Every morning when I wake up, there is a breakfast tray on my balcony with food and coffee. In the evening when I go to bed, my boy/s are kneeling beside it.

We often talk about rules, rituals and protocols, and I wanted to talk a little about why, of the three, I find rituals to be the most meaningful.

Rules are easy enough to understand, and every D/s household has some in place. A protocol is a triggered action or set of actions – “in this circumstance, this is the appropriate way to act”. We can talk about them in terms of low, medium and high protocol situations, which is an increasing scale of formality. Or we can talk about individual protocols, such as when walking together the sub should try to walk a half step behind and to the left or right, or when going down the stairs the sub should lead but when going up the stairs the sub should follow. Protocols are important because they establish a rhythm in the relationship. They represent an unspoken yin and yang and help to keep the D/s ticking over unconsciously.

Rituals, on the other hand, are largely self-driven. They may start off as protocols, or by being discussed between Dom and sub, but they develop into something more sacred. They’re a pattern of self-practice that’s infused into everyday life.

What we practice and where we put our energy and attention, and what we believe, is what we become.
Mackenzie Hall

I like to think my breakfast, and my boy/s waiting for me in the evening, are rituals. In doing these things, my boys are expressing themselves, and it’s a meditation both on and for themselves, and on and for me

Mackenzie Hall gave a talk for Mindvalley’s Awesomeness Fest last year on The Power of Ritual, and in it she described herself as: “Really, I’m just a pattern. We’re all just patterns of energy, patterns of practice. We’re ultimately just a culmination of all the ways we infuse practice into our daily lives.”

And, that’s really what we are, right? We put energy into something, we adopt it as a practice, something we do regularly, something that has some meaning to us, and we absorb it. It becomes part of us.

Ultimately, our ideas about D/s, and about everything in life, come from all around us. The things we read, the things we hear, our own thoughts, our experiences, the people that have been part of our lives, everything. We’re big sponges, soaking it up. But, how we express those ideas, how we harness them, is personal and authentic to us and us alone.

Many of us choose D/s because we’re following our paths to what we feel is an authentic version of ourselves. Ritual, and the way we put it into practice daily, is a conscious expression of that.

FURTHER READING

• FetLife – Rituals, Rules and Contracts
• Submissive Guide – Rituals That Work from Those that Practice Them
• Jolynn Raymond – BDSM Rituals and Routines
• Pagan BDSM – Staging Sacredness: The Practical Considerations of BDSM Ritual
• A Kinkster’s Guide – Submissive Rituals
• Aeon – How Extreme Rituals Forge Intense Social Bonds
• Leather N Roses (Raven Shadowborne) – Rituals
• RibbonFarm – What is Ritual?