Subspace
An altered, often floaty or dreamlike state that some bottoms describe during intense play; early research is consistent with it, but evidence is still limited.
Subspace is the community name for a temporary altered state some bottoms report during a scene, described in MEL Magazine as a dreamy, floating sense of surrender. A small study by Ambler, Sagarin and colleagues in the journal Psychology of Consciousness involved 14 practitioners. As psychologist Brad Sagarin explained to MEL, most bottoms did worse on a Stroop attention test after their scene, which he reads as indirect evidence of subspace, consistent with a temporary dip in prefrontal activity. He links the focused absorption of tops, sometimes called topspace, to a flow state. Sagarin cautions that research is too thin to say which practices bring it on. In rope vocabulary, Shibari Study’s glossary compares nawa-yoi, “rope drunk,” to the feeling of subspace.
Sources
- Whipping the brain: the mind-altering, hallucinatory states of BDSM — MEL Magazine (Gabriela Herstik, 2020)
- Consensual BDSM facilitates role-specific altered states of consciousness: a preliminary study — Psychology of Consciousness 4(1), supplemental materials page (Ambler et al.)
- Glossary — Shibari Study