An article written by Sparky.

I’ll finish up the discussion of headspace with a quick talk about maintaining and improving headspace. Some of it we’ve already covered, but it’s good to put it in its own section for reference.

Maintaining & Improving Headspace

Staying in a particular headspace, regardless of type, can be difficult. There are any number of things that can interrupt your thoughts and force you out of the headspace. If you’re a particularly shy individual trying out pup play, you may find yourself overanalyzing just how to bark or get embarrassed about it and psych yourself out. I did that quite a bit early on, worrying about what others thought of me while I was a puppy or being self-conscious about barking. Obviously, I’ve moved past that point since there’s a point where you have to look at yourself as a puppy and say, “yeah, it can look kind of goofy, but I like it, so no one else’s opinion matters!”

Beyond a feeling of self-consciousness there can be a lot of external factors that can contribute to losing headspace. Stress and depression I’ve already stated, worrying about not achieving headspace, overthinking what happened at work the day before, and any number of other things that you get lost in without even noticing.

If you have a hard time focusing in your day-to-day life or just not ‘feeling it’ the day you’re trying to get into headspace, then a stray sound or thought can be enough to distract you and make getting back in very difficult. You can lose the headspace if you end up overthinking the situation. I mean, if a role-play scenario with your Dom goes in a random direction–your Dom says something that should be a turn-on or appropriate for the situation, but just winds up sounding silly, for instance–then you both may end up laughing and joking about the absurdity and just lose focus altogether–which isn’t a bad thing since you’re still sharing time with your Dom and/or other partners, but still pushes you out of headspace.

While not surprising at all, I’ve learned over the years that yoga and meditation can help with your focus; shocking, I know. But at the end of my yoga sessions, there’s usually 2-5 minutes of “corpse pose” –aptly named, if disconcerting–where you lie on your back, close your eyes, and breathe steadily. You focus on your breath and on relaxing your muscles. While you keep stray thoughts out of your mind as best you can, my puppy side has often shown up at that time looking to play. It makes sense as I’ve stated already that the puppy headspace helps me to release the stress or tension from the week and this is very similar to that.

Another thing I’ve found helps is trying to slip into headspace a little bit each day. It doesn’t have to be a huge endeavor with gear and everything, just something that you can do to find some headspace and then keep going. I try to wear my hood when I can, but more often I find that I do something silly and start wagging because I hadn’t anticipated it. I’ll get excited when I see another dog, pile on top of Daddy when he’s watching TV and won’t move till I get pets, and other simple things like that.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any great revelations on the topic of maintaining headspace. Like puppy play and kink in general, it’s going to be personal and something that you have to find yourself. The purpose of this article is to share my own experiences in one place to try and give you some ideas that could lead you in the right direction in achieving your own headspace.

If you have any tips of your own, let us know! Would love to see if anyone has any pointers I could use myself!