Lying across a bed

If a session is going to be long, or hard, or both, this is where I would want it to happen. It is also the position where the geometry fights you most, and where the room quietly changes what the evening is about.

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.

Two consenting adults over 18, a bed, and no equipment beyond what is already on it. Face down, hips raised, arms up, head turned to the side.

Getting into it

Two pillows stacked, or one firm one, placed where the hips will be. She lies face down over them so the pelvis is lifted and the stomach is supported. Arms forward or folded under the head, head turned to one side rather than buried, legs straight and slightly apart.

Where she lies on the bed matters more than people think. Diagonally across with the hips near the edge, or straight across the width, so that whoever is standing can reach without leaning over a mattress.

If she lies in the middle, the top ends up kneeling on the bed with no swing room, or standing at the side bent forward at the waist, which is how a person hurts their own back delivering a spanking. I have done this and paid for it the next day.

The best version is the receiver lying with her hips right at the edge of the bed and her feet on the floor or her knees on the mattress, which combines the comfort of lying down with a working height that does not require anyone to stoop.

What it does to the angle

Without a pillow, badly. Lying flat spreads the cheeks sideways and flattens the whole curve, so the fleshy part disappears and what is left proud is the tailbone and the upper slope near the base of the spine. Those are the two places you are trying to avoid.

A pillow under the hips reverses it: the pelvis tilts, the target rounds up, and the bony bits drop away. See where it is safe to strike for what you are aiming at and what you are avoiding.

The mattress also absorbs. A stroke that lands on a supported body over a chair transfers cleanly, while a stroke into a soft surface pushes the whole hip down into the bed and takes some of the force with it. The result is that implements feel milder here than elsewhere, and that tops compensate without noticing. Better to accept the position for what it is and use it for volume and duration rather than for peak intensity.

Legs slightly apart, hips flat rather than twisted. If she rolls to one side, which happens over a long session, the target turns with her and strokes start landing on the outer hip.

Stability, joints and time

The most forgiving position here. Whole body supported, no muscle holding anything, head only just below the heart, nothing trapped. People can stay in it for an hour, and the things that eventually end it are boredom, a stiff neck from having the head turned one way, and pins and needles in arms held above the head.

Fix the last two cheaply. Have her change which way her head is facing every ten minutes or so, and bring her arms down beside her occasionally. Getting up afterwards is undramatic compared with the folded positions, though people are often stiffer than they expect.

The joint risk in this position belongs to the top. Standing over a low mattress with a bent back for half an hour is a genuinely bad idea, and kneeling on the bed removes your swing and your view. Raise the target with pillows, move her to the edge, and stand up straight.

What it means

Private, soft and enveloping. The bed is where people sleep, and lying face down on one puts the receiver in a posture of rest rather than presentation. There is no audience, no staging and nothing upright about it. The effect is closer to being looked after than to being dealt with, even when what is happening is severe.

That informality is useful. Scenes with no scenario, long slow sessions that build over an hour, anything where the point is sensation and headspace rather than ceremony, all belong here. So does anything at the harder end, because the person receiving needs to be comfortable enough to stay in it.

It works against formality just as strongly. A summons, a sentence, a reading out of charges, all sound faintly ridiculous delivered to someone lying on a duvet. If the frame is institutional, use a table for the formal part and move to the bed afterwards, which is a sequence I use often and which gives you both registers in one evening.

The bedroom association is the other thing to be deliberate about. For some couples that proximity is exactly right and for others it muddles what they were trying to do, particularly where the arrangement is disciplinary and both people want it kept separate from everything else. Worth an explicit line in negotiation rather than an assumption.

Who it suits

People with back trouble, hip trouble or anything that makes standing bent over unwise. Long sessions. Heavy sessions. Anyone who wants to disappear into it rather than perform it. Nervous first timers who would rather not be looked at.

It also suits scenes that end quietly, because there is nowhere to go afterwards. She is already lying down, so aftercare begins by sitting down beside her rather than by moving anybody anywhere.

Drawbacks

The angle takes work and can go wrong invisibly. Pillows shift, hips slide, and ten minutes later you are hitting a flattened target with the tailbone higher than the rest. Look, rather than assuming what you set up is still true.

Force does not transfer well, so heavy implements feel disproportionate to the effort and tempt you to swing harder into a soft surface.

And the tone is fixed at soft. If the evening was supposed to feel cold and official, no amount of stern language will get you there from a mattress.