Episode 73 - TRANSCENDENTAL BDSM: THE TANTRA OF DOMINANCE & SUBMISSION with Madison Young

Transcript

Francesca Gentille: Welcome to Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You the Soul of Sex. I’m your host, Francesca Gentille, and with me today is the very exciting and evocative Madison Young. Madison is making waves in feminism one orgasm at a time at her gallery, feminapotens.com, and we’ll say more about it, make sure you’re connected to it later. She also travels the world with sex positive performances, workshops, readings and artwork on BDSM. Madison is an advocate of the transcendental nature of BDSM, and she teaches workshops like the Zen Submissive, using tantra, breath, sensation, energy and visualization, and I’m delighted to have her here on the show today.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome Madison.

Madison Young: Well thank you very much for having me Francesca.

Francesca Gentille: It’s really a delight. I, I’m sort of excited by some of the new directions this show is going. It’s, it’s definitely a show where we, our intention is always to bring in the soul, the sacred, into our sexuality and relationships, and we’ve interviewed a number of therapists and authors, and lately we’ve been exploring what I consider to be some of the wilder shores of love and allowing our listening audience to learn from people like you who are really pioneers in the erotic edge, techniques that they can bring into their own bed, bedrooms to expand, expand their erotic lives, give a greater, we might call it ‘artistic pallet’, of their, of their sex life. So Madison, to start, what, if you would give us a little bit of information about what the heck is BDSM? What does the BDSM stand for?

Madison Young: Well BDSM stands for a lot of things to a lot of different people. But the basics of BDSM, it stems, the acronym itself is ‘Bondage, Domination, Sadism, and Masochism’, as well as the DS can also stand for ‘Dominance and Submission’.

Francesca Gentille: And those are some big chunky words that often, you know, can conjure up, you know, things that might be very painful in ways that we don’t like, might, you know, almost on the edge of torture, we think of the Marquis de Sade, and, you know, for some of us we might think, “Well why would I ever want to do anything in this realm?” But you and I know, and you more than me know that this is, those words are kind of a pointer to something much bigger, and could you, could you let us know some of the, you know, the keys to what has this realm be so delicious and, you know, what the spectrum might be.

Madison Young: Yeah. I mean, BDSM in no way refers to, to torture. It’s actually completely based on consensuality and communication, and within the BDSM community that’s one of the things that is really most important within BDSM is communicating with your, your partner and talking with them about their boundaries, what they’re interested in exploring and going on a journey with them, taking them on a journey through different psychological and physical aspects, exploring different sensations. I mean, one of my favorite implements to use and to have used on me really is just hands. They’re always there, they’re amazing, you can grab someone’s hair, you can slap someone, you can spank someone, grab someone. It can be a really amazing sensation to have someone taking control of you and taking you on that kind of ride, taking you into that kind of space.

Francesca Gentille: You know, I want to say a little bit something of what Madison’s pointing to so beautifully with her words like ‘ride’ and ‘journey’, and, is the sense of I think all of us have a longing in some way to be the erotic guide, that person that takes someone on a journey so beautifully, that they can surrender to it. And all of us had, you know, or many of us have had the opposite where we have some part of us that wants to be guided, that wants to feel so much safety and trust with another person that we can fully surrender, and as you said, be taken for a journey, be taken on a ride. And we’re going to go even deeper into this, but I, I’m remembering, and one of the reasons I so wanted you on the show is one of my best friends told me, she’s married with kids, and she said that her, she and her husband were experimenting and that he had tied her up and, you know, very, you know, profoundly into the bed, and I said, “Oh my God, were you frightened?”, and she said, “No, I was finally relaxed. I finally felt, I didn’t have to do the laundry, I didn’t have to take care of the kids. There was no where to go and nothing to do, and I could finally surrender to my own pleasure.”

Madison Young: Yeah, I, I actually used to suffer from pretty severe anxiety attacks all through my, my early college years, and, you know, one of the things that I was able to find, that really helped me to find my breath and to find myself and to find a stillness and meditative state, was the feeling that I had when I was in bondage, when I was tied up tight, when I had someone take control of me. I was able to breathe, I was finally able to breathe when I was in that kind of state, in a submissive state given over to someone else. I, I often explain my experiences, like, in submission as being like a hollow reed, allowing wind to flow into and out of me, giving myself completely over to someone else to something much larger than the two people that are in the room, to part of a whole other history, something that you’re really giving yourself over to and serving, which is kind of a Buddhist philosophy. And I saw stated somewhere, giving up power and possession leads to a freedom from fear is a Buddhist statement, and I really feel that that’s something that you find in submission. Or at least I do.

Francesca Gentille: You know, that’s so beautiful, and there’s so many of carrying a sense of anxiety, a sense of sometimes lack of trust. So what I hear you’re saying is that with someone with whom there is trust, with someone with whom there is a sense of their expertise and knowledge, this can be extremely healing.

Madison Young: Definitely. I mean, just the fact alone that it’s so based on communication and asserting your sexuality and consensuality can be empowering for someone, for people who haven’t in the past felt like they had a strong sense of their sexuality or strong control over their sexual self.

Francesca Gentille: You know, I want to talk more about that sense of consensuality and communication because from talking with my friends who are in this realm it seems to me that there is a strength in this, that those of us who haven’t entered this realm or, you know, maybe want to dabble, maybe want to fully enter, could so learn from, when we come back from a break and a word from our sponsors.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You the Soul of Sex with the evocative Madison Young, who is a teacher of the transcendental nature of BDSM and workshops like the Zen Submissive. And we were talking about the beauty of the consensual nature and how well, well versed that is in BDSM, and could you say a little bit about that, ‘cause we all talk about having consensual sex, but in, you know, in the general public consensual sex could mean, “I get you drunk and you didn’t say no.” I mean, consensual sex could be, “You know, I shame you into having sex but you finally said yes.” So, you know, consensual is a little bit vague in the average world, but in BDSM it’s very precise. What do you mean by consensual and how is that built or negotiated?

Madison Young: Well it can be negotiated in a lot of ways. There’s definitely communication that happens between the dominant and submissive; verbal communication, communication online. There can be different kinds of submission and domination. Sometimes the people haven’t met and they’re, I mean, a DS relationship over the phone or online. But having a dialogue between the two people and negotiating what their boundaries are, what they’re interested in, what their limits are, what their soft limits are as far as what is an absolute no, of where they don’t want to go or what might be a trigger for them, and then things that might be a fear for them that’s something that they’re maybe interested in exploring, but maybe not on the first time.

Francesca Gentille: If you and I were having a, negotiate a session, and I said, “You know, I’m interested in this, I want to explore this, but I’ve had some trauma in my past, so at least for right now I don’t want to do anything with my buttocks or my anus and, but I’m a little nervous about going into maybe certain kind of strokes on my body, and yet that’s both nervous and maybe a little bit exciting. But definitely no with the buttocks. I’m willing to see what would happen if we explore some of these other strokes on other, using other toys or tools on the rest of my body.” That, are we talking that kind of thing?

Madison Young: Yeah, I mean it can be all the way down to what, you know, what kind of implements do you like used on you? How long have you been playing in this scene? Is this your first time? Something that you would use on someone who is completely new might be different than something that you would use on someone who says they’re an experienced player. You might take more time with someone who is brand new, communicating with them about any physical injuries they might have, anything that, did they have a bad day this week, did, you know, a family member die, did anything traumatic happen? A lot of times things can come up. Or if I had a, personally I had a heart murmur in the past, so I don’t do electric play from the waste up. I also have PMJ, which is kind of like carpal tunnel of the jaw area, so I don’t do large ball gags or anything that might cause pain to my jaw area, and I always make sure to communicate that to someone before we start playing. If I’m on my period and I know that my nipples are going to be incredibly sensitive, I let them know about that. If I don’t, you know, want to keep my underwear on while we are playing or whatever sort of, whatever your boundaries are and both the top and the bottom, talk for a good long while. Sometimes, you know, you might not even play the first day, it might be all negotiations.

Francesca Gentille: I’m going to, I’m going to stop you for just a second…

Madison Young: Mm hmm.

Francesca Gentille: because I want to slow down just a little bit and…The top I’m imagining is the person that’s guiding the experience…

Madison Young: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: And then the bottom might be the person who’s going to be the submissive or the one that’s being guided. Would that be accurate?

Madison Young: That’s true. The bottom is not always submissive in the situation, but is often, is being guided. Often bottoms can be great guides for tops as well, as far as maybe, maybe it’s kind of the opposite. Maybe you’re a very experienced bottom and you have a brand new top that’s just getting into the scene, and you’re able to tell them what implements to try to use, ways that they can push you. You can help guide them through the journeys themselves.

Francesca Gentille: So let me see if I, if I’m getting this right, is that the quote/unquote “bottom” is the person that’s going to be receiving the sensation basically…

Madison Young: Yes.

Francesca Gentille: And the top is the person that’s giving it. But I could in fact, you know, top from the bottom if I’m the person that is saying, “Could you use this? Could you do it like this? Could you do it like that?”, and if the person that is giving me the sensation is, you know, very well versed and I’m really wanting to also be in a place that’s submission or surrender, then I might not say anything, and then they, they would be the ones that we say, “Now I’m going to do this and I want you to do that or not do this.”

Madison Young: That’s correct. And then obviously, well maybe not obviously, a very important part is also having your safe word, that’s an important part of the negotiation.

Francesca Gentille: What’s a safe word and when do you use it?

Madison Young: A safe word is a word that is negotiated between the two people that are playing, as far as if that word is stated then the play ceases. They’ve, that way the, the submissive or the bottom can scream as much as they want to, they can say, “Stop, stop, stop. No.” They can…

Francesca Gentille: “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”

Madison Young: Right, exactly. But that way the top doesn’t have to stop every time the person is saying stop, even if they don’t want them to stop. But if they say “Gafilta fish”, then they know, “Okay, there’s something wrong. We need to stop.” A commonly used system is the ‘green, yellow, red’ system. So red is often used as a safe word.

Francesca Gentille: You know, I’m so loving this. I love that you bring, keep using the word ‘play’, because I read a study once that said, you know, here we play as children until we’re, you know, 8, 10, 12, and then suddenly play disappears. Well where does it go, because play is actually a healthy urge of a human being, it’s interwoven into our nature. Play often goes into our sexuality, and I love that, you know, BDSM claims that word, “We’re going to play now.” And also, if you’re thinking of playing a game, you want to be in the same game, you want to, you know, are we playing basketball or are we playing baseball? You know, are we using, you know, bats or do we have hoops?

Madison Young: Mm hmm.

Francesca Gentille: You know, what is a foul? You know, what’s an out? And so, it’s really lovely that there’s a precision here, and I, and I think in, you know, you know, certainly my average sexuality, you know, I kiss someone, I’m attracted to them, it feels good, and we just keep going. And maybe I’m on my period or maybe my nipples are sensitive or maybe I do, I am feeling, you know, a little upset to my tummy or whatever, and I won’t say it. I won’t…

Madison Young: Yeah.

Francesca Gentille: tell them no, that actually something that they’re doing isn’t working for me, and then later I’ll be upset with them. And I love that there’s this, this celebration of language and conversation and a positive negotiation about the game we’re going to play before…

Madison Young: Right.

Francesca Gentille: we even start, and it feels so empowering. And I want to talk more about the empowering nature of playing with all of this after we come back from a break and a word from our sponsors.

Francesca Gentille: Welcome back to Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You the Soul of Sex. We’re here with Madison Young who teaches The Zen Submissive, combining many aspects of tantra into BDSM. And Madison, I just so want to talk about that empowering nature that you and I emailed a little bit about before the show, the empowering energetic nature of BDSM. Could you speak to that?

Madison Young: Yes. For me when I am in a scene with a partner and I have someone chaining me or spanking me, with every bit of sensation that I’m receiving it’s energy that’s entering into my body. People will often ask me if, if it’s painful, does it hurt, and I don’t feel like those things apply to what’s going on. What I explain to them is that it’s all sensation and it’s all energy that is entering into my body. When I’m experiencing any kind of corporal, which is when an implement or a hand is, is making contact with, with the body, striking the body, that is a rush of energy entering into the flesh. And through visualization you, you can control where that energy heads, you can redirect that energy. One of the things I do in the, in the Zen Submissive is I teach people how to breathe with that energy and how to redirect that energy in an erotic way. So say you’re being spanked on your butt, but you can have the, you can experience the warmth entering into the flesh, into your, into your butt and have it run down your thighs and have it run back up your thighs and to your cunt or to your cock and you can breathe with that. This is, this is one of the ways that many masochists, including myself, can orgasm, something’s obtained because there is a large rush of energy that’s entering into the body, and they’re able to redirect it to erogenous zones. At the same time, you’re breathing with that energy and able to create orgasmic waves.

Francesca Gentille: When you’re speaking of this, what this does remind of, of tantra and Daoism, which is also about energy, and where sometimes in tantra we focus on moving the energy up to the heart and maybe sharing it from the heart or moving it up to the third eye and opening the third eye, I hear, what you’re saying is that you’re moving it, you can move it into painful areas of your body and massage it, you can move it into your genitals and create higher degrees of arousal. This is opening up a whole new vista here Madison that is really fascinating.

Madison Young: Yeah, yeah.

Francesca Gentille: And it reminds me of tantra as well because I have a sense, and I’d love for you to talk more of, the energy exchange that happens between the giver and the receiver.

Madison Young: A lot of people do this in different ways, but when someone is giving you that energy, you are breathing in the energy, breathing, you receive the energy that they’re giving you from, say a flogging, and you’re able to breathe it back out and send it out to them. It really helps to, one of the first things that I teach masochists or submissive is really about thrust, because people who are not familiar with BDSM, when they’re spanked or flogged or whipped, they will experience, they do experience pain. They’ll feel this sensation and they clench up. They keep it in their body and it gets trapped there, instead of breathing it out and having it be circular. And if you let it be circular it can go back to the top, enter back into you, and it just creates this amazing fire of warmth and breath and just sends you off into amazing transcendental sort of experience.

Francesca Gentille: I’m just going to breathe that in. I’m going to breathe that in, ‘cause that sounds, I mean it really does sound incredible. It feels to me like another flavor, like…As I said to you earlier, expanding our erotic pallet, our artistic pallet of what we can explore and share in terms of energy, in terms of breath, in terms of visualization with one another, and that it’s still an exchange, whether someone is giving to me or I’m being given to, there is a deep sense, what I’m hearing is a deep sense of connection, and I’m, I’m imagining, you were speaking of the submissive sending their energy back to the guide, you know, to the top. And then, I’m imagining if I’m going to be a successful top, a successful guide, yet I’m also steeling deeply into the energy of the person I’m guiding. I want to, you know, in some ways almost sense before they, before they make a sound, before they, you know, say anything, sense where are those, those edges that will help them continue to build their erotic energy.

Madison Young: Yeah. There’s an exercise that I also have people do within my workshops where I just have two partners facing each other, and there’s a bucket of close pins, and the top will apply the close pins to the submissive and they’re looking into each others eyes, they’re breathing with each other, and when the close pin goes on they imagine that energy that they’re experiencing, that sensation as a color, as a warmth and allowing that warmth to spread through their body and then sharing it with their partner and verbalizing it so that they’re, they’re partner can key into what the submissive is feeling as well. And it’s a very simple exercise, but it, it allows us to really work on visualization of sensation. I often talk about sensations that I’m experiencing, some say a single tail or a chain as a food. One of my favorite implements is a thuddy implement, Different, different things that create thuds could be a paddle or a heavy flogger, even a hand can be thuddy. But one of my favorites is a two by four. Might sound silly, but I love the two by fours. And…

Francesca Gentille: Wow!

Madison Young: It reminds me, it reminds me of, of meatloaf and mashed potatoes and comfort food…

Francesca Gentille: Wow!

Madison Young: because it has a very thick and comforting feel to me, so I can taste those things in my mouth, melting in my mouth as I’m being spanked with it, where say a single tail on the other hand is more of a…

Francesca Gentille: And a single tail we mean, we mean a whip or a flogger? What’s a single tail?

Madison Young: A single tail is a whip and it’s very stingy. And for me I feel like it tastes like Wasabi. It’s a very zingy Wasabi. So I feel like the more that you experiment with sensations, the more in depth you can really get to pinpointing taste and color and warmth, and sharing that with your partner and connecting with your partner on a much deeper level.

Francesca Gentille: Mm, and I want to say for our listening audience as well is that although I, Madison is the expert and I am very much the dabbler in so many things, I’m what some people say more vanilla than not, but at the same time I like to do exploring to find out what’s out there, you know, like you might try different food to see whether or not you like it. And when I was, experienced being flogged by, you know, a fairly thick piece of soft leather, it was wonderful. It just, it felt like a delicious back massage. You know, I wanted more to the right, you know, more to the left, it just…

Madison Young: Uh huh.

Francesca Gentille: I agree with you, there was, you know, when you find a sensation, whether it’s your hands, like you said you loved hands being scratched or stroked over your body or, you know, pinched or, you know, tickled or slapped in certain ways, or whether it’s through, you know, a wonderful massaging tool or flogger or two by four, when you find a sensation that your body loves it’s an amazing thing.

Madison Young: Yeah.

Francesca Gentille: And so we’re really talking about supporting one another to experience and expand our capacity for, for sensation and energetic pleasure.

Madison Young: Yes, and I feel like that can be an incredibly empowering experience for both the submissive and for the dominant, and…

Francesca Gentille: How does it empower, when you say empower, what does that mean?

Madison Young: I feel like it gives me a great sense of control, and also when, so your body is engulfing all of this energy, it’s being fed an immense amount of energy, and you’re consuming all of this, this energy, and yes you’re breathing it out, but you’re getting to a higher and higher state as you’re doing that, and I feel like that’s a very empowering kind of experience. When I’m in certain suspension, a rope suspension is when I am raised off the ground in rope bondage. It can often look like an aerial dance, but bound. But your entire body weight is settling into the ropes. So if I’m doing something like that and also having someone flog me or experiencing other sensations, I feel just invincible. It can just be incredibly empowering. And just the fact that, you know, the submissive are very in control of what’s happening. You’re the one laying down the law of what you want to do, what journey you’re wanting to go on, and you’re engulfing all of this energy and just raised to this amazing higher state. So it could be an amazing experience. And for some DS experiences, it can be very, very different. For me, something that is more, say, SM or bondage related, SM being sadism and masochism dealing more with pain and sensation, versus something that’s DS, which is dominance and submission. For me submission is more around serving and really is more around, based around what I was talking about, the Buddhist philosophy of giving up everything, serving something larger than yourself and feeling very humbled.

Francesca Gentille: I, when I offer something, and it may or may not be like this, sometimes I feel that when I’m with my beloved that I am serving, for me I still feel like I’m serving a divine. You know, that I just, I feel like my heart’s very open and it’s how can I be of service to you? What can I give to you? What can I do for you? And it feels like it’s on that spectrum. It may be in a different range or area of that spectrum, but it’s that, it’s a beautiful feeling to feel I want to be in service of something.

Madison Young: Yeah. And when you’re in that service, feeling like it’s almost a meditative state, like I’ve, I’ve, am, I have given part of myself over and I am, I am a hollow reed, like feeling like you are, have hollowed out part of yourself, but in a very peaceful and Zen way and giving yourself to someone else.

Francesca Gentille: This is, you know, this is such a beautiful interview, and, you know, these, the words that are given, this experience, bondage, domination, submission, you know, can, as we said, can sound scary, but what you’ve mapped out for us is an exploratory journey of love and energy and vision and ecstasy that I think has given our listening audience, and certainly me, a lot more to think about and explore.

Madison Young: Well thank you. I’m glad that you enjoyed it. I did as well.

Francesca Gentille: I want to thank you so much for joining us. And Madison how do people get a hold of you?

Madison Young: Well people can find me at feminapotens.org, like orgasm. Or at madisonbound.com.

Francesca Gentille: Wonderful. And I also want to say to our listening audience, if you want to learn more about Madison, if you want to see her bio, get her lovely picture, find out more about where she’s going to teach and when, you can do that at www.personallifemedia.com, that’s www.personallifemedia.com. Thank you for being here with us on Sex: Tantra and Kama Sutra: Bringing You the Soul of Sex.