Kiss me and smile for me
Egregiously late again, I still owe Ellie and you a Monday post. It should have had something to do with Memorial Day, I suppose, but that’s not quite where my heart is.
I mentioned my girlfriend, Julie, in posing the Sunday Question. She’s back home now, 500 miles away, hopefully still smiling as much as I am. Which has me thinking about how hypnosis comes in handy in the oddest ways. Yes, even with a long-distance relationship.
Julie is a kinesthetic type, meaning her mind tends to represent and recall data in terms of body sensations. Because her mind naturally leans that way, Julie is very good at recalling and even reproducing sensations of touch, texture, and warmth — she can even hallucinate them with very little prompting. Which makes it very easy for me to send her a warm hug, for example, by posthypnotic suggestion. It’s still not the same as physically being there with her, but it makes her feel good and I (being an auditory type) get to enjoy hearing her sigh when she feels it.
Skype is our friend, of course. The call quality is generally outstanding and the price is unbeatable (free). People who use computer voice chat also tend to do it with headsets, which eliminates the problem I mentioned before about dropping the phone. I’ve talked with other hypnotists who’ve done whole sessions over Skype with distant clients and gotten very satisfying results. No surprise, then, that another powerful way to connect is to do a form of guided visualization (or the kinesthetic/auditory equivalent) over that voice connection — with a little hypnotic help, we can create a shared space where we can sit together, cuddle, and talk. It’s quite nice, and again adds to the feeling of connectedness that’s so hard to sustain across multiple state lines.
I could go on, but I didn’t clear this topic with Ellie beforehand and it would be dangerously easy to drift into Too Much Information. ;^) So instead let me just suggest that those of us who work with people in relationships, or who are in relationships ourselves, take a few quiet minutes and ask, are we making the most of the tools we have at hand, for ourselves and for our clients?
<MR>
