Hypnotic Offerings

I used the following script in a dream recently, where I'd been invited to meet a celebrity who was in town.

I was in the hotel room. It was pouring down outside, a fine silvery rain which obscured the view of the offices opposite, and the overpass in the distance. The window was open, and I could feel the breeze in the room as she sat on the chair opposite me, her legs crossed.

We'd already met over Twitter, and spoken often. She knew me as "that weird, hobbity Welsh bloke," and I never disavow people of that impression of me because it is my schtick.

She wanted to talk to me about an unexpected bout of performance anxiety she was suffering from. She'd been in lockdown for months, and it was all getting on top of her, at least in my dream. So she'd wanted to know about hypno, and whether or not I could help.

Here's the conversation we had, after I'd asked her if she consented to having her hypnotised and she'd said yes.

'You're probably wondering what will happen, when the induction proper begins, and whether you'll have to stare at a spiral or a pocket watch or something.'

'Something like that.'

'But then again, the hypnosis part isn't in the watch, or in the spiral. It comes from you, when you trust to letting your mind go, like that, and slip into a hypnotic trance, in that way. Once you realise you're letting go of your conscious thoughts and awareness, you notice that the process becomes inevitable, and the swinging watch just gives you something to concentrate on while it's happening.

'Yes.'

'And when it is happening, little by little, you realise that you've been there all the time, and you're just letting your mind catch up with the knowledge that you're still deeply in trance already, are you not?'

'Yes.'

'And you're so excited to discover what awaits you, when you can, you know, close your eyes happily, and you curiously let go of everything that isn't that, all the way past that now, and further in, deeper, peacefully, joyfully, enjoying the wash of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin as your body surrenders to relaxation, suddenly, completely, exactly like that, just there.'

'Yes.'

'While your whole being reaches a point where, in this moment, you are across a threshold of awareness, to the extent that you are dropping, now, at this point, completely, and when you are fully immersed in a hypnotic trance, you can happily say hello, and we can proceed to find out what you really want to take from this.'

'Hello.'

'You can, you know, read this page now, and explore how to go deeper, now, and we can reach a point where you can address the issues bothering you.'