Blindfold

What is a blindfold?

Blindfold (Dutch: blinddoek) is a cloth or mask that takes away your sight. In BDSM it is the most used tool for sensory restriction: what you cannot see, you cannot see coming. It is cheap, easy to use, and changes the experience more than almost any other object.

Why does a blindfold change so much?

It is not the dark that does it. It is the anticipation. As long as you see what is coming, your body gets ready for it. Take that away, and every touch lands like a first touch, and that is why people say their other senses get sharper.

What actually happens is more down to earth than the scene usually makes it sound. Your attention shifts. The account of sensory deprivation calls short sessions relaxing and good for meditation, and it lists simple means like blindfolds and earmuffs as a way to shut out sight and hearing.

There is a physical side too, and it has been measured. In Archives of Sexual Behavior, Sagarin and colleagues took saliva from 58 participants and saw cortisol rise in the ones who were tied up, received stimulation, and followed instructions. Sensory restriction was one of the observed activities.

Why do people use a blindfold?

The appeal is in the low threshold. Nothing is tied down, you can walk away, and still the experience is different right away.

• For the person wearing the blindfold, the gain is that you have to do nothing with your eyes. No eye contact, no reaction that can be read. The self-consciousness about how you look lying there falls away as well.
• For the person putting it on you, it comes down to pace. You can let seconds drop without the other knowing you are waiting.
• For a couple, it is a first step that forces nothing and undoes easily.

For someone with a history of anxiety, losing your sight can be too much instead. The same source on sensory deprivation notes that prolonged or forced deprivation can lead to intense anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, and low mood. That is a different order of thing than an evening with a cloth over your eyes, but it does show which way it goes if you push it too far.

How do you use a blindfold?

The usual route is short and informal. A scarf, a sleep mask, or a real blindfold with straps. Something that works without shutting everything out is nicer for a first time than a mask that takes away every sliver of light.

What changes after that is the pace. With a blindfold everything goes slower, and that is the point. Announcing a touch with a sound, or deliberately not, is impossible when you can see and the whole game when you cannot.

What separates the careful version from the sloppy one is talking. Someone who sees nothing hears only what you say, and silence that runs too long turns from exciting into disturbing.

Misconceptions about the blindfold

“It really sharpens your senses.” What demonstrably changes is where your attention goes. That it feels like sharper perception is real. That your hearing or your skin actually gets more sensitive in that half hour is a different claim, and that one is not in the literature.

“It’s light stuff, so nothing can go wrong.” For most people that holds. For anyone who knows panic, losing sight is the trigger itself, and you notice only once it happens.

“Longer is better.” Short and with contact works better than long and silent. Sensory restriction turns unpleasant the moment nothing comes in anymore.

What I see myself

The blindfold is the first thing I reach for on a BDSM date when someone is curious but does not want anything tied down yet.

It makes people quieter first, and only then do they relax. That first minute is almost always awkward, and whoever gets through it comes out somewhere else. So I always say beforehand that the start feels strange.

I talk a lot myself. Not explaining what is about to happen, but letting you hear that I am there. With a blindfold that matters more than with any other piece of gear.

What you can do yourself

• Start with something that does not shut out light completely, like a scarf. A sliver of light makes the first time easier.
• Keep talking or touching. Silence plus dark is the combination that tips from exciting into grim.
• Agree on how it comes off, even when nothing else is tied down.
• Keep it short the first time. Twenty minutes is enough to feel whether it suits you.
• Afterward, ask what the hardest moment was. That is usually the start, and knowing it helps next time.

More reading about the blindfold

On this site the article on blindfold play goes deeper into how you build it up, and the piece on hoods and sensory deprivation covers what happens when more falls away than sight alone.

Sources

• Hormonal changes and couple bonding in consensual sadomasochistic activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38(2), 186–200, 2009. Saliva measurements in 58 participants, with sensory deprivation among the observed activities; cortisol rose in the receiving role.
• Sensory deprivation. Wikipedia. Provides the finding that short sessions are described as relaxing, that simple means like blindfolds and earmuffs shut out sight and hearing, and that prolonged or forced deprivation can lead to intense anxiety, hallucinations, and low mood.

Related terms

• Ballgag. The other common way to switch off a sense, with a very different risk profile.
• Bench and St. Andrew’s cross are what you add when something also has to be held down.
• Sensory deprivation. The broader practice a blindfold is the first layer of.
• Hood. The heavier hoods that take away sight and hearing at once.
• Biting. The other close neighbor, and what a blindfold does with it.