Click

Last November, only a month or so after I'd started out being a hypnotist, I asked the following question in one of my earliest posts, entitled "Sleep!".

"What does the experience of being zapped back into trance in an instant feel like? This is where I guess I have to ask for answers on a postcard."

I wrote it long before I actually tried hypnosis properly and had my bubble burst a bit by my apparent complete lack of receptiveness to it. That was last December, but of course since early this year I have been working hard to improve my abilities as a subject. Last night I had an experience that made me realise just how far I've come since those early months, and which I would like to share.

My response to the instruction to "sleep" so far has been one best described as "yeah, okay...". It's felt as though I have made the conscious decision to close my eyes and go back into trance, partly because I enjoy being in trance and partly because it's something you agree to do when you volunteer to be a subject. More recently I have come to accept that the above is probably more of a conscious rationalisation of what's really happening, which is probably a more subconscious process.

But it's always felt as though I've had time to think: "Trance? Yeah, okay. Why not. Let's just do that." Or indeed, as I confess I'm a bit of a junkie, sometimes: "Trance? Did someone say trance? Where? I want! My trance! Gimme!"

In either event I will allow myself to go limp, feeling compelled to go for maximum dramatic effect.

My experience last night was rather different. The friend I was with had given me the suggestion that I would go back into hypnosis whenever she clicked her fingers. On the face of it this might not seem any different from her simply saying "sleep", but for me the experience was something else entirely. This was especially as it caught me completely off guard; I did not see it coming at all. We were mid-conversation, I was in fact mid-thought when it came.

*CLICK*

It was like my reality hit a brick wall.

That's the best way I can describe it. There was no warning, no build up, no time to think about what I was doing. One moment I was sat there eyes open, chatting and thinking away, and the next everything had just stopped. For a split second the click was the only thing in the world and it seemed in the same instant that my eyes were already closed. Before I had a clue what had happened I was already in the warm darkness of trance and didn't care about the outside world. Don't ask how my body reacted, whether or not I flopped like a rag doll, I honestly don't remember noticing!

The change of state from alert wakefulness to the fuzziness of trance happened so instantaneously that there was absolutely no question whether I'd chosen to or pretended to follow the suggestion. It was all over by the time I had a clue what was happening.

It was, on balance, one of the most awesome experiences I have ever had.