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Noah -> RE: How submissiveness feels (12/5/2006 5:00:40 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: justheather
I have an awareness of certain physical sensations or "feelings" when I am experiencing a particular moment when I am more acutely aware of my submissive orientation toward my partner. Perhaps I am lucky enough to be so acutely aware of the physical sensations because my partner has, from the beginning of our relationship, encouraged and even required that I practice mindfulness in my submission to him.
Sounds like you've got one kick ASS partner there, you lucky thing. But with socks like those how could you miss?
Everyone I deal with kinkily get practice in sorting things like physical feelings from emotional ones; hopes and fears from ideas and prejudices; theories from descriptions.
So many confusions in our relationships turn out to be external reflections of confusions within us, I think. I don't know anyone who couldn't stand to get better at this.
Surely, if one of your intentions is to explore new territory in experience or in yourself (and maybe find previously undiscovered treasure) I think it is important to be more intimately familiar with yourself than our culture generally requires or encourages. I don't mean in a big phychoanalytical overlook kind of way. Maybe more like the way a good rider is familiar with his horse. It has more to do with moment-to-moment awareness and acuteness than with an ability to summarize.
The ghost in the machine can manage to drive it around for years in a marginally adequate way without really feeling it's pulse. That can be a blessing in certain extreme circumstances but it is kind of a shame if it becomes a habit, I think.
quote:
The physical sensations that come to mind for me vary from a lightheaded wooziness to a slow, gentle sinking sensation in my stomach to a tingling sensation up and down my spine, depending on what it is that he (my partner) is doing or saying at the time. My partner's scent can also be a powerful trigger for me, so it isnt always about something he does or says.
The most consistent feelings that I experience have to do with a sensation of letting go of physical tension and a settling of my breath, a sort of dropping into my center. At the same time, there is a sense of lightness that fills me. It is almost as if I am physically letting go of something.That lightness is most prominently manifest in my head, but I am aware that the sensation is present in my entire body.
So, I guess it is like a grounding and a lightening at the same time. I feel physically smaller in some sense but at the same time I feel expansive. I think this has to do with my connection to the moment, which is as large as all time and as small as the smallest increment of time at once. So, for me, there is this wonderful array of seemingly juxtapositional feelings...a series of dichotomies....I am small, yet I am limitless. I am grounded, yet I am light. My senses are aroused, yet I am aware that my breathing is slower and deeper.
I have an increased awareness of my forehead, my chest and my pelvis... my intellectual, emotional and sexual "centers". Tension leaves my neck and shoulders. There is a sense of release of tension throughout my body, a sort of "giving up" of that tension as in the giving up of my will. A giving over. This is physically manifest in my body.
Thank you. All these juxtapositions can sound paradoxical when put into words but I think we are in an area where words are penguins, they swim with their wings. And we just have to go with that and not get too hung up on it.
So we see this phenomenon wherein all sorts of seemingly paradoxical elements--things which might be mutually exclusive from a logical standpoint--hang together. That this should be the case goes a long way for me toward resolving--or rather, erasing--questions which seem to trouble a lot of people, especially noobs.
"How can a sadist hurt a masochist?" "Where does the control really lie?" ... and things like that.
That sort of question seems often to presume that since it can be asked in such a way as to invite a single cut-and-dried answer then we should damn well get to some kind of cut-and-dried answer. You know, those boiled-down reductionist claims like "The sub is always the one really in control" or "A sadist can't really hurt a masochist."
But far too much is boiled away when things get boiled down like this. Our natural ability, even propensity, to experience seeming paradox both psychologically and emotionally isn't taken into account.
Some questions don't have simple answers and it seems to me that assigning simple answers to them is a lame attempt to sooth something in ourselves at the cost of encountering the world as it happens to be, in all its seemingly paradoxical glory.
quote:
It is not that outside of these times of physical manifestation I am not submissive to my partner. It is my firm belief that submission is not a matter of feelings, it is about action. I think that what happens is that when my attention is acutely focused on submission, the physical sensations follow. So, whether they are a product of my submission or my attention to the submission, I can not say...I only get to inhabit and enjoy the feelings when I am paying attention to them.
I think this addresses nicely comments from beth and kyra. I mean it doesn't attempt to refute or confirm them but for me it sheds light on them.
Thank you, dolly.
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