Tranced

Over the last four days, I've acquired a qualification in hypnosis (accredited and all). It's a four-day weekend, full-on course where you put people in a trance pretty much after 3 hours on the course. I've learned quite a bit about myself (one: still lots of garbage left over from my childhood that I should work with to release some stuff I no longer need - but that's no surprise).

I've done some beautiful work with some of my partners on the exercises. Found a woman who's also into power animals/shamanism and we shared one (Eagle, though my primary is Raccoon and hers was Bear), so we tranced each other on a shamanic journey. It was lovely hanging out with Raccoon again  -we were on a beach, playing with a red plastic ball. The trance was about expansion and empowerment, which seemed somewhat incongruous, but we rolled with it. I was aware of people watching, but, to be honest, I had too much fun just playing with Raccoon and the plastic ball. At some point, he gives me the ball (it even had teeth marks).

Afterwards, we talk in the group about colours in trance. And apparently "red" means "power". Cool. On the way to the course that day, I'm standing on a full tube train, and a guy with headphones stands next to me. And what's the one line I pick up through his headphones? That's right: Snap's "I've Got The Power!"

So that was me for the rest of that day:



But even the other stuff ended up being significant. While my partner tranced me about empowerment/expansion/growth, Raccoon was all about "Let's just have fun". And it became abundantly clear that that's my path. Empowerment/expansion will come as a side-line if I play and do what I enjoy and focus on it. It's a no-brainer when you write it down like that. (Though apparently it'll come with some teeth marks, LOL).

A French guy tranced me about the birds book (which is set in France), and it was beautiful, thinking of my books as trees that sometimes rest and then grow again. He took me down a path with all my books as beautiful trees and I loved that. (I don't remember much more than that, I was way, way down.)

I did the "authoritarian" (Estabrooks) trance with two other people who are really awful at accepting authority (two of whom from countries with recent fascist/totalitarian pasts, go figure). That was the most polite, "GO, SLEEP NOW! DEEPER" you could imagine.

And yes, we did several different kinds of trance, from the very common Erickson to Estabrooks to Elman. All slightly different in approach. The one I like best is half Erickson and half whatever I think the client will respond to best. But pretty much all of my favourite inductions (the part where you put somebody in a trance in the first place) are based on touch. Big surprise - I'm overall very touchy-feely anyway.

I helped one girl release a lot of stuff (there's a huge sense of responsibility when you make somebody cry - or very nearly cry) - going from smiling and laughing to sobbing in five or ten minutes is ... interesting. I ended up crying like a dog in one of the group trances. I always do when that trainer does that particular trance. It's very healing, but I'll be the one with tears running down my face for twenty minutes.

One thing that is apparently becoming my "style" is to go very specific about the environment I put people. The teacher says "content-free" is best, but that's very generic stuff that the other person's subconsciousness just colours in. I go pretty specific and describe actual impressions. Say, "content-free" is when they send you to "your favourite place", whereas I would put people in a specific environment - a meadow, a forest, a beach, describing flowers and light and sun/stars/moon. It seemed like the right thing to do - but then, I knew the people I was trancing and tailored the environment/impressions to them and they seemed to enjoy it (saying the imagery was "beautiful"). Because, let's face it, I'm a writer - staying "generic" would be "bad writing" in prose. It's a mindset/and decades-old training that's taking over as you improvise a trance on the fly. (No scripts - urgh.)

But I'll see if I can keep it more content-free with people I know less well. In any case, I'm looking forward to trancing writers/artists. The results should be amazing with people who are so good at visualisation. But I'm looking forward to trancing just about everybody. It's play time.