Breathing through a spanking

Breathing is the one thing the person on the receiving end genuinely controls, and it is the thing almost nobody gets told about. Everyone braces and holds. It took me a couple of years to work out that the still, quiet people I admired were mostly just holding their breath.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Watch anyone new. The implement comes up and the whole body goes with it: shoulders lift, ribs lock, the breath stops near the top of the chest and stays there until the stroke has been survived. Then it leaves in a rush, and the next one arrives before it has finished.

The held breath

A body in that state takes a stroke badly. Why rigid muscle is the worst thing to hit is on the warm-up page. The breath is the mechanism underneath it. You cannot hold your breath and stay loose, so fix the breath and the muscle usually follows, without anybody having to think about relaxing, which is an instruction no human being has ever obeyed.

Out on the stroke

The technique is one sentence. Breathe out as the stroke lands.

Then the difficult half, which is timing. The out-breath has to have started before the stroke arrives, so you need to know when it is coming, and anticipation is half the skill. That is one reason a predictable rhythm is worth so much early on.

Make it slow and longer than the in-breath. A sharp huff empties you and leaves you gasping high in the chest two strokes later. Nearer a long sigh, four or five seconds of it, with the in-breath short and unremarkable. Through the mouth, jaw slightly open, since a clenched jaw drags the neck and shoulders back into it.

Noise on the way out is the out-breath doing its job with the volume up, and people apologise for it constantly. I had this backwards for years and thought the silent ones were the ones doing it properly, when a good number were holding it in and paying for it.

The count is a breathing device

Formal counting has its own page at counting and ritual, which covers what it does for structure and for having a job to do. There is a physical one underneath all that. You cannot say a number while holding your breath. A count forces an out-breath after every stroke, at a regular interval, whether or not anybody designed it that way, and that is part of why a counted set is easier to stay present for than a silent one.

What the top can do about it

Most of this belongs to the person swinging.

Set a rhythm she can breathe to. An even, predictable tempo gives the body something to organise itself around, and the breath usually finds it within a few minutes without being asked. Keep early timing regular and save the unpredictable gaps for later. See pacing a scene.

When the breathing has gone high and quick, stop. A real pause, with a hand flat on her back and half a minute of nothing happening. Breath resets faster than almost anything else in the body.

Then say so out loud, which is the part I got wrong for years. Waiting in silence for somebody to sort her own breathing out is no use to a person who cannot currently assemble a sentence. Tell her. "Let it out. Long one. Again." Better still, breathe audibly yourself and give her something to copy, since a rhythm she can hear needs no processing.

Breath as information

It is also the best signal a top gets, and you watch for it rather than asking. The detail is on reading your partner. The one I would put above the rest: fast, shallow breathing high in the chest means somebody is struggling in a way that has nothing to do with how much pain she can take. Easing off ten per cent will not fix that. Stopping for thirty seconds will.

When it runs away

Fast shallow breathing kept up for a few minutes blows off more carbon dioxide than the body wants to lose. Tingling and pins and needles in the fingers and round the mouth. Light-headedness. A strong sense of not getting enough air, which is the reverse of the actual problem. Sometimes cramping that curls the hands.

It frightens whoever it is happening to and whoever is watching. The first time I saw it I was certain I had done something serious. In itself it is not dangerous, and it settles once the breathing slows.

• Stop. The session is over for tonight, and gentler is not a version of this.
• Sit her up, supported, feet on the floor. Restraints off first.
• Slow everything down, your own voice included, and breathe out loud so she has a rhythm to follow.
• Get her answering something ordinary. Talking lengthens the breath by itself.
• No paper bag. It was dropped from first aid years ago, and it relies on being certain that breathlessness is hyperventilation and nothing else.

Breath and headspace

The state described on headspace does not arrive while somebody is fighting, and settled breathing is most of what having stopped fighting looks like from outside. Whether the breath causes any of it I could not tell you.

What I have noticed is that I have never seen anyone go under with the breath held high in the chest, and that the moment it drops lower and lengthens is often the last thing to happen before everything else does. For a good number of people this is the way in.

Crying

Crying and breathing arrive together and get in each other's way. Sobbing is disorganised breathing by definition, which is why hard crying and the tingling above sometimes turn up in the same five minutes. The distinction that matters is drawn on what if I cry. Crying that loosens somebody is often the point of the evening. Crying with a locked chest and a held breath under it needs a stop. Listen to the breath beneath the noise rather than to the noise.

Asthma and anything respiratory

If you have asthma, or anything else affecting your breathing, this stops being a technique page and becomes a planning one. Face down into a soft mattress, weight across the back, a corset or tight straps, a long stretch of crying: all of it makes breathing harder before anybody has done anything wrong.

The instruction is simple and I will not bend on it. The inhaler is in the room, in sight, and both of you know where it is before anything starts. Not in a handbag in the hall and not in a coat downstairs. If there is wheezing, everything stops, she sits up and uses it, and nothing restarts until the breathing is properly normal rather than nearly. More at health conditions and medication.

Practise it when nobody is hitting you

Nobody learns a breathing pattern for the first time while being caned. It has to be dull and automatic before it is any use, because at the moment you need it there is little attention going spare.

Five minutes on a sofa, a few times over a week. Out slowly for a count of five or six, in for two or three, with some attention on what the shoulders do. Then have your partner tap the back of a hairbrush against your leg every eight seconds, and practise emptying just before each tap. It feels sillier than it looks and becomes automatic in about two evenings.

Tops have the other half to practise, which is swinging to a count steady enough to breathe to. One thing to take away if nothing else does: out on the stroke, and longer than feels natural.