You can also use conscious power exchange to enhance erotic massage. If you are the active partner you can use sensual touch—your hands or your whole body—to communicate the transfer of control. For example your hands on their back might convey the message, “You are my property,” or, you might lie on top of your partner, using your weight to take command. You can dictate the pace of your partner’s arousal, driving them wild by denying them an orgasm or by insisting on multiple “forced” orgasms. By the way, although it might seem logical that the person giving the massage would be the active partner and the person receiving the massage would be the receptive partner, this is not the only viable power-sharing configuration. The person receiving the massage could be the active partner, directing the receptive partner in giving them exactly the right touch, exactly when they want it.
Power exchange and oral sex are a similarly good mix. As the active partner you could take control of your partner’s cock or pussy with your mouth, teasing mercilessly, allowing orgasm only on your terms, in your own time. If you like vampire fantasies, you could imagine feeding on your partner by sucking out their power and their pleasure with your mouth. As the receptive partner, your mouth could become your partner’s sex toy, to be used as they please.
Use your imagination. You don’t need specifically Tantric positions or BDSM rituals to play with conscious power exchange. Some fantasy or image may have flashed through your mind as you were exchanging power. You may have caught a glimpse of a scene you’d like to act out. Perhaps your inner hapless victim wants to be overpowered by your partner’s inner evil villain? Whatever your sexual preferences or desires, you can combine them with power exchange. The possibilities are infinite.
THE TAO OF PAIN
People who love to play with pain do it for a variety of reasons. For many people, traveling on the intense sensation commonly referred to as pain produces altered and expanded states of consciousness. For others, playing with “good” pain alleviates physical, emotional, and psychic “bad” pain. Many people who love “good” pain—meaning conscious pain—experience it as orgasmic, including those who consciously and compassionately inflict the pain upon themselves; for example, solo SM artists and cutters.
Conscious pain is not the kind of pain we experience when we stub our toe or bang our elbow on a door frame. Conscious pain is not accidental, nor is it violent. Orgasmic pain is an intense sensation, received by choice by someone who knows how to turn it into pleasure, relief, or empowerment. It is delivered by someone who knows how to deliver it in measured doses, at the right intervals and intensities.
But still, pain as orgasm? Let’s consider for a moment: what exactly is an orgasm? The most common definition might be “a sexual climax attained by stimulation of the genitals and other erogenous zones.” That seems incomplete. Perhaps we could add “accompanied by a release of accumulated tension and energy.” That’s better, but it’s nowhere near inclusive enough to contain the kinds of expanded orgasms we want to talk about when we combine Tantra and BDSM. Let’s try this: “An orgasm is a release of tension and expansion of energy flowing through the body/mind and connecting us to spirit.”
According to this definition, conscious pain could certainly produce an orgasm. And how you actually do that is simple: you use all the techniques for moving sexual energy through the body that you learned at the beginning of this chapter. If you combine conscious breathing, focused imagination, sounds, and PC squeezes, you could have an orgasm with no genital stimulation whatsoever. Yes—an actual orgasm. I recently proved that this type of hands-free, breath-and-energy orgasm is an actual orgasm by having one inside an fMRI machine. Just as you can add these techniques to sex to produce hugely expanded genital orgasms, you can combine them with pain to produce exquisite paingasms. Of course, this doesn’t mean you have to leave out the sex. A combined energy/pain/genital orgasm is truly (and almost literally) a mind-blowing experience. You can use all these techniques of expanded orgasm to keep ecstasy flying through you or you flying through it.
EXERCISE: PLAYING WITH PAIN
So let’s try another two-part exercise. We’ll explore the possibilities of conscious pain in solo practice first and then with a partner.
Before we begin, here’s a word of caution and an alert to a possible trigger: The solo practice of pain, like the solo practice of sex (masturbation) may come attached to feelings of shame, guilt, and self-recrimination. For example, some people feel they’re mad or bad because they cut, scratch, pull out hair, or bang their wrists. In this next exercise, I’m going to ask you to drop any self-judgment and focus instead on experiencing the sensation of pain. If that’s too difficult for you, or if it triggers bad feelings about yourself, then skip the solo part of this exercise and, if possible, go on to Playing with Pain (For Two).
Get comfortable. Make sure you feel physically and psychically safe. Pain (and sex and most everything else) is seldom ecstatic in unsafe space. Breathe gently but fully, in and out of slightly parted, relaxed lips. With each exhale, imagine all the tension leaving your body through the top of your head and the base of your spine. Squeeze your PC muscle and begin to find the beginning of a turn-on in your genitals. Breathe into that turn-on and imagine it flowing through your whole body, and out into your fingertips and toes.
You are going to practice giving, receiving, and fully experiencing a sensation of pain that you give to yourself.
Find a way to give yourself a stinging or thudding sensation—one that doesn’t damage your body. We want to focus on sensation, not injury. You can give yourself a slap, a pinch, a bite, or use your fingernails on any place on your body you can reach. For those of you who are more experienced with pain, you can use a favorite toy from your collection of sensation-producing devices. If you don’t have a collection of toys, you can use your hands, mouth, a wooden spoon, or some other implement you can find in your kitchen.
You will give yourself a single sensation. This can mean three slaps, or several seconds of a bite. Sometimes a single, effective, painful sensation can only be created with multiple strokes, therefore those multiple strokes count as a single sensation. You’re going to create a single sensation and then dive into that sensation as totally as you can, using your breath, your mind, sound, and PC squeezes to expand the sensation and carry it through your body.
So let’s try it. Breathe. Center yourself. Focus. Give yourself the sensation. Now go completely into it. Become the pain. Ride it as a surfer rides a wave—all the way into the beach until it disappears.
Breathe. Do it again. Deliver each stroke at your Resilient Edge of Resistance—right at the place where the pain is enough to make you gasp, but not so intense that you withdraw from it completely.
Now we are going to try a similar exercise with a partner. The receptive partner will ask the active partner for a single sensation and tell the active partner a) how intense the sensation should be, b) how long the sensation should continue, and c) where on the body they wish to receive it. They will also create a safeword. (Most people play with safewords. Some don’t. In this exercise, a safeword is part of the mindfulness of our giving and receiving, so we will use one.)