Lesson 1: Flow, focus and intuition
Welcome to your first lesson, hypnonauts!
Prerequisite
You can just read these blog posts if you want, but the vast majority of classes are going to be pretty exercise heavy, so it would help a lot to be able to do hypnosis exercises. We are assuming that you are taking these classes as a pair (or more) of people that are all enthusiastic about learning hypnosis. We strongly believe that there is as much skill and experience involved in hypnotizing and being hypnotized, and our classes are accordingly written for hypnotists, hypnotees, and switches. We insist that you only do the exercises that you want to, and only assume the role or roles that you want to. Please never use our classes to push yourself or your partner into something that you folks are less than enthusiastic about.
Goals
In this first class, we will show you some exercises to experiment with flow, intense focus on each other, and using your intuition to communicate with your partner. All of these are basic components of hypnosis, in our opinion, and you might start to feel a light trance state during some exercises (or you might not, and that’s completely normal too). We will also quickly introduce the consent notions you need to do these exercises safely.
Content Note
We will talk about and experiment with hypnosis, and flow, through means involving touch and gaze.
A Note on Consent
We will go much deeper into consent theory in a later classes. For now, we recommend using an opt-in model of consent, unless you have negotiated some blanket consent. If you’re not familiar with blanket consent, we will talk about it more in the future, but for now, you should go for opt-in. Opt-in means that you talk about everything you want to do in details with your partner before doing it, and only do it if they are explicitly enthusiastic about it, without any pressure. With hypnosis exercises, the tee might feel a bit over-relaxed for a while after several exercises—or even just one. As a result, you should talk about everything you want to do in that session before starting the session. We will tell you what kind of consent you should negotiate in advance for each lesson, but we also recommend reading through the lesson together first, and seeing what everyone wants to do.
You can always adapt exercises or just nope out of them entirely. Everything we suggest is optional! The most important here is that you never push yourself or each other into doing something you don’t 100% want to do.
We will discuss the specific added difficulties of doing hypnosis online, in later classes. For now, we assume that participants share a physical space for the exercises.
Consent
While we don’t expect you to go in a deep trance, the exercises we will practice are hypnosis-adjacent, and could potentially put you in a light trance, and you should get consent for that.
For this class, you should discuss consent for the following:
Hypnosis
Touch (be specific about what kind of touch is ok, and where)
Intense eye contact
Emotion play (be specific and choose emotions you want to play with. They can be complex feelings too, such as dominance or love)
You should also discuss what you are going to do as a cool down after the class. Some exercises can be emotionally intense, and you will maybe want to spend time together after them. Anything that helps you both process and return to a more usual state of mind is called aftercare, and you should discuss it before starting, to make sure both your needs are compatible and will be met. If you have no idea, a good place to start is to see if either of you might want cuddles, water, a blanket or a snack. It’s also always good practice to ask each other what you’re going through after a scene. You should check with each other that your aftercare needs are met before moving on. Our lessons are probably going to take about two hours each to go through.
Flow
You might have heard of flow before—people talk about it as a state of pleasurable intense focus. We use that term relatively loosely to refer to a light to intense focus that can be experienced by both tees and tists. In our vision of the world, flow is adjacent to trance but lighter than a deep hypnotic trance. We see the intense focus of the tist on the tee as a flow state or a light trance. In the following exercises, we are going to experiment with creating a state of flow.
We call rapport, an ensemble of results from interpersonal intimacy. Trust is part of them, as is an intuitive understanding of the mental state of your partner, as well as a capacity to communicate non-verbally. We will experiment with non-verbal communication, specifically, in this lesson. Rapport makes hypnosis easier. We also believe that intuition and non-verbal communication are at the center of creative, emotional hypnosis play.
Flow and rapport exercises
In this section we will experiment with tuning into each other, flow, and focus on your partner. You might or might not get some trancey feelings during those exercises.
Mirroring
The goal of this exercise is to get you both to focus on each other, as well as getting famiilar with leading with non-verbal cues or following them in a scene. If you want to, you will do the following:
Sit or stand facing each other. You will need to be able to see each other clearly and to each have one or, ideally, two hands free.
Position your hands so that you’re in a mirror position to each other
The leader moves their hand, the follower follows to continue simulating a mirror
You can reverse leader and follower, if you want to
Ask each other how that felt and listen to answers
It might feel relaxing or focusing in a way that is similar to a light trance or it might not. Either way, the idea here is to get a taste of what it feels to be focused on your partner, for the follower, and to lead your partner non-verbally for the leader.
The leader and the tist do not need to always be the same person. Sometimes, the tist might want to concentrate on their partner, see where they are going and take advantage of that, either to follow it, or to go against it. We will talk about this more in the next lesson’s exercises.
A note on silliness
Some of these exercises can feel super silly and awkward. That’s normal, in our experience. You don’t have to be serious to do hypnosis! It can be your vibe and it can be your kink and we respect that, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve all had a really funny scene from time to time, and we’re still bad, dangerous to know, hypnokinksters! (just kidding). If you or your partner starts giggling, don’t worry about it. Some of those exercises are pretty funny in our opinion too.
Pocket watch
Here, the goal is to show you how unconscious responses can happen and what they can look like. This is a one-person exercise, and we recommend you both do it, but you, of course, don’t have to.
You don’t really need a pocket watch for this, but as hypnokinksters, you might have one. (Don’t worry if you don’t, they’re super optional! Some people in the scene like their gadgets, which will be for a later class, but you never need them). But you will need some sort of a pendulum. Anything a little heavy attached to a chain or string of some kind will work. Actual pendulum, pocket watch, crystal on a string, a hardware nut on a string, anything of the kind.
Hold the string in your hand with the weight hanging below, you want to give it some length, because that will reflect your micro movements better.
Think about the weight going left to right a little. Don’t do it consciously, just focus on the idea of that pattern. It will probably happen “on its own”, if you think about it hard enough and for long enough
Same with the weight going in circles.
Hopefully, at this point, you have convinced yourself that unconscious micro movements can happen. They are called ideomotor responses, if you want to Google what’s going on. They can be used for the tee to communicate in trance, and acting on hypnotic suggestions can feel similar for some people. People sometimes use this pendulum method for divination, or talking with their unconscious. (Exactly what the unconscious is, and whether to see it as a separate part are very disputed, but we find the metaphor useful).
Guessing emotions
The goal here is to continue to learn to focus on each other, and to use your intuition for leading or for following. The leader will demonstrate an emotion from a list of agreed upon ones with the least amount of outward/physical shift as possible, trying to focus on using internal mechanisms and intent instead to pass this emotion to their partner. The receiver will try to guess the emotion.
Position yourselves in a way that you can see each other’s face clearly
The leader thinks about one from an agreed in advance set of emotions or feelings (dominance, happiness, or love could be a place to start), and tries to demonstrate it to the receiver while moving their face as little as possible. The idea here, is to use unconscious micro-movements that the receiver can pick up on.
The receiver focuses on the leader’s face and tries to feel or guess the emotion.
You can talk about which emotion it was and then do another
Switch if you want to
Talk about how it felt for each of you. Was the receiver able to pick up on anything? For us, it was sometimes more general categories, for example, aggression and dominance felt about the same. You’re doing great if you got anything! And if you don’t yet, it might happen later with more experience and rapport. Also remember that this might be extra difficult for some people, but they will be better at other exercises.
Debrief
Did either of you experience a cognitive shift or a change in perception during those exercises? (Tell us in the comments or @ us on Twitter!) It could be a sign of light trance, and it’s not unusual, in our experience, for the leader to feel that too. We believe hypnosis and flow can be very similar sometimes. But don’t worry if you didn’t feel anything. The goal here is more to get you in touch with the intuitive side of hypnosis, and more comfortable with intense focus on each other.
Homework
Start a hypnosis journal, writing down about your experiences. This can be especially helpful for tees to see how hypnosis feels like for them over time.
How did that feel, hypnonauts? We’re craving your feedback!