beta_vulgaris (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beta_vulgaris) wrote2014-11-18 10:43 am
beta_vulgaris) wrote2014-11-18 10:43 am
Entry tags:
Kinky November Day 13: Pain Processing
Pain play is a core element of my kink practice. As I have gained experiences with different kinds of pain and different partners and scenes, I've learned a lot about myself, about pain processing, and about the emotional and physical takeaways I get from it.
I'm very definitely a masochist with a fairly high pain tolerance, which makes my approach to pain a bit more straightforward than it might otherwise be. Some people don't have the same physical enjoyment of certain kinds of pain that I have, and so for some people pain play comes from a different place--perhaps an element of submission as part of a D/s or Master/slave relationship.
There are, of course, some kinds of pain I straight-up hate. I don't enjoy headaches! I find pulled muscles and stubbed toes annoying and not fun. Even some kinds of pain that I take as part of my kink practice aren't straight-forward fun for me, but I do them as part of pushing toward my limits and exploring some aspect of my willpower. These types of pain require a bit more care in processing.
When I'm getting ready to bottom for some kind of painplay or impact scene, I start out with visualizing. I tend to stretch a little to get my mind into my body. I visualize an emotional buffer that goes over my skin, like a layer of anticipation that feels physical for me. I can usually tell where I am emotionally at this point. Sometimes I am using pain play as an emotional release, in which case this layer feels tense and spiky to me. If it has been a long time or I am feeling particularly stressed, I have learned that I need to ask my top for a gradual warmup and a lot of physical skin contact with them. Other times, I'm looking forward to it with joy and excitement, in which case the layer feels springy and warm, and I am likely to be up for more challenging forms of pain.
The warmup can really set the tone, and I need warmups in order to get into good pain processing. Warming up helps my body learn to anticipate blows, and helps me feel connected to my pain emotionally. In my pain psychology, warmups usually do feel literally warm to me, and the psychological layer I described above gets more relaxed and pliable.
A note on types of pain: There are lots of kinds of pain, and many kinksters roughly separate them into 'thuddy' and 'stingy'. This tends to be about the springiness of the object and the surface area and intensity with which a blow is delivered. Small surface area blows tend to be stingy, whereas heavier materials with more surface area tend to be thuddy. The material the object is made from also makes a difference, of course, as does the location on the body.
I tend to find thuddy very relaxing--heavy leather floggers, for example, work on me like a deep tissue massage in some ways. When a thuddy blow lands, the visualization I take is like a heavy wave on a beach. It falls on you hard and kind of stays for a few delicious moments, then ebbs away. When thuddy impact gets layered, especially in a repeated, consistent rhythm, it can feel to be like being surrounded by blankets. It makes me feel kind of drunk and very relaxed.
Stingy is a harder type of pain for me to process but I find it really rewarding. This kind of pain comes from things that are more whippy, like canes, thin-tailed floggers or even some paddles (especially rubber). The visualization for this pain feels bright to me, I experience it in colors that spark. It's a spiked intensity that can be overwhelming and that I've learned one must breathe through. The immediate aftereffects can feel SO giddy, like you've just come from a thrilling rollercoaster.
I actually tend to have a different set of visualization for scratching, biting, smacking and punching, because those tend to be more intimate and feel more connected with my partner, so my pain sense gets wrapped up in them more directly than with tools. I have a stronger sense of my muscles, and the psychological layer broadens for me to encompass their breath on my skin and the emotional connection/sense of the scene we have going.
If I'm looking for an emotional/physical release, a strong painplay session can be hugely comforting to me. A scene will arc up from warmup through play, often peaking on a heavy or, depending on the goal of the scene, challenging pain. The warmup and relaxation into the rhythm of the scene and the style of the top help me get to a space where I am in control of my visualization, where I feel ready to take on a particularly difficult or strong impact, or where I get to a place where we can play with rhythm--if the top starts acting randomly, landing unanticipated blows in terms of speed or placement, that can make everything harder to process and the anticipation becomes part of the difficulty/enjoyment. I can't do randomness at the beginning of a scene because I usually am not in my body enough to calibrate to it, but once I'm well-warmed up this can be a really rewarding, fun challenge.
A lot of taking pain is in having an understanding of your body, your past experience of pain, and the way you allocate endorphins. The post-pain rush can be amazing and enveloping, and depending on the type of impact it can stay in your muscles as a delicious ache for hours or days after (not to mention the bruises!). I've found that trying to keep my breath steady and deep, trying to not tense up my muscles in anticipation of a blow, and visualizing pain as a wave that feeds through my body and transmutes into pleasure as the wave rides through me are how I manage it and turn it into something that I find beautiful. An experienced top will recognize this and will help remind you to breath through the pain, to relax, and will adjust their style to help you reach your goals, whatever those might be.
Those are my thoughts on visualizing and processing pain in a kink setting!
I'm very definitely a masochist with a fairly high pain tolerance, which makes my approach to pain a bit more straightforward than it might otherwise be. Some people don't have the same physical enjoyment of certain kinds of pain that I have, and so for some people pain play comes from a different place--perhaps an element of submission as part of a D/s or Master/slave relationship.
There are, of course, some kinds of pain I straight-up hate. I don't enjoy headaches! I find pulled muscles and stubbed toes annoying and not fun. Even some kinds of pain that I take as part of my kink practice aren't straight-forward fun for me, but I do them as part of pushing toward my limits and exploring some aspect of my willpower. These types of pain require a bit more care in processing.
When I'm getting ready to bottom for some kind of painplay or impact scene, I start out with visualizing. I tend to stretch a little to get my mind into my body. I visualize an emotional buffer that goes over my skin, like a layer of anticipation that feels physical for me. I can usually tell where I am emotionally at this point. Sometimes I am using pain play as an emotional release, in which case this layer feels tense and spiky to me. If it has been a long time or I am feeling particularly stressed, I have learned that I need to ask my top for a gradual warmup and a lot of physical skin contact with them. Other times, I'm looking forward to it with joy and excitement, in which case the layer feels springy and warm, and I am likely to be up for more challenging forms of pain.
The warmup can really set the tone, and I need warmups in order to get into good pain processing. Warming up helps my body learn to anticipate blows, and helps me feel connected to my pain emotionally. In my pain psychology, warmups usually do feel literally warm to me, and the psychological layer I described above gets more relaxed and pliable.
A note on types of pain: There are lots of kinds of pain, and many kinksters roughly separate them into 'thuddy' and 'stingy'. This tends to be about the springiness of the object and the surface area and intensity with which a blow is delivered. Small surface area blows tend to be stingy, whereas heavier materials with more surface area tend to be thuddy. The material the object is made from also makes a difference, of course, as does the location on the body.
I tend to find thuddy very relaxing--heavy leather floggers, for example, work on me like a deep tissue massage in some ways. When a thuddy blow lands, the visualization I take is like a heavy wave on a beach. It falls on you hard and kind of stays for a few delicious moments, then ebbs away. When thuddy impact gets layered, especially in a repeated, consistent rhythm, it can feel to be like being surrounded by blankets. It makes me feel kind of drunk and very relaxed.
Stingy is a harder type of pain for me to process but I find it really rewarding. This kind of pain comes from things that are more whippy, like canes, thin-tailed floggers or even some paddles (especially rubber). The visualization for this pain feels bright to me, I experience it in colors that spark. It's a spiked intensity that can be overwhelming and that I've learned one must breathe through. The immediate aftereffects can feel SO giddy, like you've just come from a thrilling rollercoaster.
I actually tend to have a different set of visualization for scratching, biting, smacking and punching, because those tend to be more intimate and feel more connected with my partner, so my pain sense gets wrapped up in them more directly than with tools. I have a stronger sense of my muscles, and the psychological layer broadens for me to encompass their breath on my skin and the emotional connection/sense of the scene we have going.
If I'm looking for an emotional/physical release, a strong painplay session can be hugely comforting to me. A scene will arc up from warmup through play, often peaking on a heavy or, depending on the goal of the scene, challenging pain. The warmup and relaxation into the rhythm of the scene and the style of the top help me get to a space where I am in control of my visualization, where I feel ready to take on a particularly difficult or strong impact, or where I get to a place where we can play with rhythm--if the top starts acting randomly, landing unanticipated blows in terms of speed or placement, that can make everything harder to process and the anticipation becomes part of the difficulty/enjoyment. I can't do randomness at the beginning of a scene because I usually am not in my body enough to calibrate to it, but once I'm well-warmed up this can be a really rewarding, fun challenge.
A lot of taking pain is in having an understanding of your body, your past experience of pain, and the way you allocate endorphins. The post-pain rush can be amazing and enveloping, and depending on the type of impact it can stay in your muscles as a delicious ache for hours or days after (not to mention the bruises!). I've found that trying to keep my breath steady and deep, trying to not tense up my muscles in anticipation of a blow, and visualizing pain as a wave that feeds through my body and transmutes into pleasure as the wave rides through me are how I manage it and turn it into something that I find beautiful. An experienced top will recognize this and will help remind you to breath through the pain, to relax, and will adjust their style to help you reach your goals, whatever those might be.
Those are my thoughts on visualizing and processing pain in a kink setting!