Variations on flogging

If you plan to put your sub on your knees and hit her as hard as you want and for as long as you want, until her buttocks are black and blue and she cannot sit for several days, you don’t need any special technique. Just brute force will do.

But for making punishment an art, you should use your sub’s mind as much as any instrument. A good punishment should be as much psychological as it is physical, so it will be more severe without the need of hurting your sub so much (but sometimes, a brutal beating feels also good)

These techniques can be used on any “licit” part of the body and with any instrument and technique you find satisfactory. As usual, we write as a man punishing a woman, but I was in both ends, and your preferred gender could be at any.

We offer:

• Delaying
• Hitting slow
• Fast to slow
• The bastinado
• The barrage
• The sample
• In installments
• Counting
• Giving the rhythm
• False hope
• The unforgettable

Delaying

As punishment shouldn’t be given in anger or on the spur of the moment, you could delay it. English Victorian teachers were masters as this technique. A pupil was, at least, sent to the Headmaster’s office, and made to wait there for some time, or the punishment could be after school hours, or even on a particular weekday, often on Friday. The pupil has to wait from hours to several days knowing that he will be punished, that the pain is unavoidable, that the sentence would be carried over no matter what, and dreading the moment of the actual pain.

You can also make anticipation a punishment. Tell her that she will be punished before going to sleep, or on a determined punishment day, and don’t fail to remind her every now and then the pending sentence.

You have two choices here: you can tell her form the beginning how you will punish her, how many lashes, and as much detail as you care to give, for allowing her to play the scene on her mind many times before the actual execution. Or you can tell her just that she will be punished severely for her misdeed, but not which the punishment will be. She can then imagine for herself what will happen to her. And if you seem angry, she will probably imagine a harsher punishment than what it will actually be, and suffer in her mind more than she will actually suffer in real life.

And of course, she will better behave until then, or she will suffer more than one punishment when the sentence is paid.

Hitting slow

If you are going to give just a few hard lashes (say, a dozen with the belt or cane or so), you can make the most of each by hitting slow. Give the sub time for suffering the pain, for recovering, and for waiting for the next. You are there, you got a lash that hurt deeply, and you know there is more coming, each one an ordeal. You wonder how you will manage to stand them. And the time between one lash and the next, knowing that you can do nothing for avoiding it falling, and waiting for the pain you know is coming is agonizing.

Fast to slow

Another good technique for a few lashes is making the rhythm of the cuts go from fast to slow. For instance, a good dozen with the cane or a paddle could be given:

• the first four in a minute, at about fifteen second intervals
• the next six, three a minute, or at about twenty second intervals
• and the last two, every thirty seconds

 making the punishment last four full minutes, an eternity for the one that is receiving it.

The “bastinado”

Even when now it means, especially for BDSM, beating on the feet, the Chinese torture consisted on hitting in any part of the body with just the necessary force for eliciting a reaction in the subject, but rhythmically and for long periods. It is especially adequate for using in body parts in which you can’t hit hard, as on the face or feet.

So bind your sub, sit in a comfortable position, hitting for the sting, not the pain, but hitting, hitting, hitting. The pain, not too hard but mounting and repeated for what the subject will think is forever, brings a psychological reaction of anguish that is in itself the punishment. The lashes should not be too slow or too fast, neither too hard nor too soft. The secret is duration and rhythm. Be careful, because this kind of punishment is actually harder than it looks. People went mad under it.

The barrage

Another technique that makes a determinate number of lashes harder, is giving them in a period as short as possible. You could also use two instruments, say two slippers or two ping pong paddles, one on each hand, for hitting faster. The sting will fast become a burning. The anguish here comes for the impossibility of processing and controlling the rapidly mounting pain.

You would probably have to bind the subject when giving this punishment, because it is difficult for a person avoiding fleeing from what will be felt as an attack.

Don’t use too heavy or dangerous instruments, because hitting fast you are not going to have too much control.

The sample

Put the sub in position and give her a sample or demo of what is coming. Two or three hard lashes are enough. And when your sub has a fresh feeling of how those lashes hurt, left her in position and untouched for some time, for letting her enjoy the anticipation of the pain she know she will receive when the punishment finally comes.

Published: 01/14/05