3: What is hypnosis?
The question on everyone’s mind; the question that everyone wants or has a different answer to. GleefulAbandon points out that hypnokink is a bit of a strange activity in that mostly, we enter into kink or sex knowing what things like spanking, kissing, and bondage are. Hypnosis is much more difficult to define.
The best way to think of this question is as a philosophical one—one that people have been trying to suss out for centuries. “Hypnosis” is not a physical thing that we can hold, nor are there rigid rules of how to do it or how it behaves. While we’ll talk about it here, it’s absolutely OK (and even a mark of proficiency) to feel like you don’t quite have it figured out!
But for our purposes, let’s talk a little bit about it.
“Hypnosis” is the term used to refer to both a “trance state” as well as the entire process and practice of messing around with someone’s head, such as giving “suggestions” (even without formally invoking “trance!”).
Hypnosis is a broad practice where we try to understand the existing ingredients and ways that a person’s brain works so that we can play with all elements of their psychology as though they are an instrument.
The basic process of hypnosis is making suggestions that open a person to a more nuanced or different focus on their body/mind or something outside of them—and that awareness leads to the capacity to change perception with other suggestions. We can do this with any form of communication: words (verbal or written) and even body language and nonverbal touch.
When someone experiences changes in their perception, that may correspond with changes in their perspective and capabilities (like their focus, imagination, sensory systems, and beliefs). Someone in trance might really be feeling their body relaxing, which might open them up more to suggestions involving being physically “stuck,” or focusing on other bodily sensations. Or, perhaps a hypnotist is taking someone through a fantasy of being someone else—the subject might feel like they’re able to take on qualities of that imaginary person!
“Trance” is what we might call an “altered state” that someone goes into when we hypnotize them, where they might experience differences in the way they feel and think. But don’t worry about whether or not hypnosis is formally an “altered state”; psychologists have been debating this for decades, and while it’s an interesting exercise to consider, for our purposes “altered state” can simply refer to how different someone feels when they’re playing with hypnosis.
There isn’t one singular “hypnotic state” with rigid boundaries or defined qualities, and a special state of any kind isn’t necessary to affect someone’s mind in an amazing way as we do in hypnosis. And since trance is not quantifiable (despite what Google might tell you), we want to focus on those dynamic collections of feelings—like sensations or mental changes, and what they mean to you or your partner. The person feeling them is the most important source!
TL;DR, hypnosis is:
Using any kind of communication to play with someone’s focus, thoughts, and feelings as tools to make people experience amazing things.
It’ll be easier to understand once we talk about how to do it :)
