d said yes to her, like all the times I agreed, all the times I relented…

“What’s this?” She swatted at my crotch with the crop lightly, the fabric of my underwear sticking to my skin. “Are you getting turned on by this?” She spat out with a sneer.

…Like all the times I came.

My ears burned. “I—”

“Sweetie, sweetie.” Trina’s voice softened again. “It’s okay, to like the things that you like. No one can judge you here, okay?” She hugged me gently as I leaned my tired body against her legs.

“But, out there…those neighbors,” she whispered, saddened. “Who knows what they’d tell people if they knew what you did? What you were into? What got you so fucking wet?” She ripped the thin, flimsy fabric from me, the coolness of the air on my slick skin a stark contrast to how feverish my head felt. “It’d be bad, right?” I nodded against her absentmindedly.

“Then we can’t tell anyone, right?” She knelt and met me at eye-level, face to face. “We can never tell anyone about your deepest desires? Your shames?”

“No…” I sighed, a part of my soul fading away with my breath.

“It’s better not to tell anyone about what goes on in this household really, people can be so nosy.” She rolled her eyes with a grin.

“Yes…” My body felt heavier than it’d ever been, my eyes threatening to close.

“Good.” For a brief second her eyes softened, a genuine, small smile on her face. Those were the fleeting moments I lived for. I knew she was a good person who just played at being harsh. Because I was asking for it. Because I deserved it. Because she loved me. Right?

Her eyes lit up in rapturous glee. “Well, without further ado.” She jammed the discarded panties into my mouth, her fingers uncomfortably prying my jaw open as I choked on the fabric being stuffed into the back of my throat.

“Remember, no screaming.”

---

(a short story for sleepingirl, a wicked pervert)

#follow ari #a wicked pervert

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