What’s good beginner bondage gear?

Apr 1, 2017

Liz: This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.

Cathy: If this had been actual emergency.

Liz: If this had been an actual emergency, you should have like called the police or something like gotten the fuck out right now.

Cathy: Yeah. I mean we can help with like move or advice or something.

Liz: Yeah, absolutely.

Cathy: Safer sex toys.

Liz: Sex toys.

Cathy: Safer sex.

Liz: And like what bondage gears good for beginners like we can do that.

Cathy: Well, I don’t know that. That would be good …

Liz: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Bondage for beginners because everyone goes for like riding crops and metal head cuffs.

Cathy: Ouch!

Liz: And just the works.

Cathy: I like the Velcro thing that they can get out.

Liz: Velcros are nice. Yeah.

Cathy: Because I heard horror stories about people trapped.

Liz: Yeah. In general, like a suspension style cuff is far better than like a wrist style cuff. When you have a wrist style cuff, what happens is it’s wrapped around here and if you start pulling your weight on it, it pulls your hand away from your wrist. Suspension cuffs wrapped around the outside of the hand and go up through the palm so that you grab on to them like this so that it uses your whole hand when you dropping your weight on it.

Cathy: And since we’re actually doing …

Liz: Since we’re actually doing a video, hi. I’m Dr. Liz from Sex-Positive Psych.

Cathy: I’m Cathy Vartuli from TheIntimacyDojo.com.

Liz: Yeah.

Cathy: Yeah. So if you’re into – if you want to experiment with bondage, there are things to look out for.

Liz: Yeah.

Cathy: And I don’t know if it’s true. There’s an urban legend and it got my attention that one person was handcuffed down and his partner had a heart attack and the partner that was handcuffed down couldn’t get up to save him. So I’d like to – when I play, I want to be able to get out if I really need to.

Liz: Yeah. So I think that there are pros and cons to being able to get out of whatever bondage you’re in.

Cathy: It might be different.

Liz: Right. So for some people, we don’t want the ability to escape, right?

Cathy: Yeah.

Liz: We want to make sure that the way that we are being bound is very, very secure.

Cathy: Because it’s just erotic.

Liz: Right. It’s erotic. You want to be able to strain against it and like fight it, right? Whereas for some people, they want to know that they could get out if they needed to.

Cathy: Yeah. I like being able to pull hard but if I needed to, I know I can like get out.

Liz: Get out of.

Cathy: Yeah.

Liz: So like Velcro-style cuffs are really easy. They tend to be fairly secure. They’re unlikely to dig into in ways that are problematic or likely cause nerve damage. Suspension style cuffs, if you can invest in them, they’re going to be a little bit more pricey but they’re going to be so much better for you long term.

Cathy: Do you have them with you?

Liz: I don’t have it with me. I have it in my house.

Cathy: OK.

Liz: But it’s again, it’s going to wrap around the back of your hand and come up here so the strips will kind of splay out to go around your hand and it allows you to grip on to it.

Cathy: And pull.

Liz: And pull, yeah. So it’s not pulling your hand away from your wrist especially if you’re standing and bound. But even if you’re lying down, what happens is the person who is bound tends to pull against their restraints, particularly if you’re doing a heavier scene or if it’s a longer scene or if they’re getting really turned on, they tend to drop their weight into those restraint points. And if you’re pulling your hand away from your wrist, it’s really possible to cause damage there and problems.

The other common mistake I see is that most people buy their first toy as a riding crop. And a riding crop is actually a fairly intense toy.

Cathy: It can be very erotic for some people but actually getting hit with one hurts.

Liz: It does. Well, I mean if you’re looking for something that’s going to hurt someone, riding crops are like going from zero doing no kinky dolls like to a six all at once.

Cathy: Out of ten.

Liz: Yeah, out of ten. Yeah, just six out of ten. So if you’re looking for toys to do any kind of pain, play your BDSM play. What I usually recommend is experiment with your hands first.

Cathy: Right. And then maybe go to a paddle. Wider does not hurt as much.

Liz: Right. Well, different kinds of hurt. So the wider it is and like the heavier the material, the more likely it’s going to give a thuddy type hurt so like a punch.

Cathy: As opposed to stingy.

Liz: It’s much thuddier whereas like a slap, it’s much stingier. And you can feel it if you’re at home like punch your hand. Notice how that feels. Slap your hand. And you’ll notice that the nerve reacts differently. So that stingier pain, a lot of people don’t find as erotic. Most people tend to prefer thuddy.

Cathy: Or they want to switch back and forth to kind of keep their nerves paying attention.

Liz: Yeah. And the good thing about using your hands especially at first is it’s really easy to dial in and out because you can tell exactly how much sensation you’re getting.

Cathy: You’re getting feedback.

Liz: Right. If you’re using it and implement, I always recommend that you practice first on yourself in some way. You can hit this area of your forearm to get a good idea about how hard a hit is going to be on someone else.

Cathy: Like on their buttocks, yeah. And you want to avoid the kidney area.

Liz: Right. So there’s like a rainbow of no-no on someone’s back. So you want to look on their butt cheeks. You want to stop a little bit before the top of their pelvis if you’re not a very experienced player and not start again until their ribcage is like nice and fully formed up here because in there, you have the kidneys, the liver. If you hit someone too hard, it’s easy to damage their internal organs.

Cathy: Yeah. What about blindfolds?

Liz: Blindfolds are great. And blindfolds are super easy because you can turn any piece of cloth into a blindfold.

Cathy: A scarf, a tie.

Liz: A scarf, a tie. You can use a pillowcase. You can use whatever you have around. For a long time, even as a fairly experienced kink player, a lot of the bondage and blindfolding that I did, I just use scarves. I have like cashmere scarves and those are strong enough that they can work pretty well for bondage and you can tie them in ways that are easier to get untied.

Cathy: Yeah.

Liz: Blindfolds are wonderful because when you don’t have your sense of sight, humans – the way our brain works, it’s strongly overridden by a sense of sight. So when you take that away, all the rest of our senses become much more intense. So they’re going to hear things differently. They’re going to feel things differently. And especially if you’re newer to tapping people, newer to giving a sensation, if the person you’re tapping is blindfolded …

Cathy: They can’t see you fumble up.

Liz: … they can’t see you freaking out. And it’s OK. That takes you some time to figure out what you’re doing.

Cathy: It can become part of the play.

Liz: Yeah.

Cathy: Because like if you’re lying there blindfolded and maybe tied up, you’re like, “What are they doing? Are they messing with me? Are they – what’s going to happen next?” So like even the noises in the background, you’re trying to figure out what it is and it could be that you drop the bottle of lube and you’re like trying to swear under your breath and it’s all so hot because they don’t know.

Liz: Right. And what creates a lot of pleasure is anticipation. The things that we are anticipating tend to become the most pleasurable for us.

Cathy: Yeah.

Liz: So giving them that time to anticipate is going to make it more intense.

Cathy: Is there anything else that you’d recommend be it blindfold, restraints that are gentle on the wrists and ankles? What else would you recommend for maybe – and you said their hand or a paddle or something?

Liz: Yeah, yeah. If you’re just starting out and you’re going to be tying anyone down with anything, get yourselves a pair of paramedic shears. The reason is when things go wrong, you’re going to panic. And if you’re trying to cut it off of someone in a worst case scenario and using regular scissors, it’s really easy to cut the person.

Cathy: And they’re not always so sharp. Like I have scissors here that if I was trying to cut through restraints, I’d be like, “Hold on for 5 minutes while I get the carpal tunnel.”

Liz: Paramedic shears are cheap. You can get them on Amazon. You don’t have to go to a special store.

Cathy: And they’re protected so you don’t cut people’s skin.

Liz: Yeah, they are protected so you don’t people’s skin. They have around tip so that it’s easy to slide in and under things and be able to cut it off pretty simply.

Cathy: Yeah.

Liz: The other thing I would say is if you’re experimenting and you can find a class, go to a class.

Cathy: Such as you offer.

Liz: Yeah. I mean I offer some classes for kink. Most of the classes that I offer are about how to get a scene that you want, so how to negotiate for the things that you do and don’t want. There are lots of online sources as well for kink instruction. Kink Academy has a lot of great pleasures.

Cathy: Yeah. And they have free videos. You can go there and just watch them.

Liz: If you’ve read the BDSM erotica, the BDSM that people do in erotica is very different than real world BDSM especially if you’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey. Fifty Shades of Grey can be a great entry point for people who think they might be kinky but please don’t use zip ties as restraints unless you’re very, very experienced. Please don’t do breath play and kind of like choking or restricting of the airflow unless you’re very, very experienced and you know what you’re doing.

Cathy: And please don’t manipulate your partner into doing BDSM if they don’t want to.

Liz: Don’t emotionally abuse your partner and stuck up. Basics.

Cathy: That’s bad.

Liz: BDSM 101: Don’t stuck.

Cathy: So my favorite – I’m not super kinky but one of my favorite things is my brain like having them talk to me. And I know you teach a class on dirty talk.

Liz: I do.

Cathy: Can we come back and do another video on that?

Liz: Absolutely.

Cathy: Leave your comments below. What are you favorite beginner BDSM toys and techniques?

Liz: Or leave us a comment. What was your biggest BDSM mistake?

Cathy: Oh yeah.

Liz: Those are some serious ones.

Cathy: I was playing with my partner and we use stockings because we’ve read about that and they go totally knotted and we were trying to get them – it was a mess.

Liz: Yes. Stockings, tights, it’s really easy for them to get too tight because when you pull against them, it’s tightens the knot and they’re really hard to get untied.

Cathy: Yeah. So don’t do that.

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