The Alchemy of Pain

The path to my freedom was paved in pain, and not only the bad kind. The early days of the studio led me to my discovery of BDSM and my first sessions with Adam. Now that I look back and reflect on it, this may prove to be the greatest discovery of my life, and it wouldn’t have happened without the studio. Life unfolds in truly twisted ways, and there are some diamonds in there if you can find them under the piles of shit. My sessions with Adam taught me how to surrender to pain and how much I could withstand.

During one session, he stood behind me as I kneeled. I looked in the mirror at my nude form in a g-string, hair in a tousled lion’s mane, as my nipples were clamped into vices, with ever increasing pressure. He made me count to 10 as he slowly increased the pressure. By 5, I was sure I couldn’t withstand any more. But he held me, he reminded me to breathe. He made me look into the mirror again and recognize the fucking powerhouse that I was. I watched myself scream and moan and saw that my capacity was so much greater than I thought. Slowly, the pain shifted from unbearable to blissful. I felt the pain alchemize into pleasure. The pain made me wet, turning myself on in seeing what I was truly made of. He was there only to facilitate my witnessing my own glory.

Getting to 10 taught me that on the other side of fear is ecstasy. But in order to get there, you had to surrender, fully, to the pain. Over the next months, as I navigated the loss of the studio and my marriage, I kept going back to this moment in the dungeon. The explorations of pain there became a guidepost for me and taught me that in order to learn and move through this painful transition and loss in life, I had to feel it in every muscle, every bone, every atom of my being. It had to pass through me on its own timeline, and I had to be patient. Waiting, like a good girl. I had to accept it no matter how long the process would take.

My shaman, Lina always retold the story of Chuck Yeager, the pilot who broke the sound barrier. Every other pilot who tried had pulled back when extreme turbulence set in. Chuck was the first one to gun it when the turbulence hit. He accelerated into the turbulence. He knew intuitively that the only way forward was through. There is a fine line between pain and pleasure, and the place where they meet is where I found transcendence.

I’m still a newbie to this space. But the experiences I’ve had have shifted the very core of my being. The journeys helped pave the road and clear the cobwebs, but when it came time to discover pleasure, my shadows became my teachers through BDSM. Instead of pushing my fears away, I learned to dance with them. Tie me up with ropes to a pole. Cut off my circulation. Shut off my brain. Bring me back to the beginning, before the shame, before the conditioning, before the matrix took hold of me. I went back to my purest animal form. No words, only raw energy.

I guess I had to be tied up to finally find freedom.