The Spirituality of Corner Time

Ah well... the good part about being separated from my partner (again!) is that I have lots of opportunity to consider what I miss most about DD (Domestic Discipline) when we're not together.

I miss the spankings, of course, as I've written about in prior posts ("Why Spanking Matters"). But interestingly, perhaps even more than spankings, I miss the corner time that follows the spankings.

In our relationship, mandatory corner time follows every spanking. Depending on how much time we have, the seriousness of the offense and my attitude preceding it, corner time generally lasts at least 20 minutes, sometimes an hour, and occasionally longer for a more serious misbehavior.

Corner time is meant as discipline, of course, and it is certainly that. It's embarrassing, particularly since I'm required to "serve my time" with my newly-spanked bottom exposed. It's occasionally frustrating, if I haven't yet had a chance to tell my partner my side of the misbehavior I'm being disciplined for. It's occasionally painful -- depending on the severity of the spanking I've just received.

And yet, despite these unpleasantries, corner time is one of my favorite parts of DD.

Imagine having someone you love tell you, for the next half hour (or more!), your only responsibility is to Be. You have nowhere to go, nothing to do, no emails to answer, no obligations of any kind except to be still and present with yourself and your breath.

A lot of people pay a lot of money to take courses and attend retreats on meditation, yoga and other relaxation techniques. I know, because I used to be one of them. To relieve my stress and quiet my mind and just give myself permission to Be, I've tried yoga, meditation, chanting, deep breathing, mantras, affirmations, prayer, you name it. Some of these worked better than others for me and, of course, all of them can be deeply effective methods for connecting with that calm, still, sacred part deep inside of all of us.

But for me, none of them have the meditative, calming, centering effect that corner time does.

I suspect a big part of the reason corner time works so well to calm, center and relax me is that it's mandatory. All of the other techniques -- meditation, yoga, etc. -- are voluntary. I can stop whenever I want to. And because I have an extremely short attention span and because I have have a very hard time not fidgeting or moving around, I generally stop way before traditional methods like meditation have a chance to work.

But with corner time, I can't "stop." I'm there till my partner tells me I can go, period. (Why? See "Why Do I Obey.") So I can't bail out when I get restless or bored or fidgety. I have to stay and see it through.

There's a certain pattern to corner time, at least for me. And that pattern is virtually identical to the pattern commonly associated with traditional meditation (when it's working). Both are a psychological journey with several stages, from stress to peace.

When I'm first sent to the corner, I'm all good intentions. I stand obediently still, focused largely on the sore bottom I've been sent to the corner with. But it doesn't take long for the fidgeting to set in. I shift weight from one foot to the other. I move my hands from front to back and to the front again. I rock my head back and forth. My eyes shift this way and that. (Should my partner discipline me for excessive fidgeting in the corner? Good question. Perhaps. Would that get me where I need to go faster, or is the fidgeting a necessary part of the process?)

And although my partner always gives me specific instructions as to what I'm to think about during corner time, my thoughts wander everywhere. From the spanking I just got to what I did to deserve it to what I want for dinner to the emails I have to answer to... etc, etc, etc. "Monkey Mind," the Zen teachers call it, climbing out of the corner and roaming everywhere but where it's supposed to be.

But sooner or later, all these random thoughts subside. My breathing slows down. I stop fidgeting. Things get very quiet in my head and heart. I find myself resting my forehead against the corner, taking deep, slow breaths and relaxing my shoulders, my abdomen and my neck (all the places I carry my stress). Time slows down and I lose all sense of how long I've been there. All that matters is my breath and the peace I feel inside.

20 minutes is about the minimum amount of time for me to get to this place and stay there long enough to feel the benefits. As with meditation, though, the longer I stay, the more I feel the benefits (up to a point, I suppose, though I haven't found that point yet). By the time my partner says my corner time is up, I feel like I've just had a really good yoga session. He tells me that when I come to him from the corner, I look especially beautiful and relaxed. And that's how I feel, too.

Corner time for me works particularly well following a spanking because the intense, sharp, external energy of a spanking is a perfect contrast to the peaceful, internalized, calming energy of corner time. For me, the contrast is what brings the transformation. Being taken to an emotional high by the spanking, and then allowed, slowly, to come back down into the peace of corner time is a profound spiritual experience. Corner time without the spanking preceding it doesn't carry the same transformative power.

I've read a lot of comments from women in DD relationships that express their resistance to corner time. Usually the reason given is that it's boring or that they'd get impatient and restless if they had to spend more than a few minutes there. And yes, it's certainly not as glamorous or dramatic or even sexual as a spanking is. The power of corner time is more subtle and nuanced, and it's buried deep in the hidden, personal stillness of our hearts.

We live in a culture that doesn't value stillness, patience or the virtue of just Being. But like many things tossed aside by the frenetic, media-driven culture we live in, stillness is necessary to keep us in balance.

We've all met people who can't stand to live in silence. Who turn the TV on as soon as they get home, take their iPods on a hike rather than just listening to the quiet sounds of nature, or blast their car radio everywhere they go. Or what about those among us who can't live in stillness? They multi-task -- doing two things at once all the time. Reading while they eat, cleaning the kitchen while they're on the phone, heck, even listening to language tapes while they sleep!

Somewhere along the way, we've been taught to fear silence and stillness. Perhaps because it's in the silence and stillness that the truth of our emotions and our authentic selves come out, and some of those emotions are difficult, painful and uncomfortable to face and some parts of our authentic selves may not be parts we want to acknowledge. Easier to drown our feelings and our authenticity out with constant noise and movement.

Easier, but not, ultimately, healthier.

The good news is that as practitioners of DD, we're way ahead of most of the rest of the world (with the possible exception of those Zen teachers...). We've already experienced the amazing benefits of expressing our deepest needs rather than suppressing them. We're learning the joys of living our lives in harmony with who we really are, even when the rest of society doesn't understand or approve of our authentic selves. We're much less likely to fear our inner voice, and thus much less likely to drown it out inner voice out with constant motion and noise. Therefore, in theory at least, we're much more open and available to the peaceful, stress-relieving benefits that corner time can bring to our lives.

So I'd encourage those of you who haven't done so yet to give corner time a chance to work its meditative magic. Yes, those first five or ten minutes can be difficult, but like any meditative practice, there's a payoff if you hang in there long enough. And you might come to find, as I have, that it brings a new level of spirituality and empowerment to your relationship and to your life as a whole.

The Little Voice -- Emotional Awareness and DD

About two weeks ago, I was happily working away on a project one afternoon, when a little voice inside my head said, "You need a spanking."

This message from my subconscious was unexpected and I stopped to consider the possibility. I didn't feel as though I needed a spanking. On the contrary, I felt relaxed, reasonably centered and confident -- all the qualities that come from having been recently spanked (although I hadn't been) rather than from needing one.

But the voice was insistent. Throughout the day, it popped up in the most unlikely places, always with the same message, "You need a spanking."

Sure enough, the next day, I started to feel just a tiny bit edgy. And that night, my partner and I had one of those all-too-familiar conversations that end in tension and tears. "You need a spanking," my partner said afterwards.

So was that voice in my head from the prior day an indication that my partner has learned to communicate telepathically? No (though that'd be really useful!), but the experience did show me yet another benefit of living a DD (Domestic Discipline) lifestyle -- an increased awareness of my inner emotional state.

About a year ago, I started charting my fertility using the Fertility Awareness Method, a method of natural birth control based on learning how to read my body's indicators to determine whether or not I'm fertile. (check out this link for a really great software program that helps track fertility) .

In charting the various physical changes throughout my cycle, I've been amazed at my growing ability to sense even the tiniest shifts in my body as they relate to my fertility. Things so small that I hadn't noticed them before, that are clear indicators as to whether sex is safe or not on the day.

Similarly, as my partner and I get more into the rhythm of DD, I'm noticing a corresponding sensitivity to my psychological states as well. Tiny little shifts of mood or flickers of tension that I wasn't aware of before we started DD.

These tiny little mood shifts are the sparks that, in the past, went unnoticed until they exploded into full-blown arguments and fights between my partner and me. Usually he would notice that something was wrong before I did, as I began to become brittle and bitchy without realizing it. Then of course, he would respond to my brittleness with bristliness of his own, and I would respond to his response (accusing him of starting it), and so on until there we were, hurling insults and ad hominems at one another and ruining our relationship in the process.

One of the many gifts of DD is this ability to catch and deal with these emotional fluctuations before they do any damage.

But of course, reaping the benefits of this gift of emotional sensitivity requires being willing to take the appropriate steps to stop the impending "bitchy spell" before it escalates. And herein lies the challenge, of course.

Either myself or my partner has to step up and give the needed discipline at the first signs of a mood shift. But of course, if my partner notices the mood shift, that means I've already crossed the line and demonstrated inappropriate and/or disrespectful behavior -- behavior that's destructive to the relationship

The best scenario for using DD to maintain peace and harmony in the relationship is for me to recognize the warning signs before they affect my behavior, and then step up and ask for a discipline session -- turning the interior "you need a spanking" into a verbalized "I need a spanking."

Now as most of you know from experience, having your partner tell you that you need a spanking is vastly different from asking for one. However "comfortable" we are accepting discipline imposed by our partners, those familiar demons of embarrassment and rejection re-appear in full force at the prospect of asking for it ourselves.

But, of course, in addition to being a tool for building a stable relationship, DD is also (perhaps even foremost) a tool for personal growth. It's a way to build self-discipline, boundaries and self-esteem we didn't build earlier in life (see "DD as a Reaction to "Me" Generation Parenting").

The little voice in our head that tells us it's time for a spanking is a valuable opportunity to learn to take responsibility for our own emotional well-being, rather than remaining reliant on someone else to manage our psychology for us.

Having the courage and maturity to ask for discipline when we need it is a valuable opportunity to develop our own internal parent -- the same internal parent who's telling us we need the spanking even when we don't think we do. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that virtually everyone who's attracted to DD (and just about all the people who aren't as well) has an internal parent that isn't strong enough to get the job done without external help.

Recognizing a need and stepping up to proactively ask for help in addressing it is a major step on the road to becoming a healthy, integrated human being. It's a difference -- perhaps the difference -- between being a child and being an adult.

And that's perhaps the greatest gift of of the "little voice" -- the opportunity to take another step on the road to personal empowerment by exercising personal responsibility and developing a stronger, more reliable and trustworthy internal parent.

Ritual (and a little help with long-distance DD)

Most couples engaged in a Domestic Discipline (DD) lifestyle are well aware of the power of ritual to create psychological change -- whether we consciously label it as such or not.

For many of us, it is the ritual aspect of discipline that holds much of the emotional power of DD. Maybe it's that particular phrase our partner uses to let us know that we've crossed a line and earned a spanking, or maybe it's the position we're required to assume, or how we reconnect once the discipline is done. Whatever the specifics, practicing DD generally includes repeated meaningful words and actions that evoke feelings of safety, love and connectedness for both partners.

For me, the importance of ritual in a DD relationship is one of the most positive aspects of this lifestyle, and a much-needed counterbalance to the unfortunate lack of ritual in our secular, "rational" Western culture.

For the most part, Western society has eschewed ritual on the grounds that it's irrational, backwards and meaningless. Young girls, for example, no longer have an established, culturally-accepted way to acknowledge their first menstruation as a transition into womanhood and as a result, often grow up feeling shameful and secret about their bodies and their femininity. And young men, denied even the physical demarcation of menstruation, have virtually no societal benchmarks or rituals to acknowledge their passage into manhood -- leading to a culture in which the majority of young men spend most of their lives unsure of whether they're adults or not.

What few true rituals we have left in our culture -- marriage, graduation, funerals -- commemorate only a handful of public events in our lives, leaving the smaller, more personal, and often ultimately more significant passages we go through unacknowledged and undervalued.

There's good reason why ritual has been an important part of virtually every culture since the beginning of civilization (ours notwithstanding). And there's a reason that spirituality and religion are founded almost entirely on the mindful practice of ritual. A culture without respect for ritual pays the price sooner or later.

Whatever we realize it or not, human beings need ritual if we're to grow into healthy, integrated adults. Ritual helps us to come to terms with our shortcomings and to celebrate our triumphs. And more than that, ritual creates a structure that helps us to make sense of the dizzying cacophony of random experiences we live through day-by-day. It gives the little things we do meaning and purpose by putting them the context of our larger life's journey.

Fortunately for us, DD is all about ritual (impromptu parking lot spankings not withstanding). The rituals of domestic discipline help us to incorporate the lessons we learn in our everyday lives into our deeper selves so we can become healthier people.

Our DD rituals also create a safe, mutually-understood mechanism by which we can connect with the deeper parts of ourselves that are normally less accessible to us.

For me, the ritual aspect of DD is what allows me to submit to the discipline that I've consented to (but don't always want in the moment). When my partner says, "go get the paddle," the familiarity of those words -- the same ones every time -- acts as a Pavlovian trigger, shifting my psychology from rebellion into submission more quickly and gracefully than if he used different words every time.

And the more those words pass between us, and the more we step through the increasingly-familiar dance of discipline, the more the practice and the benefits of discipline become engraved in our minds (our neutral networks, if you take the scientific approach). Ritual, at its core, is meaningful habit.

But most significantly, the ritual of discipline is a deeply spiritual process that helps us to to realize the effects of our actions on others and their actions on us. Discipline is a ritualizing of the universal emotional journey from anger (disconnection with humanity) to repentance (acknowledging our own humanity) to reconciliation (reconnection with humanity).

In my experience, when it's done well, Domestic Discipline is an experience in finding the divine spark inside myself that allows me to forgive myself and others for being human. Being reminded that my actions affect others in turn reminds me that I am connected to others.

The rules of DD mirror those of life -- when I hurt others, I am hurt, but when I love others, I am loved.

How Ritual Works

For many years, I misunderstood the nature of ritual, and mostly did it backwards. I thought ritual was something you were supposed to do when you were ready for it, and not before.

To use a small example, after one of my favorite cats died, I planned to scatter the ashes, but I kept putting it off. I felt like I couldn't scatter the ashes until I was ready to say goodbye. But a wise friend pointed out to me that I would likely never be ready to say goodbye unless I completed the ritual of scattering the ashes. If I waited to scatter them until I was ready, I'd probably have dead-cat ashes on my dresser for the rest of my life.

So although I didn't feel ready to say goodbye to my best kitty friend, I took my friend's advice and did the ash scattering ritual. Afterwards, I was surprised to find that I was able to say goodbye. The thing I thought I couldn't do until I was able to let go is actually what enabled me to let go. I'd been approaching the whole process of ritual backwards.

DD rituals work the same way. We step through them not because we're already ready, willing and able to accept discipline, but to help us get ready and accept it more humbly, gracefully and spiritually. If we waited until we were ready before bringing our partner the proverbial paddle, most of us would never submit, and we'd lose the powerful and amazing benefits of that submission. And our partners discipline us not because they've already forgiven us for what we've done, but as a way to help them on their own journey of mercy and understanding.

Our Commitment Ritual

The benefits of ritual are particularly on my mind just now, because after three beautiful weeks with my partner, we're again in different parts of the country for another month-long separation.

The day of my departure, we spent the afternoon at the beach. During that time, we talked about the challenges we still have in building and strengthening our DD relationship.

I talked about the fears I have that he doesn't take this crazy lifestyle seriously and is just humoring my "kink." I also shared again how hard it is to hold onto the connection we have when we're apart. He talked about his struggle with how to handle the times when I resist discipline, and how those incidents fuel his continued fears that I could revoke my consent, and then turn around in a moment of anger and accuse him of being abusive.

These are huge issues, of course, and I confessed that I despaired of ever truly resolving them. That's when he suggested that perhaps we needed a ceremony, a ritual, in which we both stated our commitment to a DD lifestyle, and said the things the other needed to hear in a formal pledge.

There wasn't much time to set it up, since I was leaving in a few hours. But another thing I've learned over the years is that simple rituals are often much more effective than elaborately planned and scripted ones, the latter of which often take so much concentration and choreography that there's no time to be in the moment.

So off we went to the local tourist shop, where we bought a simple $5 silver ring (for me, since he doesn't wear jewelry). Holding hands, we walked to a beautiful bench overlooking the ocean, and discussed what kinds of things we each needed to hear from the other to feel safer and more confident in our relationship.

As we sat side-by-side on the bench, I handed him the ring, promising that it symbolized my consent, commitment and submission to his discipline. I promised that the consent I was giving was true, no matter what I said or did in the heat of the moment. I also promised that to help him tell the difference, if I truly wanted to revoke my consent, I'd do it in a calm, rational, non-disciplinary moment. Finally, I explicitly pledged that I would not betray our trust by turning on him and accusing him of abuse for administering discipline, but to trust and talk through situations when I'm angry or when things go wrong.

As he put the ring on my finger, he promised to always strive to discipline with love, although he reminded me there would often be anger and disappointment, too. He reiterated his serious commitment to a DD relationship, and his willingness to do the hard work of building it. He reminded me that we are connected and that the energy between us is present, even when we're apart and it's harder to feel that connection.

We kissed, then held each other for a moment. We hadn't said anything that we hadn't said many times before, but this time, we said the words more formally and with the strength of our solemn word behind them.

A few hours later, it was time for me to leave. But this simple, impromptu ritual has had a surprising power. The presence of the ring, a physical reminder of our commitment and my consent, on my finger made the separation easier (the ritual pre-departure spanking helped, too, of course). And now that we're apart again, having something tangible to see and touch when my fears come up has been very stabilizing. I can touch the ring no matter where I am or what I'm doing and instantly invoke the power of the ritual and the special bond we share together.

The acid test of the ceremony came a few days later when our tempers flared during a phonecall (about not being together!) and I shifted into my habitual bitchy attitude, complete with the petulant hang-up. He called back a few minutes later, as he almost always does. Normally, I either pick up the phone with a nasty attitude or don't answer it all, knowing that he's almost certainly calling back to discipline me (and knowing full well he can't do much if I say no, given he's 1000 miles away).

But this time, almost without thinking about it, I felt the ring on my finger, remembered the promise of consent that I gave. My word means a lot to me, and I realized that simple promise on the beach had weight -- weight enough to cause me to pick up the phone respectfully, prepared for the consequences of my disrespect. It wasn't a perfect interaction -- if it had been, I wouldn't have hung up the phone or been disrespectful in the first place, but it was a lot more better than it had been in prior instances.

In sum, I'm deeply grateful for the presence of the rituals of DD in my life, and for a partner who recognizes the value and power of them. I feel extremely fortunate to have access to such a powerful way of reconnecting with the transformative power of ritual.

I would love to hear about any rituals or ceremonies that you've used in your DD relationships to overcome relationship issues, solidify bonds or make the experience more emotionally and spiritually meaningful. Along with comments, please feel free to contribute to the discussion your rituals of preparation, discipline, reconnection or commitment. (long comments are fine!)