“I can’t be funny if my feet don’t feel right.”
-Billy Crystal
Definition
Bastinado may sound like a complex term for something freaky, but it’s just a fancy word for anything that involves torment by caning the bottom of the feet. This is an especially insidious area of the body to torment in any BDSM scene because you can really go hard on the soles of the feet and hardly any marks will be left behind, leaving no evidence of even those nasty and particularly painful scenes. It is a sensitive spot and even light caning can make some people scream and cry, so bastinado isn’t something for the faint of heart. It’s for experienced freaks and those who know they like pain play, especially those who have a fairly high pain tolerance.
History
Bastinado is actually a real form of punishment that people have used in many cultures as a way to get information out of people or simply to punish them for being on the wrong side of an international conflict. However, it is also mentioned as far back as the Bible. Now only the most repressive regimes actually use this as a political tool, though freaks have adopted Bastinado during hard BDSM sessions.
Bastinado Lite
If you’re not ready to go all out with a foot caning, how can you bring some foot torment into your life? Well, there are many ways you can start to see if your submissive partner will enjoy this type of painful play. First of all, you can try using rubber bands on the bottom of the feet. This is good because you have some control over how hard to do it, and it gives a similar feeling to caning. You can flick them lightly at first, and then do it harder after a good warm up. You can also try using barbecue skewers, the wooden kind that you might use for shish kebabs. You can alternate between tickling, poking and hitting the feet lightly with them as a precursor to a serious bastinado session. Also keep in mind, that even The Bible limited the number of strikes during Bastinado to forty at a maximum (Deut. 25:2, 3).