"Before we begin, I'd like to describe the goals we're going to be working to achieve with today's session. If these goals don't interest you, or if you don't feel safe and comfortable with them, you can simply make the choice to stop listening and find a different experience to enjoy. You are always in control of your trance state, and any suggestions you hear will only apply if you feel safe and comfortable accepting them.
"The goal of today's trance is to train you to experience drowsiness on command, to a degree where once you've practiced with the suggestion enough you'll experience a sleep-like state whenever your hypnotist wills it. There are no specific hypnotic triggers in this induction that I'm asking you to accept--we're going to teach your mind to develop those sleepy feelings that you may explore whenever a safe, comfortable opportunity arises to do so. This is more flexible and open-ended than a trigger, and may result in you becoming becoming drowsy unexpectedly... although, again, only when it is safe and comfortable for you to do so.
"Although there are points in this session where you may be encouraged to pay less conscious attention to the hypnotist, there are no direct amnesia suggestions incorporated into this session, and no suggestions or triggers that are intended to be forgotten after the session is over. Even so, spontaneous amnesia does happen to some people during hypnosis, so you may find yourself experiencing difficulty recalling details of the trance experience. If you enjoy forgetting your trances, your mind is going to work to make that happen. You have permission to remember or to forget as much of this session as you want--again, within the boundaries of what is safe and comfortable for you.
"This session contains permissive language directing you to disrobe and touch yourself. If you believe you will have difficulty resisting these instructions, please wait until you have some privacy to begin. If you do not feel safe or comfortable following any of the described suggestions or instructions, this would be a good place for you to stop. Otherwise, please lie down and get comfortable for me so that we can begin.
"And we can begin with the image that's in your head already, the one you've been thinking of from the moment you saw that title. The image of opening your mouth wide in a long, slow, lazy yawn. It's so easy to picture, isn't it? We're all accustomed to that sight at the end of the day, a visual absolutely synonymous with exhaustion. We all know what it's like to feel our jaw stretching, our lungs sucking in as much air as we can get to try to get a little bit more oxygen into our bloodstream and stave off that tired, sleepy feeling. Everybody knows what it's like to yawn. And everybody knows what it means when it happens.
"It means you're getting drowsy, of course. Even as you picture those long, sleepy yawns in your head--and you might find your mouth imitating the image in your mind and beginning to yawn for me, that's okay, that's a normal and natural thing to do--you can remember all the times that a yawn finally made you realize what your body had been trying to tell you for so long. A yawn is like a signal from you to yourself, a message that you're getting so tired and so weary and it's time to lay down and rest. And no matter how hard you try to ignore that message, once you receive it you find that becoming more and more difficult, don't you? Once you know you're ready to sleep, it's like a heavy weight on your thoughts, pulling them down and down and down into total exhaustion.
"Sometimes it's not even you yawning--not at first, anyway. Because the thing about yawns is that they're contagious. When you see someone yawning, when you see that mouth going so wide and round and those heavy eyes squeezing shut, it's hard to resist the desire to yawn back at them. The power of suggestion makes the mere image of a yawn--like the yawns you're seeing now inside your head, the ones you've been picturing the whole time I've been speaking--feel like an irresistible compulsion to yawn on your part as well. And once you begin yawning, it's like priming a pump. One leads to another leads to another until all you can think about is how sleepy you are.
"It's like water rolling downhill. Yawning doesn't just happen when you're tired, it makes you tired. Once the yawn gets into your brain, whether it's the physical act of stretching that jaw open and gasping in a long, sleepy breath to try to stave off exhaustion just those few tiny seconds longer, or simply the mental effort of picturing that perfect drowsy yawn in your weary head, you find you can't resist the desire to yawn for me again. And again. And again. And before long all you want to do is rest and sleep.
"And there's something so luxurious about the thought of sleep when you're deeply exhausted like that. When you're so tired that you can't stop yawning, when your body feels weary and your eyelids feel heavy and all you want to do is close them all the way down and relax into peace and pleasure, that's when sleep becomes a magical soothing elixir that melts everything away into warm, drowsy bliss. You can imagine it so clearly right now, can't you? You can imagine the delicious sensation of drifting down and down, deeper and deeper, until those dreamy sensations are absolutely everything to you and and you're too cozy and comfortable to even move.
"It's so easy to fall asleep when you're yawning like that, sometimes you don't even know that it's already happened. Sleep comes in stages, after all, and although we always think of blissful dreams and deep, total unconsciousness when we think of sleep that's not the only part of it. Right at the beginning, in those first drowsy moments when you're still trying to convince yourself that you're only resting your eyes and you could wake up any time you wanted, you enter what's known as a hypnagogic state. It's a little like sleep and a little like trance, where your mind has vivid experiences that aren't quite dreams and aren't quite reality and your body is too relaxed and heavy to act on any of them. You might be in that hypnagogic state already and not even realize it.
"And if you are, if you've already drifted down for me into that soft and sleepy place where you're not quite asleep but you're very much not awake, then you might find that everything that happens to you feels like a warm and wonderful waking dream. If I were to describe your hands, for example, moving all on their own to remove your clothing and leave your slumbering body naked for me, it might feel like it's really happening even though it's just a dream. Or it might feel like a dream, even though your fingers are undoing buttons and tugging on zippers right now under my direction.
