When minds attack

So hypnosis doesn't always go as planned, and the real interesting learning happens when people just react in their own odd individual way.

Recently I've had several trances where I found myself in unfamiliar waters. The two trances that are freshest in my mind were with friends that I'll name Coconut and Celeste. In both trances I ran into situations that I didn't quite know how to react to, and both I think I learned something very interesting about the way people's minds work.

With Celeste, she had agreed to trance to satisfy her curiosity, (which I was glad to help with) and I used a confusion induction which I learned from Lady R's "Chelletrance" script. it's a very straightforward and effective method that involves having the subject try and memorize a list of items, which distract the conscious mind while you give them suggestions. The first stages were quite effective, and I continued deepening and relaxing her using vague imagery like "sinking" and "flowing" and measured her depth using the same scale meter used in that script (which I find is very very effective, thank you Lady R) after what seemed to me like a perfectly normal trance, and bringing Celeste out, I asked her to report on how she felt and what she thought of her first experience. The response I got was extremely interesting.

Celeste reported that during the trance she began to imagine herself sinking in the ocean, with very vivid imagery imagining herself first as her 16 year old self with appropriate hair and dress, then as her 8 year old self and so on, going with extremely vivid descriptions of every stage she went through in addition to the feelings of depth themselves. She told me how the scale was as big around as she was tall, and had a chain which she pulled on to bring herself down deeper, and how she sank deeper and deeper into the water changing identities as she sank into different versions of herself.

It wasn't until I went into trance myself that I noticed, that at points I would start to have my own spontaneous imagery pop up, I would drift into almost dream-like imaginings, which I actually don't remember now other than knowing I did them. The whole experience was very surreal but not unfamiliar, and I think it's the same one that Celeste went through. I had several more sessions with Celeste since then, and she's been a very good subject, and I learned that in the absence of specific instructions on what to do, her mind tends to wander around imaginary creations, which can be either good or bad depending on the goal of the trance, but must be acknowledged.

So I hope this was helpful to everyone, (all 2 of you) who read this, and I will write about Coconut on Friday with my next update.

- Sharky