Catching Up

Wow ... I just realized I haven't updated this blog since November.  Yeesh!  There's been a lot going on.

First, of course, was Charmed! back in January.  It was our first year, and I think we hit about 185 total people in attendance.  The energy was amazing, and I'm proud to have been part of bringing the con to the Baltimore/DC area.

In February I taught at the NELA Fetish Fair Flea along with my friends MrDream and ZanyM.  For the first time, we had an Erotic Hypnosis Lounge running for most of the event and a lot of really cool stuff happened in there courtesy of people like AmHypnotic, MentalConfetti, Hypnostory, Ariadne, Maamaine, and others.  Really hoping that becomes an annual happening (the lounge, of course -- the Flea already is).

March brought NEEHU, which meant a return to The Society and a chance to reunite with the community.  Many, many awesome things happened there, much of which has been written about already by others.  Some personal highlights for me included the workshop that MrDream and I did to help new presenters develop class ideas and co-teaching Erotic Hypnosis 101 with Ariadne.

Last week I visited with Hypnosis New Jersey and spent an afternoon doing Kinky Human Tricks and some mentored practice time.  It's really amazing how fast that New Jersey group is growing; Moon-Gazer and pinupknits have built something awesome there.

In a couple of hours I'm presenting for my hometown Black Rose SIG on "Making It Stick" -- an extended discussion, demo, and practice session about why, and what to do when, a suggestion just isn't getting followed.  This will be an extended version of one of the classes I'm offering at MEEHU later this year.

There is a lot coming up, too.  Tomorrow is the first instructional day for my first in-person professional hypnotism course.  Six people from the DC metro area, who are also members of the erotic hypnosis community, will be getting certified as professional hypnotists and NLP practitioners over the course of the next 8 weeks or so.

Some of you know that I'm a pretty serious hobbyist woodworker; most of the photos I post on FetLife are of things I've made in my garage workshop.  In May I'm treating myself to a rare non-working vacation as I attend Weekend with WOOD in Des Moines, IA.  I'll be there in my Bruce Wayne identity just for the fun of attending.  Before I return, though, I'm going to take advantage of the proximity to Mephki's new home and do a workshop for the brand-new Iowa City hypnosis group.

Come June, I'll be at MEEHU 3 along with a long list of amazing and delightful people; if you haven't been to an *EHU yet, this is a great one to start with.  (Warning:  may be habit forming!)

I'm looking to assemble another in-person professional hypnosis course in July, this time in "boot camp" style:  eight days of instruction, Saturday to Saturday, with the final exam at the end.  I'm looking for a venue in the New York City area; if I can find one that won't drive up the class cost we'll do it in person, otherwise we'll do the class online.  Looking at the latter half of July, probably July 16-23.  Let me know if you're interested or have venue suggestions.

My next for-sure online class will start in late August and run until probably early October (dates are not finalized until we know who all is attending).  This one will be in the original format, online and spread over several weeks.

It's early yet, but I fully intend to be on hand at WEEHU 2016 and hope a lot of you will be as well.  There are a couple of other things that aren't confirmed yet.  I've got an invitation to go teach in Seattle when we can find a date that works, and I want to do something as-yet-undetermined with TES before the year is out because I love working with them.  So stay tuned.

WEEHU 2015 Highlights

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'.

Weekend Recap and Looking Forward

It was a very busy weekend for me in my Bruce Wayne identity, but the highlight of my weekend had to be "More Than Meets the Eye," the class I gave for NELA and NEHG-Boston on Saturday evening.

The class was about hypnotic transformations -- taking a willing hypnotee and temporarily turning them into someone or something else.  There are some classic transformation types such as bimbo/dumb jock, robot, doll, animals and such that are very popular, so I went into a fair level of detail on the sorts of things one needs to consider when turning a partner into these things and what types of suggestions work well.  Then, it was demo time.  I was expecting to do some basic animal, robot, and maybe bimbo transformations.  My audience surprised me in delightful, happy ways.

My first volunteer asked to become an action figure; in the process of designing the character for this action figure -- a super-villainess named Dramatic Pause, thanks to some creative suggestions from my audience -- I forgot to make her a doll and instead she actually became Dramatic Pause, with a distinctive speech pattern and commanding demeanor.  We played out a scene in which she was interviewing a candidate (me) for a lead henchman position, only to throw me over in favor of VulpineSpike, who put on a very impressive dance performance on her command.  (I should note for the record that VulpineSpike was NOT hypnotized as part of this.  He actually is an impressive dancer.)

Next, we had fun turning another volunteer into a mannequin, posing her a few ways, and slinging an extra jacket over her shoulders for effect.

The last demo -- and it's a good thing it was last, because I don't know how we could have followed it -- my volunteer was a little unsure of what she wanted to play.  We were sort of thinking cat, sort of thinking bimbo, but she wanted to be tough and smart and slutty rather than dumb.  Thanks to some input from our audience she became Knight, a hard-drinking, hard-talking, slutty fighter pilot determined to get a promotion by coming on to her squad commander (me) and then leaving him high and dry once he caved in.  Knight played her role beautifully, bragging about her combat prowess and high scores on the strategy exams, the moving on to her sexual conquests of Klingon women.  When the squad commander questioned her talents compared to the Klingon women's, Knight pulled down her top and put two of her outstanding "talents" on display, thus winning the promotion.

(Side note:  Knight's "talents" is now a fetish on FetLife.)

We had an awesome time all around.  NELA and NEHG did a great job of putting this on and taking care of the logistics.

Schedule Changes

The event at the Society that had been tentatively planned for Labor Day weekend has been postponed until next year some time, so that will not be happening yet.  However, I am now booked to do an appearance at the FOCUS Group in Minneapolis, MN on Saturday, September 19th.  By request of the group I'll be doing an extended version of Kinky Human Tricks.  There is a teaser post on FetLife which will be followed by details.

And of course I'll also be at WEEHU 2015 in October!

-wg

Upcoming Appearances

The new book is out the door, and now so am I.  The next few weeks are going to be very busy, in fun ways.

First up comes Dark Odyssey: Fusion.  I've been invited to teach 4 classes in erotic hypnosis at Fusion this year, so I'll be there for most of the 4-day weekend.  My new friends at Passional Boutique will have copies of The Mind Play Study Guide for sale at their vendor tent.

Next comes TESfest over the July 4th weekend.  I won't be able to be there, but there will be a lot of awesome erotic hypnosis going on courtesy of ZanyMo, MrDream, and others they've recruited.  There will also be copies of Mind Play and The Mind Play Study Guide on sale there thanks to TES being so wonderful.

Then, July 9-11, it's off to Chicago for MEEHU 2.  I'm teaching a bunch of classes there, some for the first time, and of course I'll be signing books for people on request.

I'm really excited about all of this and looking forward to seeing as many of you as I can out there.

-wg

NEEHU 6 Recap

NEEHU 6 took place a couple of weeks ago at The Society in Hartford.

What can I say about NEEHU that hasn't already been said?  Probably not much.  Each NEEHU is an experience to cherish.  For me it's all about reconnecting with my community friends, making new community friends, teaching, playing, and doing my Hypno Obi-wan thing.

This year I also had another goal:  to help inspire and recruit more new people to present.  Toward that end, I solicited people to co-present two of my beginner-level classes and reached out to a few people afterward about joining the presenter ranks in the future.

Here's the day-by-day:

Thursday

Dani, our friend MissIsis, and I journeyed up the highway by day and made reasonable time getting to the Hyatt House.  Familiar faces were already congregating in the lobby, along with one face I knew from online but hadn't actually met yet:  Lex, of Entrancement UK.  I took advantage of the opportunity to introduce myself and chat him up a bit; Lex is a great guy, and we hit it off right away.

There was no organized plan for Thursday night, so Dani and I went out to eat and pick up a few things for the weekend and called it an early night.

Friday

NEEHU started for real Friday morning.  We had breakfast in the common room at the Hyatt House among friends, with lots of hugs and hellos, and made our way to The Society.  One of the benefits of the expanded schedule (classes all day Friday through Sunday) was that I had more uncommitted time slots to play with, and one of those happened to be the first one of the day.  So I took my time getting badged and got a chance to get better acquainted with D'Artagnan, part of the New York contingent.

My first class was "The Art of Teaching Hypnosis" at 11am, part of the campaign to recruit and inspire new presenters.  We had a good turnout and the class went well.  After class I spent some time with friends Autumn (HypnoTy) and Fraulein among others, which was fun.

Next up, after lunch, came "Kinky Human Tricks."  I love doing this class, but for NEEHU 6 we changed up the format a bit and added two co-presenters:  my old friend AmHypnotic and Lex.  We switched up the format a bit:  instead of doing a wider variety of tricks, we picked a topic and then each demonstrated something to be done with that topic.  We covered less ground laterally, but more depth.

Given the environment, I felt a desire to experiment so I asked Daja to join me for a doll scene that I'd been wanting to do since the Fetish Fair Flea.  She was game, so I dropped her into trance and turned Daja into my ventriloquist's dummy.  My idea was to get Daja, who is well known for her talents as a brat, wisecracking and making fun of me.  It didn't actually turn out very well; I hadn't really considered that Daja, while she is always up for a little playful fun, really doesn't do rude, and asking her to make fun of someone she knows and is friendly with was asking too much.  Still, it was a very interesting game to play; I just need to work on my technique and choose a better way to get the response that I want.

Other than that learning opportunity, the class went very well.  Lex and AmHypnotic have very different styles from mine, so the variety of approaches was highly entertaining.  They also have delightfully wicked, playful senses of humor (something I can appreciate) that came out during the various demos.  As we were running low on time, I spied Unidragon at the back of the room and invited her to come up for a demo of my famous Five-Point Palm Exploding Orgasm Technique.  We did the technique and then, because I know she loves to play with this sort of thing, I deliberately suggested that her own subconscious would decide exactly when that trigger would wear off.  She had no conscious idea of what her subconscious had decided, so of course we had to test it periodically throughout the weekend.  (So far we know that it lasted at least through the end of NEEHU.)

Next, I was scheduled for a mentored trance practice.  At first I was the only hypnotist there, but I was soon joined by WhisperOfPleasure so we were able to work with several people right up to the start of the Meet 'n' Greet.  By then Dani had joined me (she was unable to attend during the day because of another commitment) so we had fun with friends, watched Daja eat strawberries (an inside joke), and socialized until dinner.

After dinner was the Friday night party, which this year was themed A Taste of Hypnokink.  Dani and I were on duty in the back room doing dual inductions, as were our friends DJ Pynchon and WildNutmeg.  Dani and I gave several people tastes of the dual induction technique, and then had some time to play around a little ourselves.  I borrowed WildNutmeg to give Dani a dual induction and erotic trance, then we returned the favor by doing the same for WildNutmeg.  Another friend came by with his partner to have me do a dual induction with him for her, and we made sure that she enjoyed it fully.  Later on, LeadPrism and I performed a dual induction and suggestion session with SashasTrance which brought joy to my auditory heart.  ;^)

We stayed busy enough that we missed all of the other scenes and group trances that were done during the party, but I wouldn't have missed any of the scenes we did for anything.

Saturday

Saturday started slowly for me; we barely made it to the Society in time for the 10am classes. Fraulein was ready for "Erotic Hypnosis 101." I'd chosen Fraulein a random from a number of volunteers, and as luck would have it she was an excellent choice.  She brought the perspective of an empowered, experienced bottom into the class and added a lot; the biggest problem we had was keeping to time (we had to rush the demo).

Right after that, my friend and graduated student CalamityBrain joined me to present "Your Hypnotic Self," a class for beginning hypnotists on developing their own voice and style.  Calamity is a professional voice actress, so she was able to provide a lot of good advice on vocal training and care, and again we found ourselves running short on time before material.  Which is always better than the alternative.

The third Saturday slot was free for me, so I took advantage of the chance to see Mr. Dream and D'Artagnan do their talk on "Making Mistakes Work for You."  They had great chemistry and a good crowd, and the class went extremely well.

After lunch it was time for "Subtle Suggestion," the class on using NLP with erotic hypnosis.  I've now given this MEEHU, WEEHU, and NEEHU plus a separate night at The Society in October and it's still popular.  Unidragon was on hand, so I picked on her to be my demo volunteer (unsurprisingly, all I had to do was ask).  In the process she acquired another trigger, one that causes an intense burst of arousal, and for the fun of it I again gave her subconscious mind control over how long that trigger would continue to work for me.  (Again, at least through Sunday.)

Thanks to the expanded schedule, I had three hours before I had to teach again.  I'd planned on observing some other classes, but as often happens at NEEHU plans change.  I ended up working with some people individually, doing some coaching and mentoring, and only actually made it to Daja and SpiralTurquoise's class on "Hypnotizing a Brat."  That was a highly entertaining presentation with a lot of good material in it.

My last class of the day was "What's Depth Got to Do With It?"  This was a new class for NEEHU, taking the concept of depth and reframing it a bit.  I've done classes before on why depth is overrated, and on how to get someone really, really deep; this one was about how to determine whether someone is responsive enough and able to do a given type of suggestion by using 'trial balloon' suggestions as simple tools.  My demo volunteer was Amitus, who dropped so deeply right off the bat that it made the demo look easy.  Not that there's anything wrong with that!

After dinner came the play party.  The Saturday party is open to all Society members, so it tends to be loud, crowded, and mostly focused on non-hypnotic BDSM play.  Dani and I put in an appearance, spent some quality geek time with HypnoMaestro and SpiralTurquoise, but found very little hypnosis going on and called it a night.

Sunday

Lots of people were a little slow getting started Sunday, as is often the case.  Quite a few people turned up at 10am for mentored trance practice, though; luckily for me a few hypnotists did as well, so we were able to work with pretty much everyone who came.  There were some really satisfying breakthroughs for people, which always makes me very happy.

My 11am period was free and I had intended to go to a discussion panel, but I ended up instead doing an impromptu demonstration of the Esdaile state with Daja in the unconference space.  It was definitely time well spent.  By the time I had Daja awake enough to be functional (which is about as good as you can get on Sunday of NEEHU) it was time for the Writer's Roundtable.  Chewtoy and DreamsOfControl were unable to be there, so SpiralTurqoise and I led the discussion together.  We spent most of the time discussing fiction writing techniques and tips, and the group seemed to get a lot out of it.

The last class period of the day I had the "Induction Swap Meet," which is designed to be a see-one/do-one exchange of people's favorite inductions.  We had a good turnout for this one, and there were several interesting techniques brought out for the group.  I especially liked D'Artagnan's, which involved an imaginary, moving fixation object.  I think we also found a new Fet name for one of the attendees, who invented on the spot an induction he called "Mind Finger."  (Cue the James Bond music ... now!)  At the end I got to demonstrate a non-verbal induction with SuzanneSxySadist, someone I always want to see more of at these things.

Usually my NEEHU ends with the last class on Sunday, but this year Dani had to fly home early (and we are both grateful to DaSade for getting her to the airport while I was teaching) and I did not want to sit around by myself, so I joined the mass invasion of the Chinese restaurant near the Hyatt House. The staff was overwhelmed as usual, but it was nice to hang out with PhotoJoseph, BostonBond, MissIsis, and others.

I couldn't participate in the traditional Sunday night hot tub hang-out, so I went directly to the volunteer suite where I met up with Lex, Lizzidoll, and several others to start the post-NEEHU party there.  There were hijinks aplenty in that suite as more and more people arrived, and once there were a number of willing volunteers around I played a game I'd been hatching in my head since clean-up time.

First, I took Lizzidoll down into a nice, deep trance state and stood her up.  Then I walked her around to several other people and just had her stare into their eyes while in trance.  One by one, my volunteers locked eyes with Lizzidoll and faded into trance.  (There's an actual scientific reason for this, by the way -- mirror neurons, the bits in the brain that allow us to imitate behavior to learn.  They fire off all the time when we observe things, so when we stare down someone who is already in trance part of our brain automatically starts to follow them in.)  It was ridiculously hot and fun to watch.  Then, for the fun of it, I woke Lizzidoll and showed her the results of her handiwork:  five deeply hypnotized people just standing around, still and quiet.  And then, since she had done the hypnotizing, I had Lizzidoll walk around and bring everyone back out.

Listening to Lizzidoll's voice as she brought the others out of trance inspired a slightly selfish impulse on my part.  I dropped Lizzidoll again, then suggested that she lock eyes with me, and when my eyes closed she would emerge from trance and take over.  I was actually surprised at how deeply I dropped, even knowing how the technique works, and I quite enjoyed having Lizzidoll's deliciously sexy voice (and British accent) in my ear as she let me drift for a minute or so before bringing me back up.  The joy in her face, and in her voice as she told Lex how she had dropped Wiseguy, made this little game the highlight of my NEEHU.

There were many more hijinks to be had, and I stayed up way too late, which made for a very happy Wiseguy.

Monday

I set the alarm early for Monday so I would have time to gather my things and get on the road.  Lex had mentioned that he and Lizzidoll would be leaving around 8, so I made sure to be down in time to say goodbye.  There were many hugs, and a little more hypnotic horseplay (not literally), and every time I started to go back upstairs more people came down to say goodbye to.

Finally I did make it back upstairs long enough to throw my stuff into the suitcase and load it into the car.  MissIsis and I were joined by SashasTrance, who needed to be in Baltimore for a few days, so the trip home was fun and full of great talk and companionship.

Let's see, MEEHU is what?  4 months away?  Hurry up!!

NEEHU 6 preview

NEEHU 6 is almost here, and it's going to be awesome.

This year's NEEHU features an expanded schedule, with classes all day on Friday as well as the usual Saturday and Sunday.  With more class slots to fill, the organizers have been exerting themselves to get new topics on the schedule and new presenters into the fold.

My contribution to that new-blood effort was to take on some co-presenters.

• Fraulein Fuksalot will be joining me for Erotic Hypnosis 101 (Saturday 10am).  She will bring an experienced bottom's perspective to the class.
• Calamity Brain will be my co-presenter for Your Hypnotic Self (Saturday 11am).  She is a self-taught hypnotist who became professionally certified last year as part of my inaugural NGH training class and brings a lot to the table.  
• For Kinky Human Tricks (Friday 2pm), I'll be sharing the stage with AmHypnotic (aka "Connecticut Pete"), Lex of Entrancement UK, and probably a number of demo volunteers.

Aside from these, I'll be doing a few classes by myself still:

• The Art of Teaching Hypnosis, Friday at 11am
• Subtle Suggestion, Saturday at 2pm
• What's Depth Got To Do With It?, Saturday at 6pm
• Induction Swap Meet, Sunday at 3pm

I'll also be doing Mentored Trance Practice sessions on Friday at 4pm and Sunday at 10am and participating in the Writer's Roundtable on Sunday at noon.  

This is actually a pretty light schedule for me, which means I'll have more time than I usually do to take in other peoples' classes, socialize, and be available for people who want individual coaching or play time.  I'm looking forward to that.

See you in Hartford!

-wg

Erotic Hypnosis at the Fetish Fair Flea

Besides Valentine's Day, this weekend is also the date for NELA's Fetish Fair Fleamarket in Warwick, RI.  In addition to the usual dizzying array of vendors and community groups in attendance, this year's Flea will also have an Erotic Hypnosis track among the classes.

Here's the lineup:

• Bodywork Techniques for BDSM with ZanyM
  Friday 9:45pm, Greenwich room
  
• Erotic Hypnosis 101 with Wiseguy
  Saturday 10:45am, Greenwich
  
• Intro to Hypnotic Bondage with MrDream
  Saturday 2:45pm, Greenwich
  
• Hypnokink Mentored Workshop 
  led by MrDream, with ZanyM and Wiseguy assisting
  Saturday 6:15pm, Wickford
  
• Your Hypnotic Self with Wiseguy
  Saturday, 9:45pm (Rotunda)
  
• HypnoDolly Genderfuck Playtime! with ZanyM
  Sunday 11:45am (Greenwich)

The weather forecast for this weekend in New England is nasty, but I hope you'll come join us.

Professional Hypnotherapy Training, 2015

That's right ... he's doing it again!  The professional certification course I gave in the fall went so well that I've decided to offer it again this spring.

The course is a 100-hour distance learning course in professional hypnotherapy.  At the end of the course those who complete the final (a practical exam/exercise, not a written test) will become professionally certified through the National Guild of Hypnotists.  NGH certification is the most widely recognized professional hypnosis credentials in the field.

Whether you've been hypnotizing people for years or aren't sure which end of the pocket watch to hold, this course will teach you how to be a successful professional hypnotist.  Topics covered in the course include:

• Setting the stage for success with a good pretalk
• Twenty different hypnotic inductions, each of which gets dissected and explained
• How to know if you've got enough depth for what you intend to do
• Basics of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and how to incorporate NLP into your hypnosis work
• Proven strategies for dealing with the most common client issues, including
• Smoking cessation
• Weight loss
• Stress management
• Helping with fears, phobias, and anxieties
• Hypnotic pain management
• Tips and tricks for giving live presentations and demos
• How to start and build a successful hypnotherapy practice

This is serious professional-grade training, but -- largely because I don't have to rent a physical classroom -- the tuition is only $1295, which includes your first year of NGH membership dues.  Email me to get on the student mailing list and find out more about it.

TES Workshop Recap

I really should've posted about this before it happened.  My lame and vague excuse is mundane-life commitments and a Wiseguy project that's taking longer than I expected.  (More on that when it's further along.)

Yesterday sleepingirl and I put on our tag-team workshop for The Eulenspiegel Society in New York.  Fundamentally, it was the same plan we originally had for our October appearance in Amherst MA:  Erotic Hypnosis 101, followed by separate breakout sessions for tops and bottoms, followed by mentored practice time.  TES scheduled four hours for us.

TES does an amazing job at promoting and coordinating these events.  We had a full room (I didn't count heads, but it looked like between 50 and 75 to me), and the people were in a great frame of mind for learning and play.  We owe a huge thanks to ZanyM and Mephki for putting it together, to MrDream for his opening remarks and support, and to TES in general for being awesome.  ZanyM in particular found us a second room so that sleepingirl and I wouldn't be talking over each other during the breakout part of the workshop.

The feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive.  Sleepingirl was her usual awesome self.  I actually spent the practice hour working with a group of bottoms who had no tops, but fortunately several friends were on hand to help coach people during that hour.

After the event there was a small party at Mephki's apartment, where I got to make some new friends and discover kinky uses for a variety of seemingly innocent objects.  I would have loved to stay in New York longer, but I had obligations at home today and tomorrow.

Next time.

-wg

Class of 2014

This past weekend (November 22-23) marked the conclusion of my first professional certification class.  As of now, there are twelve newly-certified professional hypnotherapists ready to start offering their services.  I didn't ask permission to name them, so I won't, but if any of them want to announce themselves, either in comments here or somewhere else, I'll help spotlight them.

I have to say, the class was a lot of work.  Each of the 25 instructional units had to be designed and planned from scratch, and I've been making notes since the first day on how to do it better next time.  The group was incredibly patient as we worked through our technical glitches and always ready to offer suggestions and to bring new things to the table for everyone's benefit.  That all by itself was a magical thing.

With all that work done and improvement ideas noted, it would be a shame not to make use of it.  So there will definitely be another online professional certification class in the spring.  It will probably start in April, after NEEHU 6, and run through June.

I'm unspeakably proud of everyone in this group.  Some of them had a lot of prior hypnosis experience from doing erotic mind play and had to make some adjustments to adapt their style to vanilla hypnotherapy.  They all made that adjustment well, and the sometimes-grueling final exams (they had to do a live hypnotherapy session with a volunteer client) proved to me that these are some fine hypnotists in and out of the dungeon.  It's an honor to be their teacher.

Weekend Wrap-up

So ... as you probably noticed from the last couple of short posts, it was a busy weekend for me and sleepingirl.  Now, I have time for a more relaxed description of what went down.

Our first official stop was at a college in Amherst, MA.  (I'd love to plug them, but the contract they had me sign actually forbids me doing so without written permission, which I neglected to get.  There are several colleges in Amherst.)  We were invited by a student group that promotes education and healthy discussion of sexuality, kink, and related issues.

We found the venue without too much confusion and met our hosts, then proceeded to set up the space.  Our plan was to do a three-part program.  First, I would do Erotic Hypnosis 101 for the whole group.  Then we would divide the group into tops and bottoms and have sleepingirl take the bottoms to another room for a talk on negotiation (from the bottom side), safety, and being a better hypno-bottom while I worked with the hypnotists on negotiation from the top, safety and ethics, and tips and tricks for developing your hypnotic style and presence.  Then we would rejoin the groups for some mentored practice time.

Things didn't quite work out that way.  The space really only had one room of usable size, so we hastily planned out how to manage that.  Then the turnout was a lot less than we were expecting because of a schedule conflict (Parents' Weekend), so it turned into a much smaller group than planned.  That actually helped, because it made it very easy to tailor our presentations closely to the interests of that group.  For example, most of the group were switches, so we abandoned the split-up-into-two idea and simply took turns discussing aspects from both sides of the watch.  The group was curious and full of great questions so we did a lot of demonstration and Q&A, and because they were much younger than the usual EEHU audience they didn't have a lot of first-hand experience, so we spent more time on basic techniques like different types of inductions.  In the end, while we didn't do a lot of what we originally planned, we did give them what they needed and everyone left happy.  I'm looking forward to returning in the spring.

The next event on our schedule was at The Society in Hartford CT.  The Society is the venue for NEEHU, of course, so I'm very familiar with the space.  The staff were wonderfully welcoming and a lot of good friends were there -- DaSade, sleepingirl and cckitten, AmHypnotic and MentalConfetti, LeeAllure, CalamityBrain, Decordazon, MrDream and ZanyM, Setsudo, and more.  The Master Charles room filled up with people, most of whom I did not know.  That meant I would be introducing new people to the erotic hypnosis community, which is always exciting.

The topic for the night was Subtle Suggestion:  Combining NLP and Hypnosis.  It's one that I've done a couple of times now but is still very much a work in progress.  For the Society, I expanded the NLP material and did some simple exercises with the group before moving into the integration with hypnosis.  The crowd was great; they participated, they played, they were lively and interested, and we had a great time.  An exhausted sleepingirl was kind enough to be one of my demo bottoms (she knows how much I love playing with her mind), and I was fortunate to meet Mistress Rheea and do some demonstrations with her as well.

As it happens, one of the people who came to that class was Enlightenment14 (FetLife name).  We talked before and after class, and he arranged for me to do a guest spot on Valley Free Radio (WXOJ, 103.3FM) the very next morning.  I called in and talked to Rick Haggerty for about 30 minutes about erotic hypnosis, the community, and of course Mind Play.  We didn't actually get to the NLP aspects, but from what I've heard so far the community who heard the broadcast was pleased.

If you didn't hear it, you can download or stream the audio of that show from their archive site.  My spot is during the second hour, from 9:15 to 9:45 (which would be 1:15-1:45 of the recording).

It was a great weekend.  Sleepingirl is a rock star for all the right reasons -- she is frank, very sharp, supremely talented, and really understands the nuances of being kinky, bottoming, and teaching.  I loved co-presenting with her, and I hope we can do it more often.

More weekend coolness!

Sleepingirl's and my visit to Amherst went delightfully well -- so much so that I fully intend to return to Amherst next year.  They are a great group of people.

We had a fantastic turnout at The Society for my NLP and Hypnosis class, which was a further-developed form of my "Subtle Suggestion" class.  It was great to reunite with dear friends that I see far too infrequently, and to start hatching a few plans for the interval before NEEHU 6 in March.

As it happens, I'm squeezing in one more appearance while I'm in town.  One of the people who came to class tonight invited me to be a guest on Valley Free Radio for tomorrow morning's "Kickin' It for Peace, Culture, & Education" show.  The show runs from 8-10am Eastern time; I will be on during the 9-10 hour talking about erotic hypnosis and NLP.  The station streams online, so if you aren't in the Florence, MA area you can listen through the website.

-wg

This Weekend

I'll be in New England this weekend (October 25) doing two appearances.

First, in the afternoon, the always-delightful sleepingirl and I are doing a 3-hour erotic hypnosis workshop for edu.kink, an organization in Amherst, MA that does weekly workshops on various aspects, of sex, sexuality, and kink.  We'll be presenting Erotic Hypnosis 101, then splitting the group so that sleepingirl can give specific advice to hypnotees while I do the same with the hypnotists.  Then we reunite the groups for mentored practice time.

Next, we drop in on The Society in Hartford, CT for an evening class on erotic NLP and hypnosis.  This is a class I've done at MEEHU and WEEHU 2, and it's still evolving so it will be different from either of those.  The class takes place during a play party (I believe we start at 9pm but I'm not positive), which is open to members of the Society and their escorted guests.  There is a door fee of $20 for non-members, who must have a member with them.

Can't wait to see New England again!

-wg

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

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

NGH Certification Update

My first NGH certification class is a go.  We have enough people committed that I can go ahead and invest time and energy into planning the 100-hour class, getting my WebEx account set up and tested, and all the other background preparations.

People who contacted me about the class received a draft syllabus over the weekend.  We'll be covering a lot of material on hypnosis, hypnoanalysis, NLP, practice building, ethics and standards ... and a bunch of other miscellaneous things to boot.

There are still slots available, so if you're interested in becoming a certified professional hypnotist email me for the latest details.

MEEHU Recap: Sunday

It was a long, long Saturday at MEEHU and a short Saturday night.  That was unusual for me -- usually Dani and I go off by ourselves, play with each other, and turn in before the party even slows down (meaning, while it's still Saturday night).  This year I stayed up late and played with people, so Sunday morning I was as zombified as everyone else.  A common bond.  ;^)

We had breakfast, during which I was playfully cajoled into doing a little hypno-bondage and a slow freeze on people sitting nearby.  Then a large segment of us trooped into the first classroom to see Dr. Cunning Linguist, a nationally-known teacher of hypnosis and NLP, present on Erotic NLP.  Dr. CL is new to the community (but not to the topic), and he was his usual engaging, humorous self.  The class covered some of the basics of NLP and included a couple of enlightening demos, but he didn't really address the erotic applications until the very end.  People enjoyed the presentation, but there was some honest feedback buzz about the lack of erotic content.  I made mental notes for my own class, which had been moved to Sunday afternoon.

After Dr. CL I had a free period -- well, a period in which I wasn't teaching.  I had some people looking for one-on-one time to ask questions or get pointers, so I spent the period doing that.  Lunch time on the schedule was noon and the menu was lasagna; I don't eat pasta these days, so I figured I'd slip out and grab a Culver's burger while I was in the Midwest.

Fortunately I ran into Mephki on my way out.  She stopped me and said that because of equipment issues in the kitchen, the 1pm classes were all being moved to noon -- meaning now -- and lunch would be at 1.  Being Dr. Mephki, she also asked me if I had eaten and when I admitted I hadn't she brought me a bowl of nice, pasta-free chicken breast.  (Thank you again, Mephki!)

And so I shifted gears and taught Confusion Inductions.  I tranced the room using Terence Watts' From Five to Nine, which NEEHU-goers quickly labeled the "office supplies" induction.  Then Lady Mesmer was kind enough to volunteer for me to demonstrate a rapid confusion induction using a pair of Chinese meditation balls.  For the finale, I pulled out something I had discovered on my bookshelf a week or so before and found too fascinating not to use for this class:  The Mystifying Induction, from Handbook of Hypnotic Inductions by Gafner and Benson (ISBN 0-393-70324-X).  I've had this book for a decade plus and had totally forgotten about this delightfully, almost sadistically, confusing induction.  I delivered it from an outline and notes and dropped my volunteer plus several audience members.

During the rescheduled lunch time I went over my outline for a new class, "Subtle Suggestion."   It's about why and how to combine NLP and hypnosis for scenes.  As I was finishing up, I overheard Felix Krull asking my neighbor SweetGasp to come join his panel on remote hypnosis, as several people who had planned to be there on the panel were unavailable.  SweetGasp had not had lunch yet and, thanks to Mephki, I had, so I took Gasp's place to give her a chance to get food.  With Felix leading and my voice starting to fade out (not in a good way), I let Spiral Turqoise, MissIsis, and Rose_Spells do the majority of the talking.

Next came the highlight of my teaching day:  Subtle Suggestion.  To my absolute delight, one of my favorite trance play partners was right there in front; her presence meant the demo I wanted to do would very likely work exactly as I had hoped.

NLP makes heavy use of anchors -- the ability to elicit an emotional state and then tie it to an unrelated touch, gesture, object, word, or whatever so that when that item/gesture is repeated later the emotional state comes back automatically.  So I used my introduction to elicit a state of arousal, desire, lust, and pleasure, and anchored that state to myself and to the empty chair in front of me.  Then, as I explained how NLP works and why one might use it in conjunction with conventional erotic hypnosis, I manufactured as many opportunities as I could to use words like pleasure, arousal, erotic, desire, and such.  Each time I said one of those key words, I tapped the back of the empty chair.  I watched my front row and I could tell that several of them were showing signs of interest in the chair.  I chose the most responsive one and had her come sit in the chair.  From my vantage point behind the chair I couldn't see her face when she sat down, but I did see her shudder.  All that anchoring was doing exactly what I wanted.  All it took was a few indirect suggestions to induce a good, strong orgasm.

As my demo volunteer started to orgasm, I instinctively did what I always do in demos like that -- I put my hands on her upper arms to make sure she didn't fall over.  And it occurred to me that this is also a powerful way to create an anchor, which created what we like to call a Teachable Moment.  I let my volunteer finish her orgasm and recover for a minute, then I explained to the class that when someone experiences a powerful emotional state, an innocent touch as that emotion peaks can become an anchor that triggers the emotional state when used.  And I placed my hands on her upper arms again.  She shuddered and moaned all over again, right on cue, and I gave her another orgasm.  (And in the process held her up, as I always do, until she gasped out, "Will you please take your hands off my shoulders!?" -- she couldn't stop coming while I was inadvertently still firing the anchor.  So I moved my hands to the tops of her shoulders instead until she was steady in the chair again.)

I actually hadn't prepared enough material -- we finished up 20 minutes early, so I did some general Q&A and then it was time for the final class of the day, "All the Way Down."  This is the class I first did at NEEHU 5, about taking someone ridiculously deep and why that can be awesome.  Since Dani was not at the con I recruited a demo bottom from the San Francisco contingent.  The class was smaller than the others, which helped because my projected speaking voice was pretty much shot; all I had left was the hypno-voice, which doesn't carry well.  My volunteer performed admirably, going into the Esdaile state with ease and coming out again on cue (not something one can always take for granted when people go into that state because it feels so good).

There was a general plan to have a group dinner at a steak and seafood house up the street.  In the interim, I did some coaching and observing with another hypnotist and their demo bottom (really more observing than coaching -- the hypnotist knew what he was doing and just lacks confidence).  We had a lovely dinner and came back for an unscheduled, informal Sunday night play party while we still had exclusive access to the floor.  I did a couple of one-on-one sessions, one light-hearted and fun, the other a heavy impact hypno-flogging scene with multiple concurrent sensory illusions going along with it.  At one point my scene partner panted, "Are you sure you're not a sadist?"  I told her I'm not, but I can play one for a short scene.  ;^)

I wandered down to the Rainbow Room, where a game of Hypnotic Truth or Dare was in progress.  Lee Allure goaded me (okay, it took very little goading!) into taking a turn or two, then we retired to a private place for an extended friendly talk, something we almost never get to do when we're in EEHU mode.  Come to think of it, parts of that talk are kind of hazy ... she may have exercised the blanket consent I've given her to play with my mind during down times.

With all the extracurricular play and the need to pack, I got exactly 2 hours of sleep Sunday night before it was time to get up and go catch a plane home.  During the flight, I amused myself by compiling a few meaningless statistics:

My MEEHU

• Classes/panels presented/joined:  10
• Private non-erotic hypnosis sessions done:  5
• Consultations:  2
• Copies of Mind Play sold:  12
• Hypnotic play dates:  6
• Casual hypno-encounters (short trances between classes):  17 estimated

That's not counting the people I hypnotized during classes for demo purposes.  No wonder my voice is shot.  But it was SOOOOOOO worth it!

Only 2 months until WEEHU!

MEEHU Recap: Saturday

For my first time at any EEHU, I was still up at the end of the play party.  Then I took the time to write yesterday's recap post, which made for a very short night.  Still, I managed to wake spontaneously 15 minutes before the alarm was set to go off; I took that as a cosmic nudge.

Downstairs in the breakfast area, the MEEHUvians were stirring.  I grabbed some eggs and made the rounds, saying good mornings and catching up with people.  Some time after 8 the meeting room was opened for us and, thanks to a misunderstanding with the hotel staff, the actual, intended MEEHU breakfast was served.  Oops!

Then started a very long, busy, happy day.  The room was packed for Erotic Hypnosis 101, and I was delighted to see a majority of the faces were people I didn't know or recognize -- newbies!!  I just love seeing the proof that this community is still growing.

During the 101 class it hit me that while I'd arranged to have a box of print copies of Mind Play shipped ahead for sale, there was no central vending table at MEEHU -- people were vending from their own rooms.  Which was fine, except that I wasn't going to be in mine 90 percent of the time.  SweetGasp saved me by very kindly adding my books to her vending area.  I so owe her a thank-you gift.

After the 101 we segued into Your Hypnotic Self.  Same room, many of the same people as 101.  It was substantially the same as the online class I presented in May on Hypbook, but I added a dash of NLP to help switches make the transition between top and bottom headspaces.

A free period at noon gave me an opportunity to wander and mingle with the people who weren't in classes.   I chatted with a few people and then slipped into Sleepingirl and Lady Mesmer's subjects roundtable to offer moral support.  I was joined by Dr. Cunning Linguist, who was getting to know the community.

At lunchtime I found Lee Allure and we plotted our afternoon session on dual inductions.  Then it was time for a mentored trance workshop.  Something like 40 people gathered to participate, but only one of them -- my friend Rita -- was an experienced hypnotist.  We, did some general questions and answers and then Rita helped me move through the group advising and coaching.  I ran into a group of people who had not actually had their first trances, either giving or receiving, yet so Rita ended up doing a lot of the circulating while I worked with the first-timers, teaching them the simple hand-drop induction.  The workshop went incredibly fast; I was actually about to start an induction on another first-timer when HypnoMaestro came in to point out that time was almost up and we needed to clear the room for the next class.  I gave the couple I was about to work with a virtual rain-check and moved on to my favorite class, Kinky Human Tricks.

Kinky Human Tricks is like a mini improv show; every time I do the class it is new and different, depending on the volunteers I get and the mood of the room.  This room was packed -- there were people standing in the doorway -- and the people playful, which is an awesome combination.  I started with my favorite "PLEAsuuuuuuuure!" trigger using a volunteer, and while I was establishing and exercising that trigger someone else, on whom I'd demonstrated that trigger at NEEHU, started writing too.  Her subconscious had apparently decided that it would be fun to re-activate the old trigger that had ended with NEEHU.  Spontaneous things like that are SO much fun!

We did some puppet play, using a teddy bear provided by Daja to control a pair of volunteer puppets, and moved into memory play.  A round of Pop Quiz led to Daja coming up to demonstrate the Blank trigger and the hypnotic teleport.  I love doing demos with Daja; her natural playful brattiness brings out mischievous side and we play off each other so well.  It's exhilarating and fun every time we do it.

Autumn HypnoTy made the supreme sacrifice of volunteering for the demonstration of my (in)famous Five-Point Palm Exploding Orgasm Technique.  Which was good, because I'd owed her a hypnotic orgasm at NEEHU and didn't get a chance to make good on it.  We can now mark that one Paid in Full.  ;^)

When KHT ended, there was an extended break before the next classes, which gave me some time to work with.  Daja brought someone to see me who wanted to try a confusion induction and asked me to do the honors; of course I was happy to do it.  Then I ran into my raincheck couple from earlier and took care of them, too.  Finally, I grabbed the NovaPro and took it to the Rainbow Room, where HypnosisEnthusiast was finishing up his hypno-improv workshop.  We set up the machine in DreamElf's room, and I gave her some instruction on how to use it and a sample "ride" of her own first, but I had play dates and really couldn't spend the evening babysitting the Nova Pro.

By the time I was finished, it was well into dinner time.  I grabbed some of Mephki's delicious pork ribs (no, not Mephki's actual ribs, you pervs!) and actually found Mephki herself in the lounge area eating.  Mephki is so busy at an EEHU that finding her sitting still is almost as common as a legitimate Bigfoot sighting, so I happily plotzed down near her so I could catch up with her.   We were joined by MissIsis and Dr. Cunning Linguist, which made for a delightful and relaxing dinner group.

The play party had already started, but I owed my love Dani a phone call so I was late to the party.  I had a couple of tentative "let's do something together" arrangements, one of which never came to be, and in the process ended up doing several more impromptu scenes with people, some coaching for a new hypnotist working with an experienced bottom, and then dropping in on DreamElf to find a hypnotic free-for-all in progress as a half-dozen people rapidly dropped, triggered, and messed with each other in a delightfully chaotic fashion.    She put the Nova Pro to very good use, which gave me a nice, warm, happy feeling.

I popped into the Red Room because I thought I'd seen Lee Allure there, but I was mistaken; the lady I found there looked sufficiently like Lee at a distance, but was one of the many first-timers at MEEHU.  And as it happened, she had not been hypnotized by anyone yet and really wanted to experience it.  Of course we took of that, and then talked about setting up a possible visit to Iowa to do a group class for them.  That would be fun to do.

At this point I'd been running nonstop for about 17 hours, talking for most of that either to a group or in hypnotizing individuals.  My voice was starting to go, and my body wanted to drop.  I said goodnight to the die-hard folks still wandering the hall and, now that this post is done, I'm going to finally let myself go to sleep.

A happy, contented, holy-crap-did-I-hypnotize-a-lot-of-people-today sleep.

-wg

MEEHU Recap, part 1

The first MEEHU easily measured up to the NEEHUs and WEEHU before it.  It was exciting, it was exhausting, it was intense, it was fun.  There were ups and downs, but thankfully far more ups than downs.

Thursday

Flew in to Midway in the mid afternoon.  MEEHU actually had activities scheduled for daytime Friday and I had promised to be on hand early.  The trip was a little bit of a bummer because, for the first EEHU ever, my sweet Dani was not with me.  She had to miss this one for work reasons, breaking her record of perfect EEHU attendance stretching all the way back to NEEHU 1.  

I met up with Setsudo at Midway.  We were supposed to also meet a friend of mine from Abu Dabi, but her flight was severely delayed -- as in, about 3 hours delayed.  We drove to the hotel and she ended up taking a cab later.

We arrived just in time to meet up with a large group of fellow attendees and join them for dinner at a nearby German restaurant.  Great food, authentic German music -- including, at one point, an Alp horn (huge wooden horn; you may see one and think "Riiiiiiiicolaaaaaaaaaaa!") -- and, as you'd expect from this group, awesome company.  I got to meet some people whom I'd only known online and reconnect with old friends.  It was a great start.

Friday

The hotel provided breakfast after a fashion.  People filed down, more now than there were for dinner.  My friend Rita was there, recovered from her flight ordeal, and I enjoyed introducing her around and seeing her connect with people I like and admire.  Then, a rare treat for me, an opportunity to attend the first unofficial class of the weekend, led by HypnoMaestro.  We riffed with hypnosis, played with hypnotic strawberries and Nutella, until it was time for lunch.

A large number of the group went out to lunch in Naperville, which is about 20 minutes away.  Things took a bit longer than expected, as can happen when 25 people converge on one spot and the staff isn't expecting it.  My 1:30 class, "The Art of Teaching Hypnosis," didn't actually have an audience until about 2:25.  So we did a compressed version of it so that we could hand over the room to Spiral Turquoise on time.

Turq led a very interesting discussion on the subjects of modeling consent and the relative merits of using pre-screened, pre-negotiated demo bottoms for demonstrations vs. picking volunteers on the fly.  There are, as you might expect, pros and cons to each and in the end the conclusion, as so often happens with hypnosis, was "it depends on the circumstances."  But talking about those circumstances, and having different experiences and ideas come out, was highly valuable.

I started to go to the Mentored Trance Practice to help out as a mentor, but part way up the hallway I encountered someone who was in a visibly agitated state.  She was having an anxiety incident and needed care, so I took her into a nearby room, sat her down in a comfy chair, and went into hypnotherapist mode until she felt better.

In between all this, a plot was formed.  Miss Sasha, an old friend of HypnoMaestro's and someone I'd met a couple of years ago, was at her first EEHU and had an idea for a role-playing scene she wanted to do.  She needed two men she felt comfortable enough with to describe the scene, and she chose me and LeadPrism.  The scenario sounded fun and interesting -- an interrogation scene, with Prism and myself as the interrogators.  We went out for dinner to discuss and negotiate details.

We got back to the hotel just in time for HypnosisEnthusiast's stage show.  Eighty people packed into the room for the show, which was up to HE's usual standards of quality and fun.   And, to makes things that much better, Sasha was in the show.  So when it ended she was highly fractionated; Prism and I took advantage of this to hypnotically waylay her (with prior consent) and do the interrogation scene.

That scene blew my mind, in the best ways.  It was my first experience co-topping with a male, and his first as well.  We played off each other quite successfully, with me as Bad Cop and Prism as Worse Cop.  We had a list of Sasha's hot buttons, pressed them all plus discovered a couple of new ones, and the result was a scene that left us all very happy.

After the scene and aftercare I was going to join people in the social space, when I encountered Confessor_K in the hallway.  We'd talked the night before at dinner about hypnotic amnesia; she was interested in experiencing that.  So we ducked into my room, leaving the door open, and had some fun with memory play.  K is amazingly talented, and took to short-term amnesia easily.  We had a great time playing Pop Quiz, teleporting her around the room, and causing my shirt to change colors spontaneously.  It wasn't an illusion -- I actually had several shirts of the same style but different colors; I simply froze K's mind in mid sentence, changed my shirt, moving my pen and glasses to the pocket, returned to my original position and unfroze her.  To K it appeared as if my shirt kept changing color.

We did ultimately join the larger gathering in the social space for a bit and then I called it a night.  A freakin' AWESOME night.  ;^)

NGH Certification

I alluded to this in my previous post, but it's time for more details.  (Yay!)

This fall I will be offering the full National Guild of Hypnotists certification course in hypnosis/hypnotherapy.  Students who complete the course will be certified by NGH and qualified to practice hypnotism professionally.  The course is 100 hours of instruction, including roughly 80 hours of classroom time and a minimum 20 hours of between-session assignments and observed practice.  Topics covered include:

• When, and when not, to use hypnosis
• Lots of inductions, deepeners, and emergings (of course!)
• Forming effective suggestions
• Handling abreactions
• Advanced hypnotic techniques including:
• Age regression
• Parts regression ("parts therapy")
• Time line
• Specific approaches to the most common requested therapies:
• Smoking cessation
• Weight loss
• Stress management
• Basics of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), including how to integrate NLP and hypnosis together
• How to start, manage, and grow a professional hypnosis business
• How to teach an adult-ed style self-hypnosis class
• Since I am only offering this distance learning course to the erotic hypnosis community, we will be able to include additional material that is not part of the NGH standard curriculum, if you get my meaning.

My class will be offered online as a distance learning course.  We will "meet" online for 10 class days, scheduled on 5 non-consecutive weekends, using a web video conferencing service.  In order to participate you will need a computer -- Linux, Mac, or Windows, though iOS and Android tablets may also work -- with web cam, microphone, and speakers.  A good headset is recommended.  You will also need volunteer "clients" that you can practice with, sometimes live and sometimes recorded.  When you pass the final exam, which is practical in nature (you will demonstrate your skill by working with a volunteer), you receive a certificate from NGH identifying you as a Certified Hypnotist (or Hypnotherapist).

The tuition for this course is $1295 per student.  Included with that are your first year's membership dues in NGH and a package containing the class manuals, sample promotional material, and DVD videos on practice building, promotion/marketing, motivation, and demonstrations from well-known NGH instructors. I may also add a couple of things to that package.

Email me (wiseguy35@gmail.com) to get yourself signed up.  As long as we have at least four I'll hold the class starting in mid September 2014.  It's going to be an exciting adventure for everyone who participates.

-wg