Food for Thought

So, for the last weekend or so I've been attending Lee Harrington's series of workshops in Melbourne on various subjects relating to BDSM. My thoughts on each of them:

1) Take my breath away (Breath Play)
I was quite interested in this to start with, mostly because I love a nice hand around my neck... Hell, I like anything around my neck, let's be honest.

So, two things I got out of this workshop. Firstly, Good god, I was playing with some real unsafe shit when I was starting out with this. Holy god. Also, hearing about all the risks from everything else was a real eye-opener. Considering the first words were "Please remember that people die from this - it is a very real risk that you will too" - that's some serious food for thought right there. It brought into real perspective that you need to be careful with this stuff. Thankfully, there was a lot of risk awareness and attempts to help minimise the risks associated with breath play, which I'm very glad that I have now.

Also gave me some thought in regards to breath play that I haven't thought of before - things like breath forcing and such. Should I ever find another subbie who's into breath play, I will definitely keep this stuff in mind.

2) Playing between the ears - Erotic Hypnosis, Mind Play and Dirty Talk
This is not necessarily one of my kinks, but has been something I'm very curious about, and thus I learned a startling amount.

In particular, two obvious things - that there's a big continuum of erotic hypnosis (from guided visualisation to full-blown hypnotic suggestions), and that a lot of such mind play is very straightforward. There was a lot of good information about protecting yourself during such play (my favourite quote from the workshop was "Brainwash yourself before someone nastier beats you to it!"), which I plan to keep in mind. There wasn't a great deal of instruction in the workshop, which I'm simultaneously a bit sad about (because I'd like to have had a bit of hands-on work) and am feeling stupid for thinking there'd be any (because firstly, it's a very 101-kind of workshop, and because Lee's workshops are much more about expanding minds and helping people find their own path than providing direct instruction).

I'm still quite curious in regards to Hypno-play, and I'd be rather interested in trying out some small stuff. But then, I realise that I've already been doing some of the very low-level visualisation stuff already, and I'm honestly quite okay with it. It's fun stuff, that I'd like to try with my Daddy, or maybe even someone else.

3) Beyond Bowed heads - Rituals in BDSM
This was probably the workshop that my Daddy was most interested in, although I was still curious too, to hear what Lee had to say about it.

Me and Daddy are big believers in ritual currently, so we didn't really come out realising how much we've done, because we kinda knew that. Still, it was great to hear what other people do with their rituals, and I think more usefully for me, it was good to listen to Lee discuss some simple categorisations for rituals. That was really good for me because I'm a really big sucker for labels and boxes, because they make it a lot easier for me to access concepts. So thinking about things like casual rituals through to structured rituals, thinking about jewellery as ritual, as well as sharing experiences with other people about their rituals... all very good and very useful for me.

In all, I'm very glad I paid the money to go, and I'm very glad to have met Lee in the flesh after hearing so much about him. I really like his energy, and if I have to be honest, he's kinda inspired me to think about the ways I can educate the world as well. Not saying I'm changing careers just yet, mind, but he's certainly got me thinking about how I can make a difference in the world.

And that? Pretty damn awesome, I think.