I had a corporal session yesterday that, if i'm being honest with myself, I couldn't really find myself in the headspace to enjoy. It's not as though the domme didn't do what I expected, she was very much what I hoped when I booked the session, and there were even extra wrinkles to her play that excited me.
But for some reason I just couldn't enjoy the session, not in the moment and not even recalling back to it in my mind. Its been the same way for the last couple of times i've tried corporal, i've just ended up regretting it for some reason.

I had enjoyed one corporal session a year ago immensely, but since then I haven't been able to recapture that same enjoyment. Not with that domme nor with others.

So i'm very interested in hearing what others enjoy about corporal sessions and what really drives their interest in it, partly to help figure out whether or not I'm even capable of enjoying it. Both subs and domme perspectives are welcome!

AS,

I am sure you will get lots of responses from those who love corporal as part of play or are just fully spankos, which is why I wanted to respond. Personally, I am not a maso and the pain I like the least is actually corporal... Which is exactly what I get it out of it.

I always want two things out of play, 1) For the Domme to have as much fun playing with me as she can & 2) To truly feel my submissiveness... And that is where corporal comes into play for me. Since I don't like it, enduring it is truly submitting in a way that I don't when we are playing specifically to my own fetishes. Plus, if we are going there then I know we are doing so to satisfy what She likes, or just needs at that moment.

Corporal, therefore, puts me and a very specific headspace that I enjoy even if I hate the actual activity as it is going on. I don't know if this perspective helps you with what you are feeling right now, but I know it is a different perspective then you'll get from those that truly love it.

That's an interesting perspective, I like your way of looking at it.

I've always tried to enjoy the act of taking pain itself, but I guess i'm just not a masochist. I may try to adopt the same thought process as you when it comes to corporal and see if I can enjoy corporal then.

For me it is complicated. It is not just what goes on during the session but also encompasses the anticipation beforehand and the aftermath. I addressed those here:

http://domina.ms/~domroot/thebuzz/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2523&Searchpage=1&Main=712&Words=subspace&Search=true#Post2523

One aspect where I am somewhat in agreement with AspX is the sadistic enjoyment of the Domina does add something, the proverbial icing on the cake.

OW!!! I think I did something to my neck with the double take I did when I saw Thomas agreeing with me about something like this...

We are always projecting. Not being submissive myself I often wonder how sincere the submissives generally are. Somehow the pain is more authentic and harder to simulate. I think that whether you are masochistic or not something to enjoy is an authentic and intense exchange with somebody you like to play with.

LOL We do differ a lot

I’m not sure if this will help but for myself I describe myself as 50% masochist and 50% submissive but in reality I think I may be 80% sub and 20% maso. I really don’t like pain but I definitely want it and need it in session and a good deal of it too. I want and need to suffer and hurt for a Mistress who enjoys it. There are times when she is hurting me to the point where I actually ask to myself why am I doing this but the answer is it is something I need and desire at a very basic level of my sexuality.
FWIW for me corporal is only a small component of pain because I can’t take a lot of marks. It’s more NT, CBT, ball busting etc and the general ramping up of discomfort to the point of real sustained pain.

I can’t really relate to masos who are not submissive and enjoy the pain for pains sake but everyone has their own kink. Pain is not fun or enjoyable for me but power exchange and suffering for a Mistress who enjoys hurting me are what I need.

For a long time, it was my thing. If you get beaten in the right way, you will zone out in a very real way (something definitely happens, it's not just a feeling), and it's kind of powerful. It's also almost like a drug experience.

I found, ironically, that it was easier for me to find this with younger and less experienced women than it was with the older and more famous women. My best corporal sessions were long and had very slow build ups -- I think they required a great deal of athleticism on the part of the woman.

So, the sessions that were most powerful for me involved 30 or 40 minutes of continuous beating, which started out kind of mildly, and became quite deep and powerful. But who can do that? I mean, now I can't imagine how much work that must have been.

Later on I would see women who would give me 10 cane strokes -- but they were all super, super intense. Like, the first one was so hard you can barely take it. That's intense for different reasons, and I'm not saying it's not worth doing. But it's a different thing than that old dissociative experience was.

Later on, I was seeing someone personally who could be very hard core. And she would just beat the fuck out of me. She'd cut me with razor blades and spray alcohol on it, and shock me, etc. And one day, when I was driving up to her dungeon, I just started shaking and hyper ventilating. And that was it for me -- I couldn't do it any more. It's been decades since then, and I just can't do it.

I've taken a few corporal sessions -- mostly those types of caning sessions I describe above, ten strokes without warm up, that are all very hard -- and while I have gotten through them, they didn't really work for me any more.

After a while of being really adrift, I ended up pulling back from in person sessions, and doing online stuff, and eventually falling into findom. It really changed things for me.

Before, I was seeing people face to face, and doing intense things, and having extreme experiences -- it was sort of akin to the experiments I had done with psychedelics, in my own mind. Like, I was this boring guy, but I would go out and have these intense adventures in those two areas. And I really liked and admired the women I knew in the scene. I had many friends in the professional community.

Afterward, it was all sort of isolating and online. I wasn't doing anything real, intense or otherwise. It was just sort of straight ahead self harm (financial self harm). I didn't know most of the women I was interacting with, and honestly, I don't know that I would like them if I did. (I ended up trying to find women I liked to do this with, and did, so if anyone reads this, I'm not talking about you!)

So, for me, the corporal stuff was kind of the real deal. But I think it either works for you or it doesn't. I very much see it as part of my past, not something I'm likely to do very much of moving forward.

I'm really enjoying reading the different perspectives on here. I am still very much learning my pain tolerance. I'd have to say what I enjoy about corporal/pain includes several different aspects. I do actually like the pain, at least what I have experienced in session so far (yes very limited). There have been instances where I have been hurt physically (not in a session) and laughed. Not always of course, but in some cases much to my surprise, as well as others around me, I just laugh. Maybe some of my wires are crossed. Then there is this sort of pride I guess you could call it, that I just don't ever want to feel weak or like I can't handle something. So enduring pain feels like an accomplishment to me. That probably makes no sense. Lastly I have to agree wholeheartedly with Thomas and Asp. I have seen clips, movies, and read stories where the Domme especially seems to be enjoying flogging, spanking, whipping or just generally torturing a submissive and that makes me weak in the knees. I also briefly experienced this during my last session with Mistress Ayn when she told me I could and would take more pain for her. There is something about someone else enjoying it that adds this twisted pleasurable experience to the whole scenario.