Conscious BDSM, Dominance and Submission what is it?

BDSM is primarily the act of exploring consciousness, letting go of attachment to identity and ego and what it means to be within a role. The invitation is to encourage you to enter and play in the realms of BDSM and explore the possibilities fully of what is. I do recognise it can be pretty scary and also it can bring up a lot of questions, hence this in-depth blog of what BDSM really is.

I am introducing a taster on this blog and hopefully giving enough groundwork so if you choose to dip your toes in the waters of BDSM it will offer a little bit more certainty, safety and confidence.

There is a big difference between conscious awareness and playing into stereotypes. This is where polarity works comes in, as in polarity it is acknowledging the extremes of the stereotypes, so if we really get into that work you are getting the black and white expressions of human nature, which includes stereotypes.

In BDSM play which pushes the edges, it’s important to bring in consciousness. This is quite the opposite of closing off and believing we are serving our proper role, or whatever that means to you. The truth of the expression is vast and it’s also not as chaotic as it seems. I feel a lot of people shy away from the realms of kink and BSDM as there is an impression that it is out of control or chaotic. The truth about conscious BDSM is far from that. If you are in a practice that is not just abuse or ego pushing and play is very much discussed, it is quite the opposite of chaos. You are directly looking at playing with your inner fears and desires and taking the time to discuss the agreements between top and bottom that provide safe consensual play. The importance of the play is hinged on consent. BDSM is definitely not about being stuffed or stifled into a role, it is about the liberation that could possibly come from such an erotic exploration.

What is BDSM exactly? Those letters stand for a combination of bondage and discipline, sado masochism, dominance and submission and master slave. I will talk about these later but essentially BDSM is about an erotic power exchange. I also love the word kink that is also used interchangeably to describe BDSM. I like the image that it brings up like a kink on a hose where you notice there is a power shift or stoppage that happens. We use the word kink to describe a bend in our sexual desires and highlights something to look at and play with. To clarify again BDSM play is always consensual, conscious and competent or else it is just abuse.

I fully understand that it can be a difficult concept to grasp as people think about the bigness or the tabooness of their desires I fully recognise that this can be really scary for some people. This is the reason to have the all-important conversations that create safe, sane and consensual play. It is this conversation about boundaries and limitations that it is actually building a container of space where two or more people can come together and be exploring BDSM play with conscious awareness.

The underpinning work and understanding around BDSM can take you into polarity and projections which is the practice of deliberately creating a power in balance, as polarity is the black and white. Going into playing with polarities it is deliberately creating a polarity in which to play with emphasis. The most subtle of things can be very intense as we open to desire. Under pinning knowledge around BDSM covers subject / object relationship with desire and referred and deepest desires. This offers space to learn about your deepest desires and deepest fears always tracking for the desire / fear complex. Facing the tiger which is the practice of turning towards your hidden desires and fears and face them head on. In my experience this is a really powerful piece of self-learning and also BDSM play. BDSM also covers the awkward states in arousal such as humiliation, guilt, shame, fear, embarrassment. Such rich places to play in and explore arousal and supressed arousal.

I just feel to introduce what I mean by polarities, within all of us there are many different polarities and they are the desire and fear of the same thing that happens simultaneously. So examples could be desire to have sex, fear of having sex or desire to be seen, fear of being seen or maybe desire to ask for what you want, fear of asking for what you want. The list is endless as I have spoken about before where there is sexual desire there is also fear. So I use the word polarity to describe this edge, the importance of this is the BDSM scene is is blows the desires to meet the fears and this is the important compound to creating an effective scene. Its the difference between just carrying out the act of using instruments of BDSM like, floggers, canes, electrics, strap ons and giveing meaning to the act through identification of polarities.. So it could be something as simple as desire to be penetrated by a woman with a strap on over fear of being penetrated by a woman with a strap on. It could be desire to be spanked over the fear of being spanked. The purpose of Conscious BDSM is to unpack and identify the polarity and the use the tension it creates to bring it to our awareness and ultimately integration. To take it one step further through the modality of Conscious BDSM we could start to unpack what lays behind the fear elements. I recognise that this is not for everyone as the bravest thing we will ever do is lift the lid on ourselves and look deep inside and its takes a lot of commitment and courage which I honour in those that are brave tough to go there. I like to use the term shining the flash light of consciousness into our darkest most hidden corners. I am going to say though that this is the most profound and powerful piece of work I have ever done and without it I would not be any where near the wonderful person I am today.

So why do this I hear you ask as this sounds really scary. BDSM has the ability to really invite the relationship between discomfort and growth. Take for example shame around sexuality, for some a highly charged area that brings the polarity of shame and erotic arousal into play. The intentional power dynamic play is the perfect place to be playing this out. BDSM provides space to be cleared in order to find new space. As long as we are living out these patterns and old attachments to identities and big pockets of fear and shame it creates an element of overflow within ourselves. By actually allowing these things to be fully felt and seen allows new things to opened up for more explorations and play.

Something I want to acknowledge is the tendency to confuse drama or discomfort with productivity, worth or intimacy, that is a big theme here and a reason to play directly with this.

There is also the theme of transmuting pain into pleasure, which helps to increase the capacity for being in the unknown and capacity for being in the space of discomfort as the play is confronting the fears. Fear of discomfort, fear of the unknown, fear of annihilation, fear of humiliation. Through BDSM play we can stretch the capacity to be in the unknown for longer amounts of time and play around with these juicy themes.

‘The essence of true bravery is being completely honest with oneself. In this paradox of exploration where we are taking on almost a costume for a set amount of time in a BDSM scene. This can be an extreme expression that we would not just naturally do out in the world, it really is an exercise in being real about what else is going on in ourselves. BDSM provides a wonderful playing field for the conscious awareness of polarities. It is the ability to identify the tension of polarities then use this in order to create a juicy BDSM scene.

Going back to that dynamic that is necessary that normally in life we gloss over the idea of hierarchy and in balance in relationships. It is through exploring BDSM Play that lets us play in those spaces of creating a particular dynamic around our erotic fears and desires.

The similarities between BDSM and tantra can be seen when we explore and realise It’s the tension of polarities where non dualistic tantra focus on integration. BDSM focuses on the named roles as polarising, so giver and receiver, top and bottom, dominant and submissive. By becoming more practiced at stepping all the way into each one of those roles at any one time we create familiarity with those potentials. Unless we are denying ourselves permission, we can recognise when parts of our selves are coming forward with desires. Allowing each part of ourselves to be personified to a level of its own it helps us not over identify that one particular aspect is who we are, and this play is what eventually will lead to integration.

Although the practices of tantra and kink may look really different it’s all about noticing where the energy is blocked, it’s all about returning to ourselves, returning to the listening and noticing if it is mental or physical where the blocked energy is.

Talking more about S&M (sadio masochism), which is about body and sensation play. I take a quote from the Consensual sadio masochism book which is like the old school bible of this play ‘In S&M the bottom gives up his physical resistance to intense sensation, where his physical blocks can dissolve and there his energy can flow ultimately he can release his physical, emotional and erotic energies and give them up to the top, who returns the energy to the bottom joined with the tops energy and so on in an ever unifying cycle’. The circle of energy between the top and the bottom is the true expression of power exchange. When the ego gets involved and people are adhering stiffly to roles they may not actually be in that connected circuit that creates the full exchange of power, that is an honouring of the kind of power that each person brings to the equation.

It is quite a mistake to think that the dominant has the power. The whole thing really depends on the listening and on the continuation of the circuit, otherwise we are back in the unconscious behaviour and the stereotypes. That is a really important piece I will say it again, it is a mistake to think the dominant has the power, in consensual conscious BDSM the submissive is always in choice and it is the role of the dominant to empower the submissive to be fully in choice and in their power otherwise play is has the potential to become abuse.

In sensation play it is possible to transmute pain into pleasure. This is a great practice of just noticing sensation of zooming in to what it is with some curiosity. Bringing awareness to that we may just dismiss as pain. It’s about taking a moment and unpacking that sensation as much as you can, get curious about it, how is the sensation constructed, what blocks have we created consciously and sub consciously to certain sensations. So instead of oh that’s a scratch it’s about breaking down the sensation in our awareness and getting playful with it. This is how I discovered I like the sensation of being bitten and scratched.

Another important concept in BDSM play is breath, sound and movement. Always keeping in mind the flow of breath sound and movement and how that is highlighting the places where energy is stuck. Breath sound and movement is also very helpful to free stuck energy.

BDSM is a practice of playing out consensually triggers, activation and taboos. Leaning into the activations the things that trigger you. In India the tantric temples have erotic images around the outside and the idea is to look at the images and see what they bring up in you. Do certain things trigger a response and if so, what is the response? It’s about bringing to awareness the uncomfortable feelings that something may bring up for you then looing at the polarities and then playing it out and integrating it. This is where the healing power of BDSM has the capacity to come into its own.

Just to define the word sadism and masochism, Sadism is about enjoying inflicting pain or having control over someone else in a consensual agreed manner, masochism is the enjoying the receiving of pain from the sadist or being under the control of the sadist again in an agreed consensual manner.

Moving on to D/S, I take a quote from Consensual sadio masochism book which beautifully sums this up. ‘In DS the bottoms goal is to become an extension of the top and of the tops will, giving up as far as possible his sense of self and his separateness as an individual human being. He seeks to trust completely that his top will take care of him and his needs so that he can serve the top unreservedly’.

With al this in mind it starts to highlight the depth of the possibilities here and maybe bring up some more fears…

In my next blog I will talk more about the nuts and bolts of setting up a scene and go into to how to create a safe container and more importantly why.

Kristina J Sensual muse, sensual seductress and creator of wonderful play scenes…