Post-NEEHU processing part 1: Friday
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here
I got into the hotel very late Thursday night – right around midnight – to be met with a hug from my boyfriend, SpiralTurquoise. We're doing the long-distance thing while I finish up school, so I hadn't seen him since winter break. Which isn't that long in the grand scheme of things, but definitely long enough that I was very impatient to get to NEEHU just to see him (on top of the awesome of NEEHU, but, well, boyfriend.)
Anyway, once we had our PDA in the hotel lobby, he showed me up to the volunteer suite where a bunch of people were still sitting up talking. I got to meet some of the most awesome people I had not already had the pleasure of meeting (not all of them, as some had gone to bed, and some awesome people I had already met were already abed), before crashing so we could get up at entirely too early o'clock to eat and go over to the society.
Friday morning at The Society started with me on kitchen duty, helping with these mini pie crusts for delicious things being made for later that day (I don't actually know what they were called, just that they were amazing). I slipped out of the kitchen due to a very sore wrist just in time to get to the first class of the day – Wiseguy's "Brain Overload." I'd really been looking forward to this class for a while, so I was hyper excited that I got to go. Confusion and overload inductions are ones I've been curious about for AGES but never had a chance to try because I didn't really know people who were confident doing them. It was awesome! I volunteered as a demo for one induction, one that involved lots of numbers, alternating between counting down from 100 and up from 1 while Wiseguy was using other numbers, usually from the opposite end of the count than the one I was just on, interspersed with hypnotic language. It was definitely effective, and I dropped hard and fast (not for the only time, but it was a good way to start). Wiseguy then read a script to show off some really awesome wordplay and levels of abstraction – it was really interesting to learn about these inductions.
After lunch, I went to Hypnomaestro's "Riffing on Hypnosis" session, which was a laid-back sort of impromptu discussion where people could ask whatever questions and we just sort of went where people wanted to go. At one point, someone asked about using senses other than vision and hearing in an induction, so Maestro decided that he'd demonstrate an induction that used smell and taste. As he needed a demo subject, I volunteered (are you noticing a theme yet?). He sent one of the others in the session to the kitchen to find a strawberry (mmmm, strawberries!). I don't exactly remember what he did, but he tied both the smell and the taste of to an induction so when I ate the strawberry I dropped into a nice drifty trance all hyper-focused on how amazing the taste of strawberries is (well, in my defense, they ARE amazingly delicious). A little later in the class, we were talking about anchoring, and so he sent someone down for yet another strawberry to demonstrate how strawberries had been anchored to a trance state for me – and yep, one nibble of the strawberry and I was off into trance, drifting and floating and just feeling wonderful, until I finished the strawberry and slowly came back up.
I'm going to take a moment to note that amazingly delicious food + trance = a very, VERY happy Daja. Btw.
So at this point Maestro gave me a suggestion that strawberries would have that effect for the rest of NEEHU, and we moved on to a discussion on rapport and other important things. Rapport is an important thing! If I hadn't known Maestro for a while – and have met him a couple of times, and so on – he probably wouldn't have gotten quite so strong a reaction from the strawberries. He would have gotten *a* reaction, of course, as I'm a lightweight and he is very skilled at what he does, but it wouldn't have been quite so strong. We moved on, and at some point (I forget why), Maestro dropped me. Again. Then he asked for suggestions on something to suggest.
I'm going to take another moment to note that I am a brat, and I had been sticking my tongue out at people fairly regularly. By which I mean a lot.
So leadPrism, who had been running to get strawberries, threw out the idea that the next time I stuck my tongue out, it would get stuck until Maestro unstuck it. This was met with many laughs, so Maestro ran with it. 10 or so minutes later, we were at about the halfway point of the two-hour class, so we took a break. As I had not yet stuck my tongue out at anyone (I didn't want to give Prism the satisfaction that easily), Prism went to the kitchen for yet another strawberry. Just before the break ended, Prism told me he would only give me the strawberry if I stuck my tongue out. … Maybe I shouldn't have been quite so obvious about how much I was enjoying the strawberries. So the class continued, with people trying to get me to stick my tongue out on and off. Awhile into the second half, I caved (hey, I *really* wanted that strawberry) and stuck my tongue out at Prism. Much amusement ensued and Maestro told me that I would only be able to stop sticking out my tongue when I went to eat the strawberry. So I ate the strawberry and dropped right back down into wonderful, blissful trance, and woke up again pretty quickly.
I know we talked about other things, but at that point I was fractionated enough that I honestly can't remember what else was discussed. (That's another theme from my weekend, so much fractionation. It was pretty awesome).
I had a few minutes between the Riffing class and the next one I was planning on attending – a Dual Inductions and Co-topping class – to clear my head. Which was good, because SpiralTurquoise was the one who was running that class, and I'd already told Turq that I was happy to be his demo puppet, and help out with the class however he needed. So when I got to the dual inductions class, I was more or less awake and (mostly) lucid. To start this class, Turq and another presenter, HypnoBruce, performed a dual induction on me – Bruce, in one ear, was doing some sort of progressive relaxation thing. In the other ear, Turq was being a bit more repetitive, playing both off of Bruce and off of what he knows is effective on me since we've been playing for just over a year now. My rapport and conditioned response to Turq being what they are, I dropped hard and fast and enjoyed every moment of it.
After he brought me back up, we broke people into groups of three to try it themselves. I actually sat in with a group for part of this, because one of the people in the group did not feel comfortable trancing anyone yet, providing a second hypnotist for the group so that the people could get more practice. This was one of the few times I hypnotized anyone all weekend, as other opportunities I had to try I was just too fractionated to feel comfortable doing it, and it was a lot of fun. If you haven't played with dual inductions ever, you should try it if you ever get a chance.
Sometimes, in dual inductions, there will be one clear leader, and the other hypnotist will just follow along using what they know of the hypnotee to aid their partner. Other times, as in this situation, the two hypnotists will flow back and forth, taking cues from each other and each taking their turn leading. I have never had an experience quite like this, where I was so in sync with not just one person, but with two people. A while ago, I read something Turq wrote about what he gets out of being a hypnotist, about how for a period of time he has a feeling of, well, omnipotence. I understood it, cognitively, but until this dual induction, I didn't really get it on a visceral level – having never experienced that sheer amount of focus and control and, to some extent, power, I couldn't truly appreciate just how enjoyable that can be. I definitely get it now.
That was my last class of the day. There was a play party that night, as well, but I didn't really have a scene – I was taking the time to talk to people and get to know all of these new people who I found so very interesting and fun and just enjoying being in an environment where we all had something in common. (Well, I did have a mini-scene that was more of a tease for Saturday night than anything, with Turq, but I think I'm going to keep that private because, well, sometimes couple time should be.)
