Guidelines for Safe, Ethical Hypnoplay

This started as a thread on the MC Forum and is being put here for community reference.

Note that the following are nothing more than my personal rules and are binding only on me, though I know of several others who agree with them and tend to follow them as well. I offer them here as suggestions for fair ground rules that will protect everyone.

For hypnotists:

• Your trance partner has a right to full disclosure of your level of experience, philosophy, and preferences prior to any trance taking place and to require references before agreeing to play with you.
• You have the right to require confirmation of your partner's sex and legal adulthood.
• You are responsible for the safety and comfort of your partner. Make sure that if the session is unexpectedly broken -- such as by a loss of connectivity in a voice or text trance -- your partner knows to come out of trance gracefully with any active suggestions suspended or canceled. Make sure that your partner is free to adjust his/her body position whenever necessary to remain comfortable, or to avoid becoming so relaxed that they fall out of their chair.
• Always determine before any trance takes place what your partner wants out of the session and what his/her "hard limits" are.
• When your partner offers you feedback, listen to it and learn from it.
• Your partner's hard limits are exactly that -- limits. They are not to be stretched, bargained against, overruled, or ignored under any circumstances.
• Your partner has a right to remember clearly, completely, and accurately every suggestion given during a session unless they agree in advance otherwise. Even then, amnesia games should be of limited duration and always end with full memory restored.
• Never establish a trigger of any type without your partner's consent, preferably while the partner is in a waking state.
• Any trigger or posthypnotic suggestion you give should be limited to you and/or specific individuals by name. Never create a trigger that can be used by an unspecified person.
• If your partner is playing with other hypnotists, you have no right to interfere with, modify, or override suggestions and triggers given to your partner by another hypnotist. Only your partner can authorize that.
• You have a responsibility to establish and use safe words. In particular, you must provide a safe word of the partner's choosing that automatically cancels an unacceptable suggestion, and no suggestion that you give can be allowed to interfere with the use of that safe word. Establish safe words and the appropriate responses to them outside of trance.
• If you and your partner play with triggers, you have a responsibility to establish reasonable safety protocols. For example, all triggers should be suspended while your partner is driving a car or in any other unsafe situation.
• Clean up after yourself at all times. Unless you and your partner have established an ongoing relationship, every suggestion you give must expire at the end of that session unless you have explicit permission otherwise.
• If you do establish an ongoing relationship with a partner and that relationship ends, every trigger or durable suggestion you've given must be removed and canceled. No exceptions.
• Hypnotic play is for entertainment only. Play and therapy do not mix, especially if you are not trained in doing therapy.

For hypnotees:

• You have an obligation to disclose your true biological sex to the hypnotist before there is any agreement to play.
• You have a responsibility to communicate to the hypnotist your desires, your preferences, and your hard limits.
• You have the right to refuse any suggestion, no matter how deep in trance you may be.
• You have the right to remember everything that happens during your play sessions eventually.
• You have a responsibility to use safe words whenever they are appropriate.
• You have a responsibility to provide honest feedback to your hypnotist. Don't fake a response because you think it's what the hypnotists wants; tell them the suggestion isn't working so you can discuss why.
• You have a right to your hard limits and to end a session if the hypnotist makes any attempt to cross them.

Much of this is the same philosophy you'll hear Lady Ru'etha explain in her Hypnodomination and Hypnosubmission 101 podcasts.

-wg

-- Main.MarkWiseman - 05 Sep 2008