Hi, I just experienced my first caning, it's a thin rounded, but oh did it sting, it left welts which is fine, but next morning it is really bruised, bad. Haven't been able to sit for the last four days... I like pain, but caning isn't what I thought, is there anything I can do beforehand to make it a better experience? For next time? Thanks for any advice you can give me.
Painslut
I wrote about caning and my perspectives on it just last week so I'm going to point you there first. Go read it. I'll wait.
Are you back? Great. Now on to the questions. I did cover a bit of what I'm going to say here in the post I just linked to, so if I am repeating myself it's for the benefit of the people who chose not to click through and read my post about canes.
When you strike the skin, your body goes through a few responses to prepare for potential further trauma. As part of this, the capillaries in the skin shrink up and recede further into the tissues. When we warm up your bodies through "warm up", we are preparing our body to take more trauma in the form of impact or intense sensation. In this case, we are warming up the body for caning. If we neglect to do a decent amount of warm up, then bruising will occur at the surface level because the capillaries haven't had time to shrink.
Canes impact not only the surface of the skin but go deep into the tissues, into areas that the body doesn't prepare for trauma in the same way. So damage can easily be done to the tissues resulting in bruising. No matter how much warm up, if you strike the area hard enough it will bruise.
Now, from your question I can only assume you want to be able to not bruise, or bruise as badly and perhaps mitigate some of the pain from playing with canes. There are a couple things you can do, but now that you know about how canes work you may see that some of these just won't work for you.
- Take an anti-inflammatory before play such as IBprofen. It can help keep the swelling down and the immediate tenderness.
- Warm-up a lot. Use your hand, paddle, crop. Any tools that redden the skin and cover the entire area to be caned. Don't cane until the area is quite red and hot to the touch.
- Use lighter strokes with the cane. You don't have to have full swings to get the full effect.
- Select a variety of sizes and materials for your canes and try them all. Some can be easier to tolerate, others might not cause any bruises (with proper warm up) and others are personal taste.
- Cold compresses and ice the area afterward. Treat it like you would any other injury. Continue to take anti-inflammatory OTC meds.
- Massage the area every couple of hours to distribute and break up potential bruises. If you believe Arnica gel/cream helps, then use that.
- Avoid sitting or use pillows for comfort until the area is healed.
I hope you find your next cane scene to be just as enjoyable!
