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Subject Skills

Subject Skills: How Hypnotees Can Create Exceptional Hypnotic Experiences

Subject skills are the techniques and tools used by the subject to help uplift a hypnotist to foster trance, or to experience specific hypnotic phenomenon. This class discusses and provides tools and techniques for Engaging with trance, Amplifying experiences and hypnotic effects, and staying Flexible. A great subject isn’t “easy”–they are skilled, and deserve credit for practicing those skills!

What are subject skills?

  • I sometimes say: “When I am flattering myself as a hypnotist, I can claim about 30-40% of the credit for a very good trance experience, and the subject can claim 70-60%.” Having a good hypnotist is part of making an experience amazing, but so is having a great subject!
  • Subject skills are the techniques and tools used by the subject to help uplift a hypnotist to foster trance, or to experience specific hypnotic phenomenon! You can kind of think of these as “soft” and “hard” skills.
    • I’m defining “soft skills” are things done to help uplift the hypnotist’s efforts and foster trance. (In this presentation, we will touch on three big areas–Engagement, Amplification, and Flexibility!)
    • I’m defining “hard skills” as specific hypnotic phenomenon. (Memory play, hands-free orgasm, phantom touch, time dilation, catalypse, proprioception/transformation, and so much more!)
  • The “soft” and “hard” skills overlap! In this presentation, we will also go through some examples of hypnotic phenomenon and how to empower them with the same tools used to effectively enter altered states, though we won’t go super in-depth to any specific hard skill–those can be entire presentations to themselves!

(Note: Subject is my personal preferred word for myself, and what I will be saying in this presentation because of that. I know others include hypnotee and the like, and those are all cool and valid, too!)

But I want to be mind controlled…

  • Many subjects don’t like thinking about how much of a trance is driven by them, because the interest in hypnosis for many is about feeling controlled by someone else in a sexy powerful way.
  • You are not subverting that control by being a good subject. You do not need to drive the direction of the experience (though, subjects totally can!). 
  • If it is helpful to you, these skills are the things that give the hypnotist *more* power by ensuring the things they want to do work better.
  • This is different from “topping from the bottom” or trying to get ahead of or assume what the hypnotist wants. It’s engaging with what is offered. So in that sense, all control is by the hypnotist, they are the one driving and you’re just helping the path they take be smoother!

Three areas of Subject Skills

  • Engagement: Participating in the collaborative effort of a hypnotic experience.
    • Subjects are active in trance, too! Engagement is active listening.
    • Engagement is not “playing along.”
  • Amplification: Intensifying the experience of trance or of different suggestions and hypnotic phenomenon.
    • You can amplify feelings like being “mindless” or “blank,” too!
  • Flexibility: Adaptability to new ideas or imperfect suggestions by a hypnotist.
    • Taking to new ideas and suggestions means even very creative, less grounded suggestions can work great!
    • We wish they could but the hypnotist cannot read your mind! Flexibility can help trance function as if they could.

Engagement – Alternative to…

I am presenting engagement if not in opposition to, alternative to, some other concepts I am less hot on. If these ideas resonate with you, that’s OK! I am just sharing why they don’t fit into the model I am presenting.

  • “Playing along”
    • Implies hypnosis is fake, and sort of a sense of coddling the hypnotist
  • “Suspension of disbelief”
    • Poisons agreeability implying you do not believe what is happening or in the experience
  • “Focus”
    • Very difficult meditation skillset and hard for many people’s neurodivergence
    • Focus is a core skill of hypnosis for hypnotists and subjects, but is a lifetime to master, too; not very useful to just say “focus” and there’s not a lot of shortcuts to mastering meditative focus.

Some other words this relates to include attention and listening. I want to side-step some of those, because they are tricky! Attention is really hard! And so many people in this community are neurodivergent and very focused attention can be a difficult or unappealing.

What’s Engagement?

Participating in the collaborative effort of a hypnotic experience.

Hypnotist gets attention. But, maintaining engagement is fully mutual. This is similar to creative writing, the author has a hook, but you engage with the words–the same story would land very differently if it was curled up in your favorite spot in your home versus half attention

  • In-scene skills for refocusing attention: 
  • Though I just said why I say Engagement, the traditional meditation exercises can still help when practiced with that framing, too! Some skills to practice can include: Meditation exercises, putting aside distractions, mindfulness.
  • Engagement is non-judgmental, it’s OK to lose focus sometimes, that can be part of the experience! It’s *hot* to get to experience “falling under the spell of trance” more than once in a session!
  • Sometimes something may be very dissonant and not land well, and lead to disengagement; we’ll talk more about that later with Flexibility.
  • Time between engagement -> using skill reduces with how engaged you are. Over time, that can get close to feeling instant–very fun sexy mind control things, oooo!.
    • Agreeability, yes set, giving self permission.

Pocket watch spiral demo–you are moving, eyes are open, you are engaging by looking at the watch. This is not focus, this is not faking it, this is engaging with an experience.

Tricks for maintaining and empowering engagement

Empowering Trance with Engagement (Soft Skills):

  • Refocusing tools and visualizations.
  • If you notice a distraction, use it as a deepener. That sound you hear outside? Note to yourself how it sounds further away right now. Or, moving body, can be sluggish.
  • Hypno duel example of how engagement can be powerful.
  • Active listening skills https://wayne.edu/learning-communities/pdf/becoming-active-listener-13.pdf
  • Fight banality with looping back to past thoughts that you really liked a lot and noticed had an effect on you.

Hypnotic Phenomenon (hard skills):

  • Memory play – when I remember something I am supposed to have forgotten, I let it slip away as soon as I do; sort of like a dream.
  • Altered beliefs.
  • Fractionation of Trance – I’m putting fractionation for being brought out and back into trance here, because it uniquely requires engagement while both in and out of trance! This also applies to fractionation between any two states; you engage with each state in rapid succession. Engaging is an active mental effort, which is part of why fractionation can make many people feel a bit tired!

Amplification

  •  Intensifying the experience of trance or of different suggestions and hypnotic phenomenon.
  • Fight ambiguity by flowing, pick and move on. Use the dial and turn it and refocusing tools. If you have a reaction, feed that interest and burn it hotter.
  • Practical skill: body scan and mind/feelings checking.
  • Relates very closely to many hard skills and phenomenon, but also very important for trance as a whole.
  • Practice visualization, something you’re into and walk yourself through itm find the words that evoke it for you, know keywords you like (i really like drifting into a void). If you have a clumsy hand hypnotist but you already know your landmarks of what to experience, can use your rehearsed methods to feel X or Y.

Tricks for Empowering Amplification

Amplifying Trance Itself (Soft Skills)

  • Body scan, sensory thoughts, exploring deeply. DBT.

Amplifying Hypnotic Phenomenon (hard skills):

  • Phantom touch and sensation – Start small. Focus on the little things, body scan, let it grow.
  • Catalepsy – Notice how you are not moving, and the way that smaller sensation of immobility can lead to a more intense sensation of being unable to move.

Flexibility

Adaptability to new ideas or imperfect suggestions by a hypnotist.

  • Helping things resonate with you, and being receptive to new or different ideas.
    • This is how you can help fend off dissonance as well!
  • Lingering on a suggestion that’s good but didn’t land quite-right is very destructive, so you (re)interpret it, and continue to listen to what comes next… Someone describing being tied up in a damp, wet dungeon, I like cold not wet, humidity is weird, maybe it’s just cold? Span of a moment.
  • Sometimes this is fixing-up mistakes made by a hypnotist. Poor wording, a missing detail, mixing-up their words, saying a term that you’re not into/ick.
  • Flexibility is often about Decisiveness. Meditation habits and skills. Creativity connection willingness.
  • Rephrase in your head.
  • The dance–if you are the lead you can lead someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. If you are an experienced follower you can listen to clumsy messages and make them look good. Train the paths, train the traits individually.
  • Practical skill: Find some connection between the two random words, even if silly.

Tricks for Fostering Flexibility

Amplifying Trance Itself (Soft Skills):

  • Reducing (self) judgement. It is OK that something didn’t land well, and assigning fault to yourself or the hypnotist can take you out of the experience if you want to continue.
  • Sometimes, just go with it! It’s OK to try something new, and later decide you didn’t like it! Maybe that wet dungeon was going to be electrified, I would have enjoyed that sexy torture lots!

Hypnotic Phenomenon (hard skills):

  • Motor control confusion – One example, having someone “reverse” my movement. The less time I spent questioning what the heck that means, the faster it worked. They then turned my movement “inside-out.” What does that mean? I don’t know, and nor did they! But just as a hypnotist can throw an idea out there and see what the brain does with it, a subject can let it effect them however it will.

Applying this to self play: Trigger Practice

  • You can just train triggers all on your own!
  • Triggers reinforce themselves with use. So just as a hypnotist can provide the association to you, you can provide it to yourself, and practice it!
  • Example: Clicker training. Feeling good when hearing a click.
    • The way that I trained it in myself, was meditating and then using the clicker with the effect I wanted intentionally conjured to my mind and body when I clicked it. Then let myself return to baseline. Repeat. Did many many many reps of that over several meditation sessions. That’s how I train most triggers that I’ve done on my own.
    • Other options include noticing when you feel a thing and then doing the trigger or thing you want to associate it with. If you notice you’re happy, give yourself a click!

Applying this to self play: Visualizations and Experiences

All of the same skills apply!

  • Deeply exploring fantasies.
  • Focus on how and where you feel things in your body. Amplify sensation you want.
  • Flexibility skills can sometimes still apply! Your own writing/fantasy may go in a direction you decide you’re not crazy about. Pivot! You’re in control!