The SpeakEasy dames are hosting Ione’s Dream Festival this week: check it out on Facebook. Here’s today’s entry by Adele Wearing, the feral leader of Fox Spirit Books.

I love hypnosis. Like really love it. It’s about the only way I have to relax without being fast asleep. I mean ok I do occasionally fall asleep under hypnosis, but I only snore a little. Honest.

When I was younger the idea of being hypnotised horrified me, it seemed like giving away control, but then I started to think about divorce. I decided to seek a therapist before ending my brief marriage in case my husband wasn’t why I was miserable. It turned out he was btw, but I am pretty sure I am why he was miserable too. Anyway, I ended up going to see the Wizard. He is brilliant, a real believer in meditation and hypnosis as well other forms of therapy.

Sorry, long story short I went with hypnotherapy. I am shockingly easy to hypnotise and I go deep. I know I am there when my wrists feel as though they are on backwards and I don’t care because everything feels slightly detached anyway. Oh that feels good by the way, the detachment from the old meat suit. I never did stick to script, but I can feel bark under my feet, and water between my toes, and smell the water.

Whatever the journey he guides me on the smells and sensations are incredibly real, not always the visual, but I was never so good at the visual, that’s ok. It comes and goes. It’s like lucid dreaming for me. It’s like a spa day in 20 minutes in terms of relaxation. I have no sense of time when I am under and it’s really where I started to investigate my dream.

Ordinarily, even when I can tell I am dreaming I have no control, I am just along for the ride. Under hypnosis I have some say, I choose where I want to go and who I want to see and the dreams talk back, communicate with me instead of just being left over mush from the day. Or the Wizard guides me to where I have asked. I have learned, over the many many sessions that got me through divorce, how to self hypnotise. Sometimes silence and darkness are good. Sometimes I prefer drumming music to help me push everything else out. It’s still easier with the Wizards guidance, but I can do it on my own and it’s fantastic.

I do not find nearly enough time in my days to do it. I should. It’s peaceful, it’s revitalising. It’s sometimes energising and I can’t wait to go and create, and sometimes takes everything out of me and makes me accept my body and mind are just tired and I need to rest.

If you have never been hypnotised and someone is going to help you then I just have to say, you have to be able to let go, so trust is huge. Find someone to guide you through it you feel safe and relaxed with, and then let go. It can take a while to get vivid and longer to get lucid, and you know, maybe it’s not for everyone. I really struggle with relaxation, with letting go and just existing, two things allow me that, being live on air, because the moment is the only place I can be, and in a hypnotic state because time and space become irrelevant.