In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G - 50 Shades of Grey

Episode Date: March 1, 2018

Today we're going 50 Shades of Grey on you! Talkin' about all things sex, bondage, and kinky stuff. To help answer all of our burning questions I've got the sexy Dr. "Kinje" Brooks coming to us live from Arkansas. Nope, we're not in Kansas anymore friends. Dr. Brooks is a doctor of physical therapy who focuses on both pelvic and gendered health and pain management. She consults for sex education courses and kink organizations and has been an active advocate in bringing the LGB and trans-competency education to medical professionals. So before you go exploring with whips and chains, listen to today's In Your Pants episode to quench your curious pleasures in both a sexy and safe way.

You're listening to In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G, the physiotherapist for your private, helping you get in the know down below. Hey guys, welcome to the In Your Pants podcast, where we destigmatize private parts and social taboos. This is definitely not the place to be shy, so I hope you're ready to get in the know down below. Today we're going 50 shades of gray on you Talking all things sex, bondage, and kinky stuff

To help answer all of our burning questions I've got the very sexy Dr. Sarah Kinji Brooks Coming to us live from Arkansas Dr. Brooks is a doctor of physical therapy Who focuses on both pelvic and gendered health and pain management She consults for sex education courses and kink organizations and has been an active advocate in bringing the LGB and trans competency education to medical professionals. Dr. Brooks, thank you so much for joining us today. You're doing some pretty awesome

and revolutionary things to help expand sexual health and awareness in your community and around the globe. So how did you get into this work with the kink and BDSM? And for our listeners who don't know what that is. It's bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism, culture in your community and in your practice as a pelvic floor physical therapist. So I actually encountered the BDSM community when I was a student in PT. And the bridge between our work and that activity and lifestyle per se actually came about because I was talking to a practitioner, I should say, a lady who had many, many health issues, and she was a chronic pain sufferer, a bilateral amputee, just a lot of issues going on, and she had been seeing pain clinics and physicians

for decades easily. And when I was talking to her, she told me, you know, of all the medications and all the treatments she'd ever had, the thing that actually helped her navigate and manage her pain best was this. And in her case, it was specifically flogging and thudding. So things that cause thud in a rhythmic pattern and she and her partner would utilize that to help actually manage her systemic pain that it's very interesting so tell can you expand a little bit about what flog what is what is flogging so flogging would be if you are they're using an implement usually made of leather but it traditionally would have multiple tails on it so it would have a handle and like uh it looks like a horse tail i guess with several cords coming out of it and that can

be made of anything but leather tends to be the most popular and it gives a heavy thudding type of sound, type of sensation. And what I was saying, like a thuddy impact type thing, I think in their case, I don't remember exactly, but I think they might have used like marimba mallets. I have no idea what those are. Lots of defining here. Right, right. So if you're familiar with a xylophone, the instrument for xylophones, marimbas glockenspiels that category of instruments there is a special kind of mallet that's used and it is a stick with a rubber ball on it that's covered in yarn okay it gives a strong thunk but it also doesn't ding the metal it doesn't injure the instrument and it's not a

sharp sound it's a soft thud but so they would utilize this soft thudding heavy thunk thunk thunk in a rhythmic way in conjunction with their relationship and interaction to use this sensory input in the same way that we would use you know nociception or e-stem or most of our sensory modalities to help whether the mechanism was actually through a gait pathway and kind of too much sensation to allow pain through or whether it was literally just adding nociception in to the point that there was a release of endogenous opioids it's arguable but it worked for her and so i was intrigued and so it all began yes at least yeah in terms of all of the exploring all of the things and that there is an interaction and things overlap right right

So in your opinion, my next question would be, in your opinion, what are the most common issues that you find couples experience when they're exploring their sexuality in variable ways? Communication. Always, every time, it's always communication. And really, a lot of it is whenever you start coming to something that is not what everybody does and the expected I guess the norm if people don't have a super strong communication bond already when somebody wants to explore something they're sitting there going well is my partner

going to look down on me are they going to think I'm a freak are they not going to like me anymore tends to be the first thing or you know they come up with something or so within within this culture there are people who are monogamous, I'd say even the majority, there are some who are polyamorous, there are some, and these are completely overlapping. So there's lots of categories that kind of have overlap, but are not necessarily all the same. So no one person ever fits everything, it's all individual. But you know, maybe they try, they want to talk about, okay, well, I'm interested in trying this and the other partner's like well I don't want to so then you're sitting here going okay great so people are sitting here going well do I have to live without do I need to

try and find somebody else do I what and then you get into those problems right right other people but there are you know when you do things actually with I think most places and it's more so anywhere where there's a larger city. So places like, you know, Baltimore or, uh, San Francisco or Los Angeles, larger areas tend to have more classes, but there's always classes. There's training, everything that is techniques of things, but a lot of it is always with the communication and how do you broach that? Right, right. How do you help your client clients particularly, especially with those who have pain like the example or that you gave earlier in your introduction how do you help with that communication and comfort and essentially

establishing a safety for the couple to explore their sexuality and receive pleasure and nourishment from their sexuality in a safe way well by the time that i'm seeing somebody a lot of times that is so far outside that it's the same principle that you would with any kind of situation or any kind of sexual issues. You start by finding where's the safe place and identifying, okay, well, where's your limits? So if we know that this activity is fine, you're totally comfortable with it, you have no problem with it, whether it's, you know, sitting for five minutes or missionary position but over here you know rock climbing is just never going to be something you ever want to do and it's absolutely off the question or whether that's you know oh good heavens you want me to do

what there's going to be a middle ground in there where it's a little bit uncomfortable but it's also not too scary and it's well you know we can try this and see what happens a sense of curiosity right where you can get that and you're like okay well if you have the safety that you know you can play within these limits and you don't have to cross but also teaching so a lot of my people have a lot of difficulty with no and how to say no and how to hear no whether it's them or their spouses or their partners So, you know, I try to have them at least bring their partner for at least one session so we can talk about, okay, so how do you know when your partner is starting to get uneasy? How do you start reading, you know, develop a signal within the BDSM culture?

It is specifically there's a safe word. I mean, there's the stoplight system, which is super common. And that's green means everything's good. Keep going. I'm happy. yellow means let's just be aware we're starting to push my limits a little bit and that doesn't matter if your limits are a blindfold or if your limits are being buried alive so right the idea of being able to communicate your needs at any time and have them listen to is the important part

and then red means stop everything right this minute drop it and not everybody uses that some people use hand signals or you know if you're taking away if you're wearing a gag maybe and you can't talk you might hold a pencil in your hand and so your signal of stop means you drop the pencil and everything stops you know it's but you develop a signal of some kind so it doesn't really even matter what it is it might be you tap out it might be whatever but this applies to you know whether you're trying a new position and you're like okay that's hitting my sore spot i'm going to tap your thigh or whether that is quite literally um rigged up with chains because it's a spectrum so you just have extremes of a spectrum and the same principles apply right

and like you said everyone has their own limits and it's at first safely defining what those limits are for both partners and then establishing a communication like you said number one is the most important thing that when couples are exploring sexuality in a different and unique way communication is the number one thing to establish and right on absolutely well and communication without judging right right because in order to be vulnerable and express well i kind of want to try this. And I was scared of this. And you're exposing your soft underbelly, so to speak. So you need to be sure that that's safe. So if there's problems with the communication with that, I will normally strongly recommend that they're also actually working on therapy for that

specifically. As a physical therapy, I'm not going to be working on that specifically. Mm hmm. Now, what if the partner is not necessarily keen or on board to participating in maybe their partner's requests or sexual desires? Like how what's the best way to meet them in the middle, per se? You know, I really that's always going to be it's an individual relationship kind of issue. I know some people where, say, a young lady or older lady, whatever, say the lady wants to try being tied up and flogged. And her husband is like, you know, I'm really not okay with that. I don't want to do that to you. I'm afraid I might hurt you, whatever the case may be.

you know but you know i'm okay with if you did that with somebody else as long as you never did any kissing or anything sexy or anything so so you can go do your your reading and then you come home and we'll have fun because you're happy and we'll work up so in some cases i know people have worked out organic things like that for themselves in some cases i don't know i think one person decides okay I don't they have to decide do I need that or do I need my partner that's a great question do I need that or do I need my partner yeah so what's what's more important to me and again that's going to be completely individual how important is it to you right and the impact of the relationship of course like you're like you're bringing it to the story that that's

wonderful. What a great answer. That's wonderful. Um, so I have to bring up this next topic of male cage devices. I had, I've actually had several inquiries via email about, about male cage devices. And I know we knew had briefly had some messaging on Facebook about using these devices in, in the bedroom safely. Right. And as a physical therapist who deals with private parts, right you and i what i'm just curious what advice would you would you give a a man who wants to wear this male cage device and in regards to where time pelvic health and and a psychosexual component as well since you're bringing that into the whole mix right of the conversation well and that's critical we can't address the physical without addressing everything else so um when it comes

to those specifically the way that they tend to be used the male chastity devices um is in the context of a female dominant relationship so the important part on that most commonly to the gentleman is less the physical literally that specific device and the wearing of it and more of the feeling like he has surrendered control of his body to his partner, or they have taken control, that this portion does not belong to them, it belongs to their partner. So what the male cage device is, or the chastity device, is essentially a plastic metal leather structure that fits onto the genitals, and it holds them in the restricted flaccid position. And they're really popular to use. Frequently, they're locked. And the individual wearing it

does not have access to a key to unlock it, so he's not able to take it off. So the concern with that is, you know, you're limiting movement, you're limiting ability for the tissue to be able to respond to be able to receive blood flow to be able to engorge which is normal tissue movement so it'd be like you're sticking your arm in a cast and keeping it there right so the popular way to use those is if somebody especially with long distance type relationships where you're in the cage and you stay that way for a week for two weeks something like that. I generally recommend giving it a break. Use it in order to get the needs you have. A lot of times it'll be, you know, you're wearing it through the day while you're at work to keep

your mind on your partner and on your dynamic. Actually reasonably rare for it to be strictly in the bedroom with that because it's more of a getting into somebody's head type component via of that. In the context of when I had a gentleman, I've had several, but I had one in particular that was using a cage prior to a surgery, had the surgery, had erectile dysfunction afterward, which is what we were working on. And one of their main goals was, okay, well, how do we get back to, you know being able to use our devices and our implement our dynamic so what we ended up doing because it wasn't about the device specifically it was about how do you get the relationship dynamic you need and that constant reminder so we used um there's umbrella devices that are made for

hanging in weights and there's umbrella devices for that there's like the TLC tugger that's made for foreskin restoration stuff like that so I kind of pointed him in the way of those which would allow the tissues to move would also allow him to have something giving a constant sensory component to give him mental input and we also got his partner involved in doing his exercises and activities and being bossy about, you know, you do 10. No, you make it. Get down and give us 40 push-ups. Worked for them.

Right. Okay, Kenji. So tell us about the other devices that you use with your patients and clients in terms of not being so restrictive in the cage device, but an opposite device that might help to stimulate the other direction. Yes, because the cage is really good in terms of giving restriction and bondage, but when we're dealing with an issue that that can impact and cause damage, and that's the big difference is they're always looking at,

is this actually going to cause damage? Like, yes, it might. is trying to provide something that is a device that does give sensation that is stretching outward and allowing those tissues to expand instead of restricting them, but is still able to play into the relationship dynamic that they have where they need to feel like this is belonging to my partner. This is not my personal body. So some of the devices

that we had found or used included the TLC tugger, which grasps onto the genitals and pulls downward or utilizing the parachute device, which is essentially a piece of fabric or leather or whatever kind of material that wraps around the top they're designed to go over the top of the scrotum so that you then attach weights onto it and it pulls the testicles down and gives a pulling sensation there but you can also utilize it onto the glands so it's giving a sensation but at the same time it's stretching the tissue a

little bit so that's what my couple ended up using oh nice so you would essentially advise that the chastity devices or the male cage devices are are good if you give yourself a break number one and number two, potentially investigating the opposite direction for continued relationship dynamics. And it's not necessarily that the chastity devices are necessarily good per se because nothing is ever 100% safe and good, no matter what it is. And if you take anything to an extreme, you're pushing your limits of safe and good. But if you have normal function, they're unlikely to cause damage.

does that make more sense? Right, right. And so you're saying a not normal function would include? So not normal function in this case might be post-prostatectomy surgery. It might be if we're dealing with some cardiac issues, we're dealing with erectile dysfunction or Peyronie's disease. So there's tissue restriction and limitation that is actually problematic that we're trying to treat and address and normalize. Ah, great. And it's great that you brought up Peyronie. It's because I'm curious that what are your thoughts on using some of these, um, traction devices on the, on the penis to help with Peyronie's symptoms? I don't know of any evidence at all, but I think if somebody is willing to give it a try, it might help. I'd

be curious to see right because they use um vacuum pumps to help with stretching the tissue so i in my opinion like if you're stretching the tissue and it feels good and and safe and you're not going beyond its you know meat capacity um it might exactly and it's something to think about a supplemental way to assist it right right when in a fun way too if the couple is into that And that's what, when we bring the partner into play, you can make most anything that is therapy into fun and into, because the discipline aspect of it and the power exchange is very, very easy to have the partner be in charge of make you do your exercises or else. i love it you know see and that's the thing it's being playful about our genitals and it doesn't have to be so sterile oh no no not at all and that's kind of the thing with the bdsm and culture and stuff we have this image of oh whips and chains and leather and and tears and crying and misery

it's people are laughing and playing with it that's it's mostly what i've seen is people have fun. Right. Right. And speaking of the BDSM community, this brings me into my next question is, you know, give us the one-on-one on the BDSM community. Um, and also what is the difference between, and this might be a question you get asked quite a bit is the difference between BDSM and abuse. Yes. Okay. So those are too much big questions. I'm going to do one at a time. awesome sorry i get too excited um well one is the bdsm is kind of an umbrella and it is a very generalized term for a lot of practices and anybody's individual take on it tends to vary widely so for some people it's going to be something that is strictly only in their

bedroom ever and only with their partner, which is fine. There are some people where there's the difference between, is this only in this part of my life in the bedroom? Or is this something where it spills over into everything in life? So for some people, they actually have a 24-7, this is what I live. It's fairly rare, extreme versions. And then you have your, this is a private thing versus the entire community and parties and dungeons and classes. And all of those are useful resources. And you have the option of this is only something I do with my partner in the bedroom, but I'm going to go to a class to learn how to do it safely,

which a lot of those, because anytime you do something that's risky, learning the techniques, learning your anatomy, learning what are the risks, how to minimize them is really helpful. So BDSM is bondage and discipline. The DNS is domination submission. S&M is status and masochism. So especially with the dominant submission, that is more of a voluntary power exchange. and so there will be people who have no interest whatsoever in ever doing anything with toys ever doing anything with bondage ever doing costumes whatever it might be but their life is about you are the boss and i am subservient and that's what it is to them so that would be the

dominance and submission whether that plays out as i am your slave or whether that plays out as we have a 1950s style house and I am dressed up for my husband before he comes home and I have a roast in the oven and I hand him his newspaper and I polish his shoes because that's a different version of BDSM. The S&M side is sadism, masochism, not necessarily entailing any kind of power exchange at all, simply a giving and receiving of sensations and utilizing those sensations to get the physiological response or a high or to just a stress relief or whatever the case may be. With any of those there's not actually inherently sex involved. A lot of people do choose to involve sex into their BDSM but it does not have to be. So there there is sex oriented and

that's the other thing is there's within that you have people who are BDSM kink and then you have people who are open poly swinger type sometimes they overlap sometimes they don't so it's kind of it's an umbrella term that covers a whole lot of different categories that may or may not overlap for any given individual sometimes it sometimes there's role play sometimes it's strictly about physical sometimes it's strictly about getting into somebody's head so whether that is trying to mess with them or whether that is say utilizing a consensual non-consent type of scene which also would be called rape play but i know a lot of people who have used that kind of heavily negotiated very worked out here's my plan here's what i need here's everything is very very very

focused on negotiation and communication and consent but utilizing that so i've known a lot of people who have experienced a violent non-consensual rape and have been able to utilize replaying so to speak with their partner in a consensual and controlled way to kind of reclaim it for themselves so that's another variation on how it's a mental kind of thing and there's an entire spectrum from using some scarves and a blindfold in the bedroom which is mostly it's fairly light it's fairly risk-free and it's just fun to let's see inverted suspension combined with waterboarding where you're looking at you're testing physiological limits and mental limits and you run a risk of of causing death so you know you're like okay well how has this person

been practicing this stuff for at least 10 years and do they know what they're doing kind of stuff So there's a lot of things that are covered under that, and it's a spectrum, and it's lots of things. So sometimes there's role play, sometimes there's littles. So littles are individuals who see themselves as a younger age than their chronological age. so it might be a 40 year old person who when they are in their happy place i guess we would say they might be on a cushion in a corner coloring with crayons in a coloring book and blowing bubbles and that's their take on bdsm or it might be dressing up like a puppy or a pony or It's basically make-believe. Make-believe costumes and play whatever you negotiate and communicate with your partner.

And that is the difference when we start looking at the difference between BDSM and, you know, are you wanting to experience a sensation of a singletail or something that might leave scars or bruises versus abuse. because the similarities being that both are running the risk of some physical damage of leaving marks of bruising of needing to heal but when you have abuse you have it's non-consensual where one person is taking advantage of another and the other person they're not communicating they're not choosing this it's not a voluntary thing and within the beauty sm window it is you communicate through everything you talk about your history you talk about you know if do you have triggers how do you avoid them or do you want to hit them are you trying to use this to work through one what's the purpose of your

interaction what do you want to do do we want to do a specific scene or play acting so an encounter where if you have an encounter whether it's like say five minutes or 20 minutes or three hours but you have set something up and you're like this is what we're going to do it's almost like theater so you're creating your scene you build it together you figure out what you want to do and then you act it out and then after you act it out you do what they call aftercare and so aftercare is anytime you have like a mountaintop experience and you reach a high it's the snuggling after the coming down and everybody has their own version of that as well some people literally it's let's cuddle and have hot tea and snuggle and kiss and sleep together

for the rest of the night while we're snuggling for other people it's going to be okay now everybody go away and i'm going to go be in my dark quiet place by myself because that's i've had my release and i'm quiet this is my quiet happy place um and then afterward you know for days weeks months regard however long or intense or how much it needs you're following through your debriefing. How did that feel to you? What can we do to make it better? Did something not work about it? What was good about it? What should we do again? So literally not just taking the consent and the enthusiastic consent idea, but expanding on it. And so the difference then between the BDSM and abuse is the communication and the consent.

and when we talk about you know breaking down stigmas now to be fair i'm not entirely sure that some of the hardcore bdsm stuff should be de-stigmatized because part of the allure to a lot of people for that is exactly the stigma and the feeling like you're doing something you shouldn't so if you de-stigmatize it and you lose that you have to go more extreme in order to get that right but in general when we talk about culture and accepting in the same way that we want to be able to be more accepting of breastfeeding or be able and freer to talk about sexuality at all and then we start talking about we have the problems with um rape culture Well, the way we counter that is with consent and a consent culture.

And so that's kind of what BDSM is at core, is how do you push your personal limits and your personal, whether it's emotions or physical or your relationship, you want to test it somehow. you negotiate it you talk about it you decide what you want to do and then you go do it it's all about consent every step of the way so yeah i think that's most yeah no that's very logical obviously kenji that was phenomenal i know off the air a little bit you've been you talked to me about the um the consent there's almost a website that has addressed some of the issues with bdsm versus um abuse and we're just opening up the conversation and you mentioned a really good resource can you tell us about that again um yes it is called the national coalition for sexual freedom and essentially what it is is where we're talking about having consent and

consent culture being placed at a forefront um it's the entire thing they're working toward is having it not just be a cultural thing but also adding it into legal aspects so when if something goes south if you know if something goes bad and there's an injury and you have to go to the hospital and then the hospital calls the police and the police press charges because there's an injury to be allowed to have consent and yes everybody wanted this and yes we knew our risks as a defense and it also goes along with um prioritizing more the importance as well in in rape cases and such of there is not consent this is wrong right because within bdsm the absolute worst thing you can do is a consent violation right right you broke the contract

if you if you violate someone's can and that's where that community kind of thing comes in there are actual communities and groups and organizations. And when somebody becomes known, they broke consent and they didn't fix it. Because you can have a consent accident where you're like, oh, oh, shoot, I'm so sorry. I didn't ask your permission. And I just realized that. And are we still OK? And that's a consent accident. And you work it out as opposed to consistently violating consent which is going into predatory rapey type behavior and when somebody is known to be a consent violator they get blackballed right right yeah they're not allowed to participate right they pushed it too far a little bit oh yes

oh no there's there's no pushing there's that's black and white yeah yeah there's there's shades of gray on everything in kink except consent right this is great i mean what's such a great resource and to all you listeners out there i'll definitely have the link in the podcast show notes for you to check out that website the national coalition for sexual freedom as kinji dr brooks so wonderfully gave us which talking about all of the consent to move forward and exploring our sexual practices we me and you discussed again off the air a little bit about humiliation practices in the bedroom uh so what are some of these practices for example are they toys or tools that a couple can use that both satisfies their sexual desire and and is it safe for the pelvic

floor so humiliation type stuff is generally the emotional side of thing and that's gonna be specifically what finding that person's thing that they respond to what makes you feel humiliated and playing with that so for some people that might be name calling for some people that might be using a toy for some people it might be feeling like you're being degraded somehow um but yeah there's just within bdsm sexuality kink toys all of those things there are a million and ten toys and options and really some of them are going to be completely harmless some of them are going to be pretty risky so it kind of also depends on are you talking about rubbing somebody with rabbit fur which would be considered a toy are we talking about a spanking

are we talking about um tying somebody up with barbed wire that's a little more risky but there's an entire range if we start looking at the sexual pelvic floor type stuff specifically there are practices with urethra sounding i'm just going front hold it back here in order in order in order so so there are practices um with utilizing like the same kind of tools a urologist might in order to play with sensation and stretching and again mind games because sex is inherently about connection and communication and building a bond. So, I mean, there's that. You can do, there's urethral play.

There are toys for playing with clitoris and with glands. So external structures, internal structures. There are a million and ten vaginal toys, vibrators, and dilators, and good heavens. People are known to insert anything they can. So, finding things that are safe to use. i usually recommend things that can be cleaned and can be sterilized because there are a ton of really good glass toys out there there are a lot of stainless steel options you can you don't have to worry about necessarily body fluid or transmission or

problems with that come with more porous things wood and stone popular have different sensations very porous you really can't clean them well so when it comes to insertables i tend to look at um what kind of material are you using and then how far are you pushing your tissue to So, silicone is a pretty good material, but a lot of the toys that are cheaper, they're jelly-type toys or might be, what's that one called, real skin. They tend to be very porous. They're very difficult to clean. um if you get your body fluids on them make sure they don't come in contact with somebody else's because they the germs can faster it's hard to clean you don't know what kind of transmission

issues you have general rule of thumb if it melts it's cheap and you don't want it inside you because there are a lot of toys you can get them inexpensively but if you leave them sitting on a table for a week it will melt onto the table so what's that doing to your inside right exactly exactly and i do actually have a lot of people they like well you know the onset of my pelvic pain was i used this cheap jelly toy and it burned there you go because the material used for making sex toys is not regulated right it's buyer beware you have to know what's going into it if you can throw it into a pot of boiling water and boil it for 20 minutes and basically sterilize it old school style it's pretty sure one it's strong enough that you're not going to

have a problem and two you don't need to worry about is it going to cause any kind of issues with well something sat in there you know back there so the problem we've talked about with jade eggs before right they're porous stuff gets in there you put it back in and it's been sitting you just inserted a petri dish right so we do talk about that in terms of toys and pelvic floor health and in terms of germ transmission and safety and cleanliness the other side of things oh last hole sorry i skipped a hole anal toys are also very popular and the risk that comes with any of them is you know how big are you getting because there are anything from the size of a pencil standard number two to oh good heaven an enormous i don't even know glass i've seen

i i've had a mason jar size yes exactly i was just you just took the words out of my mouth exactly yeah like a quart-sized mason jar in diameter now see that is exactly exactly and when i've had people i'm like okay well my telling you that that is risky and it it is going to increase risk you cannot push the limits of your body so far without having some degree of laxity happening but if you can and my telling you that is not going to make you not do it it's just going to make you not tell me about it. Right. So how do we reduce the risk? Because it's not necessarily that I can tell you that something is not really safe, but just telling you not to do it, if that is something that is fulfilling and meaningful in your life is not going to fly. So in the same way,

when we're looking in the PT world at, well, this patient wants to walk without an assistive device and they have right-sided paralysis they're going to do it even when we tell them not to so how do we teach them how to do it with less risk same kind of thing so we might go okay well maybe try and do less frequently and then really spend the time between times allowing your body to normalize again. You know, it's kind of all about a balance. And what is realistic? Because realistically, yes, I might know something that is very likely to cause physical damage. But if that's a risk that this person, and again, it's all individual, but if that is a risk that this person is okay with, and they know how much damage they're possibly looking at, and they

aside, the risk is worth it to me. Okay, that's them. Cool. How do we minimize the risk? How do we help you recover? So, and again, that's going to be, are you going to go spend a month on a space station? Same thing. We're looking at definite physical damage. And the astronauts involved are, well, the risk of physical damage is worth living in space. So we prepare them as best we can. They do their thing. They come back. We rehab them as best we can. And I think that's really kind of all we can do when it comes to some of the most extreme things. But I think the general principles of prepare your body for what you're planning to do. you know if you want to do if you want to go participate in the crossfit games

you are going to be training daily if you want to do something sexual that is extreme and high risk you train your body with smaller things and you work up to it and that's how you lessen risk is you teach your body how to adapt so that it can tolerate that without like catastrophic tearing no we might be able to avoid the catastrophic if you're doing it too often all the time you're still going to have problems if you do the crossfit at that level every day you're running a risk of rhabdomyolysis same kind of thing if you do the extreme things every day you just put your risk level way through the ceiling and you have to be aware of that does that kind of answer questions no guys we are not in kansas anymore i just found out that dr brooks is from kansas

but my next question to her was you know to you dr brooks is what are some things are that you're doing in your community in arkansas to break down some of these social stigmas and discomforts around our sexual health especially in the bdsm community and kink community so um you know what are you doing now and what projects are you involved in and how has the community responded to you? Okay. So when I'm working with, I work with the actual BDSM and kink community on the one end, I'm also working with, um, talking to the physicians and the people who are seeing them on the other end. Um, those are very, very separate components, obviously. So I'm talking to the physicians. We're talking about, okay, well, what, what are you looking at? You're seeing,

random bruises you're doing your abuse screen you always do and how do you make it so that people are not afraid to tell you what they're up to because we need full information in order to treat well so we've been working on that some and we've got at least a handful that of physicians at this point that are being recommended within like the trans community and the BDSM community is you know they're okay you can talk to them they're not going to freak out on you within destigmatizing and getting general information out there i have been working on getting together um public health courses with like some of the mothering groups whether it's through facebook and the childbirth support groups and haven't had a lot of luck yet with

trying to work with school-based general knowledge of here's how your body works as opposed to let's talk about sex i just want you to know what's inside of you and how to take care of it right which is so important um so the local groups within the bdsm community pretty much if there is a reasonably large city you can find a small group of some kind and most of them will have an event or a class or they generally aims to be about once a month. So doing, having like a demonstration and teaching, here's the anatomical aspect of this. Here's the physiology of this. You know, if you're going to, so I've done things basically teaching, okay, here's how your body works. Here's what you're doing with it when you're doing this thing. Here's how to do it

less risky. So in one example, that might be when you're doing flogging, which again is utilizing not like a paddle, but it has a handle with heavy falls on it. If you're going to be hitting somebody, let's just call it impact. You're going to be hitting somebody. How do you hit somebody more safely so and you learn these things if you're going to be doing martial arts but if you're not somebody who does martial arts and you want to do it in the bedroom how do you do this more safely so you know you get out a mannequin and you draw the map of okay well here's the kidney area try not to impact there you know avoid the neck and you draw you know here's your green area along this scapula and the upper back is generally pretty safe that capillary refill is

really good. Buttocks are great. Posterior legs, generally okay. You want to avoid like immediately the back of the knee. You want to try and avoid hands and arms, avoid anything neck, so that you're only impacting the places on the body that are most able to tolerate that with minimal damage. So then you kind of learn the safety map and go, okay, practice. Communicate with your partner when they say too much it's too much if they say well try moving it up a little bit try moving it up a little bit as long as you're not hitting the danger zone and be aware that you know even when we say yeah right over the kidneys is a red zone don't hit there once or twice is probably not going to cause damage if you you know you miss your aim just

don't go doing kidney punches or something and yeah that's an MMA thing you don't do kidney punches that's dirty play but learning the anatomy for that learning you know if somebody is wanting to play with electricity so they got a tens unit and they want to play with the electricity and see where we can get fun sensations one of the first things people often do is stick it on the nipples which is one of the first things i say let's maybe think twice about that because running an electric current over the heart, across the heart in any way is not great. Let's find some other ways to use that. And so we go into basic, you know, how does this work? What is the body doing? How is it responding? How, you know, the different settings that you can use, what are

those doing? And, you know, what are the things that you need to not do? And I've actually considered just calling it how not to kill people right bottom line bottom line that's what it is how not to cause permanent damage right you know and you need to be aware of your partner's health history so we talk about that you know we talk about the std testing how reliable is it what are the risk factors are you engaging in the risk factors you know if you're using that electrical that's opening micro abrasions. And so if you are using the electric on somebody's genitals and you have an STI and you immediately go genital to genital, you've just increased the risk of transmission by opening things up with the micro abrasions. But yeah, it's generally

how do you make things safer? And people want to be safe. They want to do their risky things, but they don't want to be stupid right they really don't because they want to be able to do it again so um yeah it's kind of you know just pick a topic and actually one of the more recent popular ones is one of the more recent things in pt2 the cupping with the olympics that came up in clinics all over the place it also came up in kink all over the place The general rule of thumb, if something can be done to the body, it can be made kinky. Yeah, absolutely. And people will make it kinky.

So kind of having a wide variety, like we have the knowledge to teach you this is what your body is doing. When you do this, it does this. This is how you can do this with less risk. And then you take it and you practice. um one of the things i'm working on doing probably a more of like a valentine's day kind of thing is doing a couples type class for you okay so you've never played with sexy things you've never played with kink but this seems like a time to maybe try something new to do a okay basic anatomy 101 here's some easy simple little things that you can try you can talk about kink 101 for

valentine's day that's great for for the people because you know if you go just to so say say you live somewhere there actually is a dungeon you go to a dungeon and you go in there you're like oh my good heavens this is just wow and especially if you're somebody who has never been exposed to any of this and you walk in like okay this is too much for me but you still want to have fun with your partner in the bedroom just not like that so i'm trying to get a fill-in on that portion of the spectrum too dr brooks that has been a wealth of information for all of us everything from the 101 on bdsm kink how to spice up your bedroom safely you know and guys out there if you're listening, if there's anything you remember from this chat, it's all about

communication and consent. So Dr. Brooks, thank you so much for being on the show. It has been truly fun. How can our listeners connect with you? Well, probably easiest way is I'm on Facebook. I'm Kenji Brooks there. I'm on Twitter as the singing PT. I'm in Arkansas. So if you see me around. Again, you're not in Kansas anymore, guys. dr brooks is is making some headway with sexual health and and honestly communication and consent and everything that we're all about on this show so again thank you so much dr brooks all of your contact information will be available on the show notes and we look forward to again talking and

chatting it up maybe in future sessions so thank you so much for being on the show absolutely thank Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to head on over to DrSusieG.com where you can get more information, show notes and related articles on today's topic. Also, if you like what you're hearing, head on over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast and leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear feedback. Thanks again. you know what are you doing in your community in arkansas right to break down social stigmas out of all places like we're not in kansas anymore we are not in kansas anymore i'm actually from

kansas oh really oh my god get out okay this is hilarious