I’m curious (not enough to try it!) about what the link is between asphyxiation that enhances the sexual arousal. I don’t get the connection.
I think it forces all the blood to your genitals, but not positive. Can’t speak from personal experience. :O)
This peculiar phenomenon has origins in spectators noticing the effect hanging had upon males who were being put to death on the gallows.
Asphyxiation Fantasies
A very small number of people get aroused by the fantasy or enactment of a scenario in which they are being choked or in which their air supply is being cut off in some other way, as for instance, by having a plastic bag around their heads. This particular fantasy is seen more often in women than in men. Usually, the woman is being asphyxiated by a male partner who has the role of bringing the women right up to the edge of losing consciousness. Notwithstanding the fact that asphyxiation can produce sexual arousal on a purely physiological basis, in reading about these fantasies, the theme of helplessness is repeatedly mentioned. The women being choked, like the masochist being tied up, have relinquished control to another person.
Asphyxiation is an activity that is realistically dangerous but paradoxically functions on an unconscious level to establish the conditions of safety necessary for sexual arousal. While the conscious intent may be to endure and survive a dangerous state of helplessness, the unconscious intent is to overcome feelings of guilt and worry. In typically masochistic fashion, such people are likely giving omnipotent power over their lives to another person as a way of reversing and counteracting an internal tendency to feel omnipotent toward others. These people probably grew up struggling with guilty feelings of responsibility for others, feelings that made them feel too powerful and as a result overly worried about others. By reversing the situation and rendering themselves helpless and in the complete control of someone else, they can stop worrying and get excited.
That's with a partner. I don't know if doing it to yourself is another psychological layer, or just indicative of the fact that you didn't have a friend handy at the moment.