Touching toes

This is the one people ask about most and the one I use least. It presents more of the target more sharply than anything else on the site, and it is also unstable, unkind to the lower back and nearly impossible to hold still. Six strokes, not sixty.

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.

Getting into it

Feet about hip width apart, weight over the middle of the foot, then fold forward from the hips and reach down towards the toes. Most adults reach their shins rather than their toes and that is fine, since the point is the angle of the hips rather than the destination of the fingers. Knees soft, never locked. Head hanging rather than craned up.

The single most useful adjustment is to move the feet slightly wider, which lowers the centre of gravity and makes the position noticeably steadier. The second is to let her hold her ankles rather than reach past them, which gives the hands something to brace against.

Clear the space around her. In this position she is one bad stroke away from stepping forward, and the thing she steps into should be carpet rather than a coffee table.

What it does to the angle

Maximum hip flexion, which means maximum presentation. The cheeks separate and flatten, the sit spot at the very base rotates upwards into the direct line of a stroke, and the skin goes tight across the whole area. Nothing else on this site exposes that much or exposes it as squarely.

Which is why the same implement, at the same force, is a different experience here. Sharper, more concentrated, and much more likely to mark.

Tight skin splits where loose skin bruises, so a cane used on someone folded double breaks the surface at a level of force that would have been comfortable over a sofa arm. If you are moving here from another position, drop your force noticeably and build back up. The map of what you are aiming at is on where it is safe to strike.

The real problem: holding it

This is the part that gets skipped in every account of the position, and it is the reason I use it sparingly.

It is hard to hold. Nothing supports the body, the base is narrow, and each stroke arrives as a push from behind onto a person balanced on the front of her feet. She will step forward, straighten up, or come up onto her toes. That is not disobedience and treating it as an additional offence is unfair, because the position is designed to be unstable.

It strains the back. A deep forward bend with no support is one of the higher loading positions for the lumbar spine, and holding it under tension for several minutes is worse than a moment of it. Anyone with disc trouble, a history of back injury, sciatica, or a current or recent pregnancy should not use this at all, and there is no version of it that makes that safe. Hands on knees, or a chair, instead.

The head is well below the heart. Two or three minutes down there and standing up produces a real head rush, occasionally a grey-out, and the standing up happens with tired hamstrings. Bring her up slowly, keep a hand on her arm, and expect a wobble.

And it puts pressure on the diaphragm. Speech is harder folded double, which matters, because a spoken safe word is the main tool available to her and she cannot signal with her hands.

What it means

Of every position here, this is the one that carries the strongest association with formal punishment, which is both why people want it and why some people want nothing to do with it. If that frame makes you uncomfortable, the discomfort is a perfectly good reason to skip the position, and there is no loss because a chair gives you much the same geometry.

Underneath the association there is something more specific. The position is self-imposed. Nobody is holding her, nothing is supporting her, and the whole time she is bent double she is choosing to stay there while being hit. That active compliance is a stronger form of submission than being bent over furniture, and people who have both done and received it usually name that as the thing they were after rather than the exposure.

It is also the most exposing position on the site in the plain visual sense, and that should be negotiated rather than assumed. Whether she is clothed, whether the legs are apart, and what is visible are all questions that need answering in advance. See negotiation.

Who it suits

Fit adults with no back history who want a formal register, the sharpest possible presentation, and a short ceremonial punctuation inside a longer scene. It suits counting, formal numbers and stated sentences, because the brevity forced on you by the position happens to fit a scene built around an exact quantity.

Drawbacks

Summarised: it hurts more than you meant, it moves more than you want, it strains a part of the body that has nothing to do with what you are doing, and it cannot be sustained.

Two substitutes worth knowing. Hands on knees keeps the look and the obedience, loses about a third of the exposure, and is dramatically easier to hold. Bending over a chair back or a table gives you the deep presentation with the weight supported and the back protected. In practice I use the toes version for a handful of strokes when I want the picture, and one of the others for everything else.