I’ve always been a dreamy sort of person but lately I’ve become interested in the state of daydreaming itself. Most of my remembered childhood was spent watching leaves tear off the branch and slowly spin to the ground, or the way light bounced off raindrops or trying and failing to read a book and instead taking a nap, or vice versa. Then I became a writer and a mother but nothing much changed. A lot happened but the way I noticed it seemed fixed.
Eventually I began wondering why I chose to spend most of my days in what felt like semi-dissociative state. Why was I so drawn to parallel worlds that existed only in my own mind? Was this daydream time wasted or ‘part of the process’ (as I often consoled myself)? Why did I find it so pleasurable to drift off and escape and so tricky to stay in the here and now? Was the daydream an escape or a destination in itself?
Then, in my forties, I experienced an unforeseen life crisis which resulted in a prologued and debilitating period of insomnia. In desperation, I tried hypnotherapy and to my astonishment, almost overnight, I could sleep again. Sanity regained, energy restored, I became determined to find out how and why hypnosis worked so well for me. It was simple yet also mysterious, an almost effortless process. I understood it was about ‘allowing’ rather than ‘trying’ and I sensed that my weird predilection for daydreaming made me a self-taught natural. Inadvertently I’d been practicing self-hypnosis all my life without knowing how or why. Maybe all this time wasted actually had a covert purpose?
I began reading more deeply about the history of trance states with a vague notion that one day I might write a book on the subject, and this led me to study and qualify as a cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist. I started practicing in my London writing shed and found I didn’t just enjoy the work, I loved it. Hypnotherapy felt right, like writing and reading and starring out the window. It all seemed of a piece. I was invigorated by the process of meeting new people and listening to their stories, isolating their issues, and then helping them to relax and feel better in a way I knew produced tangible results. It was also less lonely than blinking back at a cursor or a falling leaf (though admittedly I still do a lot of both).
The White Room is a communal, audio-led platform where I want to share everything I’ve learned about the therapeutic possibilities of daydreams and trance states. I want it to be a clean and ordered shared space where I hope we can gather in the hope of learning how to feel better. I will be your voice and guide — but the idea is for it to be a forum for your stories and daydreams too. I hope we can all use this space to learn from each other in turn.
Daydreams, trance states, call them what you will, are not mysterious, eery or remotely unusual, and used properly they really do have the power to change and improve our lives. I now know this from both practice and personal experience. Trance is a natural function of human consciousness. It’s a pleasant liminal state of mind that exists both in and out of time, a kind of internal netherworld between sleeping and waking. Most of us go in and out of trance quite naturally many times in the course any given day. Some of us are more practiced at it than others and cultivate trance states unconsciously as part of our work. All hypnosis is self-hypnosis, as any good hypnotherapist will tell you. It’s a practice, not unlike meditation or mindfulness. We are all capable of both self-hypnotising and being hypnotised, whether we understand we are doing so or not.
Throughout history, right back to the ancient Greeks, trance states have been induced and employed for curative, creative, productive and recreational purposes. Not just evidenced-based therapeutic practices like hypnotherapy, but repetitive chanting, singing, dancing, religious rituals and the state known as ‘creative flow.’ They exist on what I think of as the continuum of daydream. If you’re curious to find out more and explore the limits of trance as a therapeutic practice, I hope you’ll join me as a subscriber to The White Room.
HOW IT WORKS:
Hypnotherapy helps us to let go of our unwanted thought patterns and reframe our sense of who we are, for better, in a way that works for us. Through regular practice we can shift and adjust the unhelpful underlying beliefs which result in negative and self-destructive behaviours and ultimately to replace them with better habits which are in line with our desired goals. I’m aware of how hopelessly earnest and simplistic this sounds but I swear to god it works.
This is the work I undertake with my clients in private practice every day. It’s also the work I’ve done since I was a child starring out the window at the falling leaf which led me to become a reader, then a writer and more recently a therapist. And now I want to bring the benefits of what I’ve learned to a wider audience.
The method is simple: I talk and you listen.
It’s non-invasive and truly relaxing. A bit like spa treatment for the mind, without all the towels, scented oil and mental restlessness. You relax and I become the gentle voice in your head.
A bonus for our purposes is that hypno is an audio-based therapy, one that can be induced passively without physical contact, and it’s shareable in a way that few therapies are.
Talk therapy has gone digital in recent years but the remote possibilities of hypnotherapy remain largely unexplored. The White Room aims to change this by bringing the practice to a wider audience and community. I hope you’ll join us either by staying on as a free subscriber or signing up as a paid one. You are welcome to participate actively or simply lurk, listen and learn.
WHAT YOU GET:
Free subscribers:
Occasional free hypnotherapy audio sessions, like the one above, as well as my occasional hypno-related musings. These free ‘taster’ sessions will be ones I have made for individual private clients and repurposed. However however they will still ‘work’ and, more importantly, give you a sense of how hypnotherapy functions both in theory and practice.
Paid subscribers:
A weekly hypnosis audio session to your inbox every Friday that includes both a preliminary discussion as well as a tailor-made session tackling common issues such as disrupted sleep, negative self-talk, lack of focus, habit change, weight loss, smoking and alcohol cessation, pain-management, overcoming anxiety, grief, self-doubt, phobias and many others. These sessions will be safe, effective, professionally-produced with music and tested in advance to ensure that they work for most people most of the time. And they will work.
Open invitations to monthly LIVE hypnotherapy discussions and guided group sessions curated and led by me.
Personal requests for audio focussed on your specific issue.
Occasional essays by me on the topic of trance states and other related topics.
Full access to the The White Room audio archive, as well as a thriving community of likeminded folks interested in hypnotherapy, mindfulness and trance states.
Introductory early bird offer: £9 per month or £90 per year (soon to go up).
Please remember this is an experiment! I’m figuring it out as I go along. So for the first month I’ll leave the comments open to everyone in the hope I can get your feed back and improve and adjust things as needed. Tell me what you think and I will listen. Constructive criticism welcome.
Finally, if you’re interested in a private session (in person or via Zoom), you can contact me directly on Substack, by replying directly to this email, or you can read more by visiting my website here.
In the meantime, find a quiet comfortable place, lay back and enjoy.
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