The author with a Julie London album in front of her face.

BACKGROUND

In May of 2007, my friend, L.A. hypnotherapist Greg Beckett expressed a desire to conduct an experiment: 30 consecutive days of hypnotherapy, just to see what happened.

Of course, I agreed immediately, although it took us a few months to get it together. (In Los Angeles, it takes a few months just to get it together to make dinner plans with a friend who lives more than two doors down.) But do it we did, starting on Friday, July 6th.

THE RULES

The only parameter was this: once per day, for 30 consecutive days, either Greg had to put me under in person or I had to listen to a recording he'd made for me. Everything else was negotiable. We had no idea when we started out what we'd end up working on, or whether it would "work" at all; it was an act of faith and commitment on both sides.

WHAT HAPPENED (AND A BIT ON WHY)

The results so far have been extraordinary. One commenter who's been following the the series likened it to doing a whole lot of therapy in a really short time; not far off, that. Of course, both Greg and I have done a lot of talk therapy over the years with our various therapists. We're also not only good friends but fellow actors, so we have a shorthand with each other and a high comfort level with creative exploration and the kooky stuff that can sometimes be the by-product of play.

HOW TO READ THE SERIES

Because it's kind of fun to read things in order, and because the blog entries themselves are posted in reverse chronological order, I thought it might be a nice, Virgo-esque thing to gather all of them here on one page. Read them in order, or jump around to the days that sound interesting.

If you want to meet the subpersonalities, go directly to:

Day 1 (Monkey Brain)
Day 2 (Miss Lax)
Day 3 (The Ambassador)
Day 4 (Self-Esteem)
Day 11 (The Edge)
Day 19 (The Resistor)
Day 26 (The Teacher)

If you want to read about past-life regression, go to

Day 21 (it's a doozy)

I hope something will resonate with you or inspire you or just get you fired up to do some sort of creative exploration of your own and share it with the world. This is how we learn, this is how we grow...

xxx c

LINKS AND SUMMARIES

Day 1: Where Monkey Brain Meets the Other 80%

I'd worked with Greg a year before we started the Project, but had never met any of my subpersonalities. Monkey Brain (I have my own, private name for her, too) was the youngest, most vocal and, if it's a contest, the most fun of the bunch.

Day 2: Little Miss Lax and Her Never-Ending Lists

The One Who Keeps Order, this subpersonality developed around age 12 as a reaction to some difficult external changes in my life. I guess I should be happy I developed a fetish for making lists instead of food or cutting.

Day 3: Wherein the Ambassador Wrestles a Few Notions to the Ground

This introduces the part of me responsible for maintaining my public face. It also gets into more detail about the subpersonalities, how they manifested and what they "mean."

Day 4: You Cannot Use What You Do Not Have

Meeting Self-Esteem was not one of the happiest days of my life. Of course, it also explained a lot.

Day 5: You Are Getting Sleeeeeepy

Hypnosis is also great for, you know, just relaxing and stuff.

Days 6 & 7: What hypno?

My inner skeptic asked to try an experiment for a couple of days where Greg made me forget what happened while I was under. Kind of fascinating, I have to say.

Day 8: A Day of Parlor Trickery (or, "Scott Adams on Why We Go Under")

Dilbert creator Scott Adams is a Certified Hypnotist! A commenter pointed me to a great post Adams wrote about the mechanics of hypnosis; I use it as a jumping-off point for my own analysis.

Days 9 & 10: Ultimately, it's all your choice

Weekends quickly became "tape time", where Greg and I took a much needed breather from intense, daily work and I used the recordings he made me. An interesting glitch happened the first weekend that spoke to the importance of will in any endeavor.

Day 11: Every team needs a badass

This post introduces "The Edge", a very forceful, brusque, rather dim subpersonality whose job is to execute orders without question: okay as one of many, but if you've ever met someone who's mainly manifesting this...well, you wouldn't want to live in a world populated only by Edges.

Days 12 & 13: Where would you like to go todayâ€¦and tomorrowâ€¦and five years from now?

Some thoughts about using hypnosis to assist you in achieving "big" goals. Of which I have a few.

Day 14: Oh, THANK you!

This covers a particular issue I have with boundaries (i.e., not so good with them) and accepting praise (ditto). Also explores hypnotherapy as an extension of the other types of personal work I'm doing in my life, and how it augments it.

Day 15: Meander Time, trust and letting go

On the importance of certain "soft" skills when approaching any creative endeavor.

Days 16 & 17: To sleep, perchance to sleep some more

Just me, sleepin'.

Day 18: Better living through script-ery

Greg brought Monkey Brain in to give me a couple of short, post-hypnotic scripts for dealing with general bullshit.

Day 19: Lord of the Dark Side

After reading about resistance, the force, in Steven Pressfield's excellent The War of Art, Greg and I met my own version of the enemy of all things creative. Probably the most interesting subpersonality, because this one is a manifestation of the Jungian collective subconscious, not some manufacture of my own.