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Power & Submission

Play as Rest: How Impact Can Quiet a Busy Brain

It’s not about punishment. It’s not even about sex. It’s about the surrender. The jolt. The reset. Spanking offers me a grounding, body-based way to find rest and clarity through BDSM practices rooted in nervous system regulation.

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• 9 min read
Play as Rest: How Impact Can Quiet a Busy Brain

For some of us, play is the only thing loud enough to quiet the noise.

The Room Before

I have a twice-monthly arrangement to be spanked. To relax.

I could book massages, stack meditation apps, or go to yoga. But what actually works for me is simple: someone comes over, moves me where they want me, and gives me a spanking – sometimes a paddle, maybe one day a few measured cane strokes – then aftercare, then they go. In my case, it isn’t sexual: no genital contact, no wandering hands, no post-spanking sex. As always, if there is no consent, it is not play.

Before a session I experience what I call the buzz. My focus is skimpy, my creativity is low, my muscles are braced. It feels like what a claws scratching on wood sounds like. It is incessant, distracting and it flows through every single cell in my body.

During the session I move between excitement and anticipation, discomfort, pain, pure joy (I laugh sometimes, seriously), annoyance (corner time for breaks - I am not a child, dammit), defiance (I can't let this guy win and tap out now), and then full melt.

Full melt is the goal: heat on my butt cheeks, hear my Spanker's heavy breathing and my own, my stress floating away and euphoria taking its place. I have a feeling akin to runner's high – discomfort reshaped into relief and accomplishment – and what I believe Rue feels in those purple-tinted, glitter-filled scenes. (Don't do drugs, kids.)

There is something therapeutic about being draped over someone's lap, or legs wrapped around their waist as your torso dangles towards the ground while your head fills with blood, or kneeling on a bench while your ass is exposed as you rest over the armrest of a sofa. Is it surrender? Vulnerability? Trust?

A palm warms the skin. Lift. Air.

THWACK!

Every muscle clenches from the jolt. A gasp escapes. I can finally breathe again.

Why would I want this? Lots of us do BDSM to shift state – alongside power exchange and sensation – rather than to "chase pain." Scenes can induce role-specific altered states (subspace/topspace): deep absorption, time doing weird things, attention narrowing in a way that feels restorative.

The Chemistry of Calm

This is a personal account, not medical advice.

What quiets the buzz isn’t blankness; it’s a bottleneck. Intense, predictable sensation shoves everything else to the edges. The body answers with endorphins and oxytocin; arousal systems surge; prefrontal ‘management’ eases. What’s left feels like focus.

I move into a state of profound rest and peace. Through intense pain. There is obviously something psychological and neuro-physiological taking place here. But what?

The buzz, that feeling of my brain amplifying absolutely every thought, idea, task and sound at the same time, is what drove me to seeking out and creating this arrangement. Wanting, needing, the buzz to stop so I could just focus on one thing, any thing, enough to complete it. But the "brain off" feeling is the end of the cycle.

A flurry of neurochemical releases take place during this sort of activity. You have endorphins, the brain's natural opioid, swooping in for pain relief. Then you have the oxytocin that comes in to give you that soothed, even bonded, feeling. And then there is the adrenaline that makes you push through. To take it. There is even likely endocannabinoid involvement.

It is a well practiced symphony.

Subs and bottoms may move into subspace*, a magical place where we become softer, a bit delirious and where the brain turns to mush. Full melt. It is different for each of us and some don't experience this state of mind shift, ever. A reddit user described it as being like the hentai trope of being "fucked silly", and made sure to emphasise that being fucked is not a requirement for entering this psychological headspace. (They really describe the feeling so well - go read that once you're done here.)

But subspace can get much deeper than that and is sometimes just the beginning of something more science-y: transient hypofrontality. This literally means a temporary state where the prefrontal cortex slows down. More casually speaking, overthinking stops, hyper focus begins and a nearly meditative mental space is entered. This state can be achieved through intense exercise like running (think runner's high), but also more generally, physical activity. Like being spanked. Or suspended from the ceiling while bound in rope.

This mental state has been hypothesised and is strongly suggested by evidence. Studies of intense exercise and altered-state activities suggest that reduced prefrontal activity correlates with reports of time distortion and effortless focus. BDSM research seems to point in the same direction.

Moment by Moment

Evidence points to a temporary easing of prefrontal oversight – often called transient hypofrontality – rather than a whole-brain "shutdown." Fewer tabs open. Less self-monitoring and time-tracking. More room for sensation.

EEG findings in related altered-state and performance research aren't uniform, so the safest summary is: a relaxed-yet-absorbed profile shows up a lot. Across tasks, optimal states often show higher alpha and theta power overall; within that, the frontal lobe tends to look more “relaxed” (alpha up) and less “busy” (theta down) relative to other regions—patterns that fit the idea of transient hypofrontality without proving a literal “switch off.” Translation: attention narrows without over-monitoring.

This downshift aligns with the experience of automaticity and time distortion – the athlete's "in the zone," the meditator's soft focus. Physical restraint can deepen this effect: with fewer motor options, attention naturally turns inward toward body awareness and sensations, heightening absorption.

Not needing to actively manage or narrate every moment directly relates to my experience of submission. And to how a well-paced spanking or a careful rope scene can quiet constant mental chatter.

Letting Go on Purpose

Intentionally giving up control gives the mind a break from the control that is required in every day life. The buzz. The demands of every day life that mean that my brain is always on, I am always planning for the next thing, thinking about all the things I need to do, work, trying to maintain a social life. Everything.

I am able to enter into subspace and feel the shimmer of submission. I am able to be taken care of for a moment while my fast-forming bruises are being seen too with a now soft touch and soothing lotion. I am moved into and out of place, physically, never having to consider the next move.

I am allowed to just be, without the expectations of adulthood or the outside world.

The control that is usually expected of me is handed over and replaced with pain and peace. What a combination.

The Guardrails

Kink has guardrails. We talk first, we agree on what's in and what's out, we set safewords, we debrief, we do aftercare. That scaffolding is the frame that lets big sensation happen without re-harm, and gives your body and brain a way to file it after. It’s not complicated, just intentional: we name the goal of the scene, the range (light/medium/heavy), the toys, the no-go zones, the time box, the marks policy, the "tap-out" plan. We use simple traffic-light language – green, yellow, red – plus mid-scene check-ins and hand squeezes when words aren't there. If anything wobbles, we adjust or stop. That's the whole point: chosen intensity inside agreed limits.

With that frame in place, the healing stuff shows up in ordinary, unfancy ways. You rebuild who you think you are (I can choose; I can stop; I am safe in my body). You find freedom inside a trusted relationship (I can lean and not break). You take power back on purpose (I asked for this; I said "more," I said "enough"). You meet old triggers slowly, with support, until they lose their bite (graded exposure but with care and pleasure in the mix). And you give pain a new job – communication, focus, release – instead of punishment.

Aftercare is part of the medicine, not a cute add-on. Water, warmth, carbs or something sweet, quiet skin-to-skin or space, then check-ins at +2 hours and the next day when the chemicals dip. Debrief is simple: what worked, what didn’t, what to tweak, what to repeat. That’s how the body files the memory as "safe" and the mind stops looping. Integration looks like a text that says, "Feeling floaty, ate pasta, nap now," or a note to try fewer implements, more warm-up, longer cooldown.

And because kink is unusually explicit about boundaries and needs, there’s no guessing game. That clarity cuts the mental load. The decisions are done, the rules are known, and all that’s left is to be present. None of this turns kink into capital-T therapy. It's still play. But consent scaffolding + honest care + repeatable structure can make it deeply therapeutic. Chosen surrender, not giving up. Structure that holds, not cages.

Risks, Red Flags, Reset Plans

Sub-drop: After intense play, especially if you hit altered states, there can be a low: teary, flat, exhausted. It’s a normal comedown from big chemistry. My protocol: water, warmth, carbs or something sweet, quiet closeness or solo space, light movement later, and check-ins at +2 hours and the next day. We debrief what worked, what didn’t, and what to tweak.

Over-reliance on altered states: If the scene starts to become the only way to feel okay – or you notice chasing the feeling (also known as frenzy) or needing it heavier each time – widen the toolkit (movement, breath work, non-scene co-regulation), lengthen spacing between sessions, and talk patterns with a kink-aware therapist or trusted partner. (Still play, not treatment.)

Skill and scope. Vet partners. Match tools to training. Agree on marks policy, health flags, and when to call a scene. Safety is culture, not vibes.

The Landing

This isn't not for everyone! You could certainly just go for a run, do some yoga or take a nap to get some of the feelings described here. But when I am over a knee, or bent like a pretzel and bound just enough, I feel all the feelings that those activities bring you at the same time.

Are there risks? Yes. Are there guardrails for those risks? Also, yes. Do I think it's worth it? For me, yes.

Notes for readers who like receipts: altered-state motives and endorphin-linked euphoria are discussed in peer-reviewed work on BDSM narratives; transient hypofrontality is best framed as a plausible mechanism suggested by EEG patterns in optimal-performance meta-analyses, not a clean on/off switch.

*All terms marked with an asterisk are defined loosely here.

Sources and further reading

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