Subject Skills: The Active Mind

Subject Skills: The Active Mind by sleepingirl

By far one of the most common experiences reported by hypnotic subjects of all skill levels is the desire to shut off, slow down, or otherwise quiet their mental activity during hypnosis. Some people -- especially those new to hypnokink -- find thinking to be limiting during their trances; they feel that it causes them to not be getting the most out of their scenes. In this article, we’ll do a little mythbusting as well as explore some practical skills and exercises to work better with your own active mind.

The Myth

Many subjects who have been involved in the hypnosis community for any length of time have had to go through a process of reconciling their own expectations about trance. The desire and expectation going in is one of seeking mindlessness, blank-mindedness, or a distinct reduction of “thinking.” Whether from media, porn, or even the erotic community’s romanticization of hypnosis, there is a strong association between trance and inactivity in the mind.

This is one of the first things that subjects are told when they run into this as a roadblock: “You won’t necessarily have a blank mind in trance.” This is true; the trance experience is one that varies widely, because hypnosis is not a singular state with easily definable qualities. Certainly, tempering our expectations there is a necessary thing to do if we want to enjoy hypnosis to the best of our abilities.

But that is much easier said than done when we have often been trained and taught that we need to think less to enjoy ourselves. And besides this, even if thinking less isn’t necessary, sometimes it’s still the goal. As we go through this article, we’ll be reconciling the best of both worlds -- letting go of our expectations of “thinking” being a bad thing while also learning how to get the experiences we want. To do this, we need to dig into the experience of thought, and we need to be realistic in our understanding of what hypnosis does as well as how the mind works.

What Is Thinking/Active Mind?

The question of what “thinking” is is a complex one that draws upon much-discussed areas of psychology and philosophy, as well as subjectivity. Our experience of thought is a combination of “verbal” inner monologue, gut or unconscious reactions/judgments, spontaneous memories or abstract ideas surfacing, visualizations or imaginative experiences, concept formation and understanding, attentiveness, and much more. The only way to stop all of these processes is to stop all activity in the brain -- something we cannot (and do not want to) do with hypnosis.

The human experience of thinking is not simply our inner monologue -- the thing that many subjects wish would “shut up.” All of these aspects of thought are interconnected, so even when that or another part of our internal activity slows down, there will always be some form of processing going on. Subjectively, this can make it very difficult to feel as though we are no longer thinking, and each of these processes can feel different to us and “trigger” to us as different feelings. We can conceptualize what it feels like to be thinking as one of awareness and attention on all of these processes, as well -- a sort of meta experience.

Hypnosis can affect all of these processes, but not necessarily in a predictable way, and certainly not always in a reductive way. On the contrary, hypnosis tends to facilitate mental processing -- when you go into trance or hear your partner talk, your brain can get active in the way that it’s making judgments and spontaneous associative thoughts and experiences. These processes facilitate response to suggestion.

For example, if a hypnotist tells you that your legs are relaxing, your attention will naturally turn to your body to observe what’s happening. The very action of creating that “relaxed” feeling is something that your brain is doing in combination with your body, and so are the judgments you make about it: “This is happening,” “this feels good,” or “am I feeling this?” Your mind is also making conscious or unconscious associations with things that you’ve experienced in your past, in hypnosis or outside of it. All of these elements and more can either have perceptually positive or negative experiences as you go through trance.

A Note on ADHD/“Analytical” Types

It is commonly stated that there are specific techniques or steps to follow when you have ADHD or are otherwise neurodivergent, when you are “analytical,” when you are an “emotional type” or any other box that you may be put in. For the most part, this type of prescriptive labeling is not very helpful, and we will not be addressing any direct solutions or exercises in this way.

The reality is that everyone thinks and processes differently. ADHD, for example, has a lot of variance in the way that it manifests; not every ADHD person presents the same or has the same patterns. Diagnoses like this -- whether from oneself or from a professional -- are used to be a guideline for how to manage daily life. They do not and cannot accurately or specifically describe a person’s individual process. Doctors make choices about treatment and medication based on symptoms, individual strengths and challenges, etc. While there may be some common patterns and some similarities between people, ADHD or other labels do not define the whole of a person and the way that they think. If we want to develop an awareness of our internal process, we should do so in a way that is not presumptuous -- not “I am ADHD, therefore I think like x, therefore I need to do y to adapt,” but “When I pay attention to my own patterns, what do I notice, and how can I address that?”

“Analytical” is another label we should view critically -- analysis of what’s happening during hypnosis is extremely common. A casual, anonymous poll of 119 people on Twitter found that ~70% of responders do or did at some point identify as an analytical subject (https://twitter.com/h_sleepingirl/status/1285339938771341314). There is no hard definition for what this means, and can describe anything from an awareness of what’s happening, to gut reactions, to introspection, to wondering if/doubt that something is working, to analysis of techniques, to worrying about doing it “right,” to general “thinkiness” and more. Again, this is a place where we want to let go of the label and pay attention to what our actual experience is.

This becomes more and more true when you encounter terms that, like “analytical,” have a nebulous definition, or one that does not have an empirical basis (“visual thinker,” “emotional type,” etc). As we go through the article, we’ll be focused on concrete and subjective experiences and how to work from there. You’re encouraged to carry this mindset with you through this piece, as well as anywhere else that you encounter labeling terms.

A Note on the Exercises

Each section here will address a specific part of active thinking versus trance, and contain an exercise. They are intended to be self-directed -- true self hypnosis is something that you do yourself, not where you follow along to another person’s words. That being said, you can do aspects of each exercise while following the text or even being hypnotized by another person or a recording. It is recommended that you fully read through the exercise before trying it, but it’s also completely normal and expected to have some responses to it as you read through -- you can and probably will be imagining what it will be like to do them. That is part of the process, and there’s no need to get it “right” on the first try (whatever that might mean).

All of this being said, the exercises provided are essentially loose scripts -- the verbiage is not especially “hypnotic,” but the processes and techniques are. In terms of content, none of these contain suggestions beyond the set-up of some personal sorts of anchors, habits, and associations to improve trance experience. You are encouraged to make this more personal to you by tweaking and experimenting and using your own words.

The point of these is not to get to a specific “trance state,” but rather to learn good habits and skills. Whether or not you are “in trance,” as well as “how deep” you are doesn’t matter -- these things can be learned effectively regardless of trance. You’re encouraged to mix and match as well -- these are ingredients that you can try in many different ways, and experimenting helps general flexibility. Each exercise has content that helps the others, as these are all interconnected concepts.

1. Trance Processing

Once we’ve established that we are going to still experience thought in trance, one of the strategies we can use to make that exciting for us is learning to be more in tune with the way that we think when we’re in hypnosis and recognize it as a unique thing. When someone talks to us in any context, our thinking process is altered. We are following what the person is saying, sometimes getting distracted, sometimes thinking internally about how to process the information that they’re presenting to us. Trance is no different from this, and when we pay attention, we can notice that there are some nuanced and special qualities to our thoughts.

One of the things that can trip subjects up is the moments where they become aware of their own process and thoughts -- they go “in their head.” While we’ll talk about dealing with some specific patterns and content of thoughts later, something you can start with is retraining yourself out of the habit of trying not to have self-awareness. An important principle in hypnosis in general is that you should go with someone’s process instead of against it: from a hypnotist’s perspective, trying to force something that is against the subject’s nature is never going to work very well. So we as subjects should take a page from that -- the Ericksonian method is always “yes, and,” and in fact encouraging the response.

When we become aware of our own process, we should look at it as an opportunity for curiosity and interest. Learn how to wonder -- a quality of asking yourself questions and making observations about your own experience. Make these observations in a way that allows you to build a little framework and definition for how you think when you’re engaging in something different than your everyday life -- your own personal “trance thinking.” What do your thoughts feel like? What do you notice about them? How do you notice your attention changing? Is there a metaphorical feeling, visual, or sound with the way that you’re thinking, and does it change when you notice it? It may be more fluid or rigid, you might notice your attention changing slower or faster, you might have more or less creativity.

Once you’re comfortable with “noticing your noticing,” you can play around with it. See if you can let your thoughts sing a song or recite a little freeform poetry. Imagine that you’re observing your mind from the outside -- what’s it going to do next? Allow yourself to find it funny and cute when it just sort of does its own thing -- maybe it gets a song lyric or a line from a movie stuck in itself. (This strategy can be especially apt if you tend to play with anything in the realm of intelligence play or bimbofication.)

Exercise:

• Simply begin to notice parts of your body. You can do this with your eyes opened or closed, whatever feels good, and you can change your mind whenever you want. You can go up your body methodically from your toes to your head, or you can just notice a part of your body that is taking up your attention. You may go back and forth between a systematic noticing and a spontaneous one freely. As you pay attention to the feelings in those parts, think about some of the things that that part is feeling -- the texture of your clothes or the air, the temperature, what the skin and muscles and bones are doing, how it’s connected to the rest of your body and the weight that it is experiencing, the sense of gravity, any sense of tension or neutrality, and of course if there are any interesting hallucinogenic trance experiences like tingling, weight, relaxation/tension, etc. Once you want to or you naturally notice a different part of your body, you’re free to do so. There is no correct way to do this and no specific intention you need to put into this. You don’t need to catalog anything or pay attention in a particular way, unless it feels right.
  
• At certain points, you will notice your own process -- you’ll notice that you’re thinking. You may have gotten distracted, you may be analyzing, whatever it is that draws your attention to your thoughts. When this happens, consciously think an affirmative word or phrase about this: “OK.” “Yes.” “I’m thinking.” “I’m noticing.” “I’m aware.” etc. If you want, you can take a breath at the same time, or do some other physical action, such as consciously relaxing a part of your body, but it doesn’t need to be anything specific or complicated.
  
• After you’ve acknowledged that you’re thinking, use that same quality of noticing that you were using for your body directed inside of your mind. What kinds of thoughts are you having? Are they segmented, fluid, nonverbal, confusing, gut reactions? What do they feel like? You can try to visualize what they’d look like if you want. How does your attention shift, and how long does it take you to notice? What else do you notice? It’s important to remember that this may happen very quickly, or you might be able to linger -- whatever happens is fine, even if you get distracted.
  
• At some point, you will be finished noticing your thoughts, and this might be because they wander elsewhere, or you don’t want to do it anymore. You can actively return your thoughts to noticing your body again, and see if anything has changed -- go through your own observation process. Eventually, you’ll notice your own thinking process again, and repeat it -- give yourself an acknowledgement and let your thoughts turn inward. You can do this process for as long as it’s interesting. When you’re finished, turn your attention consciously to the world around you to help you return.
  
• The point of this exercise is to train yourself into acknowledging those moments where you notice your own thoughts in a positive way, and develop a skill to be productive with them. You also will develop a familiarity with different kinds of thoughts. It’s also important to note that you’re not doing it wrong if you skip the acknowledgment step -- it’s a great experience to be able to shift fluidly into self awareness.

2. Dealing with Self-Questioning/Doubt

The experience of asking oneself, “Am I doing it right?” or “Am I really in trance?” is extremely common, even for experienced subjects. A skilled hypnotist knows how to use a subject’s questioning process against them, but we as subjects can make ourselves very good at this without help.

Breaking down what tends to happen, it is not primarily the process of questioning that can get in our way -- it’s the way that we answer. Generally, something happens as a trigger for this question: perhaps we notice an aspect of our physical or mental experience that we associate with us being “awake,” or the hypnotist gives a suggestion that we feel we are not “fully” responding to. It could be that we’ve trained ourselves to ask this question whenever we’re engaging in hypnosis, and it happens spontaneously without a discernible trigger.

The question happens, and it may be something that happens “verbally” in your head (inner monologue) or just a general feeling of doubt. Usually, when we have this question, we are already feeding ourselves an answer of, “I’m not sure,” “I don’t think so,” “Maybe?” “No…” “If I was I’d feel x…” If you even get to the point of verbally answering, you’ve likely already had this impulse -- the experience of hesitation.

Sometimes the questioning process is just disappointment, but often it is accompanied by looking for some signs. The subject is searching for a way to contextualize their feelings -- sometimes that may be that the person is focusing on the things that they are experiencing that are not associated with trance, or they might be trying to look for signs that are associated with trance. This might be challenging, and it can certainly be distracting.

By contrast, someone who doesn’t struggle with this process is adept at asking themselves this question in a confident and positive way. They know how to notice subtleties about their experience that tell them that they are in fact successful in trance. This is not necessarily about measurable success -- one of the primary ways of being able to go deep in trance is simply the ability to have awareness of the nuance of what trance feels like, as this ability to notice is what facilitates “more trance.” They likely also experience doubt sometimes, but the skills they’ve developed mean that they are able to produce meaningful observations in a way that makes that doubt nonintrusive.

Exercise:

• Stare at a spot on the wall, and then relax your eyes in a way that feels natural. That could mean them blurring a little bit, or the eyelids and muscles around them relaxing, or something else. It’s OK if your vision drifts. Refocus/”unrelax” your eyes and stare back at the spot. Repeat this process several times.
  
• Once you feel comfortable, verbally think to yourself, “Am I hypnotized?” and then answer your own question by thinking the word, “Yes” or “I am” or something else affirmative. When you think this answer, relax your eyes. Repeat this several times to get used to it, and then experiment. Try thinking it very fast or very slow. Try reversing or changing the timing on when you relax your eyes. See if you can do the process in a less verbal way -- simply feeling the impulse of the question and then the automatic response. See if you can both ask and answer at the same time.
  
• It’s normal to get distracted -- you aren’t doing it wrong. Each piece of this process is a tool to refocus yourself. You also will likely be having some introspection about what this feels like and what you are doing. Allow yourself to take “breaks” to think about what you are experiencing. If you get caught up in some thread of thoughts, that’s fine -- you don’t have a time limit and you don’t have to force anything, you can do this any time you like.
  
• When you think the question or the answer, do you feel curiosity, confidence, doubt, neutrality, something else? Can you consciously change the feeling of that question? You can experiment by imagining the question-feeling as a color, sound, shape, or texture, and then changing that imagination (by reversing it, making it fade, making it brighter, etc).
  
• When you feel your “yes” response, you can experiment with associating some “trance feelings” to it. You can actively notice the way that your eyes feel different than “normal,” or any other signs in your body like heaviness that may arise. This is the beginnings of showing yourself how to recognize signs of trance, and then how to associate that recognition with your internal confidence and thought process around hypnosis. When you feel like you want to be finished, you can refocus your eyes, turn your attention more broadly to the room around you, and look around to help you return.
  
• The point of this exercise is to interrupt your question pattern and replace it with something more helpful. This also teaches a little bit about how to use submodalities (assigning a sensory experience such as sight, sound, or feeling to a concept and then playing with its imagined sensory qualities as a way to change the original concept). When you do this, you can feel free to associate your “yes” response to someone or something important to you, like a moment that you felt very deep with a partner or recording -- some subjects may prefer there to be a sense of an “outside” force.

3. Analysis

The subjective experience of analysis comes in many forms. In hypnosis, it can feel like an attempt to evaluate what’s happening or what you’re feeling, a need to deconstruct, an interest or curiosity, and/or more. It is one of the ways that we as humans process our experiences -- naturally when we are focused on something, we have a habitual and inherent response to try to understand it, especially when it is new, interesting, or important to us.

This process of analysis need not be a hindrance, but some subjects find it distracting or difficult. When you are trying to focus on the experience but you are picking apart verbiage and techniques, trying to figure out what is going to happen next, or even trying to understand what you’re feeling in a way that prevents you from really being able to feel it, of course that’s going to be a little frustrating. It is generally the sense that you are not fully engaged that is the difficult part, not the analysis itself.

We’re going to take a similar strategy here as we have with other concepts: we want to work with our natural processes to use them in a productive way. Analysis can be a positive force in our trances when we direct it into patterns that help us. Two examples of ways that we can do this are 1) analyzing hypnotic technique in the context of learning and interest, and 2) analyzing our own responses in the context of getting better at recognizing trance.

We as subjects should strive to learn more about how hypnosis works even if we’re never going to hypnotize anyone ourselves. Understanding a concept allows us to be better able to discuss it and give more informed opinions and especially consent when we are negotiating with partners. Hypnosis is a rich and fascinating thing, and is in many ways an art that can be appreciated -- and like art or music, absorbing and dissecting it can lead to greater and more complex enjoyment. Especially as an intimate activity, it provides opportunities to learn about your hypnotist, to get to know them, and to develop reverence or respect.

Additionally, one of the most important components to becoming skilled as a subject is developing a growing understanding of how you experience trance. Learning to see more and more of the nuanced signs of hypnotic response within yourself helps nurture confidence and the ability to feel more broadly how amazing hypnosis can be. It is constructive to turn your attention inward with a healthy appetite for curiosity: “What am I feeling when I notice? What could that be a response to? Have I felt that before? What are the components of this feeling? Oh, when they said that, I felt this, that’s cool!”

Exercise:

• Start by placing your hand on your leg in a position where you can feel the weight of it. It doesn’t matter if your eyes are open or closed. You don’t have to push down or do it in any particular way -- you can let your arm and leg relax naturally. Start to analyze what that feels like. Pretend that you are an expert in understanding sensation and really pick it apart -- how would you describe it to someone else? What qualities are you noticing, and what are the aspects of those qualities? It’s ok if your attention drifts -- you can move that analysis to other aspects of your experience, and allow yourself to take the little mental breaks.
  
• After some analysis, change your mindset to start to think about how, hypothetically, that experience of the weight of your hand could be used to put you into trance. Could the heaviness of it be used? Could you be made to think about your sensory experiences, causing you to experience them more fully? Could it be just that your attention is focused or shifting on a whim? What else? How would those things feel?
  
• Consciously shift yourself internally to focus on your own thoughts, and begin thinking to yourself, “I’m hypnotized,” repeating that thought to yourself in the way that feels most natural to you. Pretend that you are in a deepening trance and all of the aspects that that would entail -- you don’t actually have to go into trance or maintain anything; pretending is enough, although this can facilitate hypnosis. As you imagine this, do a body scan: move your attention through your body in any way that feels natural and at any speed, and start to go into a “noticing” mindset: What signs of trance might you be experiencing? What are you feeling in this “trance” imaginative context? Pay attention to the things that stick out to you, like your face and eyes, other body parts, breathing, etc.
  
• After a little bit of this, shift your attention back to the hand on your leg, doing the same sort of analysis, but this time in the context of what feels different from before. Remember that you’re an expert at understanding this experience, trying to pick it apart.
  
• You can go back and forth between different parts of this experience to see how things change as it feels natural. When you’re finished, lift your hand off your leg and move your body a little bit to help you return to baseline.
  
• The point of this exercise is to learn how to direct your analysis in a productive way. By developing more control over what and how we analyze, we can use this newfound skill in trances. We also want to facilitate a muscle memory for looking at our own hypnotic experiences, and this ability to “body scan” is a useful one as we strive to feel and notice more when we’re in trance.

4. The Experience of Inactivity

All of the previous sections focus on the active experience as one that is skillful and beneficial to trance. But when it comes to the desire for the experience of “not thinking,” we also have options available to us to seek and enjoy that. While the exercises so far do help to build muscle memory towards reduced thoughts, this section will focus specifically on this experience.

As we’ve discussed before, the actual feeling of not thinking is a perceptual trick, and it is not necessarily correlated with any sort of depth of trance. We can consider it to be several different things that can overlap: being focused on something not inside one’s head (distracted from internal monologue, being focused on someone else/something external, being focused on a physical experience, etc), processing stuff in a nonverbal way or dealing with hard-to-notice subtlety in concepts, experiencing the contrast between thinking “a lot” or “very hard” and then having that relax, or more.

It’s important to note that the experience of mindlessness is almost never one that is consistent or static. It may be a few long seconds or fleeting moments, but our experience of time is also perceptual and something that we can elongate to make those times of silence feel intense, exciting, and drawn-out. It is normal and expected that a subject will go through moments of experiencing activity throughout hypnosis.

Also overlooked is the gradient of experience that exists here. Sometimes we may experience a sort of feeling of quasi-mindlessness -- where we are feeling processing happening at a low level, or only have a partial awareness of our thoughts. Instead of viewing mental activity as a binary, it can be helpful to recontextualize it. Sometimes you may be processing very actively, or more unconsciously, or thinking more in words/pictures/concepts, or thinking abstractly, or a sense of not caring what’s going on inside your head. Mindlessness can be a fluid and dynamic experience.

As with other aspects of our active minds, one of the first but often challenging things to work on is the impulse of feeling disappointed or doubtful when we experience something that is not in line with our expectations or desires of hypnosis. It is very common to get one of these pangs when we notice that we are thinking, and it is easier said than done to just change our minds and feelings like that. The previous exercises contain material to help with this, and you’re encouraged to take those aspects through into this one.

Exercise:

• You can have your eyes open or closed. Start by thinking some mental chatter. It can be anything, but if you need a place to start, you can think very consciously about thinking: “I am thinking right now. I am experiencing what it feels like to have thoughts.” You can repeat phrases, or follow a thread, but to start with, make this an experience that is active and conscious. When you’re thinking like this, make the thoughts loud, big, vivid, or otherwise very noticeable. People think differently -- if you don’t easily think in words or pictures, think in the way that feels most natural to you.
  
• After a few moments of this, interrupt yourself by imagining total silence or blackness -- the complete contrast of the loud thoughts, as though someone has just paused or stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. This silence may not last very long, maybe a moment or second, and that’s totally ok. You may be able to experience it fully, or there may be a part of you that is trying to analyze it at first. Whatever happens, get used to the split second, that moment of “stopping” the chatter as a blank experience.
  
• Go back to your loud internal chatter when you notice yourself thinking again, and repeat this process a number of times. As always, if you get distracted, that’s normal. Experiment: see if you can think loudly and then stop very quickly or slowly, see if you can think in a different way from words (like pictures, other sounds, nonverbal concepts, feelings, or judgments). Pay attention to different aspects of this experience: what does the “stopping” moment feel like as opposed to the actual experience of the thoughts being “stopped?” Take your time and go at your own pace; allow yourself moments to just think about what you’re doing before going back to it.
  
• It is completely normal to have your brain automatically go back into thinking mode after that sort of silence. It’s also normal for that to happen as you automatically begin to evaluate it. After you’ve repeated this for a while, you can make your own associations with this blankness. Try, when you’ve stopped your thoughts, to give yourself a really strong positive feeling -- you can even think the word or concept or feeling of, “yes.” Build excitement in yourself; this is you working towards and experiencing emptiness in hypnosis. The next time you notice this silence, allow yourself to feel that “yes” moment -- “yes, it’s happening!” Try this several times.
  
• You can also begin to experiment with how active this process is. Contrasted with very consciously thinking and then stopping thought, imagine that you have sort of loosened your grip and see if you can do it with a smaller and smaller impulse, as though you’re steering something with a bare touch. It might help to imagine that you’re far away, or that you’re observing your mind do this process from the outside. Combine this with other exercises -- instead of thinking chatter, try starting with that sort of focused awareness of your body and process, for example. As you explore, see if you can get into a flow where there is a low hum of that mindless feeling even in the moments where you are processing. To help yourself return to baseline, start thinking in a way that is more in line with your “awake” thoughts.
  
• The point of this exercise is to build familiarity with the feelings of not thinking, and develop the ability to go from the sense of activity to inactivity. Curiosity and experimentation is especially important here, as your own process of thoughts will be unique to you, and you can learn how to tailor this to suit the way that you think.