The Purification of the Self
Vulnerability, in BDSM, takes many forms. Most of them concern the surfaces, the skin, the face, the public presentation of the body. This practice goes deeper. Enema involves an intimacy that is internal, visceral, involving functions that social convention keeps entirely private. To allow this, to entrust control of these internal processes to another person, requires a quality of trust that cannot be faked. It is either real or it is not.
The preparation for the practice is deliberate and somewhat ceremonial: the temperature of the liquid, the speed of introduction, the position that allows the body to receive. The sensation that follows, the increasing fullness, the pressure that builds gradually and demands attention, brings the mind into the present with an urgency that leaves no room for distraction. External thought becomes impossible. There is only the body, and the sensation that fills it, and the person who administers the process and monitors each response.
The surrender involved here is specific: it is the surrender of bodily autonomy in a domain that is usually governed by reflection and privacy.
The receiving person cannot rush the process, cannot manage it, cannot control when the need for release becomes pressing. This dependence, the need to ask, to wait, to receive permission, is experienced by many as one of the deepest possible submissions.
What follows, the lightness, the sense of having been cleansed and emptied, the physical freshness that is not only physical, is often described as renewal. The body, having been opened and liberated, feels genuinely different. Many find this an ideal preparation for deeper practices: the inner space has been recognised, healed, made ready.
