Ada 00.00

Welcome to All Things Health and Abundance Podcast. This is a podcast where we discuss different health related issues and come with real tips and advice. The theme for today is healing sexuality and sexual relationships with consensual pain, otherwise known as BDSM. So what is BDSM? Why do people enjoy it? What are the therapeutic benefits of BDSM? This and much more is what we will be discussing today. And today with me is Kalyss Mercury. Kaylee is a media expert and consultant, Tantric Domina and kink research pioneer. She focuses on human psychology and the hidden power of sexual explorations. She has a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Princeton University. For over 20 years, she has traveled the world, sharing her dominant skills in private sessions and hosting fetish parties, workshops and demonstrations at events such as Sexpot in Australia and Oslo fetish weekend in Norway. She has acted as a consultant for movies such as My Mistress in 2014 and was an executive producer for the digital remastering of preaching to the Perverted. She has been a guest on TV and radio shows and has given interviews in print and digital media and live performances, sharing her expertise in bondage and domination, domination and submission and sadism and masochism. I'm really happy to have you here with us today. Also, because bondage and domination is something I've been curious about for many years and have explored it at some level. I remember not understanding the reason behind it and just judging myself for that. I didn't have the courage to be open about it towards my partner at the time, and when I did, the response was I couldn't treat my partner like that. So basically, I'm really happy that you're here with us today discussing this topic.

Kalyss 2:39

Thank you for having me.

Ada 2:55

Could you maybe start by explaining in simple terms a little bit about bondage and domination and sadism and masochism?

Kalyss 3:03

For sure. So when people hear about BDSM, you know, the first thing they see is like they hear about domination and they hear about Bdsm. So Bdsm, it's four letters, but it has six meanings. So the first two letters B and D, it stands for bondage and discipline. Bondage can be just what you imagine, like getting tied up with ropes, for example. But it doesn't have to be necessarily a physical thing. It could also be an emotional psychological bondage, a sense of like having to have some level of control over a person. And the same with discipline. People think of discipline like in the kink environment. Discipline is the pain component. The spanking, yeah, like spank whips, these sort of things. So corporal punishment, as they call it, is also defined as discipline, but it can also be psychological discipline. So basically follow whatever your requests are from your dominance, so your dominance will give you different types of rules and you have to follow that. So you have to have a certain self discipline within that. So bondage and discipline is kind of the sense of being controlled. So that's the bad part. And then you catch the D and the S in the middle of Bdsm and that's dominance and submission. So dominance and submission is not necessarily as kinky as people think. Many people in their relationship have one partner who's more dominant than the other. Some people call it active and passive. So one person kind of takes the initiative for doing sexual things more often or takes more of the decisions in the relationship. So this is kind of a normal thing within relationships to have one person be more in charge than the other. So within Bdsm, then this kind of gets put on Turbo basically to actually make it much more explicit. One person is in charge. Or in the other one submitting. And then people create dominance and submission arrangements to make it more strictly this way. So we agree that one person is going to be the dominant person. It normally comes more when people are attracted to each other. This is quite clear, you know, but for some people it's a little bit mixed because, you know, you're supposed to be kind of dominant and in charge of your life and your normal life. And then you go into the bedroom and maybe you want to be submissive in the bedroom, or maybe your partner wants you to be dominant in the bedroom and you're like, hang on a minute. I'm already dominant in my normal life. I don't want to do this in the bedroom. So that's where things get confusing and we can talk about that in more details. But that's really interesting because I can kind of relate to that, actually. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the traditional heteronormative aspect is that the man is the dominant and the female and the woman is the submissive, but it doesn't have to be that way. It's just the way that has been passed to us in society and culture and of course different cultures who have more of that or not. And in society now, like there's plenty of relationships where the woman is the, you know, the female lead relationship, where the woman is making more of the decisions and taking more of control and the men just accept how it is. So there's also it as well. And it's just. Sometimes it's not explicit. People just fall into these categories without actually discussing what they want to do. Anyway, I can talk more about that later, but I want to finish the DSM explanation. Right. So the last part, the S&M part, which is, you know, sadomasochism. So sadomasochism is about pain and pleasure. Basically sadism is the person who wants to inflict pain. So as a person who gets excited from inflicting pain on another and masochism is somebody who enjoys receiving pain from another. Of course, within Bdsm, this is all in consensual parameters. You know, I mean, you can call it psychology. You also have people who are more sadists, you know, and even in society as well, you have people who are sadist or masochist, like emotional masochists, people who it seems like they want to be a victim or they kind of get some sort of satisfaction from being the victim in the sense of people care about them. And then people get pity on them and they get attention from being the victim. So then they kind of start creating these situations where bad things happen to them because then they get attention. So this is a psychological aspect that doesn't have to be Bdsm related, the masochist masochism and sadism, but within Bdsm, then it's supposed to be consensual. You know, you agree beforehand to go into this play and realize who's going to be the serious, who's going to be the masochist. And sometimes you can be both. You know, in all these categories, you can be both. You can be all six of the definitions if you want, or you can just pick the ones that you like. You know, some people only like bondage and discipline, like only the ropes. And that's okay. They don't want to necessarily do the dominant submission stuff. They just want to tie each other up and have a little bit of control, you know, being in bondage for other people. They like the pain part, but not necessarily the dominance, the same sort of thing. And for some people it's only the dominant submission. They don't want the pain stuff or they don't want the bondage stuff, you know? So it's totally fine for you to pick what is right for you.

Ada 8:24

So this is quite a general and broad question that just occurred to me, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Are there different levels in Bdsm?

Kalyss 8:35

There's different levels, yes. And level is a kind of a strange word because it can mean many things, right? So you can say someone's a beginner, that's a level, somebody who's just starting, and then you can be somebody who is an advanced player. So somebody who has done it for a long time and knows what they like and practice and tried and multiple things. Yeah. So you can have this level like of how much experience somebody has, but you can also have levels in terms of the emotional level, right? Some people want to get really emotionally connected with their partner, with their play partner. Some people, they should want to keep it very superficial. They don't want to get too emotionally attached because it gets confusing and can get messy. And so they prefer to just keep it simple. Within that parameter of like, we're just here to play. We just want to be play partners. I don't want to have a relationship with you. I just want to have play. And that's okay too. So it's kind of, you know, one level is not better than the other. Yeah, it's just what people choose to do. And within tantra, which I've been playing with for the last seven years, I've been mixing Bdsm and tantra together. I recognize also there is a certain consciousness level that you can go into it within Bdsm and this kind of ties in, I think with your next question, which has to do with the therapeutic benefit, exactly what are the therapeutic benefits of it? And that's so, so, so interesting. Yeah, mainly because like when you think about it, this might be around a roundabout way of answering the question, but I'll just bear with me here because it's a few, a few nuances to think about when you go into Bdsm, when you play with this dominance and submission and you kind of letting go of control, one person is surrendering, the other person is taking the lead, right? So when you're surrendering, it opens up a lot of emotionality. It opens up because basically giving your power to someone else for the period that you're playing. I always recommend to people, if you're going to play, decide how long you're going to play, if it's going to be a one hour play or if it's going to be two hour session. So you can know when it begins, when in the middle and when it ends, as opposed to when you're having sex with someone, you just go on a date. Yeah, it's kind of freeform. You don't know exactly when things start, when things end, you know, So within kink or at least a lot of kinks as they like to have structure because you're becoming someone else in a way, or you're opening up parts of yourself that maybe you don't usually do, right? So as a submissive. So if you go into submission, like normally in life. Like many people, are not submissive in their normal life. They have to deal with their job, deal with the children, family, all the different things. You have to kind of be together. Like on top of it, as they say, you have to be in control of your life. So when you go into submission, it's a different practice and it can be a bit kind of turns on its head, you know, like some, some dominants have this thing of the submissive has to ask permission for multiple things. If you need to go to the bathroom, for example, you need to ask permission to go to the bathroom. Some people even to speak. You can't you can't just talk freely. You have to ask permission to speak. So it's a little bit like a bit of mental acrobatics to be submissive, you know, and and to be dominant as well, because it's kind of you have to kind of now control everything that this person is coming. So, so it depends on how many like the levels also means like how much control do you want to have in a session? And that will depend on the people participating. So you can kind of make an agreement of this can be a more friendly session. You don't have to ask permission to speak, for example, or we want to have a lot of structure. You are just like puppy dog and I'm going to have to take care of you 100%, right? So, so there's different levels there of how deep do you want to go with that and the emotional component. This is the part that with the therapeutic benefits, this was the most reported benefit in my research. I did a research here at University of Oslo in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, researching how did Bdsm affect the brain base? Why do people like to play with kink and what do people get out of it? Like, why would people want to do these fairly taboo activities? Yeah, and the emotional release was one of the biggest therapeutic benefits that people got from it. There were three different factors that they got and I'll explain the other ones later. But the main one was this emotional component, because then when you are submissive, you put yourself in a vulnerable space. You allow yourself to trust your partner, so you become more transparent, right? So in a scene, if you're going through some role play, maybe bondage and maybe some spanking and things like this, and if you have an emotional release during that, during that time, like let's say you're getting spanked. Yeah. And then really intense. It's. A little bit, a little bit scary and a little bit emotional. And I have memories that come up from something else. And you might have a little cry or you might allow yourself to be more vulnerable in that space because it's in a container and you don't have to explain why you're crying. You don't have to. Yeah, I guess you have. Yeah. So when I teach my King class, which is one of one of the workshops that I teach people, this is my 101 introductory introduction to Bdsm. I go through the process of like, how to make sure that you go through all you prepare yourself for the scene and having the safe, sane and consensual components within a scene is super important because of course you want to be safe, but it's just like, yeah, that sometimes you take it for granted. What does it mean to be safe? So having certain rules allows the safety to be more like things like safe words, for example, you know, having a safe that can step you out of the play. I also use safety numbers like a scale of numbers between 0 and 10, so that if things are getting too intense, you can say, Oh, this is an eight out of ten or this is a nine out of ten. So you can kind of express yourself without having to finish the play, you know? And it's easier sometimes to say a number instead of having to express what is going on for you. It can be so confusing, you know, when you're going through these emotional things like you don't know what it is, you don't know what you feel and you don't know why it's going on. And it's like so if somebody says, like, are you okay? It's kind of what does that mean? Am I okay? I think I'm fine, but I'm not sure. And it can be difficult to express yourself. So just having a number makes it easy. You don't have time to explain what you're going through.

It feels like it. You can heal traumas. This is the thing that comes to my mind.

Yeah, this is part of the emotional thing that came out in my research that was and I'll go through the three different pieces that came out. One was the emotion. Emotional release. In society nowadays, there's the sense that you can't really express yourself emotionally. It's more mean with your friends. Yeah, maybe. But it's not professional to be emotional, right? You don't want to show that part of yourself. You have to. And the whole social media, Instagram, you know, characters that we put out, you know, we're always smiling. Everything is always good. Life is always perfect. There's never nothing wrong going on, you know? So people have these expectations of themselves to be picture perfect in. Meanwhile, under the carpet, all the emotions are still, of course. Right. 3s But we don't get an opportunity. We don't usually get an opportunity to express these things. So in a environment when we are playing these roles, you know, these games, it's almost like give yourself permission to feel you are allowed to feel. So if you go through the painful component and this is why the pain is so important, you know, because when I did my research, I specifically researched S&M. So it was therapeutic benefits of S&M, not just kink in general. Yeah, you have to be very focused when you start researching stuff, you know, too many variables. So. Research pain because it's kind of a little bit paradoxical, right? Most people don't like pain.

Most people run away from that. But in that case, it's different.

Yeah, yeah, There's an aversion, like you have an aversion towards pain, you have pain killers, all these things to try to avoid pain in your life. So why would you move towards pain? The key difference here, of course, is consent because whenever we are playing within kink, we're playing with with consent. And some people like to play in extreme forms like some some really advanced people that create contracts so that they don't have to have the consent component or there's consensual non consent. They have these games and all of this, but this is what really advanced players. So we don't have to we don't have to talk about that today. But I would say, and this is my recommendation, I've been working as a Domme for 20 years now, 1s long time. And I was playing within kink even before I was a professional. So I've been playing with this for a long time and I always play with consent, always, no matter what, even if people like, Oh, but I don't want to have a say for it. I'm like, I don't care. The safeword is for me. It's important, you know, if you don't want to say your safeword, don't say it, but I'm going to have my I'm going to have that consent for myself because I need to sleep at night, that I'm not abusing people. You know, this is for my own self care. Makes sense, right? The safety and the consent is there for both the Dom and the sub. This is a part that people get confused because they think, Oh, it's just because the sub needs to be protected. Yeah, the sub needs to be protected, but the dominant needs to be protected too, because you know, like if there's a disagreement and a confusion about was there consent or no consent, there could easily be an issue further down the track of typical hashtag MeToo situation where it wasn't a clear consent, you know. So this is why I'm so strict with my consent. Safe, sane and consensual components of the session and coming back to the emotional part. So if you are in a scene and you have these safety boundaries, these safety parameters, and you can push yourself to the limit and still have safety. I'll give you an example of this because it's kind of interesting to visualize it. All right. So this is not necessarily from kink, but you can. It's a good analogy to it. So if you go to a building like let's say it's a 5050 story building, right? Or it doesn't have to be that tall, even 20 stories, if you go there and there's a balcony and there's no rail, there's no fence around the balcony, you just walk out and you could easily just walk away. Walk out and jump out. Right. Don't think you're going to get close to that edge. Definitely not. That's where it's allowed. You feel quite the case. Yeah. Yeah. And I have climbed the Preikestolen. I was about a meter and a half away from the end. I would not walk to the edge. There was like, Jesse, I'm walking to that. Some people were there, legs banging on the other side. I'm like, No, that's not happening because you don't feel so safe. If there was a fence, yeah, then you can just hold on to the fence and you look over the fence and you can like this made it so clear. Actually, the safe word is that fence, right? So having boundaries, having clear stated boundaries is like having that fence, which means you can go right to the edge, you can push yourself right to the edge. You can kind of lean your head over that fence, but you're holding you're holding on the fence, right. And you can really feel that excitement of being right at the edge, but still feeling safe. Yeah, This is what allows us to play with extreme sensations and extreme painful components. And all of this because we have these safety parameters within the play, right? And therefore, when we are exploring with these things that are very intense, you know, whether it's whipping or spanking or bondage or different types of kink activities, that can be really intense, the emotions can come up and you can feel all these emotions, but you're still in a safe environment. It's a roller coaster ride of emotion while being safe. You're still wearing that harness, you're wearing the safety harness, you know, metaphorical safety harness to be able to feel that. So having that emotion was. Yes, number one.

Ada 21: 03

And there are two more Right?

Kalys: 21.07

Two more. The second one, and this was not as strong, but it was still there was the relief of overwh:elm. So in society now and I've done this research more than five years ago now, so it's like I'm sure if I did it now, maybe the overwhelm would have come up stronger because I think people are much more overwhelmed, especially since Covid people are more overwhelmed and, you know, too much tech, there's too much going on. The threat of AI, all these different things happening in the World War, you know, like all the stuff, there's so much overwhelm all the time. There's like, you can listen to bad news all day long if you want, right? And so there's an overwhelm. People are overwhelmed with too much, too much of everything. So when you go into King, when you go into the Bdsm play, you have, again, the little box. You know, you have a little I call it the container, right? The Fedex container where you decide what you're going to do. You negotiate before the session. What do you want to play with? What activities do you want to do? What turns you on? I want bondage. I want to whip. I want to be a sensation play. I want to play with electrical toys. I, you know, I want to play with a strap on whatever it is, you know, like so you go through the different things you want to play with. And also, at least that's how I do it. I also ask them what they don't want. What is it turned off so that I have a real clear boundary there, you know? So it's like putting a yellow bright red tape on the fence. Yeah, right. Don't go here because sometimes when you were in the play, you know, like maybe something that I think is hot, You don't think it's hot, right? So this is very, very, so much between people. So we can't make an assumption just because it's hot. For me, it's going to be hot for my partner. No, it doesn't have to be. So that's why it's important to negotiate beforehand and talk about it. And I think this is primarily where the judgment comes from. Because when you have an eroticism around a particular activity, maybe your partner doesn't. But then they say, Oh my God, that's disgusting. Yeah. Wait a minute. It's nothing for you. I just told you I like it. So here comes the judgment, right? So maybe there will be something else that they like and you like, right? So this is why we want to negotiate and find what's a yes. What's a no, What's a maybe. It could be some things that you like. I don't know if I like this. I haven't tried it. So put it in a maybe list. Right. And then you get your Yes list. It's not just your. Yes. Go fuck. Yes. Yes. List. Exactly. The fuck. Yes. List the stuff that you like. Yeah. I can't wait to do this. Right. And you get the two Yes lists and you kind of see the overlap. and you focus on that, you know, So. Focus on, at least in the beginning, when you're playing with somebody new, focus on your Hell Yes list. Yeah. And really focus on that in play and play and play. And as you're playing together, you're probably going to find some things in the maybe list and you're going, Oh, let's try this now. Oh, let's try this now. And even sometimes it's like this was in my no list, but now I trust you. So they can also change it, right? Of course. Even like between partners, it will change in different situations. It will change. Sometimes you go through phases, Sometimes, you know, you might have a fetish that you're really into for a little while and then you're like, Oh fuck, I've had enough of this, now let's do something else, right? So it's totally fine. It's a bit like food, you know, you might go through through phases where you love Indian food and you want to eat it all the time. Yeah. And then you get sick of this. And then I, you know, I don't want to look at it for a while and then you can come back to it. Yeah. When you come back to it. Exactly. So this is perfectly natural to, to have this. This is why it's nice to have a little negotiation before you have a play, not just like right there in the middle. We're starting now. Where are we going to do then? You can draw a blank, you know, it's like, what is it? I don't know. Confused. So negotiate beforehand, talk about it beforehand and write it down. I recommend for the Doms to have a little cheat cheat sheet. No, that's the thing. Right now, what they want right down the nose, like. So you have their. No, no, no. So you know what it is, right? And it's clear they're put it somewhere in the play space where you can see it and kind of you can't remember everything. It's just like at least have all my lists all the time because it's impossible. Yeah, I'm not a computer, right? So I can't remember everything all the time. And sometimes I'm in flow, so I want to make sure that the flow is better instead of me trying to use my mind to remember everything. Right.

But then can it happen that the Dom just decides to get over the fence?

Kalyss 26.10

Sometimes I think that it happens with everybody, you know, in a way. Like people sometimes want to push the envelope. Sometimes also people forget because it's that they like so much and we're just human, of course. So but I think it's important to, you know, the the best doms I've played with and this is the sense of I like to switch, right? So I'm professional. Dom In my work, in my private life, I like to switch. So sometimes my husbands dominate me a little bit. I have other play partners that sometimes we play with, you know, and I get an opportunity to surrender, which is very important also for me to understand the psychology of a sub. By going through it myself. I understand it better, you know, the sense of feeling vulnerable so that when I'm back in the Dom chair then I can have more compassion towards me because of that.

But is it also about yin and yang?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would say so. I would say you can call it that. It's just different names for, you know, being in the active role or being in the passive role or being in the, the sort of taking the energy like taking control or the allowing the control. This is another thing that could be interesting for you to look into. This also is called the wheel of consent. Yeah it's I can send you the details later. It's a great way to find out where you are because sometimes you might be in a submissive space, but being active, right. It's not if it's not always passive. So, like, if a if a submissive is massaging my feet, right. He's, you know, he or she is doing me a service. So they are serving me. They are active. But it's for my pleasure. Yeah. So there's these different components and the will of consent, U2

Where can people listening find the wheel of consent?

Kalyss 28.05

It's Betty martin.org. She has a lot of videos there explaining all these things and this is not just for kink. This is for regular sexuality as well like to be able to understand where you consent lies and from what angle you're coming from. So it's a super helpful tool and she has all the videos there for free. You know, like she wants to expand and give this out for people. So they we have more conscious way of relating to each other. Yeah. So, so coming back to that. So yeah, so we had the sense of overwhelm, you know, when you're so overwhelmed in life and you go into the container of kink in that container, you had your negotiations, you talked about you. Yes, you talked about your nose. It's very clear what we're going to do and then we're going to go through it. There is room for improvisation, yes, but it's much less complex than the real world, right? It's kind of caricature of the real world. So in the normal life and I'll just give my own my own example here. So I'm a pro dom, I'm in charge. I have to take care of a number of things. I like to be serious, mistress, you know, And I like to be a researcher and I do my research. I take my research very seriously and all of that. And then when I submit, I can let go of all that attachment to my ego of being a researcher and being really brainy and knowing all these things. And I can just allow myself to be a bimbo, all right? So I can surrender and I can just be a people. So just let go. Another thing is also and this is a peace that many women are suffering with this. It's like we have to be strong feminists in our normal life and kind of fight for gender equality and all these different things, you know, in the workplace and all of that. But we don't want gender inequality in the background. This is so true. 1s We want clarity in the bedroom. Otherwise, there's no there's no juiciness. If there's no polarity, if there's no plus or minus, there's no attraction. We need to have a we need one person to be. And it's just so in the bedroom, you can't have vanilla sex without polarity. What I talk about polarity is like the attraction of masculine feminine attraction, right? So one person should be more masculine, one person should be. And even within gay couples, you notice this one is more feminine or more masculine than the other. You know, they have names for this. I'm not going to go into it. I'm not an expert on LGBTQ stuff, so I'm not going to speak for it. But there is always, you know, because you need to have the attraction and the attraction comes. You know, if you think about Magnet, know you've got the positive, the positive side and the negative side. And it's not not negative and positive in terms of good or bad. It's for what it is what you're saying. It can be for each other. In the pool, there's a pool towards each other. So when I go into my surrender energy, my yin energy and my receptive energy, I can let go of all my freedom fighter, activist, feminist thing. I can let that go. And just be a bimbo submissive and forget all the research shit that I know and simple or even just, you know, be a cat. Yes, some people like to play. It's called pet play when you have animals so you can let go of. Yeah. This is a lot of fun. Yeah. So you can let go of your normal character of your normal ego, personality, persona. You know, I mean, we build our we build our personas a lot in life. You know, we have to, you know, especially now with social media, it's fucking intense. You know, we have we have to build a brand almost, you know, like this sort of character. And we want people to like us. So we need to, like, perfectly manicure ourself. It's really just. It is, isn't it? So. So then sometimes in the DSM, you can just let go of all that and be become something completely different. And it can be very opposing to what you are with no judgment. You know, like it's not like, oh, you know, I'm a bimbo now. Does that mean that my research is crap? No, my research is outside the dungeon. It's left out there. We don't need to even go into it. But here I can be a bimbo and I can be. I can be a dumb bimbo and not know anything and just relax and just accept whatever my dog is telling me to do without having to talk about it. Whatever. And and if if my if my husband tells me you're talking too much, just shut up. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm. I can just just be playful instead of like, don't tell me to shut up, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm a feminist, you know, like and get on that. I hear the voice in my head. U1

Yeah, sometimes about that because it is kind of embedded in us, right? Don't tell me

Yeah. Don't tell me what to do, but hang on a minute. This is where we are playing in the container where I have allowed you and asked you and begged you to tell me what to do. Right? So here is a theater. We are playing this theater in this box that we've created together, and here we can allow that to be the case. And the same is true for the dominant right, because if you think about it, people are always thinking about the submissive, you know, like the surrender and all of this and letting go of this character of of the sense of self. So this is why the overwhelm, the sense of overwhelm you get a you get a mini vacation from your ego, basically. Right. So and the same is true for the dominant because then the dominant can take these crazy roles of like, I can become the evil queen. I'm going to turn it around and, and beat the Dom now. So it's like I can be the evil queen that just, you know, I can be sadistic, I can be evil, I can completely destroy in quotes, you know, I can destroy the other persons and humiliate them. And, you know, you're worth nothing and all this kind of games. But it's in the container of the play, right? I would not want to be the evil bitch dom in my not like my normal life. I don't want to be this evil bully. So but in, in the play, I allow myself to be the evil bully. It's okay because it's potential.

Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. So many men have the issue nowadays because of feminism, of this thing of like, oh, I must treat my my partner with respect and all this sort of stuff and everything. And then in the bedroom, it's just there's no no attraction. There's no no one's dominant. No one's submissive. Like the masculine and feminine are just paired up, you know, so there's no attraction. So the sex is just tasteless. It's bland. There's like nothing going on. And people sometimes need to be 1s I don't know. I mean, I've been so far away from this now, it's just I can't imagine a sexless marriage, you know, like I've got to my husband and I have a tantric marriage. So 1s intense, like, fucking amazing. It's like we just met yesterday, so I know it's not part of this, but how do you manage that? And then we can go back to the same discussion. How? How? Well, this is another part. This is the tantra part has to do with allowing the polarity to be there and not taking it so seriously, like not taking yourself so seriously. And it goes into a spiritual side as well. You know, if you start thinking in terms of Buddhism, for example, you know, like. You are not your ego. You are part of the source. You are just like the little finger of the universe or the little the little tiny little cell on the corner of the fingernail of the universe is experiencing the world through that. But our perspective is very narrow. So if we can just let go of the attachment of the me, you know who I am, you know, getting so caught up in that, then you just get more relaxed. In general, the practice that I have with my husband, it's also like you try to not have a goal in sexuality. So it's not about achieving an orgasm. It's like sex should just be about flow and connecting, not about some sort of goal oriented achievement that you need to move. Right? I must have some source. Not good enough. It's like it's just about reaching that peace and that's all. Yeah. For for so many couples. I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you drop and your dopamine levels drop. There's a lot of research around this. Yeah. Yeah. The peak orgasm for men and for women because women also are using too many vibrators like the vibration on the clitoris thing is a creates a peak orgasm as well. And women should have more orgasms. Go do anything. Yes. Right. Whether it's a peak orgasm or other types of orgasm doesn't matter, you know, But the whole idea of having a goal in sexuality, it just takes out the juiciness out of it, you know? So this is just leave that as a seed, you know? So yeah, so guys, you know, like controlling your ejaculation, actually free health. That's possible. Not only that, but it makes sex so much more if it's so much, so much better for the guy as well. But for us, that's for sure.

Yeah. Okay. That's that's great. Yes. It's something that they can learn.

Yeah. It's something to be learned. It is a practice and. But it makes men stronger, more in integrity, more, one could say masculine. It improves your testosterone levels, it prevents prostate cancer, all these different things. Right. So but this is all tantra and we are today. So. Okay, so I'll just give you that. If you have questions about this, then you can also will send me a message and I can send you to your school to so you can learn about that in particular. 1s There's also some great tantra tantra festivals happening here in Oslo and around the world. I'm sure your podcast goes around the world. There's many times around the world, so people are curious about tantra just in itself. You know, that's also another thing to explore.

The third one was the sense of why is it therapeutic? Like what do you get relief from? It's the sense of I am allowed to be myself. So this is a little bit kind of turning the other one upside down. If you think about it, one of them, you're escaping from the self and the other one you're allowing yourself to be yourself. The way I explain this is the sense of being seen under the carpet. So so allowing it to be yourself, not just the self that you show the world, the Instagram picture. Right? It's the deeper self, the little vulnerable, confused bimbo, for example. Know the parts of yourself that maybe are a little bit in the shadow, the parts that maybe you're not so proud of. Right? But it's still okay to be that. And for many people, the taboo stuff, all these things, you know, it's very taboo. So there's so much judgment. So when you go and you play with these taboo things and you're celebrated for playing with these taboo things, there's a sense of like, Oh yeah, I'm okay. I'm a I'm a decent person, you know, and it's okay to be a pervert. Yeah, I love that. I'm not going to be a pervert. So it's the sense of like, Oh, I can really be myself and I can. Accept myself even with these crazy, confusing, you know, illogical desires. It's okay. So this is the sense of self acceptance, acceptance from another, you know, because when you're playing together with another person creates a mirror, right? So what you know, you're showing yourself, but you're being witnessed. So when you're being witnessed, it gives a sense of like, oh, I'm okay. This person hasn't walked away in disgust because of my fetishes. They're here with me. They in this journey with me. Does that make sense?

yes very much so. I can relate to a lot of that. Yeah. Wow.

Kalyss 40: 27

And that also brings you stuff, you know, to be seen. They're kind of together. I mean, it wasn't so much some people chose this, some people chose the second one, some people chose the third one. It's more like there was all of those together, but it showed like the strength of each factor, you know, like the first one was more more often reported. The other ones weren't reported. And interestingly, I think I can't remember now off the top of my head, but I get the feeling that the third one, it was reported more often for people who had more experience because they allow themselves to go deeper and then they see the extra details, the extra nuance. So the first piece is just, Oh my God, I can surrender, I can feel the emotions again, you know? And then the other piece is, is like as you start to see more details, like the more you play, there will be these things that are currently in the shadow under the carpet, right? So we don't get to really experience them. So when you start to experience them and bring it into the light, then you start noticing different things about it and start to have insights about how that relates to your life and all these different things. So and mean in terms of the third part, you know, the being accepted for who they are, the the being seen component. When I received that, like when I got that result, I was slightly confused about that. But then when I started doing tantra, it became so clear how this is the case, because the whole idea of like the being witnessed component is such a strong piece and we don't think about it so much. You know, we don't we don't talk about it in society. I'll give you another example about this, for example. I also do many video sessions, especially since Covid, and I have many clients that are in the other side of the world. I have clients in Australia and I have clients here in Europe, in the UK and in the States and all of this. And I'm not traveling. I mean, I travel a lot, but I don't travel. I'm not traveling every week, so I can't see everybody all the time. But when I'm in, when I'm in Norway, I can have video sessions with my Australian clients and vice versa, right? And then I can also sessions with people that never get a chance to come and meet me in real life. And you'd think like, how can you do a session online?

That's I was thinking about that and in my mind it was going, Maybe she's just advising them.

Kalyss 42: 53

There is a couple. Well, I have a few different types of video sessions. One can be okay coaching, you know. So we talk about this and do like a psychotherapy style coaching session. That's possible. But I also do a play session and it's more we're playing together, you know, I'm playing with myself and guiding them to play with themselves, using different toys and different types of things that you can get at a normal supermarket like clothes, pegs and and different types of toys that I use like that can create a sensation. You can use a little bit of fur, you know, and you can. Is that as a nice soft sensation or a feather or something a little bit sharp, like a fork, for example, you can create like a sharp, scratchy sensation. But it's not, you know, it's not dangerous. It's just a little bit sharp. I started doing this because my clients from overseas were begging me to do it, and I felt like, how the hell am I going to be able to transmit this energy without touching them? But this is where the being seen component. Yeah, it became so clear to me because yeah. There and teaching them what to do, telling them how to do it and using the tantric breathing and all these components and really guiding them in my life. I do this sort of stuff all the time. So for me it's normal. But for most people to touch themselves in this way and to allow themselves to be kinky, to sometimes they want to dress up in kinky clothes and kind of show it to me and I am kind of cheering them. It's like, Oh, look at you, little slut. You look so good. Now we're going to do this and I want you to moan and I want you to make a lot of sounds and be really like sexy porn. Now I can talk, right? You know, and all themselves starting to feel it, right? So. So they start to experience that and I'm they're seeing, I am seeing them. I am witnessing them being sensual creatures. So it's like me saying, you're okay. It's all right. You're allowed to.

Yeah. It's not just yeah, it's awesome. You're allowed to. It's a level above

Sexually Above that. Yeah. Because normally, if you're slutty. Yeah, it's judgment. It's very heavy judgment. If you are doing these kinky things right here, we're not just being kinky, we're actually celebrating the king. And I am motivating them to get kinkier, you know, to do more, even push themselves to their limits, you know, and playing and connecting. And so it's like saying your kink is okay and it's awesome. You go, Yeah, I love it. You know? So witnessing component is so powerful. I was so surprised in the beginning. Like this was like six years ago when I started doing video sessions before Covid even, you know. But I was so surprised at how powerful it is and how much people got out of it. Still get out of it. It's amazing. And they were also surprised. You know, it's like I didn't think you could dominate me from a distance. I'm like, I know. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Yeah, I'm biased how much people can open themselves up and allow themselves to really feel these experiences. Yeah. So that was the third component. U2

So I was wondering, what advice do you have for individuals that are curious about it and would like to explore more? And they don't know how to get started, basically.

Okay, so first thing there is a website called FET life.com. That's fetish life. So that's it's a little bit I call it it's Facebook for perverts, basically. That's my words for perverts. So it's a social network. It's not a dating site, it's a social network. In this place, there's like descriptions of all the fetishes and all these different things. But most importantly, it has events and you can find events in your area. So you can go learn about kink. To go to a workshop, I recommend like going to a workshop to learn about kink and explore this. Or sometimes there's like introduction night or kink like kink Q&A type things. Like here in Oslo, there's been a number of different festivals that have held kink based things. I've taught at a number of them. The night festival, for example, is one of them. There's the Norsk Tantra Festival recently, they're Sexy Braid Festival. So in Sweden there is all the Baca events over there and there's a lot of kink workshops happening all over the world. And when people are doing an event, they're going to put it on for life, you know? So it's kind of an easy way to find where is the event like. So, I mean, if you live in a very small town in the middle of nowhere, you might not find things in your area. But then think about what's the closest big city to you that you could travel to find an event and go there. 1s In an event, go check it, especially an educational event I would recommend. There's also things called munchies. Munch is just a social gathering. It's like in the in the in the UK and in Australia usually like we rent out a pub or part of a pub and you're just wearing normal clothes and you just turn up and you just meet people and just have a chat, you know? So it's kind of no expectation of play. You don't have to be dating anybody, it's just to connect with others that are doing this and ask questions and and just to just to kind of break the ice of being so taboo. And you see that there's all different types of people and, you know, doesn't matter if you're older or if you're whatever body size you are. None of that because you go to these events and you're going to see all types, all age groups. Right? And I remember because I have one of my subs has has this thing, oh, I don't want to go to a party because I'm too old and I'm fat and I'm this and I'm this. Judging, judging, judging. I'm like, doesn't matter. Come to the party and you'll see, you know? And finally he did one time, you know, and he's like, Oh, okay, well, oh, my God, You know, it's like, I can see it. It's fine. We have so much self judgment all the time. That was like, we don't you're not, you know, like the picture perfect thing that shows on Instagram of these people in the latex of the outfits, you know, like the idea that we have about you, which is horny and hot. Yeah, it's fine. But then we feel like we're not good enough to be a part of the group that. Don't worry about it. There's all different sizes and shapes and age groups and all of that. Like over time, of course, you know, there's even some groups about talk about kink when people are still like in their late teens. Like I think there was an event where you had a Q&A so people could learn about it instead of have to learn it from the Internet. You know, it's just like they still go to the Internet, right? So to give people like a grounded and it doesn't have to be explicit, but being able to teach people what to do in their private life anyway. So munches are a good idea. And educational events like Q&A days here in Oslo. The Oslo usually host cafe nights almost every week. I think they have cafe nights and sometimes they have little workshops, you know, like intro workshops, talking about consent, talking about how to get started, these sort of things. So you kind of can put your foot in the water, you know, like put your little toe in the water and start getting the feel for it. Another option, of course, is to get a coaching session with a professional one. Yeah, it could be 1 to 1 or it could be 1 to 2. Like teaching couples that one want to explore things but they don't know how or they feel a little bit afraid to to hurt their partner or, you know, don't want to and U2

they want to be private about it. They maybe don't want to go to an event and.

Exactly right. You know, for some people, you know, they want to be very private. They don't want to show their face somewhere, you know, and show that they like this stuff. So you can have them a private a private session where we go through the basics of, you know, all the different things that we do. This is one of the one of the things that I offer for people, for couples, for singles, but also for small groups, because maybe you and you know, your friends, you know, like maybe like 4 or 5 friends that you have, you're all talking about it and you kind of you feel comfortable within your group, but not in a bigger group, right? And so you can have like a mini workshop between like four and ten people. We can have these mini workshop and then it's more playful because you can try things out. And I have all my toys there. So you can look at the toys, ask what the toys are about, try them out, test it out. It's kind of show and tell. U2

So this is perfect for the ones that are afraid of judgment, right? They don't want to come out of their shell for fear of judgment. Perfect. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, and then at least to get there, learn a little bit more about themselves. Right. And kind of just ask all these questions that we have. I just did a Q&A recently at the North Country Festival, and people just, you know, they were just asking me questions, you know, like so there's like everything like wanted to ask a dominatrix but never had a chance, you know? And I also run these online. So if people don't want to meet me in real life or they don't have an opportunity to travel to me, then we can have a video call where we can discuss these things and they can ask all the questions they want and I can guide them through a few different things and stuff and try to understand these negotiation parameters. For example, you know how to say, et cetera. But the physical session, the physical coaching session, I find it really helpful. Really, really helpful. I'll give you an example of something that happened a couple of times kind of becoming normal now. Many women. They want to kind of curious about domination and their partners sometimes, you know, they want their you know, they want their wife to dominate them. But so so the men are like, you know, like, yes, let's learn. Let's learn, you know? And maybe the women are like, oh, I don't know, because they can self judgment and the sense of like, I'm not like going to be wearing all the crazy latex and all that stuff and be this evil bitch. You know, I don't want to be that, you know? But the thing is, you don't have to be that. You can dominate from your own energy, from your own style. So finding out what metaphors of women in power excite you? Do you want to be like, you know, like the Game of Thrones kind of queen energy or priestess sort of energy, you know, where I'm going to memorize you and kind of, you know, hypnotize you with my powers and you're going to do everything I want, you know, so it can be a game. So you have to find out what is erotic about taking. U2

This was such a nice example because I personally never thought about being on that side. I would prefer the submissive role. But now the way you're explaining it, it gives me kind of a feeling this is actually doable. I've never thought of that like that. Yeah, that I could be the dominant person or get that into the dominant role. Yeah, but now I can totally see it. So it was a really nice example.

Yeah. And this also, if you think about it like what I said before, that I go into the submissive role and then I can their mindset space and understand what it's like to be in the submissive space. It's the same the other way around. So even if you're not naturally dominant, if you're going to play that game, it's a game, right? And it doesn't mean you have to become that evil queen thing. You know, it's just a game. So I'm going to do a role play where I'm going to be in this role for a particular time, you know, and you decide how long and all of this, right? And then you play that role and you allow yourself. So it could be like a superhero game, you know, It could be. I love the Marvel superhero and the sort of like or an alien race, you know, like the abducts, you know, I'm going to abduct this man and have my way with him, you know, And 1s I love it. 2s All these games, you know, and just like the bad, bad board acting like it's like really funny and allowing yourself to laugh about it, you know, it doesn't have to be a strict series with, you know, script and all this sort of stuff. Just be playful with it. And I noticed also, like when many guys, they have this desire to be to have the masochist component, you know, to have the spanking or to get whipped or, you know, this this like to receive the impact play, you know, like the sense of which is spanking whips these sort of things. Right. And many women feel the sense of I don't want to hurt my partner. I love him. Right. And then the interesting thing is like women are way more sensitive than men are men. Sometimes they need that, you know? So you can see that in martial arts and guys are usually fighting more with each other. They're kind of more like punching each other a bit more and kind of rough and tumble even when the kids, you know, like if you see that like I have stepchildren. So I see like how 1s boys play much more rough and tumble type games, you know, like it's just natural to, to have that natural. It's like it's their style and it's not, you know, maybe you're not I'm not going to go into the gender equality thing right now, but just noticing this is something that is more common and men's skin is also thicker than women's skin. It's a little bit like if you think about it. If you're going to go horse riding in you, you really need to hit your horse so that they feel something because they're huge creature, right? And the men are the same in a way, you know, like I've had situations where I was coaching couples and I was, you know, whipping the man and it's like and we had the the numbers, the safety numbers, you know, 0 to 10 and all of this. And I'm asking, so what number is this? You know, and I'm whipping them with numbers just like that's a three. That's a four. That's five. Whatever. You know, And I'm just doing it. I have the experience. I don't have an emotional connection with this person, so I'm not worried about hurting them. They're going to tell me when they had enough. It's good. And I'm just really I can sometimes really, really rip them and they're like, that's a seven. And and they're partners, you know, the girlfriends or wives, they look at me like you're killing my man with a smile on his face, you know? Oh, my God. You know, So it's like you, me, it's actually good so that they know that they're men can actually stand quite a lot. 1s Yeah. And in a way. So when we do this type of play, you know, this this couple coaching play, it gives the women this permission to to take them on their, you know, like to really go to the edge of that fence, you know, to really feel, you know, there's this like women tend to be a little bit more cautious. In general, it's for self-preservation. You know, women have to be more cautious in the world. You know, like women are more at danger than men are in general generalizations. Okay. So so we are more cautious. This is a psychological thing. You know, you see the differences. You know, there is gender differences in psychology between men and women and even see that within the kink as well. You know, so going through this coaching sessions gives firstly an opportunity to say, what is it that we want to do? It's okay to be a pervert. You know, it's okay to have these fetishes. Like what sort of fetishes do you want to explore? Gives an opportunity to ask questions. And then this piece of the witnessing, which I told you before. Yeah, witnessing your partner receiving that extreme thing that you think, Oh, my God, I could never do that because I love them. And then you see how much they are actually enjoying it and realize, Oh, I would love to give them that experience. So it gives you a call that allowing that I can take my partner on this extreme journey because see how much they are enjoying it. So you kind of you witness their development in this and then you can allow yourself to step to the edge of that, so to speak.

How can someone book a session with you? Yeah. I have my website kalyssmercury.com. I've got. I was going to say all the social media but they just want my Instagram recently. No time. Very strict rules the very strict and you know yeah sometimes I explain things in a way that is too much. It's just too risky. It is too too much raunchy for Instagram. And yeah, so yeah, I just like to speak freely and express things authentically. I'm not very good at filtering myself, so sometimes multiple mistakes with this, so I'm really going to stick to Twitter. Know like Twitter is more of my, you know, bit not, you know, the non safer work kind of platform I am on Facebook. Facebook has never been me, so it's still there but it's easier to find me on my website and then you can send me a message because the emails are totally overflowing. Talk about overwhelm. It's me with emails, so messaging me on WhatsApp and then, you know, if you have questions as well, like you say, like I heard you on the podcast and you know, like, I'd love to understand this particular question, right? You know, and then we can, yeah, yeah, it's perfectly allowed. So just send me, send me a message and. You have questions and things like this, and then we can see how it goes to book a session or if they have questions about places to go for parties and things like this. I'm more than happy to help.

Oh, my God. It was I mean, it's over an hour now and this went so fast. I would love to invite you again some other time to talk about this topics to do maybe even more in depth with regards to not just that, but also tantra. Actually, it would be amazing.

Yeah. And I love to. People have questions about it. They can also send it to you and then it could be things that we can discuss later that they yes, it might be easier for them to send the question to you. Well, sometimes people are scared of the dominatrix. You know, they can just send questions to me and we can have another episode that's maybe even further. Absolutely.

That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. It was very eye opening and I loved it. I simply loved it. This is great.

So what am I going to teach you to wipe it, huh?

Ada 61.23

Yeah, I'm going to . I always thought that I preferred the other side rather than. Yeah,

Kalyss 61: 28

who knows? You never know until you try it. No side leaving, no slow, you know?

Ada 61: 39

So this would be amazing. All right. Lovely. Thank you so much for the space and.

Kalyss 61: 49

All right. All the best.

Now it's your turn. Let us know what health and abundance subjects you want us to cover in the future. Do that by commenting on the post on Instagram.

Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much to Kalyss for being here with us today. If you liked it, please leave a review at Pod chaser.com. Just search for the podcast and write a good review. And if you have questions or you want to book a session with me, please do let me know on Instagram. And remember, you are always creating your health and abundance.What do you choose to create today?