Domspace

What is domspace?

Domspace is the altered state of consciousness the person in charge can enter during a scene: full concentration, a narrowed field of view, and the sense that time runs differently. Domspace belongs to giving stimulation, commands and structure, not to receiving them. It is the counterpart of subspace. In research it is usually called topspace.

What domspace looks like during a scene

From the outside domspace looks dull. Someone stands still, watches, and does something small.

The sociologist Staci Newmahr gathered the words the scene has for it. Ambler and colleagues quote her in Psychology of Consciousness: where the scene already names this state in a top, it sounds like “in the zone”, “grooving” or “in top space”. She adds something sharp to that. On the receiving side the altered state is easier to see, and the community is far more motivated to recognize it there.

A typical run with rope: you lay the first wrap, you hear the breathing change, and from that moment nothing exists outside that square meter. That you have forgotten what time it is, you only notice afterwards.

How domspace works: flow, and what has been measured

Domspace comes closest to what psychologists call flow. Csikszentmihalyi described that state in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1991) as the state in which someone is fully absorbed in a difficult, goal-directed activity. The Flow State Scale measures nine sides of it, among them clear goals, direct feedback, a sense of control, the fading of self-consciousness, and an altered sense of time.

There is exactly one study that has measured this in BDSM. Ambler and colleagues randomly assigned fourteen experienced BDSM practitioners to the giving or the receiving role for a scene. Topping was linked to an altered state that fits flow; bottoming was linked to what Dietrich calls transient hypofrontality, measured with a Stroop test.

The nicest part sits in a detail. Both roles scored almost the same across the whole scale, but the bottoms crossed out an average of 4.3 questions as not applicable and the tops crossed out none. Those crossed-out questions were almost all about the side of flow to do with steering. The authors conclude that topping yields flow, while bottoming gives pleasure and engagement but without that goal-directed performance side.

What domspace is not: an adrenaline peak. Sagarin and colleagues measured in 58 BDSM practitioners that cortisol during the scene did rise in those who were tied and followed commands, and did not rise in those who gave the stimulation, the commands and the structure.

Why people seek domspace

Because it is one of the few places where your head is quiet while you do something difficult.

• For the person taking charge the payoff is concentration without noise. That is why people compare this state to sport or to making music.
• For the person receiving it counts indirectly: a top in domspace pays closer attention. Breathing, color, tension, voice.
• For a couple the gain is that the scene does not collapse halfway because someone starts thinking about tomorrow.

This page hangs on one study of fourteen participants, in which flow was measured only once, afterwards; the authors name that as a limitation themselves. And flow says nothing about safety. Being deep in domspace feels good and is exactly the moment you can miss the clock and the signs in the other person.

How people get into domspace

Not by playing harder, but by doing something that demands attention.

Newmahr found that tops reach this state through mental focus, especially in activities that call for intense concentration, and she names knife play, needle play and advanced bondage. Rhythm works too.

What separates the careful execution from the sloppy one is preparation. Anyone who has to hunt halfway through for where the scissors are falls out of it and does not get back in that evening.

Misconceptions about domspace

“Domspace and subspace are the same feeling, just in a different person.” The one study that measured both roles side by side actually found two different states: flow on the giving side, something resembling transient hypofrontality on the receiving side.

“Domspace is a power high.” It is about attention, not about a feeling of power. In that same research the tops rated their scene highest on sexuality and lowest on sadomasochism; with the bottoms that order was reversed.

“The dominant does not feel much, they just do.” That idea comes from what you see from the outside. Newmahr points out that the scene pays less attention to it in tops.

“Domspace is the reason you crash afterwards.” What happens after is at domdrop. Sprott and Randall actually propose that you have lost that flow, and that the later crash is more grief than chemistry.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Domspace is not a special event for me but a tool, and recognizing it is part of the work.

I talk less. That is my gauge. When I am well into it, whole minutes pass without me saying anything.

The danger sits in the clock. A scene that felt like twenty minutes to me turned out afterwards to be three quarters of an hour. Since then a timer lies on the table, screen down. Not romantic, but sensible.

What you can do yourself

• Set a timer before you start, because in domspace your sense of time goes first.
• Lay out everything you need. Hunting pulls you out, and once out you usually do not get back in.
• Agree on a fixed check moment instead of trusting your feeling that things are fine.
• Build toward something that demands concentration rather than toward something that demands force; concentration is what switches this state on.
• Plan your own landing afterwards, because the crash belongs to the peak and often comes only days later.

More on domspace

On this site the role itself is described at dominant, the word domspace is built from is at Dom, and what happens afterwards is at domdrop and drop.

Off this site, the paper by Ambler and colleagues is free to download on the research group’s publication list. It is the only piece in which both roles were measured side by side in the same scene.

Sources

• Consensual BDSM Facilitates Role-Specific Altered States of Consciousness: A Preliminary Study. Ambler, Lee, Klement, Loewald, Comber, Hanson, Cutler, Cutler & Sagarin, Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice 4(1), 75–91, 2017. Provides the term topspace, the random assignment of fourteen participants to the giving or receiving role, the flow outcome in tops against transient hypofrontality in bottoms, the crossed-out questions about steering, the scores on sexuality and sadomasochism, and Newmahr’s quote about “in top space”.
• Hormonal Changes and Couple Bonding in Consensual Sadomasochistic Activity. Sagarin, Cutler, Cutler, Lawler-Sagarin & Matuszewich, Archives of Sexual Behavior 38, 186–200, 2009. 58 participants; cortisol during the scene rose in those who were tied, received stimulation and followed commands, and did not rise in those who gave stimulation, commands or structure.
• Black and Blues: Sub Drop, Top Drop, Event Drop and Scene Drop. Sprott & Randall, Journal of Positive Sexuality 2, 2016. Provides the proposal that what a top loses afterwards is that flow state, and that the later crash is more a grieving process than a biochemical one.

Related terms

• Dominant. The role in which domspace occurs, and what else that role asks.
• Dom. The word the compound domspace is built from.
• Domdrop. What happens afterwards to the same person.
• Drop. The umbrella term for that crash, on both sides.
• Endorphin. The substance domspace and subspace are often attributed to, with what the measurements do and do not say about it.
• Onderdanige. The role in which the altered state did show up measurably in Ambler’s research.
• Rope space. The same kind of word, but for the side lying in the rope.
• Subspace. The state on the receiving side, with the meta-analysis that tests the mechanism behind it.
• Topspace. The same state under the name the research uses, with the only dictionary entry of these four.