Elements of Bimbofication by sleepingirl
Bimbofication is one of the most popular tropes in hypnokink content, and for good reason -- it has an established “canon” that is easy and appealing to play with for many people. It is easy to play in its rhythms, pick and choose elements to enjoy, or subvert the tropes entirely. In this article, we’re going to break down what exactly bimbofication’s core components are so we can better understand how to have fulfilling ...
2025-03-14 17:26:03 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! I'm really exited to share this new event/project! A bit back, I was thinking a lot about how I knew many of us in hypnokink were spiritual in some way, but the intersection of those two things is something we don't really discuss at length.
I had the idea to run an essay jam where anyone could write a little something about their thoughts/experience on it and we could build a totally new pool of knowledge that has never existed before in our community!
You can submit...
2025-03-06 16:50:44 +0000 UTC
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All Types of Utilization by sleepingirl
Language evolves within hobbies and subcultures, and especially with something like hypnosis that spans varying demographics. The word “utilization” gets thrown around us a lot, and can refer to several totally distinct ideas. It has its origins in Ericksonian hypnosis, but even Erickson used it to mean a couple different things when we look at it with a careful eye -- and in modern colloquial usage in our community, it genera...
2025-02-14 15:51:46 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! Most of you know Charmed was last weekend and it's been a very long time since I've written a proper scene writeup, but this was a very special experience for me and I wanted to share it. Enjoy! Regular articles returning next week. :)
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“Art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time.”
I first heard this Jean-Michel Basquiat quote in a rope class from Barkas, in the context of how we play within both space and...
2025-02-03 15:03:01 +0000 UTC
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This is a little motivational piece (for you and me!) as I gear up to teach "Analyzing Erickson" at Charmed. It's something I feel really passionately about, and I wanted to share it.
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Hypnosis is magic. It is not just “the closest we can get to magic.” Trance practices in all kinds of forms have served as the basis for mysticism across cultures and human history -- thousands of years. It i...
2025-01-07 16:21:22 +0000 UTC
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Distraction or Dreaming? An Exploration of Erickson by sleepingirl
Hypnosis is young -- at least, the western discipline that we call by that name. Despite only being in the public consciousness for a couple of centuries, it’s gone through an enormous amount of evolution. Even in the last 50 years or so, how we understand “what hypnosis is” has changed a lot.
In my opinion, Ericksonian hypnosis has a quality of timelessness to it -- Erickson is one of the fe...
2024-12-13 17:59:02 +0000 UTC
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It's that time again! :)
"Distraction or Dreaming?": I'm rereading Erickson's Hypnotic Realities and really struck by just how often Erickson expects his patients to be daydreaming in trance. This is in contrast to our modern community idea, surely! This would be a source-heavy article looking at bits from Hypnotic Realities and exploring why this is such a big part of Erickson's view of "what hypnosis is" -- and is this useful to us now?
"Types of Utiliza...
2024-12-03 18:46:54 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! Happy December! And right on time — my magazine is out and available right now!
This was a labor of love and a challenge to finish it in just one month for Hypnovember, but I'm really happy I did!
Inside you’ll find:
15k words. 77 pages. So much art. Word games! Kitschy magazine-style "ads." An enlightening interview! High quality articles. & more!
Usually...
2024-12-01 15:58:09 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! I’m hard at work on a big Hypnovember project -- a magazine with tons of my writing, art, and other stuff! Here’s a new article that I wrote for it :) My goal is to have it finished by the end of November, so I’ll keep you updated when it’s available!
By the way -- I'll be running an Erickson-based text study at Charmed 2025! Look forward to it!
Run Your Own Hypnosis Text Study! by sleepingirl
What is a text stu...
2024-11-19 16:33:12 +0000 UTC
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Guided, Erickson-ish(?) Scenarios by sleepingirl
This may be a “me” thing, but nowadays I always have a tiny knee-jerk reaction when someone references Ericksonian storytelling. “There’s so much more to Erickson!” I think to myself. “Copying his storytelling is fun, but a lot of it is about tropey hypnotic signaling!”
But I have been thinking a lot in general about the ways that we “fill” our hypnosis scenes. What exactly ar...
2024-10-11 19:00:40 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone. I can't thank you enough for the support and well wishes over the past chunk of time that I've been unwell. It meant so much to me and especially I think I saw some community members here recommending my Patreon? I'm just getting my bearings but I got emails about that which is so lovely.
I tweeted about this but while I'm not 100% (still getting daily migraines[?]) I am doing SO MUCH BETTER like I have a hug...
2024-10-01 19:03:44 +0000 UTC
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Hi all. My health is really not great, BUT there are times when I'm lucid enough to write, so I want to write!
I probably can't as easily do my 5k-word monster essays, but I should be able to do more concise articles.
I need your help with topics :) Please suggest any questions about hypnosis I can answer, or other things I can write educationally on!
For example, last time I did this someone suggested "doll play" as a topic (which I will probably do!). Someon...
2024-07-25 19:11:53 +0000 UTC
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So, I was in the ER yesterday. I had sudden severe vertigo on Wednesday accompanied by heart palpitations and headache, and it was getting pretty scary.
Good news: my heart is fine, they sent me home.
Bad news: we don't really know why I'm feeling this, and I am basically non-functional.
It could be my vestibular migraines, it could be something like POTS. Whatever is going on, I'm stuck in bed feeling pretty awful and not super able to move my head/body very much.
2024-07-19 18:18:18 +0000 UTC
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Hi everyone! 1) I'm happy to say that my chronic migraines are lessening, and we'll get an article going for next week!
2) I'm finally doing an update to the benefactor tier that I've wanted to do for a long time! + More tier updates???
I know this is a bit long but please consider reading and giving your input :) <3
The "Benefactor" tier ($20 USD) currently gets:
A digital copy of each of my books
My "Pacing, Leading, Ambiguity" video class...
2024-07-16 16:51:06 +0000 UTC
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Some Stuff About (Limiting) Beliefs and Evaluation by sleepingirl
People are always making judgments and evaluations about what is happening to them and around them, and those evaluations are based on their beliefs. We intuitively understand that beliefs can change a lot about how a person experiences hypnosis -- generic pretalks always contain parts to manage a subject’s expectations about what trance will be like. Beliefs about hypnosis can seem to hinder trance exp...
2024-06-28 20:14:06 +0000 UTC
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For Hypnokink Zine Week 2! PDF on Itch or on this post.
2024-06-21 19:59:38 +0000 UTC
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Hi y'all! Two quick things:
NASTY migraine made me lose the vast majority of the day today -- the "Beliefs" article is VERY close to done and I'll finish it up early next week!
You won't be empty-handed though -- in a few minutes I'm going to upload the mini-essay/zine I made for Hypnokink Zine Week which is a cool little 1k words or so and expresses a few interesting things, if...
2024-06-21 19:55:37 +0000 UTC
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"What IS Kinesthetic?": Our sensory systems are complex and have a TON of overlap -- an experience/suggestion is never just drawing on one sense. Kinesthetic stuff, however, is the most distinct among them in that it is insanely broad and nearly impossibly to separate from the other senses. Our kinesthetic sense involves not just sensations but our feeling of orientation in space, our emotions, our sense of movement, and much more. This has huge implications for hypnosis!
...
2024-06-03 14:40:06 +0000 UTC
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One of the first things we teach hypnotists -- and subjects who are new to hypnosis -- is that hypnosis is not an external, unnatural force that acts upon someone. But pinning down exactly what it is or how to explain it can be challenging.
Trance is a natural state, but it is one that people often need help to access intentionally. People respond to suggestions outside of trance, but trance seems to also affect the way people respond. Hypnosis operates entirely within a person’s mind...
2024-05-31 16:28:18 +0000 UTC
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Hi y'all! I meant to set up a poll last Friday but I was rushing around and EXHAUSTED and the day slipped away from me.
This week I'm going to write a smaller/candid article about the concept of "hypnosis is utilizing the mind to affect itself" and how oddly complex and paradoxical that is. It's something I've been pondering over for a few weeks (as I work on my next book!) and I think there's some wacky philosophical stuff in there that we can use for trance.
A poll for a regul...
2024-05-26 14:44:44 +0000 UTC
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Effective Fixation/Focus
Obtaining focus and fixation is one of the most universal ingredients in hypnosis. Depending on how you define trance, we might say that fixation is even inherent or necessary. But if we try to open up what hypnosis exactly is, we might start to question what the role of intense focus actually is and does -- and that can lead us to start thinking about how to create it and use it more effectively.
What is Fixation?
F...
2024-05-10 18:59:08 +0000 UTC
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"What IS Kinesthetic?": Our sensory systems are complex and have a TON of overlap -- an experience/suggestion is never just drawing on one sense. Kinesthetic stuff, however, is the most distinct among them in that it is insanely broad and nearly impossibly to separate from the other senses. Our kinesthetic sense involves not just sensations but our feeling of orientation in space, our emotions, our sense of movement, and much more. This has huge implications for hypnosis!
...
2024-05-03 15:52:00 +0000 UTC
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“Female Gaze” Hypnosis by sleepingirl
The terms “male gaze” and “female gaze” are not my favorite. They are gendered, generalized, heteronormative, binary. However, they attempt to describe something very important to me. I grew up as a fandom teen, entrenched in writing and reading fanfic -- traditionally “female gaze” media. I’m an anime fan and any non-cishetmale person in anime spaces is hyperaware of the skew of quantity of anime that is more aime...
2024-04-12 18:35:54 +0000 UTC
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WE'RE BACK TO USUAL ARTICLES BAYBEEEE
"Feminine Gaze Hypnosis": If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen I had a thought about something I feel is missing in the discussion of how to do hypnosis. I don't mean "hypnosis catered to women" but instead "how to sexualize hypnosis in the same way romance novels add dripping sexuality to 'nonsexual' things like flirting + how to steal 'female gaze' tropes to make your hypnosis incredibly intimate."
"The H...
2024-04-05 14:03:53 +0000 UTC
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(Hi everyone! I hope you've enjoyed these more free-form articles over the last few weeks -- I'm quite a bit more recovered now from COVID and family stuff, and I should be getting back to regular articles very soon :) Thanks for your well-wishes and patience!)
Brainwashing and Blankness by sleepingirl
This essay is about brainwashing and the role of “blankness” in hypnosis, but requires a little background of why I am thinking about that.
I am ...
2024-03-21 16:28:33 +0000 UTC
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Models, Suggestions, Hypnosis (Article) by sleepingirl
Unfortunately, in order to teach something, you have to define it.
Hypnosis operates very heavily based on HOW you define it. By that I mean it’s partially placebo effect -- if you tell your subject that it works via some mechanism, that’s suggestive in and of itself and will affect the trance. But more importantly, the lens through which you view “hypnosis” directly informs how you will “hypnotize...
2024-02-27 17:42:42 +0000 UTC
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On top of still not being fully recovered from COVID (which is now kicking up some chronic health stuff), over the weekend, we had a death in the family.
My plan right now for here is to work on smaller posts as I am able -- instead of my usual ~4k scheduled articles, I'll be posting shorter pieces on various topics. Think 500-1000 word articles on whatever comes to mind sporadically. I think this will be more doable for me as (God willing) things gradually return to normalcy. When I a...
2024-02-26 15:20:03 +0000 UTC
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I am still definitely recovering from COVID (ugh), but I finally had enough energy and brain to do final edits on this essay I’ve been working on for a couple of months. It is long and covers a lot but I think it tells a cohesive story about connections I’ve been making between hypnosis, Judaism, magic, and intimacy -- and I’m really thrilled to finally share it. It is very, VERY “me.” (Regular articles hopefully returning soon!)
Please enjoy, and I’d LOVE to he...
2024-02-22 18:37:58 +0000 UTC
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ICYMI on Twitter I did not successfully dodge the covid in my household and I'm sick and it sucks. Got a prescription for paxlovid so hopefully that helps but it'll probably take this week to recover. Want to get back to writing ASAP, I'll let y'all know 🤒
2024-02-11 19:32:20 +0000 UTC
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(My heat is finally back on and I was able to finish this in time :) I hope you enjoy it! I think there's a lot more to explore here and would love to do more in another essay.)
Inherent Intimate D/s by sleepingirl
There is a quality of experience you can achieve with hypnosis that straddles the line between a very private kind of intimacy and edgy D/s. Hypnosis, operating at least partially in the abstract, is well-suited to create emotional sensations t...
2024-01-26 21:11:02 +0000 UTC
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