I want to talk about how to handle pain being doled out by a Sir. If you want to get anything out of the intense experiences pain can bring then you’ll need to learn how to cope with physical pain.
When your nerves light up with pain, they are more awake than normal. So any sensation, pain or pleasure will be felt more intensely. That is why so often dominants alternate between pain and pleasure to take advantage of the intensity of sensation that can be achieved by stimulating raw nerves.
The point of processing pain is to help you cope with higher levels of pain. The more pain you can experience without undue stress, the more intense sensation play can be. It is a form of play that has a great deal of depth to it and the adrenal high further intensifies the experience and can strengthen bonding between top and bottom. Furthermore, learning to process pain is useful in day to day life, and in case someone hits you harder than you expected them to allowing you to recover without writhing.
To define my terms what I mean by “process pain” is a mental or physical trick you use to lessen the sensation of pain. As a child, when I skinned my knee my parents told me to simply wait and pain would end. The reality is that while pain may not be something that can be entirely suppressed it is still quite possible for you to deaden the sensation with a physical trick or willpower.
- The Three Types of Pain -
One of the other traps pain play tends to fall into is that there are essentially three types of pain and different people enjoy or hate different types of sensation and that can lead them to write off the entire practice if they happen across the one they like the least first.
- Thudding: This type of pain is usually inflicted by canes, crops, and paddles. It is pretty much what it sounds like. These toys often hit with a thud and that thud is impactful at a point and spreads a short distance from the impact. The pain can be intense but because it tends to spread out from the location of impact it is usually shorter lived.
- Stinging: Stinging pain is often inflicted by flogs and whips. Stinging toys impact and area and the pain does not spread but tends to sit on the location of the impact while taking longer to dissipate. I personally find the stinging sensation more difficult to manage because it takes longer to fade and thus can build up if the blows are too frequent and the submissive is inexperienced.
- Cutting: This kind of pain is usually inflicted by knives. I have very little experience with knife play and cannot comment on it much, but others have told me that intense whipping scenes can also simulate this sensation because whips can in fact slice open skin if desired. Cutting pain is derived from an actual injury rather than simply an impact, but like an impact it is of course possible to control how fine or coarse the pain is depending on the implement used and how. I would consider cutting pain to be something to be sought after once you feel you have a very trusted partner and experience dealing with pain play. It’s not for beginners.
- Focus: This is probably one of the key components to most methods of processing pain. You need to shift your focus from the site and source of the pain to something that helps calm you. I’ll list some methods below but focus requires some personal discipline and practice to accomplish. So go slow when you first try pain play to give yourself some time to learn it right.
- Breathe through it: The first technique is the simplest. Breathe through it. Take deep breathes. Be careful about the speed at which you take the breaths. Too slow and you’ll get light headed and too fast and you’ll hyperventilate. The true point in breathing through it is to feel the oxygen fill your lungs. Your focus should be on breathing not the sensation of pain. Breathing is such a simple process but with some practice you can begin to feel pain being breathed out which can help much more quickly dull the harsher sensations.
- Clenching: All you need to do is squeeze down on with your fist on a pillow, ball, mattress, almost anything soft that won’t be destroyed by your grip. The objective here is to grip hard and focus on maintaining that grip with pressure. The pressure will actually make the experience of pain deaden a bit as you grip.
- Biting: This technique is something you should do very sparingly. It involves biting down on something soft (such as a gag). I don’t recommend this technique because you can damage your teeth or your jaw. It is useful primarily as management for more intense play when you are unable to manage the aforementioned techniques. If you’re strapped to a Saint Andrew’s cross and your dominant hits you a bit too hard you can bite down on the gag as a method for management.
- Meditation: Meditation is not something I would recommend in the moment but it is a useful precursor practice to experiencing pain. There are more resources out there for meditation than I could ever list so poke around and see what works for you. Meditation is a useful thing to practice to learn to control your body and your mind. If you are a particularly anxious person I also recommend it as a way to learn to self soothe. Anxiety will heighten the experience of pain and can lead to panic if you’re not careful.
- Almost ouch: This isn’t so much a technique for processing pain as it is for learning your limits. For the newest of players you want to be hit at a speed, pressure, and angle that is uncomfortable but doesn’t quite hurt. You should not be starting out simply getting wailed on as hard as the top can manage. You should build up to it because doing so floods your mind with endorphins which in addition to everything else above allows even better pain tolerance (and a nice natural high) which can build up more endorphins creating some truly outstanding sensations and head space. It’s a good line because it will redraw itself as your mind’s capacity for accepting pain changes and expands.
