Congrats on your first few PMR inductions!

I’ve written up a few notes about adjusting your induction, a safety talk, and a simple tool to check your work.

Adjusting your Induction

I’ve mentioned this before, but now we can tailor our inductions to our subject. If they’re experienced, we can reduce the length of the induction and spend more time to get practice with the deepener. If they’re a new subject, spend up to 3 or 4ish minutes on the PMR induction.

If they’re new, use suggestions like “Whatever you are feeling, as you enter trance, is fine.” If they’re experienced, you can leverage “going back to that deep, familiar, comfortable state, easily and effortlessly.”

Safety - A bit about emotional outbursts and abreactions

It’s rare - and even while playing as safe as possible, you can hit a nerve. This can go all the way from causing discomfort to a complete outpouring of emotions, or even regression. In therapy - this is called an abreaction.

This is very rare in recreational hypnosis, but since it happened to me, I want folks to be just as calm and prepared as the hypnotist who took care of me.

In the case of a minor or an oh-shit-emotional outburst:

• Remain calm.
• Remind and reassure your subject they’re safe, and repeat that you are there for them.
• Immediately change the scene. Tell them to allow their mind to come away from this scene, and tell them to imagine a safe, comfortable place where they are protected. Keep talking, and don’t give them space to think.
• End the session and bring them back up - but don’t rush it. It’s extra important to ensure your subject feels as comfortable coming back as possible.

Expect to stick around for quite a while as your subject calms down. It’s a fuck of a ride.

I’m not an authority on hypnosis, but I hope I don’t have to explain that the crossover between the skills of a hypnotherapist and a kinky hypnotist is minimal. Please be supportive, but do not try to be a therapist, and even more importantly, do not try to be a hypnotherapist.

Check your work

While phantom touch is a thing, you can’t really touch your subject in VR. If your subject looks zonked out or is moaning in response (Adorable!) they’re likely in trance. There are a few formal charts and methods for measuring depth, but you don’t need to worry about that. These methods will work fine.

For a first option, suggest that their arm is getting lighter and lighter. The classic example is to suggest that you’ve tied a bundle of helium-filled balloons to their wrist, very gently pulling up. For example…

“And now, we’re going to test your imagination and depth of trance. Please… Put your arm straight out in front of you, parallel to the floor, palm facing down…”

“Good.”

“Now, imagine a bundle of helium balloons being tied to your wrist with a string. Imagine seeing them float up in the air, how the light refracts through their transparent surface, the string slowly floating up behind the balloons. Imagine that subtle ‘thunk’ as the string is pulled gently taut around your wrist. The pull of the balloons continues to strengthen, almost as if they were getting bigger and bigger, gently pulling your wrist up.”

Right when you see their arm start to move, reinforce it with something like…

“That’s right… Just like that… feeling your arm get lighter and lighter, lifting all on its own. And as I cut the string, your arm will fall gently back into place, sending you deeper into trance, your thoughts floating away with the balloons. click Snip.”

An important bit - the giveaway for hypnosis vs compliance is in the movement of the arm. Your subject is politely playing along if it’s a smooth, deliberate movement. If they’re hypnotized, the motion be slow and jerky. You’ll know it when you see it. (Also, good job! You did the thing.)

(Also - if they’ve got a pool toy avatar - use your imagination. But get consent first. Flicking that helium-filled arm valve right open as they slowly drift deeper and deeper into trance can’t be a hard sell.)

There’s also the chance they are completely zonked out if their arm didn’t move. If you can tell they’re gone, don’t press it and just let them be.

Shit - They’re not in trance

Hey - it’s rare, but it does happen! No worries. Go through the steps you normally would to bring them out of trance. They might have been in! But, just in case, no reason to drag it out, and you can ask for feedback.

If they were not in trance - thank them for not faking it. Remind them they’re a good subject; sometimes, it takes time to strengthen your ability to go automatically into trance. Experienced hypnotists will double down and have an entire toolkit to slam folks back in, but I don’t have those skills yet. (Maybe, by the time I write a later level, I’ll be able to tell you how to do that.)