Galen Fous

Conscious Dominance

July 16, 2018 By Galen Fous 4 Comments

Defining and Living your Personal Code of Mature, Noble, Authentic, Responsible Dominance

For me, being a Conscious Dominant means to be clear about, and aware of the values, principles and protocols I have chosen to live by. It means having my words and actions be in alignment with these values.

Am I living what I preach?

And there can be many further nuances, depths and layers to consider and incorporate into your own personal style.

Ultimately, being a Conscious Dominant should only be defined in your own personal terms. Each individual should discover, develop and follow their own path, not one anyone else tells them to.

It’s important to remember that becoming a Conscious Dominant is a journey, not a destination.

Defining, renewing, living, and deepening your practice as a Conscious Dom, and being open to looking at what stands in the way, is a continual lifetime effort.

Whatever your path, if your intention aspires to nobility, you will surely be challenged by every unconscious part of you that does not show up so nobly or consciously at times in your life. This will require deep, self-reflection- also known as a “a hard look in the mirror”.

As a Dominant, if my intention is to aspire to leadership, responsibility, integrity or accountability, I have to be aware of, own, and examine all aspects of the ways and times I may not be in integrity, accountable, responsible, and/or exhibit qualities of a leader.

I will need to learn to address the underlying reasons why I am falling short of my stated intention. What is causing me to get off-track? Is there a pattern here?

Archetypally, the noble or “good” King/Queen can be a helpful model for Conscious Dominance. This archetype generally symbolizes a leader who blesses, protects, inspires, is wise, generous, makes clear agreements, holds boundaries cleanly, is in integrity, accountable, just, responsible, and numerous other qualities.

Every archetype will have polar shadow aspects. Theses shadow aspects represents the negative archetype. They are generally the antithesis of the primary archetype. They occur as two polar opposites of the primary archetype.

The archetypal shadows of the King/Queen or Dominant archetype are the weakling on one end of the scale and tyrant on the other.

We have all heard of Dominants whose innate power and authority deflates when challenged. They become a doormat and yield ground that is theirs to hold. In the other shadow direction, when the King/Queen’s energy becomes inflated, they can become a bully and become more harsh and/or strict than the situation calls for. It’s part of a Dominant’s work to strive for balance, and be aware when they drift towards being too soft or too hard in any situation. The King/Queen’s potent energy rests ideally in the noble balance between them.

As a Dominant, are you aware of these unconscious shadows of the Kink/Queen that you may possess, and how and when they may get triggered?

How well and clearly do you set and hold the boundaries or protocols you establish?

How do you respond if your submissive or others challenge your authenticity, competence, authority, or safety as a Dominant?

How readily can you own your mistakes and sincerely apologize if you have been out of integrity, unfair, or unjust?

How well do hold your own boundaries if you are being attacked or projected unfairly?

Here’s some further considerations.

Are you mindful and present in your body? Can you be vulnerable? Do you tell the truth in all cases? Honor and keep agreements?

How deeply are you taking in the submission being offered? Do you allow yourself to really feel the power of the exchange deep in your being?

Would a submissive be proud, trust, feel safe with, cared for, listened to, and honored to serve you?

Can you listen deeply without the need to interrupt?

Have you cultivated skills regarding intimacy and non-sexual touch to connect deeply with your submissive physically and emotionally? If not, how come? If so, how? Can you embrace your submissive in such a way that their body gratefully melts into your own?

Do you practice the art of blessing your submissive?

Can you honorably dance the edge between the noble dominant and cruel sadist?

Do you understand the sharp distinction between D/s and BDSM?

Consider these questions and add others that are meaningful to you. These can be used like touchstones to keep you connected to and deepen your intention.

Being a Conscious Dominant is a personal practice one can develop and continually aspire to. It is an ideal to continually journey towards, not a destination one will ever arrive at.

About Galen Fous MTP

Kink-Positive Therapist, Author, Educator & Sex Researcher

Galen regularly speaks at universities, grad schools and conferences about sexuality and Kink. He offers AASECT and APA approved CE classes for therapists on various accredited online educational platforms. His research focuses on understanding the unconscious psychological dynamics of Kink, Fetish and D/s-BDSM sexuality. Galen Has a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology from ITP.

He works with clients within a Transpersonal psychology framework that helps individuals and couples get honest, shame-free and confident in expressing their authentic sexuality. Galen helps clients shift from compulsive, dishonest, risky sexual behaviors to negotiated, consensual authentic sexual practices. This framework includes resolving the embedded fear, shame and judgments entangling one’s desire.

An important component of his research into the nature of Fetishsexual and Kink desire is the development of the Discover Your Personal Erotic Myth Survey. ( http://galenfous.com/pem ) This ground-breaking and ongoing research survey with over 4000 participants so far, is the first study that begins to document the mythic archetypal aspects of Fetishsexuality by mapping of the sexual unconscious.

Galen’s latest book, “Decoding Your Kink – Guide to Explore, Share and Enjoy Your Wildest Sexual Desires” has been praised by sexual psychologists and educators as “Visionary …Masterful …Groundbreaking …Cutting Edge…Worth its Weight in Diamonds … Highly Recommended…A Must Read!” He is also the author of “The Sharp Edge of Love – Extreme Sex, Mythic Passion, Primal Intensity. Learn more at http://galenfous.com

In 2000, he introduced the world renowned Tetruss Shibari Suspension-Bondage Rig, Portable Dungeon, and Sex Swing, the world’s most versatile adult toy. (http://Tetruss.com)

Integrity – the Key to Trust in Kink Relationships

June 18, 2018 By Galen Fous 7 Comments

Eve Marie shot by Danny Stygion

To reach the most potent depths of power-exchange requires the highest level of personal integrity.

Aspiring to the highest level of integrity is critical to deepening trust and connection with a partner. I define integrity as having the intention and commitment to be responsible, accountable, risk-aware, actively listening, transparent, honest, and present.

It means telling the truth, starting with what you want…and what you don’t. Unwavering respect of boundaries is critical in power-exchange dynamics.

Clear, transparent, and fair negotiation with your partners should be standard procedure. Knowing proper techniques, risk/safety factors for your style of engagement, and the toys or tools involved, goes without saying.

Encouragement, discussion, and compassionate support of your partner, as well as yourself, before and after scenes, is a golden practice.

Adhering to these types of practices and principles builds the foundation for an ongoing and deepening exploration. This level of safety and trust offers the possibility of engaging and sharing our most protected and vulnerable erotic depths with our partners.

While this can seem a complex effort overall, the fundamentals of consciously engaging and exploring your Eros with integrity are easy to develop and learn as a practice.

The most important aspect is to have the clear intention to aspire to the highest level of integrity.

Here are 4 Tips to up the integrity, trust, and connection level in your power- exchange engagements.

Negotiate Thoroughly

The potential for misunderstandings, perceived or actual consent violations, resentment, mistrust, or emotional/physical harm are excessive when there has not been a clear negotiation. I would discourage ever engaging in D/s-BDSM with someone you just hooked-up with, or even your own partner, if you have not already come to complete, conscious agreement on all fronts before the scene begins.

The point is to feel empowered, connected, and exhilarated after engaging your deepest desires, not wounded or disconnected.

Start the negotiation with the intention to make a deep, heart-felt, human-to-human connection before you enter into any level of D/s-BDSM. The foundation for exploring these powerful depths of our sexual desires is trust, whether for a one-time scene or long-term connection. Each side needs to know they are ultimately cared for while revealing and expressing vulnerable and often scary parts of their sexual desire.

Conduct your negotiation in the most honest, transparent, and revealing manner possible. Be clear, direct, and thorough. All partners should share in full equality, voice, and advocacy for what they want and do not want at this stage of the journey.

Intention, Pace, Trust

Be clear about intention. It is important to clarify your intentions, boundaries, and expectations beyond the initial encounter for yourself and your partner. If you want to enter the encounter as a one-off with no expectations afterwards, state that clearly right off the bat.

Make sure your partner understands your intention. Press for a direct response that they understand and agree.

Hold your boundaries firmly if a potential partner says they are looking for casual only, and you seek more, and vice versa.

Discuss clearly what may be involved in an initial engagement with your partner in terms of props, toys, roles, and intensities. Get clear about safe sex practices to maintain and sexual history.

Start slow and keep it simple if you are just beginning. Get clarity about options for what to do if something unexpected comes up during the engagement. This would include usage and agreement on safe-words.

Some issues that may arise as you engage may just need you to pause and check in with each other, and then continue. Others may require you to come to a complete stop, and check in about what has come up and/or what one or the other needs most in that moment.

Sometimes, even with clear negotiations, there are things that can present unexpectedly. The best thing to do in these situations is to breath, stay calm, shift to full compassion, and care for the partner needing support. These will likely be rare, if ever occurrences, with proper preparation. Furthermore, considering them in the initial negotiation builds trust, which will most likely reduce the likelihood of these occurrences even further.

Understand and Allow the Paradox

The nature or essence of the dynamic in D/s-BDSM is power-exchange.

One takes control, one surrenders for an agreed upon time. This exchange is inevitably both sacred and profane in its nature. There is a noble (D/s) and a taboo (BDSM) context that is occurring simultaneously.

It is very important to understand the distinction between the two, and how both are engaged during a D/s-BDSM encounter.

Embracing either Dominant or submissive role in this kind of dynamic can bring one in touch with deep-seated instinctual, historical, mythic, and/or archetypal aspects of the collective human experience. These are mythic themes and sensibilities that have been part of human theater, epic mythical tales, and cultural cosmologies for thousands of years.

It is not just the physical sensations and sex that are compelling in D/s-BDSM. It is also the intoxication of the sacred ritual of regal power and devotional surrender, and the primal instincts of being devoured or ravaging another.

Time and Space

I recommend you set aside a minimum of 2 hours to immerse yourselves in this compelling personification of your erotic nature.

You might find you could easily go 3 to 5 hours or more. Some scenes can be designed to go for an entire weekend or more.

Before you engage your partner, take time to prepare yourself by getting present, clear in intention, and embodied in whatever way works for you.

Take care in preparing the space you will engage in. Bring in ambiance of light, sound, texture, aromas, and all that sets the right tone for the way in which you and your partner wish to journey. Make this a sacred space, whatever that might mean to you.

Also, prepare in advance a good aftercare plan that includes access to emotional support if needed. This applies to both the dominant and submissive. Moving deeper into your authentic, sexual desires is an opportunity to both be empowered and to heal if these steps are followed.

In conclusion, the key to coming to terms with our sexuality and creating healthy power-exchange dynamics, is to learn how to express and experience our desires safely, honorably, and consciously, in a way that aligns with the integrity in our agreements we make with ourselves and others, and that encompasses our core values.

We must also compassionately examine and resolve the unconscious concerning powerful, negative cultural messages we’ve internalized about our sexuality and ourselves. That is why this is both an empowering and healing journey.

One short article cannot cover all the important considerations of exploring your Fetishsexuality or Kink desires, but I hope this gives you a starting point to launch your own journey into the depths of your sexuality, and aids you in building your dynamics.

About Galen Fous MTP

Kink-Positive Therapist, Author, Educator & Sex Researcher

In 2000, he introduced the world renowned Tetruss Shibari Suspension-Bondage Rig, Portable Dungeon, and Sex Swing, the world’s most versatile adult toy. (http://Tetruss.com)

Fetishsexuality – Making the Case for Kink as Sexual-Identity: Part 1

May 28, 2018 By Galen Fous 9 Comments

www.voxart9.com

A few weeks back Kink Weekly posted an announcement about the Discover Your Personal Erotic Myth Survey. The focus was on the research analysis about to begin on the data from @4000 participants that have responded. It will be one of the largest Kink-focused research projects of its kind.

I wanted to discuss here why this type of research can be relevant for people exploring or actively living their Kink-sexuality.

The intent of the survey is to help people learn to deeply explore and embrace their personal sexual truths, Kink and otherwise.

Many participants been found the survey to be a useful tool in helping them gain insights into the specific nature of their sexual desires, particularly those in the more Kink-driven end of the scale. They could begin to identify specifics of what was compelling and what was not. Participants reported they were able to identify more clearly what resists or stands in the way of honest expression of their desires, and explore other relevant considerations to express their desires consensually with a partner.

I believe embracing the depths of our sexuality is critical to our personal well-being, our relationships, and our culture.

Everyone has a sexual birthright. No government, religion, culture, spouse, nor family member has any right to deny any individual their inherent right to be who they are sexually. This assumes their sexual engagements are enacted in conscious, negotiated, and impeccably consensual ways.

Sexual rights are human rights. Our sexuality, particularly the potent depths available through Kink should be celebrated, and explored often.

Shame, fear, and past trauma around our sexuality should be prudently and compassionately expelled from the body, mind, and soul like a disease.

I have been immersed in being a public and vocal advocate for our sexual rights for nearly 20 years. I am out 24/7 as an author, educator, Kink-positive therapist, and researcher in my professional life, and in my personal lifestyle, as a Kink-oriented man. I am a Dominant Erotic Sadist!

Though the research is preliminary, I believe that Kink, or what I call Fetishsexuality, is a life-long, inherent, innate sexual identity for some percentage of the gene-pool.

A Fetishsexual by my definition, is a person driven to orgasm or other deep erotic state through their innate, inherent, life-long desire for a particular range of primal or refined dominance, submission, sadism, masochism, and other archetypal, symbolic, mythic story-driven erotic expressions. I call this the internal sexual construct for an individual-their Personal Erotic Myth.

Fetishsexuality is on the same level, by the same criteria, that straight, bi, gay, or lesbian is considered an authentic sexual identity, as defined by the American Psychological Association.

The APA currently only focuses on identity in relation to gender, but I feel sexual-identity needs to be expanded in this era to allow for a broader context.

I have worked with hundreds of clients over the last 18 years, whose clear desire and intent was to come to terms with, explore, and understand their Kink-driven desires free of shame, fear, and past trauma.

Based on my direct experiences with clients and the findings from the Discover Your Personal Erotic Myth Survey, I hope to illuminate how and why Fetishsexuality is an innate aspect of certain people’s sexual psyche.

Kink can and should be practiced in a conscious, aware, mature, healthy manner by those so inclined. There are considerable depths of personal empowerment and healing that conscious engagement of one’s Fetishsexuality may offer (at least for the portion of the human gene-pool that I believe are innately and authentically Fetishsexuals).

The Discover Your Personal Erotic Myth research project will also examine the ways and evidence that unconscious personal and collective archetypes (Predator/prey, Mistress/slave, Daddy/daughter, Mommy/son et al), symbols (collars, dungeons, chains, belts, etc), and mythic erotic story-lines (being captured, held captive, being bare bottom spanked by an authority figure, worshiping an elevated figure) are commonly woven into the fabric of authentic Fetishsexuality.

The research will also examine the ways that threads of unconscious, embedded shame, trauma, fear, and judgment get tangled up and inhibit or thwart authentic sexual expression.

Such entanglements, if left unaddressed, can lead to the problematic shadow manifestations of our sexual expression – sexual secrecy, dishonesty, compulsivity, repression, boundary violations, self-harm, and more.

Until a few decades ago, any but the most fundamental sexual activities had been classified either by law, religion, or mental health providers as deviant, immoral, or in psychological terms, a paraphilia.

In other words, most people engaging in Fetishsexual practices were considered to be engaging in either an illegal or an immoral act or had a psychological disorder or all three.

Even though the DSM-V has de-pathologized and de-listed most consensual adult Kink interactions as paraphilias, there are many sectors within current psychological, legal, political, and social institutions that still display rampant Kinkphobia!

However, in these current times, the landscape of sexual identity and the pantheon of sexual practices an adult may choose or naturally participate in have been coming into a better and broader focus.

It is my opinion that the previous theories of human sexuality are not effective at holding the burgeoning reality of human sexuality that has erupted over the last 30 years since the dawn of the Internet Era.

I further believe that recognizing Fetishsexuality as a sexual identity would pave the way for more nuanced and effective psychological models of the sexual psyche to take shape, and hopefully lead to new therapeutic models that better support one in embracing their sexual authenticity, and healing all the ways it may have been traumatized, condemned, judged, feared, hated, or hidden.

It is time to update academic sexual theory and psychological therapy to include 21st century sexuality!

Further, with the sanction as a recognized sexual identity the potential to be slandered as a pathological deviant for being into Kink can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.

Not having this designation can and does lead to profound impacts in real world battles in divorces, parenting rights, employment, and housing discrimination as well as many other areas of life.

Witness the ongoing, brutal history of the gay and lesbian movements fighting for their legal rights in all regards. The Kink communities are about where the gay, lesbian, and trans communities were 60 years ago.

To the greatest extent, my professional work seeks to help people untangle their authentic life-long Kink desires from the embedded shame, fear, and harsh judgments that may strongly resist or completely inhibit their desire.

Everyone should be encouraged to proudly claim their sexual birthright. Too many don’t.

In my client practice it has not been unusual for clients in their 40s or 50s to divulge that I am the first person they had ever revealed their desire to. For decades, they had hidden their desires from their partners, families, friends, and traditional therapists.

It did not feel safe to even talk about their desires, let alone enact them. This damaging fear of speaking honestly about something so absolutely integral to life and human fulfillment must be put to rest.

It is the intent of my work to contribute to creating a safer therapeutic, academic, political, and social environment for people to share their sexual truths without fear of being harshly judged, condemned, or ostracized.

It is up to each of us to take a stand in whatever ways we are able against the outdated, Kinkphobic laws and moral codes that inhibit claiming our sexual birthright. We need to take a stand so everyone can freely, joyously, and ecstatically express their sexuality- Kink and otherwise.

You can learn more about how I work with clients, my research, blog, and my highly acclaimed book, Decoding Your Kink – Guide to Explore, Share and Enjoy Your Wildest Sexual Desires, by clicking on the link below.

http://galenfous.com

Click here for Part 2

About Galen Fous MTP

Kink-Positive Therapist, Author, Educator & Sex Researcher

In 2000, he introduced the world renowned Tetruss Shibari Suspension-Bondage Rig, Portable Dungeon, and Sex Swing, the world’s most versatile adult toy. (http://Tetruss.com)

Galen Fous

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