I cannot sing the accolades of fisting loudly or sweetly enough!  Great stories follow!  Enjoy!  Read on!  Fist with pride!

Image by Coberst and Alan Topalian

Is fisting what I think it is?!  Yes!  Well kinda…  maybe.  The goal of fisting is to get your entire fist (at  least past the knuckles) into the vagina or anus of your partner.  “Double Fisting” is achieving that goal with two hands in one orifice.  Some people can even fist themselves!  When you’re pregnant the doctor may suggest you practice “perineal massage” in an effort to ready the body for birth – this is medical speak for “fist her good so she’s ready come time to push that baby out!”  It’s called fist-fucking, brachiovaginal or brachioproctal insertion, handballing; I call it “awesome”, and “further proof the fingers and hands are the best most smartest sex toys ever created ever”.

Fisting is an activity that takes time, patience, and often a few sessions to build up to succeeding (should you actually eventually succeed).  If you fist regularly you’re much more likely to succeed regularly as well, and time off does mean probable retraining…  What else?…  Well, here’s some more on the subject, should you care to know:

Safety thoughts:  Fisting safety is relatively easy to manage if you’re paying attention and have a few basic supplies on hand (ha!).  For supplies I suggest gloves and lube at the very least.

Gloves:  You can acquire these in Latex or for the latex sensitive, Nitrile.  Gloves come in many sizes and colors, so have fun finding the ones that have your favorite look and feel.  Because nitrile gloves are often textured on the outside, if you turn them inside out you will have a smoother surface to work with.  You can get them by the box if you’re a greedy little player, and at some sexuality boutiques you can buy them in smaller packs to try out various sizes/materials/colors before making the 100 glove commitment.  Gloves serve many purposes in fisting safety and pleasure.  First and foremost gloves are a safer sex barrier.  Safer sex with fisting may be desired for a lot of reasons, but here are a few:  if you’re fluid bonded with a partner and playing with others gloves are your friend, gloves are also generally a smoother surface to work with than a hand that may be cut or calloused, gloves are clean – probably cleaner than under your nails, and gloves will protect the sensitive skin of the vagina or anus from fingernails themselves.  So… gloves!

Photo by Alexjon

Lube:  Lube is an important element for fisting in general, though of course there are those among us who waterfall quite nicely naturally…  Because fisting can take some time, and often in time natural juices will periodically dry out making friction a larger problem, lube can really help keep the action going with less discomfort.  Lube is helpful if you’re using gloves too, as the non-porous material won’t hold onto lubrication the same way skin will.  Too much friction can cause small tears in your sensitive skin and the possibility of bleeding or morning-after rash and irritation might occur, which should not usually be part and parcel of a successful fisting session.  Friction can cause a higher degree of pain than necessary, so unless that’s what you and your partner(s) are going for, lube will help greatly here.  Lube is especially helpful for anal fisting, as the anal canal doesn’t self-lubricate the same way a vagina will.  So grab a bottle of your favorite lube and go!  I find silicone based lubes last longer and are much more slippery, I also tend to stick with lubes that are glycerine-free, and for an activity like fisting where there’s less in and out motion, lubes with a higher viscosity are great for staying put and not running away.

Other Considerations:  Take care of your nails and nail beds, keeping your fingernails short and well filed, and your nail beds smooth.  Freshly wash your nails, fingers, hands, wrists, and forearms before jumping in.  Consider either having a safe word for when the activity gets too intense to go on, or communicate clearly and check in frequently with your partner(s) throughout the activity.  Acknowledge that fisting is not something that generally results in success the first, second, third, or even more times you try and that everyone is different.  Relax and breathe.  Pay attention to the sensations in your body.  Take frequent pauses in activity to calm down, relax your muscles, and regain energy to move on.  Consider using a vibrator or other toys, and engage in lots of foreplay leading up to and during your efforts fisting.  The more turned on the fistee is, the more fun everyone is going to have.  Consider “training” your partner by using a series of insertables which increase in girth over time.  Connect!

Procedure?  Relaxation, time, foreplay, and lube!  Really that’s most of what it takes, but lets look at some of these ideas more closely.  Fisting isn’t going to happen quickly or even in the first few tries if you’ve never done it before or you can’t take much girth during sexual play.  The skin of the vaginal and anal canals are the same, they are both sensitive and very elastic.  They are capable of expanding or stretching to allow large objects to pass through (like babies, toys, people’s appendages of various sizes), and then of relaxing back to their former size and shape.  Behind the skin are muscles that create the structure for this stretching and reshaping.  These muscles are part of what keeps the vagina and anus healthy and working properly.  Practice your Kegel exercises to become more familiar with the sensations and locations of the muscles on your pelvic floor, and to strengthen your physical response to stimulation down there.  These exercises benefit both the anal and vaginal areas, and you can practice pushing out as well as clenching in and relaxing.  Plus they feel great!

Foreplay can not be overlooked as an essential tool in the fisting endeavor, I believe.  The more turned on you are the more natural lube you will produce, the higher resistance to pain you will achieve, the more resilient your body will be in the healing process from stress or friction, the more relaxed you will find yourself, and the more easily you will be able to communicate about what’s going on to your partner.  You may find that foreplay allows you to orgasm during the process, and perhaps get you further faster and more pleasurably.

Other than that, start out small and work up.  One finger, two, three…  when you get up to four and five fingers pinch them all together like the bill of a duck to continue, and continue slowly.  Engage the clitoris and pay attention to what the body wants.  There are times when pressure will feel good, rocking, in and out movements, backing out and working back up…  Let your body be the guide.  The hardest point to get past is the knuckles, and you’ll find you have to modify the shape of your fist/duckbill to get there probably.  Breathe!

So Karin, tell us a fisting story!  I had a girlfriend years ago with whom fisting became a regular activity.  We LOVED it!  I think what I loved most was the mix of feelings that came with the activity:  accomplishment, a fair amount of pleasurable pain, the presentness and breath and attention that the activity requires, that it feels overwhelming at times and can be emotional, the fullness, every “spot” gets hit for sure, and it really is a team accomplishment.  I think this is probably one of the kinkiest things I ever enjoyed on the regular before discovering masochism and kink as a thing that I liked apart from sex.

Story no 1.  So, the first time we fisted, it was in the back of a car in a parking lot in PTown.  We had gotten pretty far playing together before that, but never past the knuckles.  It was a very hot and steamy back seat, every window was obscured completely; we’d been working for a while and were tired and sore and happy and wet and turned on, and after a while, with a final bracing and bearing down, we did it!  It was incredible and amazing and I was totally high from the accomplishment.  We played around with hand position and rocking and different sensations, exploring this new place we’d found together…

And after the excitement wore off we realized that the hand had to come back out.

This was a terrifying idea.  It had taken so much effort to get the hand in, that (like a kitten trying to figure out how to get back out of a tree) the idea of working my body further was more than a little overwhelming.  We were both new to this, we were both pretty tired, and I didn’t know if I could take much more pain at that point…

So I decided to push.  Breathe.  Push.  Breathe.  Bare down… and like giving birth, the hand of my lover came out.  I remember that moment being extremely emotional and beautiful.  It was a feeling I’ll never forget.

Story no. 2  This same partner and I fisted pretty regularly after that day.  We’d be exhausted after a long day of work and actually fall asleep with her hand in my body at times…  This is how much we loved playing this way.

At the time, I lived in an artist’s loft with a bunch of performers.  It was a warehouse space where we would produce shows regularly in our “big room”, which was a two-story open space that took up half the footprint of the entire apartment.  The other half of our space was makeshift crafted into a kitchen and bedrooms.  The walls of my room were actually built by my roommates before I moved in, and my tiny little room only had 3 walls.  I had a small office, at the top of our 2nd floor stairs, and next to the office doorway was a ladder that led to a crawlspace 8 feet up above it.  It was this 3 foot tall crawlspace that my mattress was thrown into, and so my “bedroom” had no real privacy except the height.  Sufficed to say we all knew a lot about one another’s bedroom habits in that place…

One day as my girlfriend and I were engaged in fisting play, we had just gotten her hand fully inside when we heard someone come through the front door and walk across the big room toward the 2nd floor stairs.  An ex of mine who was still a good friend had come in and was calling to see if I was home.  I responded, and within moments we heard him at the foot of the ladder climbing up.  I threw the comforter over my body and my girlfriend’s hand just as his head popped up over the edge of my bedroom floor!

I remember being completely shocked and amused as he, totally without thinking about it, invited himself to come hang out for a bit…  The three of us talked and hung out, he was just passing through, and the entire time my girlfriend’s hand was completely inside me.  I did tease her a bit with some Kegels…  This story never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Last thoughts?  Like anything, this activity is not going to be for everybody, and even if you’re interested you may find you are purely into being the fister or the fistee – not everyone is going to appreciate both sides of the equation.  If you are interested in fisting do a little research first.  There’s a lot of information out there, and (as usual), some great videos at Kink Academy.  You can find books and videos on the subject, a favorite of mine is “A Hand in the Bush: The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting” by Deborah Addington over at Greenery Press.  Communicate clearly with your partner as you go for the gold, this activity takes time and consideration.  You might not always get to where you think you’re going and that’s ok, in fact it’s at least half the fun.  Happy fisting, friends!

To Breath and Being,
~ Karin

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~Thank you.

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