The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond

by Lee Harrington

  This same releasing system is important in partnered work. If we are working like a dialysis pump, we can’t let one of us go home carrying all of the goo we cleared out. We also don’t want to just leave our energetic feces lying around where someone can step on it. But just like feces, one person’s tiger poop is another person’s $100 per box fertilizer. One person’s trash is another person’s treasure. Our energy goo may be useful for someone or something out there.

  For some, developing a relationship with Earth or Ocean or some other dispersing element is useful. Others find this idea horrid, as if it were dumping toxic waste. This works well in sex magic: the goo is literally gathered into the condoms and gloves used, and thrown away. Others collect the energetic goo from their systems to fuel banishment rituals and wards on sacred spaces. There are individuals who enter into relationships with entities who enjoy eating this. Some individuals are soul-eaters and are wired to devour this stuff. Either way, don’t just clean something out of one chakra to have it land in another one or heal someone else by taking their pain home with you.

  Sometimes it is not gunk that is released, but joy. It is completely possible that the dialysis of desire between partners or with yourself, may reveal some true happiness you did not know. Our pain does not always hold us back. Sometimes it teaches that we can be anything we want to be, as happy as we want to be. This profound truth can sometimes terrify us in our youth, become a clog, and when we knock it free, we are holding a truly precious gift.

  Left Hand Breath, Right Hand Breath

  When examining the use of breath as a tool for altered states or energy pumping, consider what it is that we are pumping. In modern occult, spiritual and mystical discussions, the bulk of this discussion is broken down into Left Hand Path and Right Hand Path workings.

  In Tantra, there are two very different approaches to enlightenment. The first is dakshinachara (translated as “Right Hand Path”), where the practitioner engages in asceticism, meditation, and other such practices to examine their connection to the divine and their place in the world. The second is vamachara (translated as “Left Hand Path”), where sex magic, intoxicants, animal sacrifice and eating meat are used to indulge in the world by breaking caste and cultural taboo, and in doing so, find a path towards bliss.

  Unfortunately, as can happen when a writer comes from one tradition and tries to simplify for a different audience, Madame Blavatsky simplified these two paths for her readership. Founder of the Theosophical Society, Madame Helena Petrova Blavatsky condensed them down to the right hand being all things light, white, good and pure, and the left hand being all things shadow, black, evil and immoral. Vamachara is the more dangerous of the two paths, with possibilities of madness and harm…but this simplification of calling it evil has led to all sorts of misunderstandings over the years based on this black-and-white thinking and Christianity-based cultural appropriation.

  Western thought on Left Hand and Right Hand paths thus are not entirely related to their linguistic origins. Right Hand path work tends to focus on belief and obedience to a higher power or divine truth, a moral code or system of right and wrong, and a variety of systems of enforcement of that moral code such as karma, the three-fold law, or divine retribution, and often that the universe has a plan for the individual. Left Hand path work focuses on the individual (sometimes as being divine themselves), earthly goals, and that the individual has the ability to enforce their personal will on the universe. Neither is inherently good or evil, black or white, but they are divergent approaches to faith, sometimes at odds with each other.

  When we examine our breath for magical workings or altered states, we have the option to consider how we perceive the energy we are engaged in. Are we going to breathe in energy and use it as a tool to go on an inward journey into the self, or are we going to breathe our spirit out of our body and go into the astral realms? Shall we breathe in to pull the will of God into our being and be fueled by its plan, or breathe out our Will into the world and let our own energy change the world’s plan into ours?

  Where do you believe your energy comes from? Is it “thou art God,” or are you a piece in the great puzzle of divinity? Will you connect to the source through knowing your own internal truth (also known as your “I AM”), or are you connecting to the source by opening up and letting an external divinity fill you? It does not have to be one or the other. There are many that walk a path between, or consider the whole Left Hand/Right Hand thing to be a waste of time. So be it. But consider what your thoughts are in this work you are doing. Do you want fuel to help you journey into the shadows of self and identity, or to journey out into the astral planes? Are you sucking down energy, or inviting the energy in? Are you focusing on what you are bringing into your body and the world, or what you are putting out into the world from your body?

  For those that are more practice-minded rather than theory-minded, this is a matter of figuring out what to practice your breath on. The Left Hand breath option focuses on the lungs, the self, and what they are doing. The Right Hand breath option focuses on the air, where and how it is coming in, and where it is going. It is possible to do both, but is not as efficient of a use of our energy most of the time.

  Be forewarned–when using the language of Left Hand/Right Hand to describe your working, there are many who will jump immediately to the concept of evil/good, and thus the verbal use of such language may not be appropriate in some spaces. In addition, there are some magical workers and pagans who believe that any use of kink in magic is, in and of itself, Left-Hand work or evil. Cultural stereotypes about kink are slowly being eroded, but in a world where even homosexual sexual behavior is considered a taboo to only to be broken for extreme sex magic workings, there is still a lot of work to be done. All cultures carry their taboos, and what is a daily practice for one group or sub-culture may be seen as an impossibly destructive force to another.

  Pain Processing

  One of the more practical and widely employed uses of the Path of Breath in kink is using it for processing and controlling our experience of pain and other sensations. Pain is a perception. What we describe as pain comes in a myriad of shapes, sizes and shades. Medically speaking, pain comes from the body’s reaction to unpleasant sensation arising from actual or potential damage. Before we had anesthesia, pain was a form of input, a piece of information, and people simply had to deal with it. Now we have been trained in our culture that pain is “bad” and should be avoided at all costs.

  What is processed as pain in the brain and what is processed as sensation depends entirely on the framework we assign to it. When you ask a whip enthusiast Bottom whether the lashes hurt or were painful, there is sometimes a confused look on their face. Well yes, it hurt, but not in a bad way. It was an intense sensation that they experienced. Some part of them chose, at some point, whether the sensation was painful (or in our culture, bad) or an incredible experience (in our culture, good), even if that choice is different in every single scene.

  Pain is also sometimes not from real experiences. How many of us thought we stubbed our toe and screamed in pain, only to realize that we were perfectly fine? Other times, the sensation or experience was real, but we felt no pain because we disassociated from it. It is much easier to take pain if you don’t show up.

  The same tools are used in dissociative kink as for individuals separating from their body when having surgery done without anesthesia, for the person being raped who chooses not to be there, and for the transgendered person who can’t emotionally deal with the bodies they are living with. So, when someone says that they did not feel any pain or sensation, it can also be a clue to their partner that perhaps they were not “showing up” for the scene for some reason.

  “Pain is inevitable; Suffering is optional.”

  - Unknown

  In the kink community, I think there is confusion between these two concepts. Part of the misunderstanding comes from the terms we have adopted from the medical world used to describ
e what it is that we do. Sadism is often described as deriving pleasure from inflicting pain on others or seeing others in pain. But most clinical sadists, if the person whom they were tormenting was moaning in pleasure, would therefore not be getting to experience their sadism. Clinical sadists get off on suffering, and individuals who are diagnosed with sexual sadism as a clinical paraphilia are deriving sexual pleasure from that suffering. It gets really confusing when self-proclaimed perverts refer to themselves as sadists, when in fact they are individuals who enjoy helping others experience intense sensations and bearing witness to those experiences.

  The reverse is true of masochism. Clinical masochism is deriving pleasure from experiencing pain or, more accurately, suffering. If someone is, in fact, enjoying themselves, it is not masochism from the standpoint of a psychologist. Using the original definitions of these two terms, one of the worst relationship pairings in the world would be a sadist and a masochist. The masochist would beg to suffer, and the sadist would simply say no. Though sadist and masochist are fast and effective verbal terms to use when flirting or having quick conversations within the kink community, they don’t actually tell us much about an individual’s relationship with pain and sensation.

  Does the person like to suffer? Do they derive pleasure from extreme sensations? Do they like the challenge of rising above their perceived limits? Is it about a mental head-trip, being convinced they are going to be challenged or torn down? Do they enjoy the physical sensations, or do they put up with them to get their role-playing, relationship or degradation needs met? Do they like an excuse to complain about being in pain? Or are they just having fun?

  If you are someone who enjoys experiencing sensation, pain processing is about finding ways to be able to experience more sensations in more ways by sorting through those experiences. If you are someone who enjoys suffering, pain processing can be about breathing through the pain to be able to focus on the emotionality of the experience, or using the to amplify the pain you are experience if your partner is being too delicate for your tastes. Each person’s reason why they want to be engaging in painful activities or extreme sensations will determine how they will interact with the tools available in pain processing.

  Breath is huge in the pain processing tool kit. We can use breath to intensify sensation, or to disperse the accumulated energy and sensation we are storing out into the world. Different types of breathing follow.

  Slowing Breath.

  By breathing slower and slower, we can induce a form of altered state that doubles as a natural anesthesia in the body. Calm, cool, steady and non-reactive.

  Holding Breath

  The strike hits. Hold. Hold all of your muscles and your body and your breath and feel the sensation wash through you. As the sensation makes its way up, releases breath either very slowly, or with a sharp exhalation, for different results or highs. Some people will hold or clench during all of an experience, leading to people fainting in an attempt to amplify an orgasm or tough through a challenging whipping.

  Breathing Through

  Breathe in, the lash lands, breathe out with the pain. Repeat. Ride the sensation in time with your breath on each strike, or in sexual penetration-sensation processing, each stroke.

  Reverse Breathe Through

  Instead of breathing out when they strike, breathe in. A sharp sucking breath in with each stroke can make some people feel floaty, and others experience more intense pain.

  Pumping Breath

  As you breathe in, fill your belly. As you breathe out, curl your head inward towards your knees. This breath type can pump energy through a system in a very charged way, leaving people feeling light headed and trance-like.

  Fire Breath

  Using only your nose, breathe in and out quickly and smoothly. Clench your lower body with either with each in breath, or with each out breath. This is another form of low-oxygenated breathing that can induce euphoria and thus help some individuals process pain, or in some cases, increase the chance of orgasm.

  Sucking In

  Breathe in, in, in, in, in, in, in–and then slowly release without thinking about it. In fact, with any breath you have the choice to focus on either the style of the in or the style of the out, the other direction will happen automatically to keep the pattern going.

  Amp Up

  To add sensation to an experience, consider speeding up your breath. Breathe faster. Amp it up. There is a reason, in sweaty passionate sex that we tend to speed it up, pump faster–we want to feel it more.

  Just Keep Breathing

  Being reminded by a partner to just keep breathing, or better yet, being told how and when to breathe, can give us something to focus on external to our body. For others, returning to our breath is a reminder to return to our bodies and not float off, as easy as that might make it to take more pain.

  Breathing is not all about the Bottom or the person experiencing the sensation. The sensation giver needs to be aware of their breath as well. On an unconscious level, our partner’s body is keying into our breath to determine how to react.

  If our breathing is ragged and stressed, our partner will match their breath to become stressed and ragged as well. If our breathing is slow, calm and collected, our partner’s breathing is more likely to slow as well, to match our energy. This means Tops have the ability to connect physically, or eye-to-eye, or even in an open space. By changing our breaths, we can change how our partner is breathing. Doing so, we can help them process the sensations they are experiencing (or make it more challenging for them) with our own breath. It is also possible by synchronizing our breath, to go on the journey they are going on, easily using it as a tool for Top Trance or dual trance work.

  If we combine our breath with our Topping, we also affect the quality of the sensation we deliver. Referred to as breathing into a hit, breath has the ability to channel our energy through the tool we are using and into the object of our focus. A single tail can feel like a boiling hot blade (and damage just as badly), or a flogger can be filled with love and desire. As you focus on your breath, pull up the energy you want to channel. Hold that in your breath, and as the tool is landing, land the breath as well.

  For more advanced energy workers, a tool is not necessary. A bare hand can feel like a paddle, or in magical combat, a finger can be extended into a sword. This takes much more practice though, as it involves shape shifting and the ability to return to your original shape afterwards. We will look at shapeshifting further in the Path of the Horse. Breathing the energy through the tool as the conduit is often much more controllable for those who are inexperienced.

  Another pain processing tool that accompanies breath is noise. For many people, noise is a ship on which energy can sail out of the body. Different noises and vocalizations include:

  Laughter

  Erupting out of the chest, laughter can be manic, passionate, playful, animalistic (in the form of snorts), or include playful conversation.

  Screaming

  Whether coherent words or guttural sounds of pure emotion, screaming is a common way to process energy and pain out of the body.

  Talking

  Distracting the mind with conversations while feeling pain is often useful. Others can’t shut up, and end up babbling out information for no reason, or become smart-mouthed. Sometimes talking is as simple as explaining what they are feelings—proclamations, saying “ouch,” swearing, or muttering about what is going on. Other times it is a constant change in how we refer to the pain; instead of saying we can’t take it, we say out loud that it is challenging, but tolerable with focus. I have also met people who go into mantras—name, rank and serial number is an example of what military-trained individuals might use to process pain.

  Singing

  There are individuals who find singing useful as a way to process sensation, or dissociate enough to bear it.

  Primal Noises

  Grunting, groaning, moaning are all common ways for getting the energy out, or to ramp up how m
uch sensation the brain thinks it is experiencing. Pain pushes some into a place of growling, squeaking, howling, mewing, whinnying, whining, or other such animal noises.

  Silence

  In sharp contrast to a person who normally does a lot of vocalization, changing gears to silence can be powerful.

  Noise and breath are both techniques that involve a form of emotional expression. Along with pain, there are a wide variety of other sensations that are useful to consider for. Orgasm, desire, romance, sensuality—and even fear, terror, and panic—can all be affected by changes of our breathing styles and noise.

  One of the things that changes breath, and can also be a useful processing tool on its own, is body movement. When we curl up in a ball, shudder, write, dance or trot about, our breathing changes, as does our energetic flow. Others drum with their hands, stand up on their tip-toes, flex their muscles, or arch their back. Through relaxing or tensing just the area that is feeling the most (or least) sensation we can change where our body is sending energy within the system and the amount that region is feeling.

  Sometimes our body experience can be transformed through multiple physical inputs happening at once. If there is a vibrator between your legs at the same time as you are being caned, levels of tolerance for each item shift. This can adversely affect processing when a leg cramp or the need to sneeze stops you from being able to be pierced. Even holding onto an object can provide relief; focusing on the sensation of a piece of rope or an ice cube in your hand can distract you from what is happening to your rear end. Temperature can affect pain tolerances for many people, who can’t handle much when it is too cold or too hot.