HypnoJacks - A Field Report

The Backstory:

I was on the Skills and Education Team for CLAW 26. It was a really good role for all of us to play - and it gave me back-of-the-house access to the schedule for the weekend.  This year was our first year in the new city and at the new hotel. We’re trying to make the best impression possible with the hotel because they’ve made it clear that if everything goes well, they’d offer us a multi-year contract.

Unfortunately, a few months ago, when folks in CLAW’s former host town got wind of this new arrangement, they were pretty upset and somebody reported us and the new hotel to the Ohio liquor board. They had a little tantrum.

To their credit, the hotel remained committed to making this happen, but we had to make some modifications to our event. But now, under this heightened liquor board scrutiny, penetrative sex was no longer allowed anywhere but in guest rooms. Also, during the day, at least, only one demo sub per class was allowed to be naked.  Otherwise daytime nudity was disallowed.  In the evening, nudity was restricted to only one ballroom.

Because of this, my very popular CBT class (in which, ideally, all class members participate) was to be held on Saturday evening in the naked playspace as part of the “After School” program introduced this year. 

Bound and Beautiful (a sort of live bondage contest) happened in the naked playspace on Friday night, but would be over by 10:45 PM - leaving the playspace open for a late night event.  That got my brain cooking. I had an idea.

The Idea:

What if I did a collaboration with one or more of the educators teaching masturbation/self-pleasure/edging at CLAW 26 - a collaboration the goal of which would be to explore the overlap between hypnosis and self-pleasure.  What if it was an edging/”Jacks”-style play party* with hypnosis? Can we use self-pleasure and hypnosis to amplify mind/body connection, build a group vibe of sexual community, and let folks have a taste of what’s possible when we use hypnotic focus to forge new bonds and new self-awareness?

(*Elevator pitch for "Jacks-style play party": There are, actually, dozens of masturbation fetish parties all over the country. A lot of them call themselves "city name Jacks".  Rain City Jacks, for instance, in Seattle.)

In other words, let’s just get a few men in a room, lay out some ground rules, and do very little pre-talk to help set hypnosis expectations and consent stuff.  And then just start some facilitated masturbation.  Wouldn’t that be fun?  

The Setup:

I took my idea to CLAW organizers and they agreed: it sounded hot.

So I started reaching out to my fellow hypnosis educator peeps and both of the masturbation educators. Thiccy Nick, the educator who also runs the excellent Columbus Jacks, said almost right away he was interested. Also, hypnosis educator Dalhyp from Dallas also wanted to help. 

I chose the name HypnoJacks and CLAW organizers got it on the schedule.  Let’s DO it.

I contacted my friend SpacePupSilver and he made some poster art for me.



I was so excited by his art, I suggested I’d make stickers out of it and he had an alternative idea: let’s make a horny version of the “I Voted” stickers we see during election season. 



All of the pre-CLAW stuff happened SO fast.  Over two weeks at the most.  

Fast forward to the event itself:

I decided fairly late we wanted to be mic’d for this, so I brought my two-channel wireless mic-set from home and rented a PA speaker in Columbus. I knew there would be three facilitators (me, Nick, and Dalhyp) but thought we could somehow share the two mics between us but that was never a particularly good idea. And I apologize to Dalhyp for my lack of forethought. I’ll make it up to him.

When we arrived, Bound & Beautiful had almost vacated the room.  We had plenty of time to set things up.  It was a lucky break Bound & Beautiful had been there because the center of the room was covered in wrestling mats.  We surrounded those with chairs.  There was cool mood lighting.  You get the vibe.  I brought my JBL Flip speakers and I’m amazed at how decent the music sounded in there. We just wanted the music in the background and I think it fit the brief.  I chose Andy Stott for our background music.

The Reality:

People arrived… mostly on time.  But it wasn’t “a few men”.  It was MORE THAN SIXTY MEN.

Nick and I got started.

We introduced ourselves to and laid out the idea for the group.  We set reasonable hypnosis goals and talked about consent in this framework.  We invited folks to take off their clothes if they liked.

To be clear, I have a much stronger idea about how I’ll do this part of the pretalk in future editions of HypnoJacks.  More on that later.

I did a consent/yes-set* activity, as I do at all my hypnosis workshops. 

(*Elevator pitch about "Yes-Set": this is a pre-induction procedure where the hypnotist establishes a mindset of agreeability by asking a series of easy-to-agree-with questions.)

First question:  “Do you consent to experiencing arousal?”  

I gave a rough idea of what kind of hypnotic phenomena to expect during the evening. We’d be doing some enhancement to mind/body connection, to body and sexual awareness, to group sexual awareness.  Also, we would not be intentionally making suggestions that would continue to be effective outside of HypnoJacks (with the understanding that the things they’d learn about themselves during the event would persist after the event). And then I asked a second question, “Understanding these hypnosis guidelines, do you consent to experience hypnotic phenomena?”

I encouraged them to lift their hands up very high if they consented to these ideas.  100% buy-in.

I began slowly to pace* them all.  My pacing was very much setting the groundwork for the leading I intended to do, of course. “You can feel the temperature of the air on your skin.” “You can feel your hands where they’re at right now.” “Notice your posture.” “You hear the sound of my voice.”  “You hear the sound of your breathing.”

(*Elevator pitch about "Pacing": it's basically using direct or indirect language to focus a hypnotic subject (or subjects in this case) on some aspect of their current physical and situational experience.  For more information, check out my YouTube Hypnosis Educational Series).

In fact, there was a LOT of breathing.  I asked for (and got) and deep inhale through the nose and a noisy exhale through the mouth.  “You can hear the sound of your neighbor’s breathing.” 

And so on.

The leading* was very “you can feel changes in your body”, “warmth spreading in your body”, “can feel your breath filling your body”, “can feel yourself filling your body” at first.  It got much more intense and sexually explicit later.

(*Elevator pitch about "Leading": it differs from pacing in that, rather than focusing on the subject's current experience, it invites them to experience something else.  For more information, check out my YouTube Hypnosis Educational Series).

SO much breath work.

Then the hypnotic mantra.  I used “hard penis, soft brain…” Folks enjoyed it but had a hard time holding onto it.  That was fine. I get it.  For the brief time they WERE able to hold onto it, it was thunderous and more than a little culty.  Hot as FUCK. In the future, I’ll warn the groups about how it feels to repeat a mantra like that with a large group. See if I can’t get them past their self-consciousness about it by pre-framing.

I went back to more very intentional pacing and leading. 

By this time Nick was doing basic, but effective, masturbation coaching. He focused a lot on body positivity, awareness of your neighbor, celebrating the differences in our bodies and so on. It was really good. We volleyed the patter back and forth between us.

I did a little mentation exercise that my boy loves.  “You can feel/see/sense a tiny ball of energy pulsing in your prostate.  As you stroke, it very slowly grows and you can feel it moving, so slowly, so deliberately, moving into your balls and into the shaft of your penis. Your balls will begin to feel heavier with energy.  You can feel the energy travelling fraction of an inch at a time, toward the head of your penis. Slowly.  Slowly.  Each time you take a break from stroking, you feel the energy subside a little but it’s always there.”

Very effective. I heard from several guys later that this nearly pushed them right over.

And then the thing that got people probably the horniest:  

“Focus on that hand - pay particular attention on what that hand feels as it touches that penis” and then switching to “Focus on that penis - pay attention to what that penis feels as that hand touches it” - back and forth. And then I had them start to use BOTH hands… on different parts of their body…. “Focus on what those hands feel,”  focus on what those body parts feel” - back and forth.

THEN back to pacing and leading and asking them to notice the breathing in and noisy breath out again and suggested it as a convincer (that they were building a strong community that included all of them simply by their breathing noises and their penis strokes).  

And challenged them to touch the edge of orgasm but not to allow themselves an orgasm.

All the while, Nick was talking about their bodies, and the group, and stroking, and feeling good.

Over and over. got one hypnosis body builder (who I know a little) flexing by telling him that when he flexed he was helping to power and empower all the men in the room. And then a few more men were flexing.

I got one beautiful boy to have a ruined orgasm just by asking him to flip his focus from his hands to the parts his hands were touching.

Everybody was SO high. The room was ripe with energy, focus, and connection.  Several men connected, touched each other, and made out.

I’ve never felt anything like that before.

The Hiccup:

We had two and a half hours.  Everybody knew it.  So they were setting their stroking cadence accordingly.  

But an hour and a half in our education department organizer had to pull the plug.  He was horrified that he had to do it - but the organizers were very worried about the safety of CLAW itself (new hotel, new city, old liquor board rules) with so many naked men jerking off in the ballroom.  They pulled the plug on the HypnoJacks.

I totally get it.  Protect CLAW at all costs. It was a lot of masturbating men.

But JESUS… we did have sixty-plus VERY HORNY MEN.  And I had to tell them they had like five or ten minutes to get off.  Not everybody did.   Like… maybe a dozen men got off in the time we had left?  But the orgasms that happened were magnificent - and I suspect that many of the men who didn’t get off were just saving up for later in the weekend.

The Future:

Here are some things I want to change for the future:

• A friend of mine thought the orgasm denial caused by the premature end of the event was HOT.  And from a certain angle, he’s right. But here’s an interesting way to pleasantly pre-frame denial with intention-setting:  Include it in the pretalk we offer folks the opportunity to set an orgasmic outcome for the event. 
  • Folks wearing white wristbands are expressing an intention of having an orgasm by the end of the event.  
  • Folks wearing a black wristband are expressing an intention of NOT having an orgasm by the end of the event. 
  • Important to this pre-framing is the idea of that folks should treat these as intentions. If they comply with their own pre-set intentions, what does that feel like?  If they don’t, what does that feel like? It’s emotional and erotic data. Also, these intentions gamify their HypnoJacks experience a little bit. And I will see their pre-set intentions and be able to interact with them accordingly.
• Also, offer wristbands which express “touch consent”:
  • Green means “Touch me”
  • Yellow means “Ask first”
  • Red means “Don’t ask - if I want to be touched, I’ll ask you”
• I definitely want to explore Mantras more.  I’d definitely warn people how distractingly punchy and low-key culty it is when a large group of men say the same thing over and over. I think in order to do that, I need to spend five to ten minutes explaining the purpose of a mantra in a group setting. I understand that for some people religious trauma may fuel resistance to group mantra play.
• More challenges to touch the orgasmic edge. 
• More stroke rate coaching, more grip-style coaching.
• Encourage vocalizations.
• Do even more work with individuals once the hypnotic leading starts. 
• Encourage even more body expressions such as flexing, playing with body parts, standing, lying down, etc.
• Do even more to build community in this space - even among those disinclined to touch others physically or to be touched physically.  
• Discourage individual and disconnected  “performance” in the pretalk. Exhibition is good - but only when its purpose is to add to the group vibe.

Do it again?

Bet your ass.  CLAW has already said they'd like to do it for real next year.  And I'm getting expressions of interest from other groups. I would definitely travel to facilitate it.  It's a pretty lit idea. Stay tuned.