Finding My Feet

My kink and my vanilla lives often collide, as do my Dominant and submissive sides. In the end, I'm just one lady, evolving, learning, and trying to balance it all.

And my balance keeps improving the longer I practice yoga.

I have a healthy, innocent crush on my yoga/fitness instructor.

I say healthy, because most people had a crush on a high school teacher or other authority figure growing up. I never went through that phase, so decades later, it feels good to be catching up.

I say innocent, because I don't ever fantasize about fucking Tad or even doing kinky, non-sexual things with him. But my heart skips a beat when I get to the gym and see his brilliant smile, and it has nothing to do with the cardio workout.

I say yoga/fitness, because he's the only teacher I've had who leads both types of classes. That makes him an overachiever, a man after my own heart.

His voice is hypnotic. I often wonder if it's always been that way or if he purposely cultivated it throughout yoga teacher training. I drink way too much coffee to ever be capable of napping. But at 5:25 pm I lie down in a reclined butterfly pose with my blocks supporting my knees and my little blanket covering my eyes. He opens the hour with that gentle voice inviting us to let go of our worries and shift our awareness to our bodies, and mine starts drifting off to sleep.

Tad is tantalizingly toned and tastefully tattooed. He's a pretty boy, and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

I don't expect anything to come of my little crush, but it's fun to save my cutest workout clothes for the days he's teaching.

He's the kind of teacher who, if you come to his class once, will introduce himself and make sure you feel welcome. The second time, he'll greet you by name.

One day, Tad complimented me on my painted toenails. I'm sure I blushed, but luckily he couldn't tell because my face was already bright red as I was mid-box-jump when he said it.

The compliment itself didn't embarrass me. He's always finding nice things to say about everyone, ways to make conversation, create community and connection.

I blushed because I wondered what he'd say if he knew that my polish was applied by a submissive man at a kinky party and touched-up by another who came to my house to put away my laundry and cook for me naked.

There's a part of me that thinks he might not be so shocked. I mean, his class is practically a BDSM session on a mat wearing leggings and a sports bra. Instead of floggers, handcuffs and paddles, his instruments of punishment are kettlebells, resistance bands, maces and medicine balls.

And he's so sneakily cruel, he gets us to inflict the pain on ourselves.

Despite his kind, sweet yogi facade, that motherfucker is the most sadistic man I've ever met. One time, after almost an hour of strenuous, impossible vinyasa sequences, he made us do five minutes of high boat, low boat...high boat, low boat...over and over until people's boats were shipwrecking all over the dojo. My fellow practitioners still talk about that class in hushed, reverent tones, afraid to mention it too loudly and give him any ideas about repeating it.

In the fitness classes, he always wraps up with 'tabata torture.' I did a little research. It's a type of interval training invented by a Japanese scientist in the 90s for their Olympic speed skating team: twenty seconds on, ten seconds off for four minutes at maximum effort. That doesn't sound so long, but there are a ton of YouTube videos that call it just that, TORTURE. Tad only writes the word 'tabata' on the board but we all know what it's about: four minutes of pure burpee and jump squat hell after an already exhausting workout.

Damn, my bottom side is completely enamored, being ordered around, made to do push ups and rows, twist until I fall over, do timed rounds of AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) with a dumbbell that's *almost* too heavy, hold a plank until I'm ready to die. I get a secret little masochistic thrill when "one more rep" turns into two, or three, and Tad just grins so sweetly as the class suffers, cooing something about how proud we should all be that we showed up.

And THEN, his little 'tabata' trick.

At the same time, my Top side is grateful for the classes that make me strong and flexible to be able to manhandle bratty little subs. She's also impressed to see such an evil genius at work.

I've always wanted to incorporate difficult yoga positions and exercise punishments into my BDSM sessions.

Now I'm contemplating adding my own version of tabata to discipline a submissive. I imagine a naked boy in downward dog in front of me, eyes looking toward the ground as they should be, helpless ass in the air. I set the timer: twenty seconds on, ten off. He shivers in fear as the countdown begins and then I use my hand to spank him hard for a third of a minute. Then he gets a brief respite. Maybe the next round is a paddle, the next a dragon's tongue...maybe he has to change to a different position each time, his arms aching with the effort in addition to the suffering of his poor damaged rear.

Studies show that just four 4-minute tabata workouts per week give better results than exercising for an hour at medium intensity five days a week.

Now that's efficiency.

I'll keep that in mind if I need to quickly get a point across to a disobedient submissive.

Thanks for teaching me something new, Tad.

Maybe something is coming of my little crush, after all.