Full text of the trance, with the time each section begins. Stage directions and pauses are left out.
Before we begin
Hi, and welcome. This is From Performance to Presence, a hypnosis session for sex awareness. It’s for anyone who has ever been in an intimate moment and somehow ended up somewhere else… up in their head, checking, measuring, wondering how they’re doing. Before we start, a few practical things. Please don’t listen to this while driving, operating machinery, or doing anything that needs your full attention. Find a place where nobody needs you for a while, where you can sit or lie down comfortably. This recording can support you, and it doesn’t replace medical or psychotherapeutic care. If something about sex has been painful, frightening or difficult for a long time, a doctor or a sex therapist is a good next step, and this practice can sit right alongside that. And one more thing, which stays true the whole way through. If at any moment you need to be fully awake, for any reason, you can be. You simply open your eyes, feel your feet on the ground, say your own name, and you’re here… clear, and free of everything said in this recording. Good.
The camera on the ceiling
There’s a name for the thing this session works with. Sex therapists call it spectatoring. It’s what happens when part of you leaves the bed and climbs up into the corner of the ceiling, like a little camera, and starts filming. Am I doing this right. How do I look. Is it working. How long will it last. What are they thinking. And here’s the strange part. The more closely that camera watches, the less there is to see. Arousal, pleasure, closeness… they all need attention to grow, and the camera keeps the attention for itself. Almost everyone knows this. Women and men, people in long relationships and people on a first night. It shows up as performance anxiety, as feeling disconnected, as sex that looks fine from the outside and feels far away from the inside. You can’t argue the camera down, and fighting it only gives it more to film. What works is much simpler and much more physical, and you’re going to practise it here, slowly, in a way you can take with you.
What we’ll do
Here’s how we’ll do it. We’ll check in with three things, again and again, the way you’d check the weather before going out. Your level of stress. Your breath. And contact… contact with your own body, contact with the place you’re in, and later, if you like, contact with another person. There will be some images along the way. Some people see images clearly. Some feel them more than see them. And some just hear the words and let them pass. All of that works. There’s nothing to achieve here. Nothing to perform, and no way to get it wrong. Which is a slightly funny thing to say in a session about performance, because some part of you might already be checking whether you’re relaxing well enough. Let it check. It can stay on the ceiling for now. We’ll bring it down later, gently. So settle into a position you could stay in for a while… and when you’re ready, let your eyes close, or let them rest on one spot, whichever feels easier.
Contact with the room
You’re sitting or lying somewhere. You’re hearing these words. And your breath is moving, all by itself, without you doing anything about it. There’s a surface under you… a chair, a bed, a floor… and it’s holding your weight. You don’t have to hold yourself up. In some places the surface is a little firmer, in others a little softer. There are sounds in the room. Maybe a hum, a car outside, a clock, or a quiet so complete that you can almost hear it. Let the sounds be there. They belong to this moment too. And there’s air on your skin… on your face, on your hands… and maybe you can tell whether it’s a bit cool or a bit warm, whether it moves or stays still. This is contact with your surroundings. Nothing special about it. It’s been there the whole time. You’ve just turned toward it for a moment… and turning toward something is already the whole skill we’re practising here.
The stress dial
Now I’d like you to check your stress level, the way you’d glance at a gauge. Imagine a simple dial, or a slider, numbered from zero to ten. Zero is completely at ease. Ten is as tense as you ever get. Just let a number appear. You don’t have to choose it… let it show up. Whatever number came is the right number. A seven is useful information. So is a two. So is no number at all, only a sense of somewhere in the middle. And now watch the dial for a few breaths, without trying to move it. Dials like this have a habit. When someone looks at them with interest, the needle often drifts a little… sometimes down, sometimes it wobbles first, and sometimes it stays exactly where it is while everything around it softens. You don’t need to know which one is happening for you. Your body has been adjusting its own tension since long before you knew there was such a thing as tension.
Breath and warm water
And now let your attention go to your breath. You don’t need to change it. Just find where you feel it most clearly. Maybe at the nostrils, cool on the way in and a little warmer on the way out. Maybe in the chest. Maybe lower, in the belly. And see if you can find the exact point where the in-breath turns into the out-breath. That small turning point. It’s easy to miss, and it’s there in every single breath. And with the next out-breath, imagine you’re stepping into warm water… a lake in late summer, or a bath, whatever feels safe and pleasant to you. Just up to your ankles at first. With the next out-breath… up to your knees. The warmth wraps around your legs. Another out-breath… and the water reaches your hips, warm and steady. And another… up to your waist, your belly, so that each breath out lets you settle a little lower into that warmth.
The water carries you
The water rises with each breath out… over your chest, around your shoulders… and it holds you. You can float, or you can stand, or you can sit on a smooth warm stone and simply let the water carry some of your weight. And your conscious mind can keep doing what it likes to do. It can comment, compare, wonder whether this is working. That’s fine. It can keep talking quietly at the edge of the lake. Meanwhile, another part of you is already learning something… the part that knows how to breathe while you sleep, the part that knows how warm water feels without being told. You don’t need to know which part is listening more closely right now. Some people notice heaviness in their arms. Some feel a lightness, as if the water were lifting them. Some feel a tingling in the hands, or a warmth around the eyes, or simply that the thoughts have slowed down a little. Whatever you notice, and whatever you don’t, is exactly right.
The lift down
In a moment I’ll count down from ten to one. And as I count, imagine you’re in a quiet lift at the top of a tall building. The top floor is where the head lives… the control room, with all the screens and all the checking. And the ground floor is where your body lives, close to the earth, warm and slow. Ten… the doors close softly, and the lift begins to move down. Nine… a gentle sinking feeling, the way a lift settles. Eight… the screens upstairs are getting farther away. Seven… six… your shoulders are a little lower than they were. Five… halfway down, and nothing to do but ride. Four… the air feels a bit warmer down here. Three… your breath is slower, all by itself. Two… almost there. And one… The doors open onto the ground floor. And you step out, into your body, into the warmth, into the quiet that was waiting here all along.
Checking in
Take a moment and simply check how things are now. Your breath… is it a little slower, a little deeper, or about the same? Your hands… warmer, heavier, lighter? The dial… has the needle moved, or has the feeling around it changed? Whatever is different from when you started, even if it’s only something small, you noticed it yourself. Nobody had to tell you. That’s your own nervous system answering. And from here, on the ground floor, there’s something you’re ready to learn… something your body may already understand better than your thinking does.
The body map
Let’s take a slow walk through the body, using the breath as a lantern. Start at the jaw. Many people carry a whole day in the jaw without knowing it. Let the next breath out reach it, and see whether the teeth want to part a little, whether the tongue wants to rest lower. Then the shoulders. Are they up near the ears, or already resting? Breathe out toward them, and if one percent of the holding lets go, that’s plenty. You might not even feel one percent. It still counts. Then the belly. So many of us hold the belly in, all day, out of habit. Down here, nobody’s looking. Let it be soft. Let it rise with the in-breath and fall with the out-breath, like the belly of someone asleep. And then lower, to the floor of your pelvis, the base of your body, where you sit. Just let the breath out travel all the way down there, and see whether something in that floor can widen, or warm, or simply be noticed. And then the legs, the feet, heavy and warm. Wherever you found tension, you found a place where you were working. And wherever something softened, you found out that you can stop.
Looking at the camera
Earlier we talked about the camera on the ceiling. And now, from down here on the ground floor, you might glance up and see where it is right now. Maybe it’s high in the corner. Maybe it’s close, just behind your head. Maybe you can’t find it at all, because it’s resting too. If you can see it, take in what it looks like. Its size. Its colour. Whether the little red light is on. And here’s something interesting. The camera was never your enemy. It climbed up there for a reason. At some point it learned that watching would keep you safe… safe from embarrassment, from failing, from being seen at a bad moment. It was trying to help, in the only way it knew. So you don’t need to smash it, or chase it out. You can even thank it, the way you’d thank someone who has been standing guard far too long. And then you can tell it, quietly, that for this moment it can come down.
The lens becomes skin
Watch the camera begin to come down from the ceiling… slowly, at its own pace. As it comes down, it gets a little smaller… the red light dims… the lens softens. It comes down past the top of the walls… down to the height of your eyes… and then it does something unusual. It doesn’t stop in front of you, looking at you. It turns around, moves in behind your eyes, and points outward. Then it slides further down… into your throat… into your chest… and spreads out, until there is no camera any more, only sensing. The lens has become skin. What was watching from outside is now feeling from inside. The same attention, the same alertness… only now it points at what’s actually here. Warmth. Pressure. The weight of your body. The soft movement of breath under your ribs. This is what presence feels like. A camera that has come home and turned into skin.
Temperature, pressure, texture
Now let’s practise this with your own hands. If at any point you’d rather keep your hands where they are, you can do everything that follows in your imagination, and it works just as well. Let one hand come to rest on the opposite forearm. Just resting there. And now explore that place, the way you’d explore something you’ve never touched before. Slowly. With curiosity. First, temperature. Is your palm warmer than your arm, or cooler? Where does the warmth begin? Then pressure. Let your fingers press a little more… and a little less… and feel how the arm answers. Then texture. Fine hair, smooth skin, a fold in a sleeve, the small ridges of your own fingertips. Temperature. Pressure. Texture. Three simple things. And while you’re with them, you may find there’s no room left for the camera. The attention is busy with something real.
Touch out of curiosity
Touch like this has a particular quality. It has no job to do. No one to please, nothing to prove, no feeling it has to produce. It’s touch for the sake of interest. Sex therapists have taught this to couples for decades, because it quietly changes the question in your head. How am I doing turns into what is here. Keep exploring for a few more breaths. Slower than feels normal. Slow enough that each fingertip has time to report back. And if your mind wanders off… to a memory, a worry, a plan, the camera climbing back up the wall… that’s completely fine. It happens to everyone, every time. Simply see where it went… and come back to one of the three. Temperature. Pressure. Texture. That moment of coming back is the whole exercise. Every time you return, the return gets a little easier, the way a path gets clearer the more often you walk it. And now let your hand rest wherever it wants to.
One level deeper
And with your hand resting, take one slow breath out… a little longer than the breath in. And another. Check the dial again. Just glance at it. Whatever the number is, see whether it has moved since the beginning… and if it hasn’t, see whether the body around it has become a little softer anyway. And now, with the next three breaths out, let yourself go down one more level… below the ground floor, into a basement that’s warm and dim and quiet, like the inside of a lamp turned very low. One… two… three. Good. Down here, nothing needs to be checked at all.
The room in the evening
And from this quiet place, let an image form of a room in the evening. A room where you feel safe. The light is low. The air is warm. Maybe there’s the sound of rain, or a city far away, or nothing at all. And lying beside you is someone you trust. It may be a partner you know well. It may be someone you haven’t met yet. Or, if that feels better, simply let it be the warmth of the room itself… the blanket, the evening, keeping you company. Whoever or whatever is there, there’s no plan for this evening. Nothing is supposed to happen next. Just two bodies near each other, two kinds of warmth, two breaths in the same room. Find where you’re touching. Maybe a shoulder against a shoulder. Maybe a hand resting on a hand. Maybe only the mattress dipping a little where their weight is. And let your attention do what it did with your forearm… temperature… pressure… texture.
Breath beside breath
Now listen for their breathing beside you. You don’t need to match it. Just follow it… the rise, the pause, the fall. Sometimes two people breathing near each other drift into the same rhythm without trying. Sometimes they move in and out of step, like two waves. Both are a kind of conversation. And at some point in a scene like this, the camera may try to climb back up to the ceiling. You may hear the old questions starting. Is this right. What do they want. What if… When that happens, here is what you do. Three small steps. First, one long breath out. Second, find one point of contact, and feel its temperature, its pressure, its texture. Third, let your eyes, open or closed, rest on something real… their skin, their face, the light on the wall. Breath. Touch. Here. And the camera comes back down, a little faster each time, because it remembers where it lives now.
Giving and receiving
And in this room, something begins to change between the two of you… or between you and the evening. When the watching stops, there’s more of you available. More attention for what their hand is doing. More sensitivity in your own skin. And they can feel that. People can almost always tell when someone is really with them. Some of it might feel like closeness. Some might feel like warmth spreading through your belly and chest. Some might be a slow, pleasant aliveness, a kind of arousal that doesn’t need to be pushed or proven… it grows when it’s given attention, the way a fire grows when you stop poking it and let the air in. And some moments might feel like nothing much at all, only quiet. That counts too. Giving and receiving start to blur. You touch, and you feel your own touch. You’re touched, and you feel yourself respond. Connection is just this. Two people, both present, at the same time. Nothing to perform, because somebody is finally there to meet.
Half speed
Performance always seems to be in a hurry. It wants to know what comes next, how long it takes, whether it’s going the right way. Presence has a different tempo. So in this room, let everything happen at half speed. A hand moving along an arm, at half the speed it would usually move. Long enough to feel each part of the skin it passes. A breath in, a breath out, with a little gap at the bottom where nothing is happening at all. A kiss, if there is one, that lasts long enough for you to feel the warmth of the other mouth, the small changes in pressure, the breath between you. At half speed, there’s time for everything to arrive. Signals have time to travel. Your body has time to answer. And something interesting happens when there’s no rush. The questions that the camera asks… how long, what next, am I good enough… they lose their urgency. There’s simply no deadline for them to point at. Half speed. Nowhere to get to. And the strange thing is, that’s often exactly when things begin to happen by themselves.
Being seen
And perhaps, in this room, they turn to look at you. For many people this is the moment the camera loves most… being seen. It starts comparing, grading, hunting for the angle that looks wrong. So for a moment, let the camera stay quiet, and simply feel what it’s like to be looked at by someone who is glad you’re there. Their eyes aren’t checking a list. They’re resting on you, the way your hand rested on your arm earlier… interested, warm, in no hurry. Feel where your body responds to that look. Maybe a warmth in the face. Maybe the chest opening slightly. Maybe a small urge to look away… and then the choice to stay. And if you like, look back. Let your eyes rest on them with the same curiosity… the line of a cheek, the colour of their eyes, a small movement at the corner of the mouth. Seeing and being seen, at the same time. Two people meeting in the middle of the room, and nobody filming.
The pianist, part 1
I once heard about a young pianist who could play beautifully when nobody was in the room. At home, her hands knew exactly what to do. The music came easily, and she often lost track of time. But on stage, something else happened. Part of her would rise up to the balcony and watch… checking the next bar, listening for mistakes, wondering what the audience thought. And her fingers, which had been so sure at home, became stiff and careful. Her old teacher didn’t give her more exercises. He did something odd instead. He turned off the lights in the practice room and asked her to play one single note… and then to listen to it until it was completely gone. Just the note. The way it filled the room. The way the wood of the piano kept humming after the sound had faded. And then one more note. And then another. She said later that it was the first time she had ever really heard her instrument.
The pianist, part 2
Weeks passed like that, in the dark, one note at a time. And slowly she learned to let the sound lead… to let her hands follow what was actually happening in the room. The next time she walked onto a stage, she felt the old pull toward the balcony. She noticed it. She took a long breath out. She felt the cool keys under her fingertips, their weight, their smoothness. And she played the first note and listened to it, the way she had in the dark. People said afterwards that it was the most alive they had ever heard her play. She just said she had finally been there for it. And maybe some part of you understands this story better than I can tell it… that the most skilled thing you can bring to any intimate moment is your own attention, resting in your own body, open to the person in front of you.
Your anchor
And now, while this feeling of being present is clear… the warmth, the slower breath, the camera resting… gently press the tip of your thumb against the tip of your middle finger, on whichever hand feels right. Feel the small pressure there. Its warmth. Its texture. Take one long breath out while you hold it. Let this small touch become a reminder of this state… breath, touch, here. And let it go. Once more. Thumb and middle finger together, a long breath out, and feel how the body remembers the ground floor a little more quickly. And let it go. This signal belongs to you alone. Nobody else can use it. You decide when to use it, quietly, in any moment that calls for presence. It stays with you for as long as it’s useful, at least for the coming weeks, and each time you use it, it becomes a little more familiar. And whenever you decide you no longer need it, it simply fades, like a habit you’ve outgrown.
Looking ahead
And now let your imagination travel forward, to a moment sometime in the coming days or weeks… a moment of closeness. It might be intimate. It might be as simple as a long hug in a kitchen, or a hand on your back while you’re talking. See the place. The light, the time of day, what you’re wearing. And at some point in that moment, the old camera starts to climb. You feel the first flicker of checking. And watch yourself do the three small things, easily, almost without thinking. One long breath out. One point of contact… warm, firm, soft, whatever it is. Your eyes resting on something real. Maybe your thumb and middle finger find each other for a second. And feel how the moment opens up again… how there’s more room in it, more time, more of the other person, more of you. You might not even catch the camera coming down. You might only realise, later, that you were there for all of it.
Coming back
In a moment I’ll count from one to five, and you’ll come back up, step by step, bringing with you everything that’s useful from this time, and leaving here anything you don’t need. Before we do, feel your whole body once more. Your weight on the surface under you. The air on your skin. The sounds of the room you’re in, right now, today. One… the lift starts to rise, gently, back toward the everyday. Two… your breath becomes a little fuller, a little more awake. Three… you can feel your hands and feet, and maybe they want to move a little. Let them. Four… the room is getting closer, its sounds, the light behind your eyelids. Everything we set up for this session settles into its place, and the rest is simply done. And five… open your eyes when you’re ready. Take a moment. Look around. Find one thing you can see, one thing you can hear, one thing you can feel. Welcome back. Clear, awake, and here.