A Complete Guide to Figging

Figging is the practise of inserting a peeled ginger root (the same kind you might find in your kitchen) into a willing victim’s arse. Why? For the delightful/painful burning sensation that this causes.

Some people enjoy the sensation caused by figging. Others hate it. Thus it can be used as a sensory reward or a punishment as appropriate.

The advantages of figging as a kinky activity are numerous:

• It’s a completely natural, organic kink
• It’s relatively safe
• It’s weird and, for most people, novel
• It produces sensations you can’t get any other way

All of which makes it a shame that more people don’t practise it. To remedy that situation, here are some tips for the novice figger/figee.

Contents

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How to fig

Safety considerations

Variations on figging

Other substances

How to fig

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Like most great adventures, this one begins with a trip to the grocery store. You’re looking for a whole piece of ginger – preferably a fairly chunky one that hasn’t yet been cut up. Here’s a good example.

As well as being a particularly handsome chunk of root, this piece of ginger also has several convenient “fingers”. These are perfect for whittling into something that can be inserted into the tender orifice of your choice.

Take your ginger root and trim it down. Keep the central knob of root, and cut away all but one of the fingers. You’ll have something that vaguely resembles an alien butt plug.

Now, remove the skin from the finger, but leave the skin on the “handle”. While you’re at it you can whittle down the finger so that it resembles a butt plug even more closely. That means a tapered tip and a narrow neck near the base. Not too narrow, of course – you don’t want it to snap.

Once you’re satisfied with your tool, it’s time to play. Run it under the tap to wash off any debris and make it nice and slimy. Have your partner get into position and ease the root into them. It should be slippy enough to slide right in without any lube, but use some if you need to. Try and keep it minimal, though, as lube will diminish any burning sensations.

Your partner might only be comfortable with the tip, or they might be able to take the root all the way down to the little neck you carved two paragraphs ago. This will help hold it in place and stop it moving – although bear in mind the root is real slippy and the arse is a strong muscle. If the whole thing could conceivably fit into their arse it’s best to keep hold of the handle to prevent this from happening.

The receiver probably won’t notice anything right away (well, they’ll notice that you’ve stuck a root up their arse, but no burning sensation). It may take from five or ten minutes for the sensation to really kick in. It’ll ramp up the longer the root is left in, topping out and then subsiding after about half an hour.

And that, my friends, is figging. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Safety considerations

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Ingestion

The ass, as a muscle, is legendary for its ability to suck things in as well as expel them. If you don’t leave a sizeable “handle” of ginger root, this could well happen to you and your partner.

If you don’t want to be the couple who have to go to the emergency room to have an inconvenient vegetable removed from an orifice you should:

• Leave a big “handle” of ginger at the base of any figging tool
• Don’t make the finger too narrow, or it could snap
• Keep hold of the handle of your figging tool while it’s in use

Intensity

Figging produces an intense burning sensation. It doesn’t last forever – 20-30 minutes at most, in fact, but once you’ve gotten started there’s really no way to stop it. If you find the burning uncomfortable… well… you’re just going to have to ride it out.

For this reason I recommend starting slowly. Experiment with a small finger of ginger and a short period of insertion. Stick it in for five minutes and then remove it and see how long the burning lasts (and how tolerable it is) before going back for more.

Your precious eyes

While cutting and shaping your ginger root, you’ll inevitably get a fair amount of ginger oil on your hands. Unless you had the foresight to wear gloves, you’ll want to give them a good wash before doing anything else. Just like with chillies, getting ginger oil in your eyes will burn in a way that’s anything but gentle and warming.

Variations on figging

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You’ve figged yourself or your partner. It went down well. What next? Well, there’s actually loads you can do to make this simple freaky act more interesting.

Combine with impact play

There are some claims floating around out there that this is a traditional practise. I can’t speak about their accuracy one way or another, but the Victorians did get up to some pretty wild stuff, so who knows?

Stick some ginger in your partner. Give it a minute to take effect, then whack them with the cane. Your partner’s natural response will be to tense up, thus clenching down on the ginger and enhancing the burning sensation. Oof.

Other sensitive areas

As I’m always telling people: you don’t have to limit yourself to the anus. Ginger can be used to inflict a punitive or pleasant burning sensation on many parts of the body. Try it on any of the following.

Clit	Cut a notch into a wedge of peeled ginger and snug it into place over the clit.
Vagina	Select a fat finger of ginger and carve it into something like a dildo. Use cautiously, though: inserting anything oily or foreign into the vagina is a recipe for a UTI.
Glans	Lop off a protrusion and press the exposed flesh of the ginger to the glans.
Mouth	Ginger burns a little when eaten. Making someone eat a nub of raw ginger is, thus, rather fun.
Hands	You don’t want to accidentally get ginger oils on your hands, but you might wish to deliberately ginger up a finger or two and then touch your partner with them.

Ferment the ginger

Enjoy the burn but want something a little stronger? You can increase the potency of ginger by fermenting it – which sounds like a complex process, but is actually dead simple. Just put your whole ginger root in a plastic food bag, press out most of the air, seal it and stick it in the fridge.

You can leave it there for quite a long time. Three days will be enough to have some effect, but you can leave it for up to two weeks to increase the strength even further.

When you come to unwrap it the root might have gotten a little gross. Mold spots and black patches on the skin are totally normal – you’ll remove them when you peel the root anyway. If it’s gone manky all the way through, though, bin it and try again.

Use this fermented ginger like you would a fresh root. You should notice that it is significantly more effective. And (if you want to save some for the kitchen) tastier too.

Other substances

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Some brave souls enjoy experimenting with other substances that also cause a burning sensation. Chilli peppers and peppermint oil are two that come to mind. I recommend EXTREME CAUTION when playing with any of these. Capsaicin, I will say from experience, does not fuck around. If you must experiment, though, I recommend starting out with some of these on a non-sensitive area of the body.