Tantra & Kink: Repairing Sub and Dom Drop

Last week, I talked about Tantra being a solution to preventing sub and Dom drop. I had several people remark in comments that they didn’t even realize that this drop effect was what they sometimes experienced after scenes with their partner. And another person wondered what to do once the drop had already happened.

Here’s some answers:

Sub or Dom ‘drop’ is the term used amongst kinksters to describe the sensations of energy exhaustion following play. And energy exhaustion is not always the case, sometimes it is overcharge of energy.

The symptoms of energy exhaustion are nausea, an overwhelming urge to sleep, feeling blue or a bit depressed, lethargy, muscle weakness, hunger, dehydration, lack of mental focus, lack of balance which can cause people to trip and fall or drop things, distraught emotions…among similar symptoms.

The symptoms of energy overcharge are restlessness, irritability, insomnia, fatigue, mania, racing thoughts, impulsivity, compulsivity, obsessiveness…among other similar symptoms.

The simplest solutions to these is to develop a grounding practice. That’s a very simple meditation which will take about 10 minutes to perform and will re-establish the energy polarities of the body. We are rather like a battery believe it or not. We need to have a subtle connection to the land in order to be healthy or we have symptoms like those above. People with manic depression, for example have a chronic problem with not having that subtle polarity established and maintained.

To learn about grounding, read here.

This grounding meditation takes practice to work when you are already in a drop state. Your brain is not going to find it easy to focus on that meditation when you feel like you do in a drop state, so you need to establish a habit with the meditation, so your brain will respond instinctively to it and your body will follow the brains responses with autonomic responses of its own, which is to relax into a normal state of being

The best way to establish this habitual response to do the meditation every single day. It only takes about 2 or 3 minutes to do under normal circumstances. It requires about ten minutes or more when you are in a drop state, because you need to shift so much energy around in order to feel better. That takes a bit of time.

Now, if you’ve really done the deed and nearly tapped yourself out, only time is going to fully replenish what you’ve done to yourself. Repeating the meditation several times a day until a full recovery is made will support the body’s efforts.

The other ways to re-establish a grounded state is to eat some protein together with some complex carbs that don’t turn into pure blood sugar such as a vegetable juice or nuts and carrot sticks or a bowl of stew. It also helps to put some oil on your skin, take a warm or hot bath and going for a walk that is done slowly and with attention to every movement of your body is ideal. Even better, follow that walk up by holding each other and doing some eye gazing and breathing together.

‘After care’ is what this is normally called amongst kinksters. Ritualists and pagans will tell you that these are simply ‘grounding techniques’….and pagans will teach that you should prepare yourself better for the ritual of sex to prevent these conditions. That means ongoing, routine self care, such as was discussed in last week’s post Tantra & Kink: Energy Charge. Pagans also teach that you should learn to assess energy levels better and wrap up the play sooner instead of tapping your body out to the point of ‘drop’. Pushing from this point on means that either or both of you don’t feel well enough to play the next day again….or at least for hours afterward. If you want constant use of your sub…then you need to take good care of her energy levels.

The signs that its time to stop are when a person begins to emote without usual control, stumbling, lack of focus, getting silly, repeating yourself… Most Doms see that as time to push further because they’ve caused a loss of control. That’s actually a part of the fun for many kinksters, but you should know that chronically draining yourself like this will set up emotional and mental imbalances. You remember me mentioning manic depression earlier? Well living in a state of chronic ‘drop’, will cause the sub to become a pain in the ass to themselves and the Dom with time….and they can’t help it. The body needs to be in balance for the mind and heart to function healthy….and the same is true of the body. If the mind and heart are distressed constantly, the sub will feel ill all the time.

If you want to be well adjusted and you want to have a high functioning relationship together, then you must learn to control this drop state and prevent it.

But then,” how about the intensity which is just so lovely? Pushing is where the intensity is after all…”

In my humble opinion, pushing is not the only way to achieve the euphoria you seek. And euphoria can be sought and achieved without causing a drop in energy levels.

I bring the conversation back to Tantra in that, you can make play more intense if you teach the body to handle more and more energy. It will carry that energy in healthy ways if the techniques used to train the body are ones that maintain grounding as well as the balance of emotions and thinking simultaneously. That is why, for me, Tantra is the balance point to kink play. This practice is both a form of control and a form of seeking and achieving euphoria, intimacy, trust and surrender…to finding devotion together. These are the points of kink play for most of us…yes?