@banana-pie-gaige reminded me of an experiment I’ve been wanting to run.
Loose conjecture: I have a book of sleeping tips that suggests that people close their eyes and slowly trace the outside ridges of the United States to trick the brain into starting REM. REM, or dreaming sleep, is often a period where people can be lightly suggestible- for example, you can talk to dreaming people and sometimes influence what happens in their dreams. There’s also the eye flutter that some subjects have when they go under and the eye movements people tend to have when you ask them to imagine a visual image when hypnotized- these may or may not be REM related (or require hypnosis at all).
Hypothesis: You can trigger tranceyness by having someone close their eyes and move them around in a circular way because this mirrors REM. Mirroring REM triggers a person’s mind to start dreaming which increases suggestibility.
Why this is probably bullshit: REM eye movements often look different than someone tracing the borders of the Unites States. People usually go through other sleep stages before getting into REM- you usually only jump in to REM when you’re sleep deprived. (My one time dreaming while hypnotized- which was awesome- was when I was up late and likely sleep deprived.) Moving eyes in a REM-ish way wouldn’t necessarily trigger REM or sleep or tranceyness or anything in particular. If this did put people to sleep or even made them dream,. this wouldn’t necessarily equal a useful hypnotic state. But what if it did?
That would be cool, huh?
Tumblr peeps- this is what I’d you to do:
Would you kindly:
1. Set an alarm for 6 minutes.
2. Close your eyes.
3. Relax. If you know how, let yourself sink into a light trancey/meditative state.
4. Imagine you can see the continental USA land formation. Gently and comfortable trace around the edges with your eyes, starting at the top right hand side with Maine. Don’t try and think or stop thinking- thoughts can just happen all by themselves. You can just lazily notice anything that happens.If nothing much happens, just let yourself enjoy the break.
5. Write me feedback about what, if anything, happened. It’s OK to tell me nothing really happened- that’s useful information!
I’ll tell you guys if we collectively discover something cool. :)
Also- please let me know if you have ideas or if this is a thing you solved in 3rd grade.
So- this was basically an exploratory mission to see what would happen if people faked REM-ish eye movements while conscious. The answer, unfortunately, was nothing consistently. @friedcherryblossomprincess had the most interesting results with some involuntary eye movements and better sleep that night, but her already being sleep deprived was a huge confounding factor. Other reactions ranged from mildly trancey arm movements to general annoyance. :)~
As a hypnotist, I am often not brave enough about trying new things. I have a million theories and ideas but tend to stick to the tried and true because I worry about what will happen if things don’t work. I already don’t fit most people’s hypnotist profile (female, quieter, mousy, not particularly eloquent) so I sometimes give myself less leeway to be creative or different. I’m explaining this because I really want the people who participated to know how cool it was for me to be able to test out something potentially harebrained in a less risky way. This is something I would have never tried out face to face. I’m so thankful to you guys for giving me a chance to explore!
#(February 2016) #(still a *little* embarrassed about having misunderstood but oh well) #((if you compare the version of the OP in this post and the version in the WordPress copy you can see)) #((that she later edited the bit about tracing to be less ambiguous)) #conversational aglets #sexuality and lack thereof
Brinens and Things - Tumblr Mirror 
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