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Mastering Erotic Hypnosis

I’ll skip any information I don’t find helpful or novel from this book. These notes are for me. So, dear reader, don’t use this as a CliffsNotes for the actual book. O:)

Introduction

Starting with terminology, they use unconscious instead of subconscious - however, unless your trancee is psychologically well versed, either term will do. They continue to say that suggestibility is not gullibility and note that they’ll provide a better term later. They’ll also use the term partner instead of subject, since they believe subject should be used to denote an “appropriate, non-erotic, professional or therapeutic relationship.” (Leave my Subject terminology alone; I like being called a good subject!)

This chapter covers demonstrations of hypnosis, where someone is made to ‘murder’ people through hypnosis with a rubber knife for a judge in the 1920s. They then later describe an unethical hypnotist that raped their subject, giving them suggestions of amnesia, then gave some hints as to the MKUltra project. All this is to say that unless you have explicit and clear out-of-trance consent, you do not have consent. Coercion is clearly possible. So, something that’s sort of a problem in the furry erotic hypnosis community is tacit communication is still used quite a lot for initial negotiation… This is addressed in the book…

If you didn’t come out of a kink background, the negotiate-in-advance style may seem super awkward or intimidating to you. It goes against the “get to third base” mentality of a lot of negotiate-as-you-go play, where both participants may not decide how far they are willing to go until they get there and may start off telling themselves they have one limit while fully intending to let arousal carry them, or their partner, over that limit. Whatever the ethics of negotiate-as-you-go, it is right out for hypnosis.

Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (p. 27). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

The introduction about consent in this book is good! I like it!

Negotiating in/after state

  1. Negotiation is about the hypnotist’s comfort, too.
  2. Discuss and understand your partner’s experiences and capabilities.
  3. Listen to your instincts. (Man this hits home.)

What is hypnosis?

They start by discussing hypnosis as real, but this would be better described in a book like Trancework or, surprisingly, Neuro-Hypnosis, Using Self Hypnosis to Activate the Brain for Change. As a treat, they mention explicitly that hypnosis uses different areas of the brain than meditation.

The sauce…

This might be a little bit in the book’s sauce, but they suggest that there are direct and inferential suggestible subjects. Given that, they have these patterns… Direct Suggestible:
Imagery/imagination ⇒ evokes a physical or bodily reaction ⇒ feels an emotion
Inferential Suggestible: Imagery/imagination ⇒ feels an emotion ⇒ evokes a physical or bodily reaction

For now, we’ll remember that for direct suggestibles, we should lead with a sensation, and for inferential suggestibles, we should lead with an emotion.

Perhaps… some good advice for working in groups…

Often, the pathworking is presented as a narrative. “You are walking through a forest…you see a bear.”  Even supporting elements are usually presented descriptively. “You are on a dark path. You feel afraid.” Leading with an inferential suggestion in group settings will help ensure you get everyone who is suggestible to you into the net. “I want you to think about being alone in a forest. You might feel a sense of foreboding,” may be a better start.

They explicitly state - don’t be hyper-literal about this direct/inferential suggestible stuff.

Ah. This felt fantastic to read. <3

Realistically, if you only learn to hypnotize highly, directly suggestible partners with a script, you are not so much a hypnotist as a stand-in for an audio tape.

Intellectual Suggestibles and Concrete Reasons

I’m not sold on the model, but I like the advice. For ‘intellectual’ indirect suggestibles, telling them their eyelids are feeling as heavy as lead, and it would feel good to let them close” would be rejected since it’s just… simply not true. Their suggestion is to revivify some past experiences that had this effect, like when they took cold medication, and ask them directly to remember it. (This reminds me of Graham Old’s leisure induction and parrot phrasing.)

Team up with these people and present it as a cooperative process.

This is a bit lost in the sauce, but here’s their model for discerning direct and inferential suggestibles…

Direct suggestibles: They talk a lot about themselves, uses kinesthetic statements, animated gestures, a hugger, adopts closed posture when tense, sleepwalked at some point, feels kinesthetic suggestions, and are OK with public displays of affection

Inferential suggestibles: Uses ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ in regards to activities and actions, stiff and rigid, keeps a personal space bubble without an exaggerated closed posture, pays more attention to voice tonality than words, is reluctant to start new conversations, zones out and forgets during conversation

They mention the locus of control, which is just to say the difference between “Your eyelids are getting heavy” and “at this point, you may find that your eyelids may be growing heavy, and that’s perfectly natural and you don’t need to fight it, you can just relax.”

Hypnotic Modality

Erickson defined the hypnotic modality as a state in which the therapist was “communicating with the unconscious.” They suggest there are three components to hypnosis:

  • Establish authority
  • Establish that what you’re doing will work
  • Create overload

Calling bullshit on this - that ‘overload’ is the ideal way to learn and that things will automatically go into the unconscious the way they think they do. I’d have to see it to believe it.

Anyway.

  • Establish Authority: Demonstrate self-control, trustworthiness, environmental control
    • Some tips: Don’t talk about how capable you are; practice moderating your voice, tone, and temper; avoid extreme displays of bitterness and jealousy; avoid cynicism and sarcasm and opt for good humor and a willingness to forgive or excuse; laugh at yourself - it exudes control and self-confidence; do not force others to defer to you in special ways; show reasonable respect to people and legitimate institutions, especially in autonomy and self-designations of people around you; if an institution is illegitimate and you must oppose it, show forethought while you constructively channel your anger; take pride in your appearance
  • Demonstrate Trustworthiness: Communicate both your wants and unknowns clearly, and a willingness to collaborate
  • Demonstrate Environmental Control: Showing control over your environment, quietly and calmly - it’s worth far more than talk (There’s a quick talk on pacing and leading here… but I’ve got this down, and there’s no reason for me to regurgitate it.)

Conversational bits about hypnosis that I found interesting

Hypnosis is a science, and employing it is an art.

Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (p. 92). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

Things that are true and don’t hurt to reinforce:

  • Intelligence, generally, corresponds to suggestibility (response)
  • Imagination and creativity are correlated to suggestibility (response)
  • This isn’t a battle of the wills

Creating Overload

(Even if I don’t really think this is necessary…)

  • Incredibly slight anxiety. EG: boredom at the DMV, or driving while your mind is on something else. Think anticipation. Encourage this by sharpening your voice, or having them sit straight up.
  • Use VAK, and don’t skimp. Actually ‘touch’ your partner during a session. Don’t neglect Kog if it’s available.

As a note, you need to be aware of overload because you can have too much of it. If your erotic hypnosis partner is wide-eyed, breathing fast, skin flushed, clearly in that state where touch will melt them, you need to hold back on stimuli that would create overload, not pour on more. If your partner isn’t overly excited already, a few quick reminders about what you have negotiated to do, focusing on any things they seemed to find exciting or edgy, can create an intense state of anticipatory anxiety.

Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (p. 99). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

Redirection

Redirection is a way of doubling down on the senses to create overload. EG:

“I want you to feel your feet flat against the floor, and you may also notice the sun’s warmth on your skin.” “You can focus on my words. Outside, you can hear background noises, cars, trucks, but that isn’t important.”

Don’t overdo redirection. Usually, one to three redirections per induction, particularly as interrupts to your patter, as you can see they are beginning to go under, is sufficient.

Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (p. 98). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

Inductions

Deconstructing Inductions

  • Ensure a hypnotic modality exists (establishing authority that hypnosis will work and eventually create overload)
  • Build a compliance chain - a yes set and a compliance set, and this should be easy
  • (It should be obvious, but check for their physical comfort and safety. Pain distracts from a hypnotic state.)
  • They suggest using slight tension; they should not be -too- comfortable.
  • Focal Device - often called the induction itself
    • Aside from auditory fascination, there’s eye fascination, hypno-disks, arm-raising, all just to create overload, allegedly
    • Patter - hypnotic cadence, hypnotic speech
      • Keep your cadence clear and slow; remember you can work with both paternal and maternal tones, and don’t worry about fancy wording (it’s sexy but ineffective)
  • Pacing with ‘truisms,’ using that as evidence, creating heteroaction (Taking this from MMHA, but it’s covering the same stuff), I do like the you may have a tendency to want to swallow as a pacing statement
    • Continuing with their indirect suggestibles model, suggest emotional excitement first then move to physical. Do the opposite with direct.
  • Breathing regulation can be handy as it adds, interestingly in their model, overload
  • USE THE TERM IMAGINE -OR- VISUALIZE, as not all can visualize; if you want just one, just stick with imagine
  • Don’t be fancy with words. If you keep saying, “Your eyelids feel heavier and heavier…” and repeat, “heavier and heavier,” they’ll feel heavier. Don’t kick them out just to be creative.
  • You can deliver suggestions by example.
    • [You feel (optional emotional modifiers) THING] (You feel a pleasant warmth)
      • May remind you of some pleasant experience you’ve had in the past, non-specific
      • Perhaps when [concrete examples]
  • Gather their nominalizations ala [[Mastering the Leisure Induction notes]]

Conversion

Given their model, conversion is the place where someone goes ‘deep’ into a hypnotic state - even though hypnosis is already happening. For example, when their head slumps down, or someone goes deeply into a trance. Their model of conversion has the following components:

  • Build
    • Shifting gradually to a commanding tone, using less permissive language
  • Read
    • You do the reading. However, working with experienced partners, you might get a false positive from watching their eyes or seeing physiological signs early. They’ll describe inductions that are easier to read later.
  • Shock
    • Something unexpected to suggest going in. “Aaaand…. sleep!” Poke their forehead, shoulders down… some sort of shift or change.
  • Immediate Deepening
    • Use whatever you like, but the usual is the countdown.
    • According to them, this is where you add your reinduction trigger. Don’t ask if they’re in hypnosis; instead, ask them about things that will help them enter hypnosis. EG: “Are you comfortable?”

Dismissal

You can use something gentler when waking them from hypnosis before bed. (I like to tell them that they can enjoy this same state of relaxation in their pillow and set it up as a trigger if they wish.)

Posthypnotic state

Don’t seem desperate, prefer “How did that feel to you?” over “Did you feel anything?”

When shit doesn’t work

After hypnosis, I don’t think this is entirely genuine, but they say, “Downplay failures, don’t cast blame, and look for other methods.” I prefer to focus on the positives and set up something to try again or start troubleshooting from there. You can improve your success rate and soften the blow of a low response by:

  • Reading their suggestibility beforehand, looking at skepticism and resistance. (Or even their environment. If your dumb ass forgot to tell them to take their phone out of their pocket, forgot to tell them to take a piss, or their cat jumped on their junk, that’s on you.)
  • Bad expectations - a mild state is good enough for therapeutic effects and can improve over time.
  • Invite them to interrupt during the process.
  • Not in the book, but I like the question, ‘Did anything take you out of the experience?’ Head checks for you if you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere:
  • Are they just not very reactive, but in state?
  • Have you tried switching between direct/indirect suggestions?
  • Did I make sure to use both “imagine and visualize?”
  • If they’re disappointed, remind them of the expectations. (Apply head pats if appropriate. Poor bean.)
  • If they interrupt, work with them. Try an auto-dual induction.
  • If things seem really fucked, just tell them we’ll continue with a relaxation exercise, it’s worth doing in preparation, and sometimes it takes a while. The authors rant and practically beg you to use an eye fascination induction and say that arm-raising inductions are effective but less sexy.

Eye Fixation

  • Take your fixation object and hold it 8-15 inches away from their eyes
  • Hold it slightly above their eyeline; it should be slightly uncomfortable to look at
  • Watch your partner’s eyes - they should contact and then dilate
  • After this, after a while, or after the eyes have begun wavering, move your hand forward
  • Their eyes should close
  • Apply shock. (Touch and tell them to sleep.)
  • Deepen You can also do this with your own eyes, too. As a neat little tip, you can add some eye fixation to whatever you’re doing, such as, “And now, I want you to focus on my fingernail.”

Arm-Raising

  • Have your partner sitting
  • Position their arm and elbow so they can touch their face. This teaches them how to move their hand, and you’re ensuring it can move comfortably.
  • Suggest their arm is raising. You can suggest it could be the wrist or hand leading, lightness, weightlessness, lifting, higher…
  • As the arm raises well above the surface, suggest it moves inwards to the face.
  • When it touches their face, convert with whatever mechanism you want to.
    • Pace and lead on the usual… swallowing, breathing, feeling the chair…
    • If it doesn’t seem to start, try suggesting a ‘jerking’ motion from the arm, wrist, or hand Problems:
  • If it doesn’t move, just keep trying. One of James’ instructors said, “Just keep going, five minutes, thirty minutes; it’ll move.”…
  • Change up your suggestion style
  • If you see signs of trance, convert with touching their forehead
  • If it all fails, back out gracefully and try something else

Talk Induction

If you’re forced to do a talk induction cold, they suggest you must focus on redirection far more than if you were doing this with an eye fascination component, unless you lucked out on an easy drop.

Shock/quick induction

Shock inductions are (well) performed:

  • As a secondary induction
  • On highly suggestible individuals
  • When a profound hypnotic modality already exists Shock inductions work when:
  • Enough hypnotic modality exists
  • The bottom knows how to drop into state
  • The bottom understands the cue to drop in Or, in less BS, the subject is in enough hypnotic modality to go in, and the bottom understands and can infer “sleep” means “go into trance” unconsciously.

Hand locking test/induction

  • Have the bottom lock their fingers and extend them out in front of them
  • Suggest that if they begin to come apart, they will tighten their fingers and clamp down
    • Suggest glue to include indirect suggestibles
  • Add a countdown and further suggestions
  • Try and fail convincer

Auto dual technique

aka (hypnotize yourself with my instructions) Use a normal induction, but ask them to repeat everything you say to them. Use all the caveats you have for low suggestibles (typically high inferentials or intellecutals.) Reassure them that they can exit the state at any time, and they will remain aware. As a second option, suggest they could be suggestible, to themselves, like being lost in a film or book, r a hypnotic shift while driving. Use an induction with some ideomotor phenomena, it’s a good convincer. Remind them that hypnosis may be not what they expect or very light at first, and may require repeated work. If necessary and they are literal (arms do not respond to magnets) suggest we rely on a cartoonish willingness to accept the idea symbolically. You might need to use something like “feels as if their arm has become paralyzed.”

Relaxation

Allegedly, the relaxation induction develops overload by coincidence and is not good for creating strong suggestibility.

The Recipe

  • Hypnotic modality
  • Authority
  • Do they think it will work?
  • Compliance chain – create some chances to take direction
  • Physical comfort and safety
    • Are they comfortable
    • Hazards
    • Not too comfortable
    • Comfortable place to continue
  • Do they imagine or visualize?
  • Should I use direct or indirect suggestions?
  • Patter - describe the effects of going into state
    • Cadence/Tone
    • Repetition
  • Physiological tricks
    • Overload
    • Focal device - focus their attention
    • Redirect - move their attention
    • Physiological cues - call their attention to elements that suggest they are going into state
  • Conversion
  • Verbal component
    • Physical Component
    • Immediate Deepening
  • Coming Up
  • Post Hypnosis Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (pp. 143-144). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

Deepening

They provide four depths of hypnosis, for example:

  1. Shallow. What you may see on a first induction. Incomplete suggestibility.
    1. Initial state
  2. Light. Glazed eyes, REM eye movement, eye flicking, slower breathing.
    1. Orgasm enhancement, sensual experiences, participatory visualization
  3. Moderate. Side-to-side eye movement slowing when compared to REM.
    1. Age Regression, gender experimentation, doll state, exploration of alternative personalities, pain play, posthypnotic suggestion
  4. Deep. Eyes may roll up - don’t worry, it’s fine.
    1. Pain relief, deep visualizations, exploration of alternative personalities Their suggestion for deepening is creating additional ‘overload,’ since they may be familiar with the previous overload. When you’re deepening, prefer questions that don’t require much thought, are simple to answer, and opt for ideomotor responses (nodding, fingers, arm raising, tilting foot). Suggest that they respond off the cuff, and there is no wrong answer. You can give them permission to speak normally and conversationally, but you can give a beginner some yes/no exercises. A no-brainer, but be careful what information you ask for; it might breach trust. You can PMR someone as a deepener - the example they provided looks a bit like the furniture store deepener from Mind Play, but optionally, some sort of jacuzzi could relax them step by step through their body parts. You can suggest that negative emotions are cast ‘out’ of the body during your PMR. They’re still leaning on the idea of overload to deepen state, and I’m not… sold.

Safe Place exercise

Have them build their own safe space. If they’re not sure, some ideas to jog the memory… Indoors or outdoors, big or small space, fantasy or real, ground level, upstairs, downstairs, what things need to be there, food, drink, comfort items (blankets, cushions, books), other people, animals Push them to make a space where they feel good. Help them revivify this as you would in a leisure induction, parrot-phrasing and using their own words. If creating a safe space is very difficult, perhaps leave it alone if it starts to become more therapy than play.

Challenge

Any challenge where they are intended to fail can be a deepener and suggest you have stronger authority. Challenges can have the following components: The challenge itself, the suggestibility of the subject, direct and indirect suggestions, buildup to explain the challenge, the dominant suggestion, the challenge ‘you may try,’ amplification with ‘the harder you try the more difficult it becomes,’ and repetition, and then discharge, and rarely some confusion redirection.

Challenge Failure

Usually, they think the subject just didn’t understand the challenge. In some cases, the depth is too deep, or there is some lack of trust. They recommend saying ‘good’ and moving on.

Reaction

Why the fuck didn’t they just call this fractionation?

Troubleshooting

Some no-shit tips:

  • Limit expectations beforehand
  • Respect wishes to stop
  • Be willing to continue
  • Don’t freak out or cast blame
  • “You might be more suggestible to someone you knew better.”
  • “We may need to use a different approach.”
  • If your partner blames you, take it (and preserve their faith in themselves,) also take the blame for causing emotional turmoil; you’ll fuck up sometimes, as this is intense
  • You are the rock in the session, the dom, provide comfort and stability if shit goes south
  • You, as the hypnotist, have the right to change course or end the session if you feel your emotional wellbeing is at risk
  • If your partner asks you to leave, do it; their hypnotic state does not trump consent, grab a friend during negotiation
  • Avoid dead air - do something simple like a staircase exercise if you need a minute to think

Figure out precisely what’s the problem:

  • Not going into state
  • Not able to remain in state
  • Abreacting in state
  • Not responding visibly to suggestions (but could be in state)
  • Not giving positive responses to questions
  • “Let me know when you are able to visualize (or imagine) that.”

Causes:

  • Physical Discomfort
  • Imagine v Visualize
  • Suggestibility, or sometimes, they ‘don’t get’ what you’re asking them to do, or you’re giving too many direct suggestions
  • Locus of control; instead of telling them to “feel relaxation,” tell them to “create relaxation.”
  • Clarity and Confusion (are your suggestions clear?)
  • Landmines
  • Broken modality - do they trust you, do they respect you, do they doubt they can be hypnotized

Abreactions

While abreactions in older clinical hypnosis means “releasing a previously repressed emotion through reliving an experience,” it’s also a common term for body movements that betray some sort of emotional pushback during a session.

Tension Release

These are minor physical tics. These are normal but unexplained and nothing to worry about. (Although, if you’re getting close to something emotional, check-in.)

Classic Abreactions

Sudden strong body movements resembling a spasm or convolution can indicate an abreaction. It could be anything - even “I have to pee.” This can even be from a “yeah, right” response. Telling them something outside of their abilities can cause abreaction or convulsion, like remaining calm during public speaking. You can also accidentally hit a core belief on a word like ‘slut.’ In my case, feeling the ‘tension of the hour, the day, the days release’ autocompleting to the weeks, months, and years.

Try…

“If you would like to avoid X right now, squeeze my finger.” If things are fucking up, bring them to a safe place slowly, reassuringly. Minor ones can be avoided, and do not mean you need to stop a session, but major trauma responses might mean you need to pause for the night.

Repetitive motion

Something like arm flailing. This can stem from physical or emotional discomfort. If it doesn’t stop after a brief bit of time, bring them up and discuss.

Dead Air 💀

If there’s anything self-destructive in your partner, dead air can let this fester, and is remarkably common. Give your partners a focal exercise.

Misunderstandings

Sometimes, it feels like people may be deliberately misunderstanding our suggestions, but that’s a rare problem. Even those mildly on the autism spectrum can take things hyper-literally. There’s also a critical failure of trust, which is possible. In my personal experiences, there was a hypnotist my gut would just not let me trust (which ended up saving my ass,) as well as other suggestions a different hypnotist gave me about “being in this together.” The critical mind will remain vigilant.

Check:

  • Is it frequent? Sometimes shit happens.
  • Are you communicating clearly?
  • Would it be normal to get pushback on this suggestion? Troubleshoot outside of state.
  • Is it hyperliteralism?
  • Begin a discussion about conscious or unconscious impairment of trust or authority, and work it out in the waking world. Just acknowledging this can be helpful.

Bratting or Self-Guiding

I disagree with the term of bratting, but here are some examples to look out for.

  • Make unwanted inferences
  • While in state, beginning sexual activity that was not negotiated on the grounds that they “can’t stop themselves,” etc.
  • Retain suggestions that were intended to be short-term as long-term suggestions, despite limiting language, especially sexual suggestions or suggestions about the hypnotist
  • Make leaps of logic
  • Guide the scene play toward landmines
  • Express many issues with coming out of hypnosis
    • Unable to come up Feeling lingering or morbid issues with suggestions that seem at odds with the actual content
    • Experience other time-intensive “problems” after hypnosis
  • Apparently dismissing any suggestions designed to ameliorate ill effects
  • Insists on follow-up sessions to “fix” problems that lie outside the framework of the actual suggestions in the initial session If they’re a shitty partner, stop playing with them.

Warnings and cautions with public play

They mention ‘splash damage’ as a ‘ricochet’ or ‘sympathetic’ trance.

Presuming they do not need McDonald’s to come free them from the compulsion to buy hamburgers after every television commercial, they should not particularly need to be “freed” from a suggestion which they caught peripherally not directed at them.

It’s perfectly within your rights to push people away from this. Or explain conversation that these suggestions are not for them.

Therapy v. Therapeutic

“BDSM isn’t therapy… but it can be therapeutic.

Should you require a doctor to prescribe a cup of tea or a warm bath? Here’s a good litmus test if you can help out:

  • Does your partner want it?
  • Is it in your skillset?
  • If it’s mental, is it something you’d be willing to help them out within a non-hypnotic setting?

Issues associated with mental disorders

Multiple personalities

There’s a lot of panic over hypnotists that have ‘caused’ DID. The book suggests that clinically, this is marked by distinct personality states and recurrent episodes of amnesia, to the point of causing significant distress in social or occupational settings. The TLDR of this section is don’t freak out if your partner has alters. They can always check out a “Kink Aware Professional” through the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom’s KAP project. They understand their own safety better than you do since you’re not a therapist, so… chill. (And as a personal note, don’t… make new ones without consent. Jesus fucking christ.)

Dissociation or schizophrenia

Very unlikely this will happen…

“It would be highly unusual for a person to develop chronic schizophrenia from one incident. After a stage performance, a person may worry that the hypnosis has altered them, and this may affect their grasp on reality, but hypnosis does not create psychotic vulnerabilities and I do not believe that the effect of hypnosis is strong enough to expose those kind of vulnerabilities.”

Michael Heap, clinical psychologist, president of British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis
You’re probably fine, but a partner who thinks hypnosis might cause them to develop a mental illness is a cause for concern. There’s evidence that if they think hypnosis will cause them to experience a disorder, they -will- start to experience that disorder. Make sure they know it won’t cause them to go nuts, and make sure they have self-directed and healthy activities to keep their shit together.

Spirit possession v. hearing voices

Hearing voices is not an indication that someone suffers from schizophrenia. Make sure you’re comfortable with your partner, and if it’s involved, understand their religious practices.

Playing with those with a diagnosis

While you do have the right to play with only those you are comfortable with, it is ableist to remove susceptible people from opportunities where they ‘might’ be harmed. If someone has a disorder or predisposition, do the following:

  • Ensure awareness - there’s no firm understanding of how this may interact with their disorder or predisposition
  • Talk with and consider previous situations and issues that may have caused problems
  • Remind them you’re not a therapist and can’t offer a sound medical/psychological/psychiatric opinion for their suitability for hypnosis
  • Ensure you have their informed consent for hobbyist hypnosis
  • Make sure you are comfortable with them

Fuck something bad happened

It’s unlikely you are the cause. Treating these issues as ‘hypnotically induced’ will mask the larger problem, as it’s nearly impossible for you to be the cause. Find a KAP.

Bleed over of active suggestions

Bleed-over is rare, but ‘flashbacks’ to hypnosis do happen. One technique is to give explicit suggestions that these things are imaginary, and after ‘our game,’ you will have no feelings after these events. If this doesn’t work, suggest these things or events are being seen through a window, television, or movie screen.

Hysterical conversion

Where psychological stress is converted into physical symptoms, selective amnesia, shallow volatile emotions, and overdramatic or attention-seeking behavior.

We pointed out before that Milton Erickson’s sidewalk was not littered with the corpses of his subjects who, hypnotized without their knowledge, were never released, and therefore blundered somnambulistically under the nearest bus.

Everyone can be hypnotized, but… some people probably shouldn’t. Avoid, if you can, those who will use their unconscious ‘defense mechanisms’ to cause themselves problems or get attention.

Working with hysterical subjects?

First off, these are not conscious issues. Uh - but frankly, because you’re a recreational hypnotist, don’t deal with these people until they get their shit together. You’re not obligated, and they should probably get a therapist before they’re ready to go. If it’s someone you know, are they prone to creating drama and disaster? It’s a good call to avoid them for hypnosis.

If you suspect someone may be in this category, you can ask some framing questions in negotiation which allow you to proceed with due caution. “Do you ever feel that bad things tend to happen to you more than other people?”  You can slip this one into the suggestibility test questions and note the results separately. Ask the question last, and allow them to expand on it unlike the others, watching carefully for answers that self-contradict, e.g. “Oh of course not, but bad things do seem to happen to me a lot…”

Another is “Do you have any specific fears or concerns about undergoing hypnosis.”  If this results in a litany of how every previous attempt has resulted in disaster, not merely failure, including ten near car-wrecks and inexplicable pains, you may wish to consider avoiding that person as a partner. You can politely make it your fault by saying you’re a hobbyist and that you feel they should work with a more qualified professional first. We want to teach you to master erotic hypnosis, but that doesn’t mean you need to prove it to everyone who comes along.

Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (p. 204). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

If you do play with hysterically-inclined subjects, stick with simple entertainment. Avoid D/s or eroticization as this may cause unconscious struggle. Consider the dual-auto induction.

Use strong dismissal to call out the unconscious’s bullshit, bring them out of state firmly, and tell them they do not have lingering voices. Your strong voice says, “I’m on to your shit.” Usually, these are attention-getting issues. However, you can sate the unconscious mind by giving them attention before the issues arise.

The people will not be harmed by hypnosis; they’ll just cause you pain.

When trauma happens

If you’re in a kink world, count them up and give them aftercare. Counting them up in a gentle voice can give them a natural break point for their emotions to ramp down.

The first thing you need to do is comfort them; figuring out what happened can come later. Offer them physical affection (if it’s welcome) and allow them to have the choice, don’t force it on them. See if they need water - providing something can help a lot, and drinking water can change state.

If they’re in the fetal position, this is not the time to try a state change. If they’re responsive but upset, get up and move to a different spot to ‘break the frame from the trauma. Let them talk, and leave questions open-ended. “Can you tell me what happened” is much better than what happened; keep your questions inviting.

If they seem upset and responsive, but not angry, offer a relaxation exercise, or offer cuddles/sit/relax, or I can do some relaxation with you, or we can go back to where we were before this happened. Offering that last option can be important since it means the relationship is not broken.

Do whatever they need. “Leave me alone, get my friend” are all valid. You can ask if they’ll be all right if you do this, but this is not a good time for you to override what they think is good for them.

Be sexy like Erickson, and utilize their negative self-talk if you’re calming them down. Avoid “you’re not a shitty person” if they say they’re a shitty person. Say something like, “I can see how that would make you feel that way right now, but that’s not the way I see you at all.”

Giving Suggestions

(I’m taking everything at face value in this section. Nothing sounds terrible in here! But I don’t know if I’m sold on the psychological explanations.)

Suggestion types:

  • Knowledge - “Smoking is bad” or “eggplants r hawt.”
  • Behavioral - A change in personal outlook. “I want to quit smoking” or “I become aroused around coconuts.”
  • Active - Imagine/Visualize - Momentary active imagination - “looking at the coconut makes you begin to feel aroused.”
  • Active - Do - “Stand up, kneel, meow like a cat”
    • It is possible for someone to be able to imagine/visualize but not be able to actively do as a suggestion
  • Posthypnotic - “when you wake up, you will be aroused” or “when you wake up, you will not feel any pain.”
  • Posthypnotic (amnesia) - amnesia uses specific neural centers - conditional amnesia can be part of a suggestion

”Laws” of suggestibility

  • Law of focal attention (or repetition.) Repeating this as a battering ram to get through to the unconscious.

    (paraphrased) We are more likely to create an obsession through emotionally powerful communication, suggestibility and personality than through repetition

    • Allegedly, mantra-like repetition has little value outside of induction and deepening. They suggest a mantra used by the subject may be slightly less useful.
    • Repeat the idea before hypnosis, during hypnosis, and after hypnosis. Why not.
  • Law of emotion - they suggest you can ‘get beyond the rider and speak directly to the elephant (unconscious,) but you must speak the elephant’s language - emotion 💩
  • Law of reversed effect/effort - this has allegedly been muddied by the concept of reverse psychology
    • Dominant Suggestion - The more powerful suggestion will usually be embraced.
      • This can fail if the ‘weaker’ idea has a stronger appeal. Like - if someone really wants to smoke a cigarette, you’re not going to get around it with this one.
    • Perversity - “Don’t think of the pink elephant.” This can be a drive, but there can also be some psychological elements like guilt, attention-getting, desire for excitement, or desire to induce crisis for emotional release. You’ll need to figure out what’s up.
    • Reactance - “Fuck you, I do what I want. doesn’t clean the room.”
      • “You shouldn’t eat your vegetables, you’re not old enough…”
      • Do not look at this as ‘reverse psychology.’ Look at this as reframing.
      • “Keep out” is ineffective; “Keep out - raw sewage” is more effective.
      • This is usually not handy unless there’s bratting
    • Law of self-fulfillment
      • Don’t micro-manage - the unconscious mind will come up with its own solutions.
      • Don’t frontload your suggestions with a lot of details. Don’t start with a goal. Break it up into chunks. The unconscious is “bad at planning.”
      • Break suggestions up, but don’t detail how they should be realized
    • Dissonance - “You’d like to pet a tarantula” is dissonant. “You are a horse (in hypnosis)” is fine.

How to craft a scene

OK - thankfully, this isn’t all about writing bad smut.

Some tips on speaking prose:

  • You don’t need to go too crazy with this, as the unconscious uses symbols. However, you should make it emotionally engaging.
  • Word things clearly
  • Avoid humor (or strongly consider why you’re using it) - it takes a lot of cognitive processing power and may break state
  • Avoid being overly mechanical. “I put your penis inside your vagina.”
  • It’s about emotions. Do not add on critical thinking. You will not get any points for being ‘technically’ correct. Tap into what they say inside of their heads and speak smut language.
  • Fuck grammar, use run-on sentences
  • Use adjectives to add color and vividness
  • Relate concepts to their experiences. (But avoid landmines or specific events…)
  • To give experience, write a bit of story, with steps. However, in lewd times, focus on feel…
  • Repeat yourself a-plenty
  • Ask your partner for the keys 🙂

Building Visualizations

Remember that your subject will start filling in details as well, but you should VAKog your descriptions. You are more concerned with setting the tone of the scene than detailing everything. Use it to set the emotional context.

The primary facets of the pirate ship in our partner’s mind aren’t a capstan or rigging. They are the noises and scents that go with such a vessel: creaking boards and rigging, the slap of waves, the scent of salt air, perhaps crew singing a sea chanty as they work. You can enlist the sense of taste, even if there is no food in the scene you are describing. For example, salt air has a flavor as well as a scent. Scent and taste are interlinked, and trying to invoke both of them is generally a good idea.

**Use temperature or humidity descriptions as they’ll affect the real body. **

Activity

You’ll want to describe what’s happening - including the struggle making them sweaty, or fingers arousing them. focus on simplicity during the activity.

Search for points of commonality

In your suggestions, ensure you have a reference point that both you and your subject can go back to.

“I want you to recall the sensation of being cut by paper…now when I press my finger against your skin, that is a shiny, very sharp scalpel and you are going to feel that sensation following the tip of my finger, that slight burning sensation, followed by a deeper pain.”

Stitching

OK - here’s a cool idea - take a pile of experience ingredients to make a new one. So… for instance…

Flying

  • See if they know how to swim or something where they can move in three dimensions
  • Then, attach the feeling of moving swiftly… a fan nearby blowing air through their hair, or sticking their head out of a vehicle

You could stack multiple of these on, but hook it up with the suggestion of flying.

Suggestion Brain Farts

Be sure you tailor your suggestions to your subject. Some may just get “you’re aroused,” and others you might want to lead with something that’ll lead to arousal. They’re back on the direct and indirect suggestibles, but it’s good to make sure that they’re experiencing the phenomena you’d like them to experience.

Play Ideas

Attach existing sensations and bind them to a finger/appendage. A wand, a papercut, a match…

You can attach an erotic or arousing sensation to another body part - e.g., feeling aroused or stroking along their length as you stroke their throat.

Attach orgasms or arousal to your staircase deepener.

Horny door prize

I’ve done something similar to this with a deck of cards with wants on them before. Their setup for doing this is…

  1. Set up a safe place in their mind. Explain doors and options.
  2. Explain something sexy is going on behind all these doors. They may be extreme, or something or someone they know.
    1. Ask them to think about what could be behind the doors.
    2. If they have taste and they’re a monster fucker, say there may be monsters…
  3. Pick a door to look into.
    1. Have them look into it through a video monitor or a peephole. You need to bait and prep the unconscious to cook something hot up for them.
  4. For a sly squeeze, tell them they must tell you all the details. It’s no reflection on them, just what’s in the room, and they have no control over it.
    1. If they don’t see anything, tell them it might take a bit for it to transpire.
    2. Ask for at least a finger squeeze for confirmation.
  5. Bring them back up, or have them describe the tasty details.

This is one of my favorite things I’ve read so far.

Some hardcore players don’t like check-ins, but it is your right as the top to insist on them.

Gordon, James; Doll, Rebecca. Mastering Erotic Hypnosis: A Comprehensive Manual for Erotic Play, Fetish, and Kink (Comprehensive Mastery Book 1) (p. 247). Comprehensive Mastery. Kindle Edition.

Bondage and Restriction

In an fMRI test from Yann Cojan, they studied the difference between people in hypnotic catalepsy vs people just pretending to be paralyzed. The people pretending to be paralyzed activated a part of their brain for motor inhibition, those in hypnosis did not. TLDR - hypnotic paralysis is very real.

Keeping this in mind, it is quite possible to cut circulation with unsafe bondage suggestions, which can cover up nerve damage. Your partner can also fall; they’re not pretending to be stuck; they are stuck.

Partners under hypnosis may be able to carry out acts they could not or would not in a waking state, and that can be a bad thing. Stress can trigger asthma attacks, fibromyalgia flare-ups, and problems with existing injuries.

Orgasm Control / Squirting

Stiffening stinky winkys
  • Your partner may be shy or even traumatized about being made erect in front of people
  • Don’t get upset if they don’t immediately snap to attention
  • Calling attention to their lack of an erection is a good way to ruin everything
  • Sometimes, you can do this just by suggestion alone, but a light touch and asking them to focus on something that’d cause an erection is a good place to start
  • Say lewd things, get lewd erections, use that sexy brain organ of theirs and yours
  • Training someone with a penis to orgasm without stimulus may take multiple tries and prove difficult unless they are highly suggestible.
  • The age of your partner will affect their refractory period
  • You might be able to override ED or a refractory period with hypnosis, but… don’t bet on it

OK - as a mostly ace gay dude, is this information interesting…

Working with roast beef sandwiches
  • Lubrication may or may not indicate arousal, and the absence of lubrication is not an indication of a lack of arousal
  • You probably need to stimulate the clit to get someone to orgasm
    • Talk with your partner, but stimulating it over the ‘hood’ is a nice way to not overstimulate.
    • The clit is a structure that extends around the vaginal canal on either side that contacts at the top
      • I guess that’s the usual location of the G spot?
  • Lubrication is associated with Bartholin’s gland - located on either side of the vaginal opening
  • Squirt is the first clear, thin fluid.
    • It’s not pee, but it does come out of the bladder.
  • Female ejaculation - thicker and milkier.
    • Allegedly, science doesn’t know where this comes from? Supposedly, Skene’s glands?
  • Massage the G spot until a high level of arousal is reached, then pull one or two fingers away from the G-spot rapidly and out of the vagina
  • If you need to squirt but it feels like you need to pee, just relax and let the squirt happen
  • It’s rare but possible your partner has never orgasmed before
Buttholes

Both penis and vagina drivers can both (usually) orgasm from prostate stimulation and milking.

  • Many people can experience orgasm through anal penetration
  • Gender doesn’t seem to be a big deal
  • Penetration can be painful, dumbass
  • Thrusting may be profoundly uncomfortable

Exploring your Partner’s Orgasms

You’ll want to know why they orgasm, beyond if it feels good, and how strong their drive for it is. Is it biological for anxiety relief, or something they do with very close partners? Dig into their deeper drive.

Explore when they orgasm - is it related to a situation or stimulation? What will you need to do to stimulate them? How do they treat their genitals? Do they use toys? What’s going on in their head when they orgasm?

The On-Command Journey

Understand that the difficulties you’ll encounter are proportional to the ease at which they orgasm normally. If they’re tuned in to one situation, it’ll be difficult, but if they orgasm with many partners under many different situations, you’re good to go.

You’ll need to encourage them to touch themselves if you’re unable to touch them or if they’re not able to use toys. As a last-ditch effort, you’ll have to ask them to think about touching themselves.

The first thing you’ll want to do is anchor the orgasm…

At first, you do this and nothing else. Just make sure you pair your trigger with their orgasm. You can also capture the feeling leading up to or immediately after orgasm. “I want you to remember this feeling, how you feel right now. When I suggest you will be able to recall this level of arousal/how it felt to orgasm, and you will be inclined to recall it, and thinking about it will return to this level of arousal.”

This is just classical conditioning - but hypnosis makes it more effective.

First, tinker with the new stimulus and link it with both the feeling of the orgasm and the excitement you’re trying to build. Build up the suggestion with the trigger and remind them about feeling the orgasm. You don’t have to use the trigger right away; set up a few practice runs and just do it for the association while you manually help them orgasm. Then, gradually switch to the trigger only. If they don’t pop, help them along again.

When you’re successful, spread your trigger out, giving them a little warning before using the trigger. Gradually move to less and less edging, to the trigger directly. Use their language, the way they speak about orgasms and sex, not your own.

The Structure…
  • Get them aroused
  • Get them to the edge
  • Precipitate orgasm/use your trigger
  • Repeat
  • Each time, use less actual stimulus to arouse them and focus more on the idea of orgasm from your command alone
  • Be patient

Teaching them to edge

  • You’ll have to know what your partner looks like when they’re close.
  • Use a relax trigger when they’re close.
    • “You will edge… you may come close to orgasm… but you won’t come until I say you can… you’re free to try… you can get close… but you won’t get there without my permission.”
  • Suggest that they can cool down near orgasm…
  • Suggest they cannot orgasm
    • Test it 😈 by touching
    • If they start to slip, give them permission
    • If they’re not slipping, keep going at it

Orgasm Modification

You can always move an erogenous zone, but moving that to the point of orgasm may be difficult. Or, if there’s something they’re not used to (like anal), you can help them by providing additional imagery.

If you already have an orgasm trigger set up, you can improve it by borrowing some of their positive associations or kinks and describing the imagery, suggesting that their orgasm will be “stronger and more intense.”

You can “extend” an orgasm just by telling them it’ll be a longer orgasm, but it may be an illusion.

You can ruin an orgasm by stopping stimulus, suggesting cold ice, or anything else that would stop the orgasm. Or, train a “stop” trigger by doing a back and forth on stimulation.

Addressing anorgasmia

Start off by checking the basics and ensuring they’re stimulating themselves correctly. Take their history with orgasms and take notes. “See where it goes,” and don’t bring it up initially. Try to recreate a previous orgasm or try to build a perfect experience. Try to build a full combo to help them orgasm.

Sadomasochism

In this area, it’s imperative that you understand your subject in order to satisfy them. This is not as simple as “I enjoy being shocked” since you’ll need to figure out what physical (or physiological) part they enjoy.

Sadistic Motivations and Needs

If you’re going to be a sadist or do things that are sadistic, it’s imperative to know yourself and your weaknesses. A willingness to hurt comes from a desire to display the willingness to use force.

Sadism through Visualization

The more detailed the description the better. Having a clear point of focus for the delivery of the pain payload will help. If you use physical touch, avoid dissonance - it’ll reduce your effectiveness. As a downside, this sort of pain easily goes into extinction - it becomes ineffective after about four to five uses, or after 30 minutes. The body doesn’t want to feel pain.

As a tip, use other common painful events to intensify the pain. (Scalding, burning, papercuts, a cut with a knife, stubbing your toe, your funny bone.)

Sadism through Direct Interaction

Instead of creating the imagery, just cause the pain or stimulus itself, then bind it to something. They suggest having some overload on top will help the suggestions go through.

Power Exchange

Techniques for Hypnotic Dominance

  • Contrast Pairs
    • “I am a Goddess; you are a pig.”
    • Requires buy-in (obviously.)
  • Creating Subordination (Automatic agreement and submission, under a manager)
    • Autosuggestion
    • Direct suggestion
    • Visualizations
      • Describing the partner in submissive positions
    • Reframing
      • Dominance and submission as identifying leadership and submission as the gift of support, rather than winning and losing
    • Mantras
  • Battle of the wills
    • You feel control slipping away from you…
    • You feel yourself coming under my spell…
    • You may feel as if you are paralyzed in front of my gaze, staring into my eyes as prey hypnotized by a cobra
  • Body Veneration
    • “My pussy is the best”
  • Anchoring
    • Using eye fixation, a collar, or other props

Size and Body Perception

General technique:

  • Ask them how they see the change, gather keywords
  • Describe the change to themselves as if they were in front of a mirror
  • Find some art and ask them what they notice most about it
  • Set up some sort of scene for them to transform, an excuse
    • Possibly even some backstory (“As part of your excursion into toaster-topia, you’ll be required to wear a toaster-suit for three days.“)
  • For ‘intellectuals,’ sell the effects, not the transformation
    • Describe the feelings, suggest it’s as if they were playing a characters
  • Be sure to check for flavor (painful? loud? messy? grotesque? scientific? magical?)

Tips

  • You can suggest how others would see them, given their transformation
    • (feeling a gaze perhaps, or how they’d want them)
  • The sensation of the clothing or costume
    • Soft, starchy, harsh, ill-fitting, frilly, restrictive
  • Accessories
  • Describe using existing knowledge (if they’ve handled snakes, remembering snakeskin)
  • Pick a representative emotional state and hammer it in with some description
    • “You can feel yourself sitting on your glittering pile of gold. It might seem cold to some, but to you, it feels like sitting on a mountain of warmth, your own heating pad, your gold is almost a living breathing thing, and you are filled with the satisfaction of owning it.”

Eroticization

There’s not a whole lot here, minus a few tidbits, but here we go!

  • Emotional excitement will help eroticize something. (Say, for instance, a crowded dance club.)
  • The dominant response will… well, be dominant in conditioning.
    • If the fear is stronger than the erotic component of watching a horror flick with your squeeze, your lust is going to fuel the fear, backfiring.
    • If there’s a negative emotion, it’s going to be next to impossible to eroticize it.
  • This is mostly just classical conditioning.
  • In hypnosis, you can suggest…
    • Adding erotic context, that things are better or more appealing
    • Highlighting components that are already appealing
  • Go slowly working against disgust - present very small amounts
  • If you’re numbing pain since it’s a problem - don’t make it a worse problem and end up in the hospital
  • If you’re De-eroticizing actively, try replacing the response rather than negative hallucination. You’re going to have a difficult time

Other Mind Games

Fear Play

  • Dig out an existing fear
  • If you’re concerned about it being too strong, put the scene behind glass or on a screen
  • If they’re into fear for fear’s sake, you don’t need to worry about taking it as easy
    • They’ve likely eroticized fear on a deeper level
  • Use hypnosis (after negotiating) to get them to spit out their interests
    • Either use halls and doorways
    • (I personally like using a deck of cards)
    • Do an interrogation scene

Memory Play

[!info] Science People who forget things under hypnosis are not “pretending” to forget them. A  summary of findings from neuroimaging studies of hypnosis from the early 2000s[40] showed that hypnosis altered elements of the attentional network, which carries out the function of “alerting, orienting, and executive control, and in the case of suggestions to “forget” this showed reduced activation in areas of the brain responsible for recall. [81] One interesting finding was that subjects who were instructed to forget a movie did not forget the context in which it was shown, suggesting that hypnotic blocks on memory can be extremely specific. One theory is that hypnosis (and other forms of amnesia) may affect a stage before recall where the brain decides to call a memory, and monitor and prevent its retrieval. We think this is very consistent with how memory blocks behave in regards to hypnosis.

The cue to remember should be immediately after the cue to forget - you do need to be precise, but you do not need to repeat the language. If it’s been a while since you created the cue to forget or had them forget, you’ll want to spell out what they were instructed to forget so they can remember it later.

Be direct and specific.

“You will forget I have given you a white envelope to place under your chair. When I tell you to remember the envelope you will remember where it is and be able to retrieve it for us.”

The author suggests that, given neuroimaging studies, the hypnotic suggestion to forget works primarily on memory retrieval, blocking the retrieval attempt. Given that, the most effective way to forget may be to replace the memory, along with suggestions that directly reference the recall itself. “When you try to recall, you think of x” may be a good approach.

Roleplay

I didn’t find much useful in this chapter that didn’t just go back to “What do you want to experience, VAKog and emotionally?” Solid communication can solve this.

FWIW, if you’re a third party reading this, go check out Mark Wiseman’s hypnotic roleplay ideas in Mind Play—they work great.

In the gender roleplay section, they suggested a few things to enable someone, but I think some would be handy in other scenes. (EG - if you’re trapped in a lab tank, is it OK for you to scream out in fear, or would the cops get called and there’s some drug preventing you from doing so?)

  • The power to behave aggressively
  • Permission to show compassion, nurturing, or tenderness
  • The power to take the lead in sexual relations
  • The power to compel the sexual interests of others

Appendix A - Negotiation Checklist

Partner Questions:

  • What is your level of experience with hypnosis?
  • What is your level of experience with (other kink elements)?
  • What do you want to get out of this scene?
  • What emotions or feelings do you want?
  • What physical sensations would you like?
  • Whitelist - what do you DEFINITELY want.
  • Known triggers to avoid?
  • Limits - what should definitely not happen?
  • Off-limit body parts/areas?
  • Injuries/issues?
  • Health concerns and allergies?
  • Have you ever had problems with hypnotic suggestions carrying into waking life?
  • Safewords
  • Safe Signs
  • What do abreactions look like for you (if known?)
  • What should we do if there’s a significant abreaction?
  • What sort of aftercare should we do?
  • Safety/Emergency Contact

During Hypnosis:

  • Description of sexual acts
  • Erotic Stimulation
  • Suggestions/whitelist - what would you like?
  • Requested triggers/control/suggestions about yourself?
  • Permission for
    • Eroticization
    • Orgasm triggers
    • Arousal triggers
    • Public arousal triggers
  • Roleplay scenes
  • Taboo areas open to investigation
  • Information regarding experiences, taste, touch sensations
  • Anything else?