Erotic hypnosis: ​“It’s just tying someone up without rope”

Every so often, a niche sexual practice becomes the online discourse du jour. It explodes into the mainstream in such a way as to bewilder, humour, or even horrify those who’ve never come across it before.

In recent months, our collective timelines (well, mine, at least) have been introduced to the latex vacuum cube, the concept of a praise kink, and, most divisively, erotic hypnosis. For those whose only experience with hypnosis is from 2009 when Derren Brown went on national TV to convince the public he’d stuck them into their chairs, it may be difficult to fathom how the practice can be eroticised. Maybe you’re picturing some balding guy swaying a pocket watch in a fedora and nothing else. Or you might even be imagining Brown on the telly, in some kind of sexy outfit (please don’t).

Whatever erotic hypnosis looks like, the practice is at least exactly what it sounds like: the use of hypnosis to intensify sexual experiences, usually in a BDSM context. Essentially, if you thought your brain was the least sexy part of your body, think again.

As per practitioner Neil the Erotic Hypnotist, erotic hypnosis, also known as hypnokink, can be used to enhance sensations, like pain or pleasure, or create ones that aren’t there, to make fantasy scenes feel real, or as part of consensual non-consent (CNC) play by controlling or immobilising the subject (within certain limits). He says the draws of the practice include increased sensitivity during sexual encounters, longer and more intense orgasms, a general interest in BDSM, or being turned on by the idea of being controlled or even ​“manipulated”.

The latter is what drew 30-year-old Eden*, who enjoys being ​“gaslit, tricked, teased, and taken advantage of”, to hypno CNC. ​“It’s like flirting, arousal, and mental bondage mixed with intense sexual fantasies and psychological manipulation,” they explain. ​“You can be pushed into a dream-like world where the hypnotist has full control over what you think and feel.” They admit that while this might sound like ​“a terrifying idea”, when it’s done well, it’s like ​“a heightened fantastical reality that you share with another person”.

Eden compares it to bondage. ​“Once someone has you genuinely tied up, you’re totally at their mercy. This is just tying someone up without rope.”

Eden’s been fascinated by the idea of being put to sleep ever since they can remember. They recall watching TV tropes such as being hit with tranquiliser darts, or kidnapped using a chloroform rag, and feeling a particular intensity as the character helplessly slips out of consciousness.

“I’d draw doodles of comics, imagine myself getting captured, struggling against some evil mastermind, and falling into some elaborate trap that put me to sleep, like a room filled with sleeping gas,” they tell me. ​“I felt weird and embarrassed about it, but as I grew up, I started recognising that same feeling in bondage, submission, and hypnosis.”

Now, they add, ​“it also helps me relax and trust people more; it’s sort of like therapy”.

If your interest is piqued, there are several ways to conduct erotic hypnosis: in-person with a qualified hypnotist, at home with an IRL or virtual partner, or alone with audio or video recordings. A professional session will be safer and may help you enter a deeper trance, but each technique largely works in the same way.

First, there’s guided meditation to induce a state of relaxation, followed by erotic hypnosis triggers to induce a trance. Then, once the subject’s in a deeper state of hypnosis, they can be given suggestions or commands. These suggestions can either take effect during the trance, or be post-hypnotic, meaning they’ll be triggered in regular life by certain actions or phrases.

Example commands from Neil’s sessions include: every time he holds the subject’s wrist, they feel an orgasm for as long as he’s holding it (vibe); when he touches their forehead and says ​“statue”, they become, you guessed it, a poseable statue; and when he says the word ​“horny” followed by a number between 0 and 10, the subject becomes aroused according to that number, with 10 being ​“the most aroused they’ve ever been”.

However, according to erotic hypnotist Miss Sara, this won’t work unless you’re open to it in the first place – for example, you wouldn’t be able to hypnotise someone off guard, if you didn’t know them first. ​“The amount of influence I have is related to how willing the subject is to accept the suggestions and how deeply they want to allow themselves to sink,” she explains. ​“A lot of that involves roleplay and participants who are very eager to go into trance. You can’t hypnotise someone who doesn’t want to be hypnotised.”

Although that may sound relatively harmless, or even just totally unbelievable, erotic hypnosis is actually highly stigmatised, even in the kink world. Hypnokink content is subject to restrictions on several porn sites (hence the existence of the term ​“mind fuck”, which is used on porn sites to get around hypnokink censorship), thus making life difficult for its creators. There’s also a widespread fear that the practice is inherently dangerous, as well as easy to abuse.

This is where the aforementioned discourse comes in. A recent BuzzFeed News exposé alleged that a series of hypnokink recordings, known as Bambi Sleep, were used by a self-described erotic hypnotist, James*, to ​“brainwash” subjects in the US and force them to partake in sexual acts they didn’t consent to. The article contains distressing testimonies from victims about being sexually assaulted while in a state of trance (they’d consented to be hypnotised but not to sex or sexual touch), and being forced to listen to the Bambi Sleep tapes for hours at a time.

The recordings, which are available for free on YouTube, aim to ​“feminise” or ​“sissify” the listener into becoming a ​“sexy bimbo girl” (also called bimbofication). They’re considered dangerous because they’re allegedly designed to be forgotten, making the subject less able to resist triggers outside of a trance. They also contain sexually explicit, agency-eroding content, and are so contentious that discussion about them is banned from the 126k-strong r/​EroticHypnosis subreddit.

While this horrified BuzzFeed readers, it also divided them. Many sex workers and erotic hypnosis practitioners described the piece as ​“irresponsible and anti-kink”, criticising it for conflating kink and abuse, and claiming that while a tool like Bambi Sleep ​“may make someone more vulnerable to an abuser, the [audio] files themselves can’t change someone into something they’re not”. There were also concerns that the headline (“After these people tried erotic hypnosis, they couldn’t recognise themselves”) may heighten the taboo already surrounding the practice, particularly among those outside of the kink community.

As someone who’s written about erotic hypnosis in the past, I was similarly critical of the framing of the story, and particularly the sensationalist headline. The BuzzFeed article is nuanced and harrowing, but what it describes is abuse using multiple tools: erotic hypnosis, yes, but also forced drug-taking and electrocution to enact emotional, physical, and sexual violence on unsuspecting, kink-curious people.

That’s not to say erotic hypnosis or even regular hypnosis can’t be abused (in fact, it famously has been, as have BDSM dynamics in general), but it’s important to make the distinction between nefarious actors – who aren’t necessarily professional hypnotists – and a tool that can, and typically is, used for safe, consensual kink play. Framing it otherwise just serves to stigmatise and villainise non-traditional sexual practices and those who engage in them.

“With the use of hypnosis or without, James would still be an abuser; he abused all of us in and out of trance,” Ava*, one of the survivors from the BuzzFeed piece, tells me. ​“I do, however, think people should be aware of the safety issues involving the Bambi Sleep files specifically.” Ava’s even created a document detailing all their unsafe suggestions and triggers.

To get around this, 25-year-old Rebecca*, who listens to the Bambi Sleep tapes every night, has her boyfriend edit them to remove potentially harmful parts, including negative feeling suggestions. With the vetted recordings, Rebecca says she ​“gets to be a pure, sexual being without worldly cares and [her] usual anxieties”. ​“My Bambi traits are now a part of Rebecca,” she continues. ​“I dress better at work, I exercise more and eat better, and my body positivity is as high as it’s ever been. I feel like a free spirit.”

There’s a whole other article’s worth to unpack when it comes to Bambi Sleep’s theme, but if curated, used mindfully, and with someone you trust, like how Rebecca uses it, erotic hypnosis itself is safe. ​“It’s when you put something that involves the power of suggestion into the hands of someone who has the intent to harm and manipulate, and that person finds victims who are vulnerable and often masochistic, that hypnosis can be dangerous,” says Mistress Sara. ​“But you could say that about anything.”

Even though any dom-sub relationships, or any relationships for that matter, could run the horrible risk of becoming abusive, Neil believes erotic hypnosis is particularly stigmatised because it’s so misunderstood. This, he says, is ​“mostly due to media portrayals, where it’s depicted as a form of mind control, with the subjects unable to resist the hypnotist’s commands”. So, he continues, ​“to many people, hypnosis is the antithesis of consent, hence it’s to be shunned”.

To combat stigma and make the erotic hypnosis community as safe as it can be, Neil encourages practitioners to share best practices on hypnosis forums, as well as to recommend trustworthy hypnotists and warn others away from abusive ones, as Ava and the other survivors have worked to do. And, despite all they went through, Ava still practises erotic hypnosis – though not with the Bambi Sleep files – and doesn’t want their experience to ​“demonise” the practice, which they think is ​“super hot and makes every other kink more fun to explore”.

Ultimately, as Miss Sara concludes: ​“People think that hypnosis must be some form of magic or manipulation. They assume that, if hypnosis is real, anyone can be put into a trance with a snap of the fingers, and that’s simply not true. Hypnosis isn’t magic, and it isn’t mind control. Anything can be harmful if it’s in the wrong hands.”

*Names have been changed