Tripnosis in Brighton was super trippy!
I joined forces with the Psychedelic Society to do my first event in Brighton, and 40 people turned up to open up their minds to the joys of trance!
We started by retracing our steps to the building, bringing our attention to the present and the body, and then I explained how I approach trance, emphasising that autonomy and control rest with the subject rather than the hypnotist.
The first trance journey cleared the space and the mind, opening up the body to energies flowing through it. After sharing some thoughts about the power of magic, of words, and of magic words, we dropped back into trance to explore the mycelia beneath the forest floor (you can stream a similar induction here).
Going in and out of trance like this allows people to go deeper each time, especially if it is your first experience: some people like to dip their toes in first before diving in. After an exploration of hypnosis and shamanism and the use of trance in 18th and 19th century medicine, the third trance went really deep, introducing people to their spirit animals.
Hypnosis, or my way of introducing it, is a little bit Marmitey, it seems, and some of the feedback was less positive:
"I became alarmed when the speaker said he would be invoking Thoth, and that's not my path, so I left at that point."
As the old saying goes: You can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the time one of the people thinks they are going to lose their souls in an occult ritual.
What I said was:
“The other god who is interesting here is Thoth, who has the head of an íbis and a long pointy beak with which he can poke around in the ground and find the kind of things that ibises eat. Words can penetrate, when they are used correctly, and bring things back from the depths, from unseen places.”
Please be advised that while these workshops are perfectly safe, trance can lead to insights and experiences as surprising as any psychedelic trip (though usually not quite so wobbly). Sometimes, turning the awareness inwards can threaten parts of the mind which are coasting along on autopilot, and all kinds of defences can kick in.
If some irrational fear bursts into your conscious mind, relax and allow your system to recalibrate. Things can get really interesting, and patterns can be interrupted, if you sit with what arises for a moment and allow yourself the time to alchemise it.
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