WEEHU 2015 was, as always, amazing. The only reason it's taken me this long to write about it is other commitments, many of which are far less fun.
This year's WEEHU featured a new venue, still in the San Francisco area but outside of downtown, and followed the everything-under-one-roof model that MEEHU made popular. I am a huge fan of that model because it's extremely convenient.
Dani and I flew in Thursday to make sure we wouldn't have a repeat of last year, when I missed the first two classes I was supposed to teach because of flight delays. Despite having an early afternoon flight we still managed to get held up enough that we missed the "early bird" dinner, but there were friends all over and it was a good pre-WEEHU evening.
Friday was a day for teaching and meeting the many new people who were enjoying their first WEEHU. I got to open the educational part of the weekend with my "The Art of Teaching," the class about teaching classes, and then moved on to team up with LeeAllure in a workshop on mutual hypnosis. I had a brief break and then did "Kinky Human Tricks," which is still my favorite class because it never fails to be different each time.
The Friday night play party was a low-key affair. The organizers arranged for separate play areas for noisier/higher-intensity play (which was where the dungeon equipment was located) and quieter play or aftercare, and that formula seems to work very well. There was more socializing going on that first night than overt public play, at least in the open areas, so it was easy to float around and mix with people. I took an hour shift as a Dungeon Monitor on the quieter (mostly hypnoplay) side and there was no drama.
By Saturday WEEHU was in full swing. The classrooms were packed and the hallways jammed with happy people. I had a full room for "Erotic Hypnosis 101" and then a free period, which I ended up spending with a couple I met in the 101 who had questions and wanted a private hypnosis session for the submissive, which I was happy to do. Next I joined LizziDoll, DJ Pynchon, ZanyMo, and Shaman58 for EnScenic's Erotic Writers' Panel, which was all kinds of fun, and then taught "Use Your Words" to an appreciative group. After a little more one-on-one coaching Dani and I had dinner and hustled back.
Saturday night started for me my first-ever room trance. I'd seen them done before, but this was the first time I'd led one myself. We had a little trouble getting the group assembled -- a combination of late returns from dinner and confusion over where the room trance would be -- but we overcame that and got going in earnest.
I'm a big believer in negotiation and consent, so before doing the actual trance I made full disclosure of what the nature of the suggestions would be and what I expected of those who chose not to participate in the trance (basically, not to disrupt or interfere). I asked for consent for touch, as I often use touch in erotic trances, and gave out pink ribbons for people who preferred not to be touched to remind me of that. Then I went around the room asking for positive consent for the trance as described from each participant and started the actual session.
One of the challenges of hypnotizing a bunch of people together is that you can't stop, rewind, or adjust to each individual the way you can one-on-one. One way to compensate is to do extra deepening so the ones who are less responsive to the induction can have a little more time to settle into trance; the risk of that is that some people may get overly zonked in the process. I started with an overload style induction based on the "Nine things" formula I outline in The Mind Play Study Guide and then spent a few minutes in improvised deepening to help the stragglers catch up. I went around and gave a few people shoulder touches to help drop them down and noted that most of the group looked like they were in a good place to continue.
For the suggestion part of the trance, I started by suggesting a sense of mental openness, in which they felt their minds opening up to the idea of accepting suggestions. Since there tend to be a lot of Doctor Who fans in an *EHU audience, I brought up the concept of the Zero Room as a place of safety, where the mind can be at complete peace, defenses down. Then I invited them to imagine the patterns of neurons in their own brains firing in sequences, lighting up and going dim, creating constantly-changing patterns -- a sort of imaginary eye fixation intended to get them focused internally.
From there, I transitioned into eliciting a general state of arousal and openness to pleasure. We increased that gradually, just until I could see some signs of arousal in a few of the higher-responding participants, then mixed in related emotions like lust, pleasure, excitement, and sexiness. Next, I suggested that in addition to having these feelings my participants could become highly attuned to those same feelings and emotions in the people around them. I brought in another geeky reference: the way a Cylon's spine glows with energy when they become aroused (this is from the remade Battlestar Galactica, of course), and suggested that the spine, which connects the brain with the body, can be like a highly sensitive antenna, picking up on the sexual energies in the area and transmitting those to your own brain, so that each person can share in the sexual energies of those around them, becoming aroused whenever they are near people who are aroused, and then in turn transmitting that to others. We kept on that theme for a few minutes, creating in each person's mind that concept that for the rest of WEEHU their antenna was active, and that they would feel arousal, pleasure, excitement, etc. from being in the vicinity of others who felt those things. I also added in that this could give them the freedom to explore, to play, to experiment with things they were curious about, always within their personal limits.
Then, while they absorbed and acted on that (and I could see them feeding off each other's arousal and pleasure, which was a good sign), I gave them suggestions about readily absorbing and internalizing the information and techniques they were learning in their classes, so that the material is easy to recall and use whenever they need it. Finally, I brought my group back still feeling that general sense of arousal, and basked in their happy smiles.
The room trance went really well, and people told me they enjoyed it a great deal. (If you're an *EHU organizer reading this, I would love to do that again in the future!)
I did another tour of DM duty during the Saturday night party. It was a very easy, pleasant duty because everyone was well-behaved and considerate of everyone else, at least on my end (the quiet end). I didn't hear of any incidents in the high-intensity areas, so I'm forced to conclude that *EHU goers are awesome. One thing that was particularly interesting to witness, while on duty, was a negotiation for someone's first rope scene. The negotiation was textbook, covering all of her questions and defining what the scene would be about -- a combination of rope and trance -- and the scene itself was extremely well conducted.
Sunday brought more classes, some of which were new for me. First thing I got to team up with my friend Dr. Headcrash for a class on resistance play. Headcrash and I come at it from different angles, so being able to combine our perspectives and provide several short, hot demos in the process made for a riveting class. We will do this one again at Charmed! in January.
Another new class, which I developed at panavatar's request, was one on hypnotic anesthesia and sensation play. It went very well; I had a great volunteer to demo with and the audience had lots of great questions and thoughts.
After the community leaders' roundtable, Dani and I got together to teach about dual inductions. There wasn't a lot of enthusiasm for breaking up into small groups, so we had a few people come up and practice it in front of the audience. One of our demo volunteers was the person who'd had that rope scene the night before; when it was her turn to be the hypnotee, I whispered a few hints to one of the volunteer hypnotists about reminding her of that experience, and the results were very satisfying all around. I love it when stuff like that happens!
For the last class period of WEEHU, panavatar and I teamed up for another new class that we developed together: "Hypnotizing Your Dom as a Form of Service". It's a topic I've been asked about at other events and it was a pleasure to present on it with panavatar, who has a lot of natural talent. We talked about the ways a submissive can effectively do hypnosis, with permission and consent, from the bottom without disrupting the power dynamic of the relationship. I could see people were struggling a little with how to apply it, so I put Dani on the spot and asked her to join me in a demo. She did beautifully, as I knew she would, and the demo made the material gel for a lot of people. It was a great final class, and one that panavatar and I will definitely do again.
Sunday evening we had a group dinner at a Chinese restaurant, where I shared a table with Dani, Lizzidoll, and several new friends. We got to hear a repeat of the hypnotic musical induction composed and performed Friday night for DJ Pynchon, which was awesome, and generally enjoy the company of the con-goers. After dinner we went back to the con hotel for some unofficial play time. I had a particularly enjoyable scene with someone from the local area and was in the hallway to enjoy GirlFriday's live rendition of her original song, "You're a Terrible Slut."
I went to bed ridiculously late and got up ridiculously early (for a 6am flight); the Sunday night low-key play was still going on at 4am when Dani and I were leaving the hotel, which gave us a chance to say goodbye to some people before hitting the road ourselves. We even got a micro-dose of WEEHU closure at the airport, when we ran into KalypsoScreams in the terminal. Then it was back to the mundane world, for now.
This was a great WEEHU for me. I got to teach some new material, to team up with people I admire and enjoy being with, and to do some one-on-one work and play with exciting and fun people. If you haven't been to an *EHU yet, you're missing out on a lot. Just sayin'.
Showing posts with label WEEHU. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WEEHU. Show all posts
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Sunday, October 5, 2014
WEEHU 2 recap
WEEHU 2 is behind us now, and what a weekend it was! There were challenges, both logistical and other. There were also awesome moments, and over the whole weekend the scales tip toward awesome pretty decisively.
For the second year in a row, travel to WEEHU was made way more difficult than it had to be by forces outside of anyone's control. Last year it was the shooting at, and subsequent closure of, LAX airport; this time it was the fire in the radar control tower outside Chicago, which caused ripples across North America with flight connections. Dani and I were stuck in San Diego for 3 extra hours (which wouldn't have been so bad if we weren't confined to Terminal 1 of the airport there), which caused me to miss both of my scheduled Friday afternoon classes. Fortunately Hypnoguru stepped into the void and ran "The Art of Teaching Hypnosis" and "Kinky Human Tricks" for me so there was no need to disrupt the schedule.
We did make it to San Francisco in time for the Friday night play party at The Citadel. The party's theme was "A Taste of Kink." There were experts there in a number of kinky disciplines: knife play, caning, single-tails, flogging, needle play. Professor X and I were there representing erotic hypnosis. People circulated through the space getting 5-minutes "tastes" of whatever they desired. There was a good mixture of people new and curious, experienced, and enthusiastic about erotic hypnosis and I had a ball doing 5-minute scenes with them. By the end of the tasting Dani and I had been up for 22 hours straight and were fading fast; we caught the WEEHU-provided shuttle back to the hotel and crashed.
Saturday morning proved hectic thanks to a busload of French tourists who had also stopped at the convention hotel for the night. The hotel restaurant was packed and the staff were clearly not prepared for it; breakfast took a little more time than anyone expected. The restaurant also wasn't really set up for large groups, so there was no real chance to commune with our fellow attendees over breakfast. We got onto the first shuttle and headed over to the Citadel to help open up.
The first class of the day for me was Erotic Hypnosis 101, and as usual I got a nice crowd of new and curious people. For the demo scene we did some voodoo doll play, with my Dani as the voodoo doll and troublethewater (her Fetlife name) as the volunteer. Both of them were delightful and we had a great time with it.
Next up, immediately following, was Subtle Suggestion, my NLP-and-hypnosis class that I added to my roster for MEEHU. I'd added material to the outline because I finished way early at MEEHU, and I still ended up with about 10 minutes extra. We spent it talking about other applications of NLP, working hard to stay out of therapy territory. I'm going to have to add some more material to this for NEEHU 6.
One thing I enjoyed about WEEHU 2 was that I did have more downtime than usual. It was good to have the chance to sit in on Hypnomaster_D's class on Global Suggestion, a technique he has developed for speaking directly with the subconscious and getting cooperation from it even without a formal induction. I'd heard about it and read some on Fetlife, but seeing it actually used and established with someone was fascinating.
After lunch with Lady Ru'etha and some friends at a place called Show Dogs (which was extraordinarily tasty!), I taught Hypnotizing the Analytical Mind, an expanded version of the Live Learning class I did on Hypbook in August. Rather than just teaching confusion inductions, this class takes a holistic view of working or playing with an analytical-minded person with emphasis on getting the basics right -- rapport, setting expectations -- before lunging into a complex confusion induction that may not be necessary or the best approach.
Another free period followed, and then it was time for Deeper, Faster, Easier, my hypnotee-oriented class on getting better at going into trance. There was a lot of interest in this one and we used the time well, teaching the audience self-hypnosis and doing some fractionation with them to help break down any barriers.
To close out the class day Dani and I sat in on LeeAllure's class on doing hypnoplay in public places. There are few things I enjoy more than watching Lee teach; her mischievous brand of hypno-sadism was fully on display in that class and it was a great cap on the day.
Dani and I had a mission for the Saturday night play party: to practice our dual inductions on as many volunteers as we could muster. It's one thing to practice at home with an empty chair; to make sure our timing and nonverbal cues were right we needed some live volunteers. As you might imagine, it was not difficult at WEEHU to find people willing to be tranced by us. Even with LeeAllure and DJ Pynchon offering dual inductions too, we had plenty of eager hypnotees to work with and it helped Dani's confidence tremendously. We also got a chance for some social time with the always-busy Mephki, which was a treat.
Breakfast was less hectic Sunday as the French tourists were gone. We got to talk with some of our fellow WEEHUers in the restaurant and rode the early shuttle with panavatar and Fleur, who was still limping from a serious ankle sprain on Saturday (one great thing about an EEHU is that Doctor Mephki is always in the house). We helped set up chairs for the final day of classes.
Dani and I indulged ourselves in another LeeAllure class, this one on hypnotic amnesia. Then it was time for what is usually the highlight of my EEHU, Kinky Human Tricks. The audience turned out to be small, which made it hard to develop the room energy that I usually get for KHT, but we had some great demos of sensation play and freeze play and of course the Five-Point Palm Exploding Orgasm Technique. I felt a little bad because my volunteer for the 5-point technique was building to it slowly and we ran out of time before she could get all the way to orgasm. Things like that happen sometimes because I don't generally pre-select my volunteers. It's worth the risk because even when I "fail" it helps people to understand that not everything works the way you want it to the first time out. I'd rather someone think, "Well, it didn't always work for Wiseguy either" rather than "How did I screw this up?" when faced with a similar situation on their own.
After lunch (we went to the food court at the nearby mall), it was time for the class I'd been looking forward to most: Dual Inductions, presented by myself and my wife Dani. This was Dani's debut as a presenter, and she was everything I knew she could be. Our timing was good, her voice work was exceptional, and we dropped our volunteers with no difficulty at all. I'm unspeakably proud of Dani for showing the EEHU community that she has skills in her own right.
Our last class of the day, in the last timeslot, was All the Way Down, my class on really deep trance states. We were in the very comfortable upper lounge, which suited the topic nicely because this is the one in which I take someone into the Esdaile state to demonstrate how it can be done and why you would want to do it. I used Dani, as her reward for doing so well in the dual inductions class, and she enjoyed it quite a bit. I was also honored to meet Dossie Easton, who taught the shadowplay class on Saturday, and to have her sitting in for All the Way Down.
There was no formal plan for after-con dinner -- or, rather, there was a chaotic mix of partially-formed plans -- but Professor X took the initiative and got us a reservation for a large group at a kink-friendly restaurant she knew nearby. That gave us a chance to dine and chat with people we hadn't been able to get much time with, like Professor X herself and Hypnomaestro and SweetGasp (among many others). There were hugs, there were goodbyes, and there were see-you-at-NEEHUs.
It was a great time once again. Next year, I'm flying on Thursday instead of Friday!
-wg
For the second year in a row, travel to WEEHU was made way more difficult than it had to be by forces outside of anyone's control. Last year it was the shooting at, and subsequent closure of, LAX airport; this time it was the fire in the radar control tower outside Chicago, which caused ripples across North America with flight connections. Dani and I were stuck in San Diego for 3 extra hours (which wouldn't have been so bad if we weren't confined to Terminal 1 of the airport there), which caused me to miss both of my scheduled Friday afternoon classes. Fortunately Hypnoguru stepped into the void and ran "The Art of Teaching Hypnosis" and "Kinky Human Tricks" for me so there was no need to disrupt the schedule.
We did make it to San Francisco in time for the Friday night play party at The Citadel. The party's theme was "A Taste of Kink." There were experts there in a number of kinky disciplines: knife play, caning, single-tails, flogging, needle play. Professor X and I were there representing erotic hypnosis. People circulated through the space getting 5-minutes "tastes" of whatever they desired. There was a good mixture of people new and curious, experienced, and enthusiastic about erotic hypnosis and I had a ball doing 5-minute scenes with them. By the end of the tasting Dani and I had been up for 22 hours straight and were fading fast; we caught the WEEHU-provided shuttle back to the hotel and crashed.
Saturday morning proved hectic thanks to a busload of French tourists who had also stopped at the convention hotel for the night. The hotel restaurant was packed and the staff were clearly not prepared for it; breakfast took a little more time than anyone expected. The restaurant also wasn't really set up for large groups, so there was no real chance to commune with our fellow attendees over breakfast. We got onto the first shuttle and headed over to the Citadel to help open up.
The first class of the day for me was Erotic Hypnosis 101, and as usual I got a nice crowd of new and curious people. For the demo scene we did some voodoo doll play, with my Dani as the voodoo doll and troublethewater (her Fetlife name) as the volunteer. Both of them were delightful and we had a great time with it.
Next up, immediately following, was Subtle Suggestion, my NLP-and-hypnosis class that I added to my roster for MEEHU. I'd added material to the outline because I finished way early at MEEHU, and I still ended up with about 10 minutes extra. We spent it talking about other applications of NLP, working hard to stay out of therapy territory. I'm going to have to add some more material to this for NEEHU 6.
One thing I enjoyed about WEEHU 2 was that I did have more downtime than usual. It was good to have the chance to sit in on Hypnomaster_D's class on Global Suggestion, a technique he has developed for speaking directly with the subconscious and getting cooperation from it even without a formal induction. I'd heard about it and read some on Fetlife, but seeing it actually used and established with someone was fascinating.
After lunch with Lady Ru'etha and some friends at a place called Show Dogs (which was extraordinarily tasty!), I taught Hypnotizing the Analytical Mind, an expanded version of the Live Learning class I did on Hypbook in August. Rather than just teaching confusion inductions, this class takes a holistic view of working or playing with an analytical-minded person with emphasis on getting the basics right -- rapport, setting expectations -- before lunging into a complex confusion induction that may not be necessary or the best approach.
Another free period followed, and then it was time for Deeper, Faster, Easier, my hypnotee-oriented class on getting better at going into trance. There was a lot of interest in this one and we used the time well, teaching the audience self-hypnosis and doing some fractionation with them to help break down any barriers.
To close out the class day Dani and I sat in on LeeAllure's class on doing hypnoplay in public places. There are few things I enjoy more than watching Lee teach; her mischievous brand of hypno-sadism was fully on display in that class and it was a great cap on the day.
Dani and I had a mission for the Saturday night play party: to practice our dual inductions on as many volunteers as we could muster. It's one thing to practice at home with an empty chair; to make sure our timing and nonverbal cues were right we needed some live volunteers. As you might imagine, it was not difficult at WEEHU to find people willing to be tranced by us. Even with LeeAllure and DJ Pynchon offering dual inductions too, we had plenty of eager hypnotees to work with and it helped Dani's confidence tremendously. We also got a chance for some social time with the always-busy Mephki, which was a treat.
Breakfast was less hectic Sunday as the French tourists were gone. We got to talk with some of our fellow WEEHUers in the restaurant and rode the early shuttle with panavatar and Fleur, who was still limping from a serious ankle sprain on Saturday (one great thing about an EEHU is that Doctor Mephki is always in the house). We helped set up chairs for the final day of classes.
Dani and I indulged ourselves in another LeeAllure class, this one on hypnotic amnesia. Then it was time for what is usually the highlight of my EEHU, Kinky Human Tricks. The audience turned out to be small, which made it hard to develop the room energy that I usually get for KHT, but we had some great demos of sensation play and freeze play and of course the Five-Point Palm Exploding Orgasm Technique. I felt a little bad because my volunteer for the 5-point technique was building to it slowly and we ran out of time before she could get all the way to orgasm. Things like that happen sometimes because I don't generally pre-select my volunteers. It's worth the risk because even when I "fail" it helps people to understand that not everything works the way you want it to the first time out. I'd rather someone think, "Well, it didn't always work for Wiseguy either" rather than "How did I screw this up?" when faced with a similar situation on their own.
After lunch (we went to the food court at the nearby mall), it was time for the class I'd been looking forward to most: Dual Inductions, presented by myself and my wife Dani. This was Dani's debut as a presenter, and she was everything I knew she could be. Our timing was good, her voice work was exceptional, and we dropped our volunteers with no difficulty at all. I'm unspeakably proud of Dani for showing the EEHU community that she has skills in her own right.
Our last class of the day, in the last timeslot, was All the Way Down, my class on really deep trance states. We were in the very comfortable upper lounge, which suited the topic nicely because this is the one in which I take someone into the Esdaile state to demonstrate how it can be done and why you would want to do it. I used Dani, as her reward for doing so well in the dual inductions class, and she enjoyed it quite a bit. I was also honored to meet Dossie Easton, who taught the shadowplay class on Saturday, and to have her sitting in for All the Way Down.
There was no formal plan for after-con dinner -- or, rather, there was a chaotic mix of partially-formed plans -- but Professor X took the initiative and got us a reservation for a large group at a kink-friendly restaurant she knew nearby. That gave us a chance to dine and chat with people we hadn't been able to get much time with, like Professor X herself and Hypnomaestro and SweetGasp (among many others). There were hugs, there were goodbyes, and there were see-you-at-NEEHUs.
It was a great time once again. Next year, I'm flying on Thursday instead of Friday!
-wg
Saturday, September 6, 2014
WEEHU preview and other fun things
WEEHU is just around the corner!
The second annual WEstern Erotic Hypnosis Unconference will be held again at the Citadel in San Francisco. It is not too late to get tickets for this event, though it may be too late to get a room at the same hotel.
One of the things WEEHU has done this year is recruit a wider array of presenters and topics. I'll be there, of course, doing a half-dozen classes or so, but you will also see lots of Dr. Headcrash, HypnoMaestro, Lady Ru'etha, Felix Krull, LeeAllure, Professor X, Max, SweetGasp, sleepingirl, Max, DJ Pynchon, and others. It's going to be incredibly exciting.
This WEEHU will feature the presenter debut of my wife, Dani Fantom. She and I will co-present the session on dual inductions, in which we will double-team several willing volunteers into trance nirvana. Having Dani share the stage with me is something I'm very much looking forward to.
Other fun things ...
Last month, with all the other things going on, I forgot to mention that I was doing another Live Learning class on Hypbook called "Hypnotizing the Analytical Mind". That class is available for listening on Hypbook in the learning library. My friend HypnoMedia will be doing a class on September 17th on "History of Erotic Hypnosis." HM is the hypnokink community's leading historian and media expert, so this will be well worth attending.
My NGH Certification course is full, and will occupy a lot of my non-WEEHU time between now and the end of November. When we finish, 12 shiny new hypnotists will be ready to start practicing professionally. Yay!
Sleepingirl and I are also hatching a plot or two for the weekend before Halloween (that would be October 25 and 26). We will be doing classes for edu.kink in Amherst, MA and then appearing together at The Society in Hartford, CT.
The New England Hypnosis Group and I are working with NELA to bring an extended class to the Boston area in December. More details on this as we work them out.
Play safe and have fun!!
-wg
Friday, November 8, 2013
A San Francisco Treat
There were so many high points that it's hard to pick just a few. Meeting up with Lady Ru'etha in Phoenix and flying together the rest of the way to San Francisco was definitely at the top. Ru'etha is a dear friend and I loved seeing her happy and well cared for.
The WEEHU crowd was awesome. I taught a lot, as I tend to do at these things:
- Erotic Hypnosis 101
- Your Hypnotic Self -- aimed at new hypnotists learning to develop their own style and technique
- Kinky Human Tricks, of course
- Deeper, Faster, Easier -- a new class I put together for WEEHU on how to get better at going into trance
- It Takes Two -- Lady Ru'etha and I presented this together; it was about dual and mutual inductions
- More Instant Inductions -- I hadn't actually planned on this but someone put it on the schedule so, in the Unconference spirit, I went with it.
As always happens at an EHU, I met some absolutely delightful new friends and got to catch up with a number of existing ones. The play parties at the San Francisco Citadel were splendid, and we got to mix with some of the new members who didn't realize they were walking into an erotic hypnosis event. And it looks as though HypnoMaestro and I will be hatching a joint project in the future relating to education; more on that when we're ready to talk about it.
My biggest regret is that I wasn't able to stay to the end. I had to catch an early afternoon flight, which meant leaving WEEHU after the first class on Sunday. So I probably missed a lot, but at the same time I know I'll see these good people again. This is an amazing community we have.
-wg
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