Hypnosis this, MC that

First, thanks to Deep Helix for pointing me toward Scott Adams' blog post about hypnosis. I had no idea that Dilbert's creator was trained in the field, but he's written a fantastic analysis of it. I suppose you might consider it a little spoilery in places, if you don't want to know how hypnosis does what it does, but all in all it's fascinating. Here are a few (non-spoilery) choice quotes:

I describe the state of hypnosis as acquiring a power. The subject has all of his regular faculties operating plus he gains some more, if he has no objection to those new powers.

About one person in five can experience what hypnotists call “the phenomena.” For those people, their powers of imagination become so strong it is almost indistinguishable from reality. Those are the people who can give birth without pain, or see an elephant in the room, or eat an onion and think it’s an orange, or have multiple orgasms on suggestion. My name for that group is “lucky bastards.”

Some people have a problem with the idea of hypnosis because they don’t want someone else having control over them. That’s the wrong way to think of it. A hypnotist is more like a coach, or a tour guide. He shows the subject how to unlock his extra powers. He doesn’t “control” the subject. In fact, I’ve never known anyone who didn’t totally enjoy the feeling of being hypnotized. It’s like getting a pedicure on your brain. It’s deeply relaxing, and the hypnotist does all of the work. It feels a bit like being pampered.

I had already planned to make today's entry about my own hypnosis experiences, so Deep Helix's link makes a nice lead-in. I can't say I experience all the "phenomena" that Adams describes - and I really envy the people who do experience them - but at least hypnosis has made some deep, positive changes in my life. I've been going at this for roughly a year and a half now, and as a result of the suggestions in my morning and bedtime Virtual Hypnotist sessions, I feel happier, more confident, more in control of myself (especially my tongue), better able to see through people's manipulations, and better able to fall asleep at night. It's also fun, throughout the day, to think about the kinky secrets I'm keeping from my coworkers. ;-P

Now, from time to time I offer tips for use with Virtual Hypnotist, and here's another. I'm continuing to work on suggestions that will help me stop thinking and analyzing, so that I can just enjoy the depths of mindless bliss that feed my fetish (and help me wind down enough to sleep at night). The best I've come up with so far is this. I use the fact that I can't hear myself think, but I can hear the voice of the hypnotist (meaning the speech synthesizer - I'm still using "Mary in Stadium") and any music and/or recordings of my own voice chanting mantras, to make my own thoughts so insignificant that they almost disappear.

Here's what I mean. This is a screen grab from the text behind my morning session. I've chosen to give you the code, rather than the words alone, because this way you can see the various elements I added to get the most out of the speech synthesizer. If you're using VH and want to make the voice sound as natural as possible, you can drop this text into your own program and get very nice results (more tips along those lines here, of course).

Note: In my 100% nonprofessional opinion, it's very important that, if you use this suggestion, you make it clear that the effect will only work during trance. You certainly wouldn't want to be going about your daily business and realize, out of the blue, that you couldn't hear your own thoughts so you must not be able to think!

Now I'm off to update my VH tutorial, which I relocated to this blog not too long ago. It occurred to me that people who are interested in hypnosis but who aren't actually hypno/MC-kinky might find this site through Google and be put off by some of the other stuff in here...not least the "adult content" warning you get when you first click the link! Poor little vanillas. I'll do what I can to make them feel comfortable. ;-P