"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.