CraigJustCraig

Tag: mental-health

  • Not My Shadow, Not My War

    Carl Jung once said that “the most dangerous psychological mistake is the projection of the shadow onto others.”
    I feel that on this holiday break. Most conflict: interpersonal, communal, spiritual, starts when someone wrestling their own darkness mistakes you for their battleground.

    I used to think I could avoid this if I just explained myself well enough… moved gently enough… was compassionate “enough.”
    But I can’t outrun someone else’s shadow. It walks with them—cast on me.

    What I can do is learn to recognize the moment their shadow lands on me.

    For me, the first sign is intensity.
    Not every disagreement or discomfort is a projection. Humans clash all the time. Personalities don’t always mix: different values, different morals, different goals, different perspectives, different trauma, different strategies for getting needs met. I get that. That’s normal.
    But when the emotional charge is strong, out of proportion for what happened, or strangely personal… that’s usually not about me. That’s their shadow searching for a new battleground.

    My strategy starts with simple observation:

    Notice the flare.
    When someone’s reaction is harder than the situation called for, I pause. I feel it, but I let it pass.

    Acknowledge it instead of fighting it.
    If I argue with their projection, it only grows. Shadows get stronger when you deny them.

    Name what’s happening.
    Not out loud, but to myself: “This is not about me. This person is projecting.”
    That one sentence keeps me from internalizing their story.

    Stay rooted.
    Their shadow doesn’t overwrite my truth.
    Who decided their darkness swallowed my sun?
    The only one who can decide that is me.

    And sometimes the simplest thing you can do is let their shadow pass like a wave hitting a rock.

    The goal isn’t to be liked or understood, but to see clearly—your shadow and theirs—and not let either pull you out of yourself.

    How do you deal with it when someone’s shadow tries to make you their mirror?

  • Classes on Offer

    Rope & Sound — weaving rope with soundscapes to deepen immersion. Using rhythm, resonance, and vibration (instruments, voice, sound scapes, and ambient textures) to guide the body into trance, release, and connection .

    Rope & Surrender — the psychology and embodiment of yielding, with accessible floor-based ties.

    Rope & Smoke — bringing rope into dialogue with oils, herbs, and sage as tools of grounding and purification. explore how scent, smoke, and anointing can shift the body’s awareness, slowing the mind, deepening breath, and marking transitions.

    Rope & Somatic Resonance — an exploration of how rope interacts with the nervous system and body awareness. Using deliberate pacing, repetition, and mindful touch to tune into subtle shifts in breath, muscle tension, and emotional release.

    Rope & Ritual — exploring rope as a mindful, intentional practice where each knot and movement becomes a meditation. Through steady repetition and focused presence, rope transforms into a rhythm of breath and body, creating a sacred space for connection

    Rope & Offering — exploring rope as a pathways into astral journeying. approach tying as an offering — of presence, of surrender, of energy — Through guided intention, repetition, and breathwork, we’ll explore how rope can serve as a bridge into altered states, facilitating astral travel, vision work, and deep spiritual connection.

    Rope & Ordeal — exploring rope as a tool for endurance, and self-discovery. Through extended, repetitive, and challenging ties, participants are guided to confront physical, emotional, and mental boundaries. emphasizes mindful presence, breathwork, and consent, allowing the rope to act as a mirror for resilience, surrender, and personal insight.

    Rope & Healing — exploring rope as a medium for emotional and somatic RESToration. Through gentle, intentional ties and mindful touch, cultivate trust, presence, and deep connection with themselves. This session emphasizes slow, rhythmic movement, attuned mindset, and conscious holding to create a space where rope becomes a vessel for release, grounding, and interpersonal resonance.

    Rope & Yoga — exploring rope as a tool to cultivate mental presence, focus, and mindfulness. This session draws from yoga philosophy and breathwork, using rope as an anchor for attention and introspection. Through intentional holds, repetition, and meditative pacing, participants learn to tune into their inner experience, heighten awareness, and explore the mind-body connection in a contemplative practice.

    Rope & Erotic Hypnosis — exploring how rope can enhance trance, suggestibility, and erotic focus. This session examines the interplay of touch, tension, and verbal guidance to deepen mental and sensory awareness. Participants will learn techniques for creating hypnotic states, maintaining safety and consent, and using rope as a conduit for immersive, and intimate experiences

    Rope & The Five(Carnal Alchemy) — exploring rope as a catalyst for the body’s natural chemistry: serotonin, cortisol, endorphins, oxytocin, and adrenaline. evoke focus, connection, flow, and exhilaration. — a dance with The Five.

  • The Chalice That Never Empties

    They say: “You’re only ENM because you want to cheat without guilt.”

    But those words are shallow, spoken by mouths that fear the depth of truth.

    If I hungered only for pleasure without consequence, I could do what so many men already do: lie.

    Whisper sweet nothings. Pretend at devotion. Disguise betrayal with flowers and empty vows.

    That is the easy path. The coward’s path.

    But my life is built on integrity sharpened into steel.

    I do not lie. I do not shrink.

    I stand in the open, naked in truth.

    To speak my desire aloud is to invite judgment, to summon contempt.

    But I accept that crucifixion.

    Because ENM is not escape. It is not indulgence.

    It is covenant. Expansion. A refusal to mutilate the heart into scarcity when it was forged for abundance.

    Monogamy has often felt like a cell:

    twenty-three hours in confinement, one hour of stale air.

    But ENM — ah, ENM is the sky without walls,

    a storm with no horizon,

    a freedom tempered by responsibility.

    Do not mistake me: I do not love less when I love more.

    Each bond burns with its own fire.

    Each person receives the fullness of me.

    I am cursed and blessed, like a priest whose chalice never empties —

    no matter how many drink, the wine remains.

    Sometimes love awakens in the smallest spark:

    two hands brushing in passing, a flash of lightning across the skin.

    Why should I chain that current, forbid the seed to sprout,

    simply because another flower already blooms in my garden?

    Love is not a ration. It is not prison food.

    Love multiplies. Love overflows. Love is infinite.

    And ENM is not only love — it is architecture.

    It is the building of life outside the blueprint of scarcity.

    Shared burdens, lightened by many hands.

    Finances braided into ropes that climb us out of poverty into legacy.

    An emotional ecosystem — one soul offering peace, another fire, another laughter, another wisdom.

    No single person crushed under the impossible weight of “everything.”

    This is not chaos. This is design.

    This is not cheating. This is covenant.

    A web woven with honesty, accountability, expansion.

    So I say: stop fearing abundance.

    Stop caging infinity.

    Stop binding the heart to scarcity when it was born to overflow.

    I do not choose ENM because I must.

    I choose it because I can.

    Because my blood sings freedom.

    Because my heart refuses to shrink.

    Because love is too vast, too holy, too dangerous to ever be caged.

    ✨ Love without limits. Build without boundaries. Live without fear. ✨

  • The Price of Staying Close

    Sometimes being close to someone costs more than it’s worth. That isn’t just romance. It shows up in families, friendships, jobs, groups you thought were “yours.” The pattern’s simple: things shift, and staying the same stops making sense.

    Family is the hardest to walk from. Blood is supposed to mean unbreakable. But some family members don’t change. They repeat. Same fight. Same bullshit cycle. You hope the next holiday will be different, but it isn’t. At some point, you realize the only move is stepping out of the role they keep shoving you in. That doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you’re done paying the toll with your sanity.

    Friendships rot quieter. Somebody leans too hard, or you’re the one chasing. Either way, the balance slips. You notice the weight. You carry it anyway until resentment eats the bond. Stepping back isn’t drama. It’s silence. Less calls, less texts, more space. Not exile—just not letting yourself bleed out alone on the rope.

    Work plays its own game. You become the reliable one, the fixer, the mule. People learn fast: dump it on you. Not always out of malice, just because it’s easy. The day you stop, the day you say no, suddenly you’re the bad guy. But nothing sacred broke. It was never sacred. It was just convenience, and it served them better than you.

    Stepping back here looks small. Closing the laptop. Saying no. Letting the phone ring. It’s not rebellion—it’s survival.

    Romance? That’s the stickiest trap. Love blinds. Attachment begs. You tell yourself loyalty is holy. You wait for “better.” But sometimes the most loving thing you can do—for them, for you—is distance. Enough space to see what’s real and what’s just wish.

    we’re wired to bond, and wired to protect. Those two instincts crash, and the crash feels like guilt, grief, relief—all tangled at once. No clean clarity. Just mess.

    Stepping back isn’t cruelty. It’s the line where you stop bleeding yourself dry. Ignore it too long and you’ll burn out everywhere else too. Distance gives you breath. Breath gives you sight.

    People won’t always get it. They’ll call it selfish. Cold. But stepping back is often the only way to keep something from rotting into bitterness. It’s not perfect, not painless. It’s just healthier.

  • Interactive Mindfulness

    What is Trance?

    Trance isn’t some rare, far-off state. It’s here. It’s everywhere. It’s what happens when the mind forgets its performance and falls into presence.

    You’ve been in trance a thousand times already today.
    When the book swallowed you.
    When the music carried you.
    When the kiss erased time.
    When pain or pleasure drew you so deep into your body the world outside dissolved.

    That’s trance.

    There are shallow ones—like flow, like good conversation, like losing yourself in a movie. They bend time, shift awareness, loosen the grip of past and future.

    And then there are the deep ones. The ones that take you out of ordinary reality altogether. Healing, hallucinatory, erotic, dangerous. They can rewire you. They can break you. They can save you.

    Emotion is the gatekeeper. Desire. Grief. Rage. Ecstasy. Fear. Love. Each can narrow your world until there is nothing left but the truth inside it.

    Most people think these states happen to them. That they’re at the mercy of circumstance, chemicals, other people. That’s why they’re easy to manipulate. Sometimes that’s play. Sometimes that’s peril.

    But trance is a power. A human superpower. With it, you can bend your experience of reality—shape it, sculpt it, rewrite it. No drugs required.

    This is why I practice. Why I train discipline, mindfulness, awareness. To choose my states. To choose my power. To choose my pleasure.

    Tantra, for me, is trance in partnership. Interactive mindfulness. A deliberate exchange of attention, sensation, energy, and power. It’s not about gender, symbols, or roles unless you want it to be. It’s about what happens when two beings decide to share a state—on purpose.

    That’s where the magic begins.
    That’s where reality bends.
    That’s where you stop performing and start becoming.

  • Embodied Rituals

    Not all kink is equal.

    Some of it is performance.

    The hitting of beats. The following of scripts. The meticulous choreography of boxes to check.
    It can be hot. It can be filthy. It can be fun, even theatrical. But it is a stage. And the stage does not hunger.

    Other kink is alive. It is embodied. Rooted in want. Saturated with presence. Hungry—not for the kink, but for you. Your body, your being, your vulnerability.

    Performative kink can burn the skin. But embodied kink scorches the soul.

    It makes you feel chosen. Desired. Unfolding in the heat of someone else’s craving. It is a hunger that scripts cannot imitate.

    I have been fetishized. Revered. Placed on pedestals and props.
    I could feel the roles being enacted, the taboos being performed, but the desire? Missing. Absent.

    It was “stunt cock” energy: my body present, my touch real, my skill undeniable—but never devoured, never wanted. I was a mirror, a vessel, a necessary instrument in another’s story.
    The scene was precise. The intensity, unfiltered. And yet… hollow.

    Connection is not desire. Safety is not craving. Respect is not want.
    Love can exist. Curiosity can abound. But if someone does not ache for you, the kink is empty, no matter the brilliance of the performance.

    Then there are other moments.
    When hands grab me not to pose, but because they cannot resist.
    When teeth claim me like a ripe fruit split open.
    When mouths trail my flesh and whisper, “I want all of this.”

    This is not performance. This is possession.

    When the belly is kissed without hesitation.
    When hands press into softness—not as compromise, but as craving.
    When touch is reverence, and reverence is hunger.
    This is kink becoming revelation.

    desire is never guaranteed.

    Connection can be given. Curiosity can be shown. But being wanted, truly wanted, is rare—a cosmic accident.
    Many have loved me. Many have respected me. Few have unraveled me. Few have made undressing me feel like a privilege, not a given.

    When it happens, when desire flows through the kink, it is a high that lingers:
    After the ropes fall. After the body relaxes.
    The hunger remains. In them. In me.

    This is the difference. Not performing fantasy—but being the fantasy.

    Performative kink can leave bruises and satisfaction.
    It can leave breathless bodies and flushed skin.
    But it also leaves an emptiness: a quiet knowing that you were instrument, not object of desire.

    Embodied kink hits differently.
    It is personal, not just physical. It feels like being chosen.
    The hands on you speak in your language, not the language of the act.
    It is not what they want to do—it is who they want to do it to.
    You. Fully. Nakedly. Unavoidably.

    For me, this is seismic.

    In scenes of performance, I was the faceless one:
    The skilled instrument. The body delivering pleasure. The actor in someone else’s story.
    Emotionally invested, yes. Connected, yes. But the desire was not for me. Only for what I could produce.

    Connection is not desire. It never guarantees want.
    I was present, essential, appreciated—but not held. Not craved. Not devoured.

    Embodied kink rewrites that truth.

    It tells me: you are wanted. Not just used. Not just admired. Not just consented to. Wanted.

    As someone aromantic, romance rarely ignites me. Attachment rarely lands.
    But desire—raw, pulsing, unfiltered—lights me on fire.
    It bypasses calculation, masks, mirrors, and analysis.
    It forces me to feel, not observe.

    Embodied kink grounds me:
    In my body. In my breath. In my skin.
    It is intimacy sharper than any love.
    It is hunger, attention, recognition, and surrender all at once.

    Now, I do not seek mere kink.
    I crave kink saturated with desire.
    Roles are sacred, yes—but they are held in want, in need, in uncontainable hunger.
    I want to be chosen. I want to be craved.

    Because what moves me most is not skillful execution.
    Not the scene perfectly done.
    It is being wanted while I play the role.
    Not the stage. Not the script. Not the story. Me.

  • All I Ever Wanted Was Community v2

    All I Ever Wanted Was Community

    All I ever wanted was community. That longing might sound naïve, but it is deeply human. I entered these spaces hungry for connection, for chosen family, for a circle that could hold both my fire and my tenderness. I led with my heart—always have. That heart has carried me through joy and devastation, but it also connects me to a much older hunger, one that thinkers and wisdom-keepers across cultures have tried to name.

    Sobonfu Somé, in The Spirit of Intimacy, reminds us that true community is a spiritual endeavor: a weaving of vulnerability, ritual, and collective responsibility. In her Dagara tradition, the health of the individual is inseparable from the health of the whole. Malidoma Patrice Somé echoes this in Healing Wisdom of Africa and Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community: community is sustained by rituals that reconnect us to one another, to nature, and to Spirit.

    I believed that if I moved with integrity, compassion, and willingness to learn, there would be room for me. I showed up. I gave. I made space—not to earn approval, but because that is how love teaches us to live. bell hooks, in All About Love, calls this the ethic of love: an active choice to nurture growth in ourselves and others.

    But instead of belonging, I met betrayal. I have been erased from spaces I helped hold, accused in whispers, and defamed without dialogue or process. This grief is mine, but it is also cultural. M. Scott Peck writes in The Road Less Traveled that true community requires struggle, honesty, and commitment to growth—but most groups collapse before reaching that stage. Instead of intimacy, we replicate domination.

    The West romanticizes the “rugged individual,” Erich Fromm critiques in The Art of Loving, but this individualism breeds alienation. Families are privatized, elders discarded, art isolated in museums, Spirit replaced with consumption: I shop therefore I am. In Of Water and the Spirit, Malidoma Patrice Somé contrasts this with African initiation systems where community raises the child, and where each person’s survival is bound to the survival of all.

    And yet, I kept hoping. I thought the circles I entered could be intentional spaces of care. What I found instead was conflict avoidance, gossip as governance, and safety-ism masquerading as accountability. Lee Harrington, in Playing Well with Others, emphasizes that authentic community requires communication, negotiation, and clarity—not whisper networks and silent complicity.

    So no, I am not broken. I am becoming. Smaller, deeper, and more intentional. I no longer scatter my energy into spaces that treat my humanity as optional. I do not beg for belonging. I honor those who have supported me, I release those who have harmed me, and I devote myself to what Sobonfu Somé calls the “vital life force” of real community: ritual, Spirit, and the deliberate weaving of souls.

    Community is not everyone in a room. It is not gossip or safety committees or charismatic leaders. It is a spiritual practice: a collective intimacy that restores, heals, and sustains life.

    That is still all I ever wanted. And that is still what I am building.

  • No One Breathes for You

    The tension between responsibility for oneself and the creeping trend of infantilization, “safety-ism,” and universalizing one’s own perspective over another’s consent and choice

    There’s a troubling trend I keep noticing: the desire to treat others as if they are incapable of making their own decisions, as if they are children who must be protected at all costs.

    I watch as people step in and supplant another’s desires, another’s wishes, with their own judgments — robbing them of agency, interfering in their path of self-discovery.

    I spoke recently about responsibility — that I am responsible for my existence, my choices, my actions, my happiness, my relationships, the values I live by. No one can breathe for me; no one can give me self-esteem; no one can rescue me from the consequences of my choices. That is the work of my life alone.

    So why do so many now insist on “protecting” others by stripping them of this responsibility? Why pretend that people are victims of choices they themselves have made?

    When someone consents, when someone desires, when someone says yes — who are you to override them with your own discomfort, your own morals, your own standards? Why is your universalized perspective supposed to count for more than the actual will of the person in question?

    I see it over and over: loud voices declaring “safety,” when in truth what they create is suffocation. They destroy the spaces we’ve built in the name of protection, but protection from what? From being fully human? From tasting risk? From living by our own choices?

    And worse — the arrogance of it. To presume that your personal discomfort invalidates another’s freedom. To insert yourself as savior when no rescue was asked for. To yuck someone else’s yum, and then call it morality.

    There are no victims here — only people who choose. We each walk our path. We each live the consequences of our own decisions. To deny that is to deny our dignity. To rob people of their responsibility is to rob them of their humanity.

    So I return to what I know:
    I am responsible for my life.
    I am responsible for my choices.
    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to everything I do.

    No one else can do that for me.

  • Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs Strategies

    Needs vs. Strategies
    Part I: The Problem – Alienation from Ourselves

    Today I want to talk about three books and why they helped me describe a topic I have been extremely passionate about: The Art of Love, Nonviolent Communication, and The Body Keeps the Score. The topic is Needs vs. Strategies.

    What do I mean by that?

    Strategies are requests, desires, wants, and “solutions” to specific actions by specific people. Needs, on the other hand, contain no reference to any particular action; they exist regardless of who or what is available. Some examples of needs are rest, understanding, support, honesty, and meaning.

    This topic is so fundamentally hard to talk about, but it transforms everything. I am going to attempt to codify my understanding through this writing. Why? Because strategies disconnect us from our needs.

    Stop right there. Some of us can’t even name our needs. We live outside ourselves—and by that I mean we live on external directives rather than from our internal knowledge and needs. We become alienated from our natural state.

    All criticism, attack, insults, and judgments are the result of our attention being focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels. Our thinking becomes centered on dehumanizing one another with labels and judgments. Judgments, criticisms, diagnoses, and interpretations of others are all alienated expressions of our needs.

    But everything would change if we listened to the feelings and needs behind the message.

    Part II: Trauma, Survival, and Strategies

    We have an estrangement from feelings and get stuck utilizing survival strategies to assert our needs. This is both an inability to connect with our needs and an inability to assume responsibility for our needs. We put all our energy into protecting ourselves, developing whatever survival strategies we can. We may repress our feelings; we may get furious and plot revenge. We may decide to become so powerful and successful that nobody can ever hurt us again.

    Many behaviors that are classified as psychiatric problems—including some obsessions, compulsions, and panic attacks, as well as most self-destructive behaviors—started out as strategies for self-protection.

    Biologically, we need to attach to someone. Whether that is a loving and caring someone or a distant, insensitive, rejecting, or abusive someone, we will develop some way to get our needs met. And when your source of survival is also your source of fear, you are stuck with “fright without solution.”

    In The Body Keeps the Score it says: “It is much more productive to see aggression or depression, arrogance or passivity as learned behaviors: somewhere along the line, the patient came to believe that he or she could survive only if he or she was tough, invisible, or absent, or that it was safer to give up.”

    These adaptations will continue until we feel safe and integrate all the parts of ourselves that are stuck fighting or warding off trauma. Coping takes its toll. For many, it is safer to hate themselves than to risk their relationship by expressing anger or acting out.

    They survive by denying, ignoring, and splitting off large chunks of reality: they forget, they suppress, they numb. They reconfigure their minds to live with the worst. They develop defensive strategies to help them survive.

    What is unknowable causes anxiety. People need the illusion that everything can be known. Even if in this illusion they are the most hated, it feels safer than the chaos of the unknown.

    Part III: Turning Inward – Naming Needs and Affirming Worth

    When we live away from our needs within ourselves, our lives become limited by external and alien perspectives, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on our needs.

    But when we begin to live from within outward—in touch with the power within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us—then we begin to be responsible to ourselves.

    We begin to recognize our deepest feelings. We give up, out of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self-negation, and with the numbness that so often seems like the only alternative. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

    To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience and to allow ourselves to be reduced.

    It requires a concern to know not only external reality but also internal reality—the reality of my needs, feelings, aspirations, and motives—so that I am not a stranger or a mystery to myself. The feeling that joy and fulfillment are my natural birthright.

    Part IV: The Affirmations – Owning My Existence

    Once you’re able to say:

    I am not here on earth to live up to someone else’s expectations; my life belongs to me.

    Each person is the owner of his or her life; no one is here on earth to live up to my expectations.

    I have a right to exist.

    I am of high value to myself.

    I have a right to honor my needs and wants, to treat them as important.

    I am lovable.

    I am admirable.

    I will usually be liked and respected by the people I like and respect.

    I should deal with others fairly and justly, and others should deal with me fairly and justly.
    I deserve to be treated courteously and with respect by everyone.

    If people treat me discourteously or disrespectfully, it is a reflection on them, not on me. It is only a reflection on me if I accept their treatment of me as right.

    If someone I like does not return my feeling, it may be disappointing or even painful, but it is not a reflection on my personal worth.

    No other individual or group has the power to determine how I will think and feel about myself.

    I trust my mind.
    I see what I see and know what I know.
    I am better served by knowing what is true than by making myself “right” at the expense of the facts.
    If I persevere, I can understand the things I need to understand.

    The more conscious I am of that which bears on my interests, values, needs, and goals, the better my life will work.

    To remain effective, I need to keep expanding my knowledge; learning needs to be a way of life. The better I know and understand myself, the better the life I can create. Self-examination is an imperative of a fulfilled existence.

    At the most fundamental level, I am for myself.
    At the most fundamental level, I accept myself.

    Part V: Responsibility and Aloneness

    I accept the reality of my thoughts, even when I cannot endorse them and would not choose to act on them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept my feelings and emotions without necessarily liking, approving of, or being controlled by them; I do not deny or disown them.
    I can accept that I have done what I have done, even when I regret or condemn it. I do not deny or disown my behavior.

    I accept that what I think, feel, or do is an expression of myself, at least in the moment it occurs. I am not bound by thoughts, feelings, or actions I cannot sanction, but neither do I evade their reality or pretend they are not mine.

    I accept the reality of my problems, but I am not defined by them. My problems are not my essence. My fear, pain, confusion, or mistakes are not my core.

    Once you own that:

    I am responsible for my existence.

    I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.

    I am responsible for my choices and actions.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my work and other activities.

    I am responsible for the level of consciousness I bring to my relationships.

    I am responsible for my behavior with other people—co-workers, associates, customers, spouse, children, friends.

    I am responsible for how I prioritize my time.

    I am responsible for the quality of my communications.

    I am responsible for my personal happiness.

    I am responsible for choosing or accepting the values by which I live.

    I am responsible for raising my self-esteem; no one else can give me self-esteem.

    In the ultimate sense, I accept my aloneness. That is, I accept that no one is coming to make my life right, or save me, or redeem my childhood, or rescue me from the consequences of my choices and actions. In specific issues, people may help me, but no one can take over primary responsibility for my existence. Just as no one else can breathe for me, no one else can take over any of my other basic life functions, such as earning the experience of self-efficacy and self-respect.

    Part VI: Healing, Neuroplasticity, and Self-Care

    In order to play, mate, and nurture , the brain needs to turn off its natural vigilance. We must identify strategies beyond denial or repression for navigating pleasure in relationship to others.

    Drop low-performing strategies and replace them with tested alternatives. Once I could name my needs, I became aware of my strategies—how I cope with the fear of my needs not being met.

    I learned to listen for feelings, to express my needs, to accept answers that I didn’t always want to hear. I learned to grow, to accept, to love, to be fulfilled.

    The most important job of the brain is to ensure our survival, even under the most miserable conditions. Everything else is secondary. Psychological problems occur when our internal signals don’t work, when our maps don’t lead us where we need to go, when we are too paralyzed to move, when our actions do not correspond to our needs, or when our relationships break down.

    The brain is formed in a “use-dependent manner.” This is another way of describing neuroplasticity, the relatively recent discovery that neurons that “fire together, wire together.” This creates the communal, spiritual, and historical contexts that shape our lives.

    As we begin to re-experience a visceral reconnection with the needs of our bodies, there is a brand new capacity to warmly love the self. We experience a new quality of authenticity in our caring, which redirects our attention to our health, our diets, our energy, and our time management. This enhanced care for the self arises spontaneously and naturally, not as a response to a “should.”

    We are able to experience an immediate and intrinsic pleasure in self-care. The body needs to be restored to a baseline state of safety and relaxation from which it can mobilize to take action in response to real danger. Building up internal resources fosters safe access to sensations and emotions. Feeling the pleasure of taking effective action restores a sense of agency and a sense of being able to actively defend and protect ourselves.

    Part VII: The Call – From Survival to Liberation

    When we don’t know how to directly and clearly express what we need, we make analyses. Criticism and diagnosis get in the way. Pain can get in the way of our ability to hear clearly.

    Translate any message into an expression of a need. Understand the pain.

  • Passing Out

    First, a word of clarity: I’m not a doctor, and this is not medical advice. If you faint in ways you can’t explain, go see a physician or medical professional.

    Now, let’s talk about it.

    Have you ever stood up too fast and felt the whole world shift beneath your feet? A dizzy spell, black creeping in at the edges of your vision—like an old tube TV flickering out. Maybe your body suddenly buckled, even collapsed. It can happen in rope too, and let me tell you—it’s scary as hell.

    Your circulatory system is complex, and one of its jobs is to maintain equilibrium throughout your body. To do this, it regulates pressure through vasoconstriction and vasodilation, among other mechanisms. There are many other factors that play a role too: temperature, body weight, hydration levels, drugs, exhaustion, and more.

    Your circulatory system is designed to adjust to keep you balanced. But sudden shifts can cause the body to overcompensate. And if your brain isn’t getting enough blood flow—it lights out.

    Now let’s apply that to rope. Rope messes with blood flow. Obviously. Tight bindings or certain suspensions can trap blood in parts of the body. When those ropes come off, all that blood suddenly rushes back into circulation. Add gravity and fast transitions, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for fainting.

    Fainting isn’t always about pain tolerance, intensity, or emotions (though those can absolutely play a part). Often, it’s about circulation and how quickly the body is forced to adjust.

    Things that make fainting more likely:

    • Standing up too fast
    • Dehydration
    • Skipped meals
    • Heat
    • Exhaustion
    • Low blood pressure or high blood pressure
    • Vasodilators like alcohol
    • Vasoconstrictors like caffeine
    • Certain medical conditions
    • Coming out of rope too fast
    • Going from horizontal to upright too quickly

    So what do you do?

    Transition slowly and intentionally. Don’t skip meals or water. Expect fainting—it doesn’t always mean something went wrong. Rope stresses the body. Fainting is one of the ways the body protects itself.

    Trust the early signals and evacuate early. Your body gives you signs: tightness of breath, profuse sweating, too much spit in your mouth, slight ringing in your ears, a creeping sense of disconnection or dissociation, or just a general feeling of wrongness. Don’t push yourself. Listen.


    And if it happens: Don’t panic. Passing out is scary, but panic makes it worse. Be honest—if you’ve fainted before, it will probably happen again, so adapt accordingly. If you feel the signs coming on, say something. Take a seat. Get water. Cool down. Come out of the rope slowly. Get fresh air. Eat some sugar. Take a pause.

    Don’t let fear cement itself. When you’re ready, try again—slowly and intentionally.

    Passing out is not uncommon. And it’s not always physical. It can also be triggered by psychological stress—called vasovagal syncope. This can come from trauma, emotions, or your body’s response to the situation, feelings, your conscious reaction to your subjective experience of your emotions, trust, uncertainty, lack of safety, or care. Sometimes fainting acts as a psychic wall —to shutdown, shield or reset that protects the body.

    Understanding why helps you prepare for when it happens and respond better next time.