Rabbit hole

I'm helping out Different Drummer with a hypnosis project on pain. By "helping out" I mean that we're meeting up once a week, he's putting me in trance and we're seeing how my pain responses can be turned off.

What I hadn't expected was quite how easy and how needed going into a trance state was. I know I'm a bit tired and run down at the moment, I'm expending a lot of energy both on work and my kink (totally worth it!) but what I'm not getting is much down-time. Domination is energy intensive, like working out, it makes you feel energised in the sense that you are stronger, sharper and powerful. But it's also tiring. A good sort of tired, and you have the satisfaction of having built or created something, yet tired all the same.

Permission to turn off is rare in any case in kinky or vanilla situations. When was the last time you actually took a break from doing anything? To drop everything and let go, relax, ignore all anxieties or concerns is a luxury. Not falling asleep, killing time or passing out. Not waiting for something, anything to happen. Doing nothing.

It's been a while since I've been anywhere deep and quiet, inside myself. The room is quiet. I'm laid down on my bed and listening to his voice which is strong and low. Familiar too. Safe. I've done this before, I know how it works. That's both a positive and negative point. I can hear the familiar ticks in his voice, in how he is guiding me down using repetition, the lowering of timbre on certain words, the pacing and timing. On the other hand, knowing how it works doesn't stop something from working, if anything, it's like going through a house you've visited before. It makes the journey less strange and of course, I want to go on the journey.

So there I am. Bottoming out.

Eyes closed. Breathing regular and slow. Feeling the air loop around on itself and inside me, forever and ever like a lemniscate. Holding pattern in the blackness of Infinity. I shut out the chatter and let my mind filter around, images flicker like a broken cinema behind the lids of my eyelids. I try not to focus on any particular thought, just let them flow over - the flotsam and jetsam of the day, ready to be washed over.

Suggestions within his voice trigger responses within me, key words: heavy, light, down, warm, relax. They are keys that turn in locks, dropping me down another level, then another, then another. My body gets heavy quickly - feet and legs first, sinking into the mattress. Trance state is safe space. It is not, however, empty space. There are places within myself that I can explore. The first ones are familiar from my own meditation practice, but beyond them there are more and they feel intensely personal, secret and also surprising. They are new, and thinking about them, how they looked, smelt and felt to the touch of my mind's fingers I wonder where they came from, these spaces inside are part of me, I created them.

I'm floating in a deep pool carved from a black volcanic glass, lined with fragrant magnolia flowers. I look up to the ceiling to the starry sky which is also the firing neurones and constellations of my own mind. A staircase opens up, next to an old fashioned grandfather clock (it is, in fact a clock that my grandfather made for me). The water pours lazily down the slick steps and I half float, half walk down the glass steps, holding carefully to the black iron wrought handles. Into a gigantic, fleshy heart. Which is my heart. I push at the beating, bloodied matter and it opens easily. It is warm, but not unpleasantly so. There's a sort of bed or couch, complete with cushions, in one corner so I curl up on it and watch the blood pulse in and out of my heart, to different bits of my body as my arm becomes deadened according to the suggestions from Different Drummer. It feels cold and light, I have an image of a skeletal hand, shedding fine grains of white sand. Lost to me. I take up it's image in my mind - a tarot card with a hand of glory picture and walk down to the next room.

An attic in the basement. Old fashioned furniture covered in dust sheets - a bedstead, mirror and some other shapes out into the darkness. The room is cool and has no visible walls or ceiling. the floor is littered with shop mannequin parts. Arms. Legs. Heads. Torsos. My absent body, that I have abstracted from myself, to view from afar.

He pinches my hand. I know he is pinching my hand because eventually I recognise the twist of the flesh. Then it hurts. A little. But not before. My skin has that ghostly numb quality to it. Internally, I smile. First step taken. Looking forward to more.