TOP DOG PRESS

THE DUNGEON ITSELF

 (Thanks to Bear for his contributions and inspiration.)

Personifying emotions or roles is a good way to use metaphor to access the parts of yourself that come forth in your practice of BDSM. You may find it easier to do this if you create a mental space you can go back to again and again. These prompts are designed to help you visualize such a space, to understand it and to understand yourself in it.

When you enter the door of your mental dungeon, what does your eye fall on first? Is the room crowded with objects, or only a few, or only one? What kind of furnishings are here – things that could only be here like play equipment, or regular furniture, or some combination? Is there anything here you didn’t expect to find? Is there something you expected to see that is missing? If you come back here more than once, do the furnishings change?

 What's the quality of the light? Is it dim in the dungeon, or do you keep it bright? What are you showing or hiding with the lighting in there? Is there any natural light? Does it keep you aware of the time? Is that desirable or not?

 What do you hear in this space? Is it silent? Can you hear your own footsteps, your own breathing? Is there music?

 Is it cool or warm? Is it a place with soft surfaces or hard ones? How does the space feel? Does it crackle, does it welcome you, is it soothing or energizing, does it alert you, something else? Does the air feel good when you draw a breath? Can you taste or smell anything in the air - sweat, blood, leather, bleach, piss, wood, what else?

 Is this your room, or does it feel like it belongs to someone else? Why is that? Does it remind you of other rooms you have seen, in dreams, in reality, in movies or TV, from descriptions in books?

 Did you work to create this space? Was it a process that took time, or did it come into your mind fully formed? Was it a pleasure or a chore or something else? Did you linger over the details? If you didn't create it, where did the ideas come from?

 Are you aware of your body in here? How does it feel to walk and move in here? Are you more grounded, floatier, more graceful, more clumsy? Are you sauntering, swaggering, strolling, slinking? Slower or faster than usual? What part of your body are you most aware of? Can you inhabit a different body in this space, one that is another sex, another size or shape or age?

	

 

Ó Skian McGuire 2005