Moments in the Woods
or
How Much Can you Do in One Day?
I woke up excited at the prospect of attending the first full day of MEEHU. For many people, going to conventions is solely about the socializing. While I adore the socializing, I loves me a good panel discussion and I was looking forward to a fair number of panels and classes.
Among the classes was Lee’s Rapport class, which I believe I am contractually obliged not to discuss about because it’s one of those classes with a twist. Suffice it to say that it’s an interesting class with a useful application beyond hypnosis.
I also sat in on SleepingGirl’s and Ms. Mesmer’s “Subjects 101” class. This was an outgrowth of conversations and a session she had had on Hypbook to focus on the needs of subjects. Apparently, in several previous unconferences, subject oriented classes were few and far between. Sleepingirl had taken the lead (somewhat ironically) for a discussion on the needs of subjects, especially with respect to focusing on empowering subjects to set boundaries and learning how and when to say no. This panel built on that, including what challenges are faced by people being introduced to the arena for the first time. There were various types of individuals there, from those who had been dreaming of coming to something like this for all their lives to people who were being introduced to the idea for the first time by their partners. One individual was so nervous he had had troubles leaving his room on Friday night, and attending this panel was the first time he had found the courage to actually participate in the fetish in “real life.”
My heart bled for him. (And more on him later.)
The panel was brilliant, and Mesmer and SG really kept it moving and informative.
I then attended the Dual Induction class, led by Wiseguy and LeeAllure. A dual induction is…. Well, just that. An induction performed by two people on a single person. They went through various methods of induction—one taking the lead and another following; one person speaking in the left ear speaking to the “Left side of the brain” and being more formal, while the other spoke in the “right ear” while being more artistic.
In order to bring forth volunteers, we sat in a circle and the Wiseguy and Lee placed an office chair in the middle. They spun it around and, wherever the chair stopped, that person would sit in the chair and receive an induction.
Whether it was karma or some other grand design, the first two people to be in the “mush pot” were perfect. First was MigMig, who had flown in last minute from Mexico City. Aside from a shared love for the beautiful game, Mig was a fantastic participant and a good conversationalist. He was a joy to have at the event.
The second person in the “mush pot” was that very same fellow who had felt stranded in his room the first night. I was so happy for him that he was able to enjoy a trance at the hands of such great teachers.
There were a few other trances and, amusingly enough, when they began discussing having multiple trancers with a single subject, AmHypnotic (who is a fantastic hypnotist in his own right) waltzed into the room. Timing. AmHypnotic then joined Lee and Wiseguy in “ganging up” on a “poor, unsuspecting” subject. It was awesome to watch.
There were other classes and discussions and it was just a delight to soak up all of the thoughts and the overall energy of the place.
One of the classes that Em, Seb, Fay and I attended was “your first trance” which was set up to have people try to experience their first trance as either a hypnotist or subject.
Fay very nicely asked if I was interested in being her first subject. I said I’d be honored.
She had me focus on the wall behind her, on which was a water sprinkler. She said the following:
“OK DJ. Please focus on the sprinkler behind me.”
I did.
“Look at how shiny the sprinkler is, and how it draws your eyes to it.”
It was very shiny. It was, all of a sudden, very fascinating.
“… think about it calming you down.”
I did think about it. How shiny it was. How the light reflecting off of it was holding my attention.
“Think about how it makes you feel….. “
What? How it makes me feel?
“Safe. How it’s used to make sure people are safe.”
Wait… what?
“Think about its uses.”
And I couldn’t resist: “Yes. Think about it’s a good thing it’s there, because looking at all these people in this room it’s kind of a firetrap. And thank goodness we’re not going be burned alive. Easily, anyway.”
And that kind of killed the mood for a minute.
So instead, she decided to try a simple hand-shake induction. Which involves, as you would expect, shaking hands and then, interrupting that process by pulling and saying, simply but firmly, “sleep.” It’s not one to try on beginners. But by this point, I wasn’t really a beginner.
So she did that and it worked. However, although I was obviously a willing participant, she hadn’t technically asked me permission to do that induction right then and there.
So I said, as I was shaking her hand, “here, this is how you should do it. ‘Fay, may I hypnotize you?’”
She said, “yes.”
And I said “thank you.”
And just as I breathed in to say “sleep” to her, she pulled on my hand and said “Sleep!”
And I was out.
She brought me up, and Seb and Em were still laughing.
“Hoisted on my own petard.” I said. Sigh.
After this, we started talking about “switch fights,” which raises an interesting question, “What is a Switch?”
Tangent- What is a Switch (Particularly in Hypnosis-speak)?
I think the usual way that people on the outside looking in tend to think of a scene in the BDSM world (when they think of it) is probably in the “Fifty Shades of Grey” sense of it. Which is to say, on the one hand you have someone holding the whip, and on the other you have someone getting whipped. In the BDSM general parlance, one person is the “top” and the other is the “bottom.” This is more or less generally accepted terminology, though you will find master/servant (or master/slave), Dominant (or Domme) and submissive, parent/little, or Sir or ma’am and “hey you,” depending on the needs of the people involved. However you slice it, when someone is performing a type of scene usually there is one taking the lead and the other who is following. Like in a dance.
Oftentimes, one person enjoys being in a space where they are only one or the other. However, some people are quite happy doing either. For example, in these journeys, I’ve seen people who have enjoyed being tied up with rope, and being bound helplessly in the air. The next day, I’ll see them tying someone else up.
With hypnosis, it seems, there is a greater fluidity in whether one serves as either hypnotist or subject, at least more than I’ve seen in my (Admittedly relatively limited) observances. Because hypnosis is premised on (generally) more vocal interaction, it’s easier to switch from one side to the other. In fact, several hypnotists will say that they go into trance themselves, while helping someone into a trance state. That’s not something that can really happen while whipping or tying someone up.
There is, in some corners of BDSM, what are called “switch fights,” which is where two people will actually “fight” for dominance over each other. Sometimes the “winner” is preset, but not always. This can be fairly tame, like a wrestling match or pillow fight, or it can be fairly brutal.
In hypnosis, however, you can have a switch fight between any two people who are interested in going into a trance. In a sense, you’re offsetting their desire to go into trance with their competitive nature(s). The winner(?) is whoever resists going into trance.
So Fay and I discussed having a hypno-switch fight between us and what form that would take. Initially we tried the handshake induction against each other. But literally every time we tried it, we both pulled and said “Sleep” at the exact same time. Which was funny from the outside, but not terribly effective; we were more likely to bang our heads against each other than send each other into trance.
Finally, as a group, we thought about the “hypno-egg.” (see the last blog for info about the Hypno-egg).
If I were entranced to think about the hypno egg the same way Fayvie was, then we could hand it back and forth, and whoever went into trance “last” would “win.”
It was a plan. But first, dinner, which was prepared by the fantastic staff and volunteers at MEEHU. Truly, the whole day was wonderfully run, and it was a joy to be with everyone.
Before the hypno-egg toss, however, I had one pre-planned scene to attend to. At NEEHU, the lovely and talented SweetGasp had put together a “Weeping Angel” Scene. In that scene, she had hypnotized several willing subjects to be the Angels. They were told that they would see a designated person as “the Doctor.” If the Doctor saw them they would stand perfectly still. But if they noticed the Doctor “blinking” or looking away, then they could move. Their goal? To touch the Doctor.
I was told it was a fantastic scene, but I was unavoidably detained at dinner and missed it at NEEHU, so I was determined to participate with her this time around.
I didn’t see much of her over the course of the weekend; her room was quite the social and sundry center. She had surrounded herself with a bevy of like-minded people, and occasionally I would pass by her room, hurrying to some other appointment, catching glimpses of some enticing play before having to scurry on.
SweetGasp and I had agreed on one thing, however: we were both to be the Doctor. I was to be number 13, and she was to be number 14. We had also dressed in our own versions of what we thought “our” Doctor would look like. I was in a blue plaid sports jacket, with a bluish V-neck over a white t-shirt. SweetGasp was also in a jacket over spangly baubles and a very fetching skirt. We started in one of the play rooms where she had entranced the five angel volunteers. We began:
Me (Facing away from the angels, back to back with her, who was facing them, as I held the sonic screwdriver out and activated it): Nope, no angels over here.
Her: Uh…..
Me: Do I know that voice?
Her: I remember that voice.
Me: Any angels in your area?
Her: Oh, yes.
Me: (turning around) Oh. (Glancing at her.) And you are?
Her: (pulling out a sonic screwdriver) You.
Me: Oh…. (looking her up and down) Still not ginger.
Her: (Glancing at me) Plaid? I can’t believe I wore that. At least I have taste now.
Me: (Turning to face her) Really??
Her: (Facing me) Yes!
At which point the angels moved, and we turned back to face them.
Me: On the plus side, you do give meaning to the phrase “wibbly-wobbly.”
And so forth. The banter was almost more fun than the scene itself. But the scene was brilliant in its own right. The “Angels” were consumed with us. Every time we looked away they would advance with serious intent on touching us. We worked our way down the hall as the angels advanced on us, through the con suite, until they cornered us and tagged us after about a half hour of running and banter.
It was fun, and I’m profoundly grateful to both SweetGasp and all the Angels. Though next time we need a rule that if our banter makes them break character, they lose and are no longer an angel. We might have won.
After that (and by now it was only about 8:30 pm) I found the delightfully tiny Fayvie, along with Seb and Emiliana, back in the rainbow room. We found someone to entrance me and give me the same command as Fay, namely, that the hypnoegg would entirely hypnotically consume me and that every change in color would send me deeper. (And thanks to Autumn for filling in on short notice!)
So Fay and I brought two chairs to face each other; we were maybe about one foot apart from each other, and began the competition. It was amazing how deeply consumed each of us quickly became in the Egg (and I capitalize that on purpose). The urge to give in to the trance was enormous; the Egg, which was maybe one foot in length, seemed to loom large in my vision. Each change in color made me want to go deeper and deeper. It became more and more difficult to hand the Egg back to Fayvie. And each time she had it, it was an internal struggle whether I wanted it back or not. Literally, it was an internal war over whether my eagerness to go into trance would win out over my own competitiveness. What made it extremely funny was that Fay was in the exact same boat.
After almost ten minutes of handing the Egg back and forth, each time taking longer and longer to hand it to the other person, the Egg finally settled on one person. Fay held onto it, and I “won,” even though I couldn’t take my eyes off of it either.
Once Seb leaned over and turned the Egg off (thus rescuing both of us) I looked around, and easily about 8 people had gathered around to watch.
Shortly thereafter, Lee returned from an evening she had spent out with some friends. I told her about the Egg fight, and, after a little while, Fay and I agreed to a rematch.
You’d have thought that after the first time, given how fractionated we both were, the second time would happen much more quickly. You’d be wrong.
In fact, this one went on about twice as long. Fay and I slowly handed the Egg back and forth between us. Every move became more and more of an effort, but each one of us was spurred on by our own competitive natures. What also contributed was that our respective hypnotists, Lee and Sebastian, began egging [sic] us on (you’re welcome). Pretty soon the crowd had doubled: we had no fewer than 20 people watching us hand this colored egg back and forth.
For some reason, we had decided that the color blue was the most enticing color. The Egg would shuffle through all the colors on about a 45-60 second timer. We would therefore try to time our hand off to right when the color was about to turn blue. This of course meant that we had to hold on to it, staring intently at the shifting colors, trying to remember to let go right before blue, as either (or both) Lee and Seb were telling us how fascinating the colors were, as the crowd stared at us intently slipping away and us the slipping the Egg from one hand to the other.
It was intense.
In the end, after a good 20-30 minutes, and crowd cheering, and each of us laughing (and enjoying being the center of so much attention, let’s be honest)…. Fay finally succumbed again. I’d say it was a good feeling to emerge victorious, but I was pretty much gone as well, as the last few times I had the Egg it felt ridiculously massive in my hands, and it took such concentrated efforts to push it over to Fay.
[As I read Mrs. Pynchon this, she laughed and said, “Erotic hypnosis?? It’s not like I’d poke my head in, see what you two were doing and say ‘Oh, the depravity!’”]
While I rested and recovered (and Seb shared some time with Fay) Emiliana approached Lee. She had decided to actually experience a trance, and asked Lee to put her under. I couldn’t help but sit nearby (in my already out of it space) and listen in. Lee incorporated Emiliana’s background and interests into the trance; it was amazing to listen to, and I, for once, I managed not to “trancejack” someone else’s trance. However, you’ll have to check out her blog for the details. (http://emilianadarling.wordpress.com). And for Fay’s take on some of these events, check out: http://fayvie.tumblr.com.
At some point, we realized it was well past 2 in the morning. One by one we drifted off to bed. I was exhausted, but looking forward to more hijinks that were to come.
NEXT TIME: Hypnotic Amnesia class! Pynchon teaches a class! Who for the price of one! Hashmarks! Emiliana really becomes one of us! Strangest, switch-fight, ever!
djpynchon 