Maybe I don't emphasize this enough but one of the reasons I push constant hypnosis education is because the less you understand about hypnosis, the less capable you are of playing safer. More advanced knowledge = more advanced safety.

This applies to BOTH hypnotists and subjects.

There are certain beginner concepts that I would call "safety dead-ends": "This unwanted response happened because some part of you secretly wanted it." "Suggestions work because hypnosis makes someone suggestible."

Untrue, incomplete understanding limits safety SO MUCH.

"What makes me/my partner actually feel suggested IQ drain?"

It is: motivated by/creating desires, a role-enactment, a creative act, partially unconscious, draws on/creates associations, builds patterns/habits/familiarity, a learning experience, and much more.''

The more you actually understand what is happening in hypnosis -- not treating it like a magical black box -- the more you have control over identifying and mitigating risk, as hypnotist or subject. It is why I often push a non-state model of hypnosis.

This connects to something I was talking about re: suggestions -- simple statements where you are relying on someone just being convinced something might happen are not very helpful/effective.

"You will only respond to this trigger in this scene." Why?? Prove it! Help them!!

Triggers are associative conditioning. How do you ACTUALLY mitigate and replace a conditioned response? What is ACTUALLY happening both from their subjective perspective, and psychologically? What makes them keep responding to it? How could you change those aspects?

Writing about this more in depth for my upcoming "intermediate+ hypnokink" book :)

Milton Erickson and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar... (Essay)

Finally, I've finished this essay about connections I'm finding between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy. It's ~4.5k words, extremely "me," and I'm really thrilled to share it. Enjoy!

--

My weakness is getting deeply invested in very niche topics.

Hypnosis was my first and most lifelong obsession. It was my confusing, shameful sexual fetish that I eventually took by the horns and -- through my desire to learn as much about it as humanly possible -- turned into a job. But not a normal sex work job where I do hypnosis for money -- a weird job where I just teach about it. The kink community, and the further-specific niche where people want to hypnotize each other during intimate experiences, became my home.

But the value of study doesn't really come from the quantity of people I'm able to engage with. It comes from the way it enriches my life. It creates and benefits from the capability to see overlaps between all of my various interests.

On the surface, it may appear that two skills have no relationship. But the deeper you get into each one, a synthesis appears.

I really, really appreciate the feedback on this so far <3 Next day rebloop

I am opening for inquiries :) Will take a limited number of my choice over the next few weeks as time allows.

Please DM with your ideas or questions! I will let you know if/when I accept them to work on!

See examples at https://readonlymind.com/@sleepingirl/ :)

I'm leading a text study on Milton Erickson at Charmed this coming weekend, and there's been some discussion around learning from Erickson so I wanted to make this little guide of tips I'd give to someone trying to read his book (my favorite) "Hypnotic Realities"! A lot of this is relevant to other hypnosis books too!

If you're coming to Charmed, we're going to have an excellent time at the class! Hope to see you there!

For Hypnovember I present... ✨

A progressive prompt list where you can pick one to do weekly, string a few days' together in a week, or do one every day!

Or just do whatever you want!!!

Have fun :) Feel free to tag me if you use any of these, I'd love to see what you make! ❤️

POV you're into hypnosis and watching an old anime you've never heard of and THIS scene comes on

New 90s anime aesthetic catgirl hypnobait OC

Who am I?

Hi, I'm sleepingirl (they/she)! I'm an author and educator in the hypnokink community. I have 14 years IRL hypnosis experience and I'm a switch.

I am super passionate about hypnosis and have a conversational, Ericksonian style. I do a lot of different things!

📚 Books/writing:

🎙️ Podcast:

✨ Fun:

sleepingirl.carrd.co

LearnHypnokink.com

I really wish it was obvious and clear that learning hypnosis shouldn't stop after the 101/beginner material :( There is so much more and it would help a lot of people who struggle to get the experiences they want.

I get so jealous of the rope community sometimes because rope is obviously, visibly complicated, and you have to really strive for tangible proficiency. This is DEFINITELY not about everyone but I think we settle for too low, in general.

Here's a few spitball ideas of what I might consider different levels of learning material:

Beginner learning:

Novice learning:

Intermediate learning:

Advanced learning:

--

(Pulled from my Twitter)

Aye definitely. 100% agree! I wonder how much of the difference compared to say rope is individual learning vs group learning. Yet another indirect consequence of there’s very few places with a decent concentration of hypnokinksters, let alone decent enough to have good learning environments form in. i.e. To learn rope, you’ll find a class that’s going on (because it’s reasonably common in a lot of areas) so it’s a bit more formalised, and you get lots of exposure to more “advanced” stuff and people to talk shop with, and you can THEN find people who specialise in specific directions to take your rope (suspend? self-suspend? dynamic rope? predicaments? ect?). Whereas a lot of us hypnokinksters are self-taught out of necessity. Whether it be via the few books that are out there aimed at us, which as you’ve hinted at runs dry a bit past Novice level, so to go further you have to be both dedicated, AND be able to figure out for yourself where you want to go deeper in (pun intended :3). Or via assimilation/trying what works via experience, which is very unformalised and oft leads to people who’ve got a lot of practical experience but aren’t able to quantify what they know very well/get very surprised at what would be Beginner/Novice concepts (also all the pseudoscience folklore passed down the ages that’ll forever float through hypnokink land).

Yes I think this is part of it, BUT it's also a chicken/egg question at this point.

Since COVID the online scene for hypnokink has EXPLODED. Hypnokink is like a popular mainstream fantasy at this point and the majority of people engage with it (for play) online. There is, however (comparatively to the entire population of "people into hypnokink online"):

Education in the scene suffers a lot because it's mostly novice-level material that's getting shared around. Maybe that's the one book some people have read, or the few classes they've attended. Then those people are visible online either through just being visible or teaching. There's a smattering of folks teaching intermediate stuff but the issue is that you need to be at a certain level to be able to understand it. Basically no one is teaching/writing advanced material, even the people I can think of who could.

Because you teach down, and the subset of folks who ARE coming to learn are mostly still getting their feet wet with intermediate material.

So mostly we're stuck with a community that is utterly and completely accessible but the pool of knowledge is getting wider and not deeper.

Like you're saying, attending a rope event and watching people do "advanced" rope is huge. It's visible and it's in your face and the education is available (if, often, prohibitively expensive -- tangent for another day). Hypnosis is visible in different ways but the "advanced" stuff is simply not as easy to see, or doesn't even exist.

As a side note, I think we as educators are worried about "leaving people behind," e.g. walling our classes and materials off to novices. We are fucking obsessed with teaching beginner/novice hypnosis. I think we need to get more comfortable with teaching purely higher-level material -- because truly the people being left behind right now are the folks who are trying to make it to or past a really comfortable intermediate learning. There is PLENTY of beginner/novice material available.

I had a beautiful little conversation with @/seattlefemdom on Twitter as a result of this thread where we agreed: "Advanced" hypnosis is 100% a product of your ability to effortlessly synthesize things from outside of "hypnosis" into the entire ethos of your practice. Things from your life, art, history, music, philosophy, psychology, writing, spirituality, etc... Understanding hypnosis not as "how do I build a scene out of this idea" but sort of like "how is this idea inseparable from hypnosis?" And how do you teach that?

I have some ideas. Sometime soon I will be offering a workshop I'm building that is a collaborative textual analysis of Milton Erickson aimed to teach the beginnings of these kinds of critical thinking skills. Every single thing I have done for education -- all my books, articles, podcasts, classes -- are aimed at the people who want to become familiar with intermediate material or start moving a little bit past it. But like. I am one person, and the niche is very small (and while a ton of what I make is free, a lot of is paid too because it's my job). I just want to make the pool deeper so overall the level of education increases.

Sorry this got SO long and really beyond the scope of what you are talking about, but clearly I had more to say! You had a very good point.

I really wish it was obvious and clear that learning hypnosis shouldn't stop after the 101/beginner material :( There is so much more and it would help a lot of people who struggle to get the experiences they want.

I get so jealous of the rope community sometimes because rope is obviously, visibly complicated, and you have to really strive for tangible proficiency. This is DEFINITELY not about everyone but I think we settle for too low, in general.

Here's a few spitball ideas of what I might consider different levels of learning material:

Beginner learning:

Novice learning:

Intermediate learning:

Advanced learning:

--

(Pulled from my Twitter)

Hypnokink Zine Week finished submissions :)

Hi everyone! Hypnokink Zine Week wrapped up and I just wanted to make sure I shared people's creations! We've got all sorts of stuff including:

In all, we got 13 zines -- they are all free and you can peruse them all here:

10 zines on the official jam submissions

StrangeItem's VR zine

DDD's "mundane" self hypnosis zine

Azalea's micro TTRPG

A huge thank-you and congrats to everyone who contributed and made something. This was so much fun and we will definitely do it again -- I hope even more people join us :)

Here’s mine!

Hypnokink Zine Week: Info, Templates, and Maker's Guide!

Everything will be contained in this masterpost, open it up and scroll down! <3

I can't wait to see what everyone makes! Graphic design is my passion:

ZINE MAKER’S GUIDE FOR HYPNOKINK ZINE WEEK!!!

By sleepingirl

Tips before we start:

Zines are a physical manifestation of ANYTHING! I think they’re best when they’re weird, quirky, and creative. Here’s some ideas:

How many “sections” do you think your zine might have? If you’re doing poems, for example, how many poems come to mind? You can even write out some of your first-draft content in this step -- this is to help you think about…

The hardest part! You might change your mind on this a couple times! What should your zine look like?

Simple one-page zines are the easiest -- for you to make, and also to print and fold. You can easily make a one-page zine that has four or six “pages” that require no cutting or stapling. You could even make a no-fold, “poster” style zine!

You could also experiment with double-sided one-page zines, like those trifold brochure style things we used to make in school.

If you REALLY WANT more than one page, stapling and collating will be required! Remember that (at least I) want to print out as many people’s zines as possible and less effort = better! But do what calls to you!

CONSIDER:

Draft it out and polish in Google Docs or something! Make sure your content is “almost done” before…

Use a template provided or make your own and start porting your content into a zine-able form. Canva is a GREAT resource for this. Import a template (like the provided ones) into Canva and start organizing your content and making it look snazzy. Think about:

If you are feeling driven, you can hand-make or hand-write your zine on a piece of paper and then scan it in. You could cut/paste clips from magazines, etc…

You’re encouraged to additionally (or instead) make a device-readable PDF version by doing something like the following:

Or just cutting the pages off of your printable version and putting them all right-side up :)

With all your project files: don't forget to name your files with the title of the project and your username -- put your username and social media on the zine too.

If your zine is intended to produce a hypnotic effect, make sure you appropriately tag/CW it!

You can host your zine anywhere you like, but itch.io is a fantastic resource for this. Share on social media and use the hashtag “#hypnokinkzines” so we can all find them :) If you post on itch.io, I will add your zine to a collection for the zine week so they are all in one place! Tag me!

HAVE FUN!!! I LOVE YOU

Extremely excited to share my latest project (@gleefulabandon helped contribute!).

https://learnhypnokink.com is my (free!) resource for learning hypnosis for erotic play. It's an 18k-word guide plus many other resources I've made hosted on-site. It's also available as PDF/EPUB.

I put a lot of care into this and did my best to present a holistic, realistic model for erotic hypnosis with a ton of helpful techy tips -- whether you're a beginner or you want to rehash some foundations in a different way.

Please enjoy <3

Kinks Day 4: Ageplay/Regression

I adore ageplay and hypnotic regression. I’m not sure what the right term to use is -- the age-related hypnosis I do is generally about “me” regressing to an earlier age, so regression seems accurate, but I’m sure that I’m doing it from the lens of adulthood, so it’s unclear how accurate that is.

That being said, I’ve had experiences where I remember childhood memories that were deeply buried, so I think there is something to it.

(My understanding is that in ageplay-dedicated communities, regression is the “nonkinky” version, but I come from a hypnosis background where regression describes the actual techniques and such, so…)

I wish ageplay wasn’t so stigmatized in kink. I wish it was as obvious to everyone else as it is to me that two consenting adults should be able to explore any fantasy/role-enactment they like, especially things that they have no “real world” interest in. I know that the community is doing an OK job with this for the most part, but it is an incredibly sterilized version of ageplay that gets touted as the “acceptable” one. I was on an ageplay podcast and I was told there were certain things I wasn’t allowed to talk about -- the majority of my play -- and I definitely don’t begrudge the hosts for this (we had a really lovely time and I completely understand optics!), but it does make me sad.

There are a few facets of my interest in ageplay. Firstly, I think it’s humiliating to make an adult act regressed. That’s plain, simple, and easy. It’s a control thing, and it fits well into my kinks related to making a person “lesser” in mental capabilities.

Secondly -- and a thing that really drives my interest -- I’ve always always always had fantasies about being made to encounter hypnosis when I was young and my fetish for it was extremely intense, confusing, and felt beyond taboo. How would I have reacted? How could I have been manipulated? What if someone knew my secret, as I always feared? I count myself lucky to have had an unbelievably intense scene where I had to face the object of my early fixations -- I still think about it all the time.

There are a lot of other fun things to play with in ageplay/regression, like the fantasy of being “raised” differently, the connections with bimbofication (which is regressive, in a way), tons of dark fantasies about regressed power exchange and naughty stuff, plus a lot of less-dark stuff that I do genuinely enjoy. I definitely do the “ageplay as comfort” stuff, though that’s something I do usually alone. I sleep with a teddy bear every night, I have a little bed tent, my covers are pink and covered with cartoon kittens. Occasionally I’ll watch kid’s shows for the comfort of it, wear “ageplay clothes,” or play kid’s games.

I think ageplay can be particularly risky, especially if you have any childhood trauma -- even if you try to do ageplay not as “yourself,” you’re taking from things you know about childhood. I definitely have some of my own (though not sexual trauma), but it hasn’t been an issue because I’ve been doing a lot of work on it for a long time, and it’s unlikely to really come up in the play I do.

But it’s really hot and I like it a lot and I wish I could talk about it more :(

Kinks Day 1: Extremely Deep Trance

(Inspired by @ellaenchanting and @misscammiedawn to do some writing about my kinks :) Go read their awesome posts!)

--

Trance is amazing and powerful in and of itself. People are like, “What are some ideas for me and my partner to do after they’re in trance?” and I’m like, “KEEP GOING!”

Weird stuff happens in deeper trance. Weird, spontaneous stuff. The quality of thoughts change. Responses change. I hallucinate all manner of things. I dissociate and derealize.

Often I wake from trances like this thinking, “I saw/heard God” because I just don’t have any other context for the things I hear, see, and feel. There’s a lot of art/music that portrays sex as “seeing God” and personally I don’t get that feeling even from extreme sexual arousal -- but I definitely get it from deep trances.

One of my favorite things that happens in deep trance is that I spontaneously and unconsciously start making “art.” Sometimes I see visions of really beautiful or poignant things/symbols, often (especially if there’s long pauses between words/suggestions) I find myself writing poetry. This “art” changes my trance experience, even in the long term -- ways that I see myself, hypnosis, or my relationship with my hypnotist. Many times, this “art” gets forgotten when I wake up (I have a lot of trance amnesia especially with deeper trances) and I’m left with only the memory that it existed, which I think is beautiful in and of itself and teaches something of a lesson about permanence and value.

Dissociation/derealization is a tricky subject -- I don’t think it’s inherent in all trances, but I definitely experience something in that realm with certain deep trances. I’ve discovered that usually this happens when the very deep trance I’m in is simply hypnosis for hypnosis’s sake, maybe even using more “traditionally hypnotic” elements like countdowns and the word “hypnotize.”

To me, it’s like the blatantness of it makes me really face the fact that I am actually being hypnotized -- the thing that I’ve wanted for my entire life is actually happening to me. I get this sense like “there’s no way -- there’s no way this is really happening to me” and I lose my grip on reality and who I am (who I’ve become to have this). In the trance and afterwards, it genuinely feels like nothing is real, the world can’t be real, I can’t be real, my partner can’t be real. It is an incredibly intense feeling and something I’d definitely describe as edgeplay. It can lead to wild things -- my beliefs become SO malleable and I find myself capable of holding beliefs that aren’t plausible or logical at all.

I’m never quite certain on the validity of the Esdaille state -- certainly there are hypnotic artifacts that make people able to do wild things like undergo surgery and change their hypnotic responses to a large degree, but the idea that there is one state that does that seems really iffy to me. That being said, I have also experienced spontaneous anesthesia/numbness in some deep trances, and stuff that I can’t easily explain -- so there is something to it.

"Depth" as a concept, is, of course, fraught. There isn't a way to measure it (despite what certain sources say) except for perceptually. It doesn't correlate with how readily you accept suggestions, but there is some kind of connection with engagement and rapport, plus sensory and abstract feelings -- which maybe affects the way you connect with suggestions. It is just so individualized and variable, especially the actual experience of it. I do know that I get deeper now than I ever have before.

I used to feel extremely insecure as a hypnotist because my favorite thing to do when hypnotizing someone was to just… hypnotize them A LOT. I do still feel this sometimes, but I wish everyone could see how exciting and intense it is to play with trance for the sake of trance and to explore some really crazy stuff.

I was Feeling It today even without makeup (and actually self tied) <3