((The usual warnings and instructions. The following is an erotic trance with bdsm themes. For best results, find a quiet, comfortable place to read, and let yourself relax. If you enjoyed this story, please rate it, and as always, I love hearing feedback from my readers.))
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You are getting very, very sleepy.
Throw in a pocketwatch on a chain and you have the most cliche gimmick in hypnosis. Depending on where you see it, the subject either rolls their eyes at the nonsense idea that something so simple could work, or they immediately slump forward into a absolute trance.
It's not something your average hypnotist would say, and it's definitely not something that would work as we've seen in stories. But...there is a hint of truth in it. Hypnos is the ancient greek for "sleep". The literal meaning of hypnosis is " to be put to sleep". The word's origin says nothing of trance, suggestion, loss of will or any of the number of other things we commonly associate with the modern usage.
Why? Without going into the details, let's just say that when people first started tinkering with trance and studying it as a natural process, rather than the mystical, magical "mesmerism" it was seen as before, sleep was the closest analog they had to describe what was going on.
And in many ways, it still is. There are more than a few familiar links between hypnosis and the sleep you experience every night. Both start with relaxation, getting just as comfortable as you can. Both naturally lead to your breathing changing, slowing down, going deeper. Both have several stages, level of depth. When you sleep, you can find yourself drifting off, experiencing a vivid dream, or simply knocked out and still. And a trance can be light, focused relaxation all the way to something so heavy and foggy that when it ends, you don't even remember the details.
Both hypnosis and sleep feel very good. The reason we crawl into bed every night is not just because of how uncomfortable we become the longer we go without rest, but because we remember just how good it feels to lay down, close our eyes, and just simply relax. Hypnosis can feel much the same way, with your body becoming pleasantly warm, tingling. Your mind can gradually become lightheaded, your thoughts slow down, and the whole experience can quickly become addictive.
But here is where the two diverge. Because when you fall asleep, you do so by focusing on absolutely nothing, so that your mind can simply go offline for a few hours. When you sink into a trance, your mind is still on, still thinking. More so than when you are wide awake, your mind is focused with an unusual intensity. It's all a matter of awareness.
The mind can be aware of many things at once. For an experienced driver, it's absolutely effortless to divide their awareness in several directions. Most of their focus goes into looking ahead at the road, planning for turns, passing other cars, reacting to any changes. More awareness is given to the operation of the car itself: how precisely to move the steering wheel, to press down on the gas and brake, to keep the speed within the limits and more. They can even let their awareness participate in a conversation with others in the car, or relax as they enjoy some music playing, enjoy the gum or drink they brought with them, and more. In short, the mind has a wide and deep pool of awareness that it can draw upon to multitask the wide variety of things we do all at once every day.
When you sleep, you slowly tune out that awareness. This starts with the awareness of your body. Your legs feel relaxed and good, and send a steady stream of this feeling to your mind. After a little bit, you tune this out, and then slowly the rest of your body follows along. You close your eyes, see nothing, and tune out your awareness of your sight, because it's all the same, unchanging darkness. You listen to the sounds of your room, and when they are quiet or at least steady, like the sound of rain on your window, you tune out of this as well. One by one, you tune everything out, until you're alone with your thoughts, and soon, every single night, those tune out as well, you lose all of your awareness, and you fall asleep.
The difference with hypnosis, with trance, is that even though you are tuning things out in the same way, you aren't losing focus. You are increasing it. You stop thinking, lose awareness of everything else, and you use all of those freed up resources to focus on just one thing and one thing alone. This is what happens when you are engrossed in a book, movie, or game, and the same when you become so lost in your thoughts, your daydreaming, that you simply lose awareness of what is around you.
But something unusual happens with hypnosis. Your focus grows stronger and stronger. You lose more and more awareness of everything else as all of your mind tunes into just one thing. In this case, right now, that one thing will be my words. So let's tune things out even more.
You are getting very, very sleepy. Your body is already so very relaxed, but now you can let it relax even more. Start with your feet. Just make yourself aware of them. Make sure they are comfortable and relaxed. When you are sure that they are very relaxed, take a deep breath, and move up your body, repeating the process over and over, as you make sure your body is relaxed and comfortable, pleasant feeling, and you can let your awareness of each part fade into that gentle warm hum in the back of your mind.
Imagine yourself standing in a stream. You stand on flat, smooth stones that feel nice and cool against the soles of your feet, while the water--which is as warm as your covers of your bed in the morning--is still only knee deep. The water is not still though. It flows steadily downstream. And though the stream is shallow, it is wide, an unusual combination unlike what you normally see. Very wide, so that even though you can feel the water pushing in one direction, you can't see the shore, which is hidden by a light fog that grows more and more dense the further out you peer.
