Molding Amanda's Tummy by anon1940 My proposal to Amanda was simple: because it would give pleasure to both of us, the two of us should cooperate in a program which would result in a subtle, but real, transformation of her body. Amanda's body was already very pleasing. Because she has a rather small, compact frame, her body has the enticing charm of a fruit in danger of passing from ripe to overripe. Thus, the appropriate adjective to describe her figure is ``succulent,'' not svelte. In fact, it is only because she is willing to discipline herself that she is able to present the world with a clearly defined waistline above a belly which is firm but more rounded than flat. The discipline involves constant vigilance to both her diet and her posture. For my tastes, Amanda's body type is more appealing than either the bony, emaciated or the bulky, Amazonian female bodies which dominate our media. Besides its soft femininity, I enjoy knowing that Amanda experiences a small but definite sense of tension deriving from her need to monitor her body lest its attractive roundness lose out to a less than attractive flabbiness, and I have devised various games which allow us to exacerbate and enjoy that tension. For example, one of our favorite games is to have Amanda stand naked in front of a wall mirror while I, standing close behind her, massage her relaxed tummy with one hand and tease her breasts with the other. Of her own volition, Amanda responds by reaching her arms over her head, which she rests on my shoulder, to place her hands behind my neck. The effect on her body is to stretch it taut so that her abdominal muscles are distinctly palpable through the soft fleshy padding which covers them. After a while, my massaging hand starts to apply more pressure, and what begins as a gentle rubbing evolves into a rather strong kneading of the muscles to which her position has afforded me ready access. At first, Amanda's natural reaction is to protect her tummy by tightening her muscles, thereby letting my fingers dent her soft flesh but preventing them from penetrating into the muscles themselves. However, because it causes the surface of her stomach to bear the full brunt of my probing, she soon abandons her initial tactic in favor of a compromise in which her stomach muscles become malleable without losing their tone. The result is lovely. Namely, my fingers now can penetrate into the lower strata of her muscles, which arrange themselves into flexible sheets which can be prized apart but not deformed. Of course, I can only surmise what sensations Amanda experiences while I knead. On the one hand, from the sensual way that her body writhes as I probe, I know that the sensations are intense to the point of being painful. On the other hand, her complicity in what we are doing makes me believe that she is deriving real pleasure from the game in which she is a willing participant. Indeed, her writhing represents an acquiescence with rather than an escape from what is happening to her body. To wit, she never attempts to move her tummy out of harm's way but instead seems only to be making sure that all facets of her stomach muscles receive their fair share of attention. In particular, she is always careful that, at some point, she presents me with the most intimate part of her stomach: her belly button. The musculature which surrounds the navel is a thing of beauty. Suddenly, the planar surface of muscle is interrupted to accommodate the dip left by our prenatal past. In order to accomplish this, the muscles form a delicate cup which seems to invite penetration. As anyone who has tested his own navel can vouch, it is not always easy to bear the consequences of this invitation being accepted. Indeed, having a finger delve into ones navel and then explore its environs can be an excruciating experience in which ones whole body becomes involved. Thus, if Amanda were not getting pleasure from my manipulation of her stomach muscles, it is impossible to believe that she would take such care that I include a protracted and thorough manipulation of her navel each time that she presents her belly to me. Returning to my proposition, what I suggested to Amanda is that we embark on a program which would be specifically devised to enhance the pleasure which we both derive from our time spent exploring and manipulating her tummy. With this in mind, I asked if she would be interested in having us plan an exercise regimen to strengthen her abdominal muscles in a way that would increase our mutual pleasure in them. I had no desire to turn my succulent Amanda into either a stringy clone of Twiggy or a wrestling partner for Tarzan. Instead, my goal was to augment, in a mutually exciting way, the assets which Amanda already possessed. Her hesitation before accepting my proposal was understandable. She had already experienced the intensity, bordering on pain, of having me work on her tummy, and so it was not immediately clear to her whether she should agree to increase the exposure of her abdomen to my sometimes less than tender mercies. I interpret her eventual acceptance as additional corroboration that our pleasure is indeed mutual. This interpretation is further substantiated by the fact that her acceptance came without coercion and after, rather than before, she learned the details about what I had in mind. I explained to Amanda that it was my intention to exercise her stomach in a way which would increase its strength but not diminish its roundness. In addition, it was my intention that her abdomen should become more, not less, sensitive to my proddings. More precisely, I wanted the exercises themselves to tire her muscles and leave them sore enough that she would be aware of them even when they were not being prodded or exercised. In short, I made it clear that, by slowly but steadily increasing the demands which we would make on her muscles, I hoped that her abdomen would become, at least for a while, a part of her anatomy which she would find difficult to ignore. Because we were both aware that it at times would require considerable discipline and some courage for her to accept the rigors to which we would be subjecting her tummy, I thought it important that we figure out ways to mitigate the drudgery of the exercises themselves. In the end, we arrived at two basic plans, each of which would admit sufficient variation to prevent it from becoming dull. The first plan was to introduce a certain amount of ritual into her regimen. With this in mind, we agreed that, upon returning home in the evening, Amanda should pamper her body. She should begin by taking a protracted warm bath in which she could relax from her day at the office and soothe those of her muscles which were suffering residual soreness resulting from the exercises they had been made to do on the previous day. Further, with the help of bath oils during and body lotions and powder following her bath, this should be a time for her to bask in narcissistic reverie of her body. At the same time, I was confident that she would find excitement in the knowledge that soon the oils and powder in which she had lavished her body would be mixed with her own sweat and that the soreness which she had relieved during her bath would be renewed, and sometimes increased, by the exercises in which we would soon force them to engage. Indeed, I knew that she would appreciate the irony of pampering her body in order that it be primed to more fully experience the demands about to be made upon it. When she had finished with her bath, she was to put her now warm and fragrant naked self into a clean leotard. The leotard was to be made of a soft material which would cling to but not alter her natural shape. Further, the leotard was to be the sort which wraps around the midriff and is held to the body by a couple of cloth stings: one around the waist and the other tied in a bow behind the neck. Finally, the leotard was to be cut so that the pleasing softness of her breasts and roundness of her tummy would be clearly visible. Once she was in her leotard, her only obligation before my arrival was to keep her muscles warm and relaxed in anticipation of what lay ahead for them. During this period, she was free to read, nap, listen to music or do anything else which might suit her fancy. However, I hoped that while she waited for my return, she would occasionally press on or tighten her stomach muscles in order to gauge just how hard it would be for her to bear the resumption of their ordeal, about whose rigor she would by then have no doubt. I say ``ordeal'' and emphasize her lack of doubt about its rigor because, from the very beginning, I wanted to impress on Amanda that, although I wished her to derive pleasure from her exercise program and have it allied in her mind to our sessions before the mirror, I wanted it to be a pleasure which arose from a distinctly different relationship to both her own body and to me. Namely, while her muscles were being made to work, I wanted her to think, at least metaphorically, of both her body and me as the enemy: her body because it was causing her pain, and me because my role was to make sure that she would continue to endure that pain past the point at which she would have stopped if I were not there. In order to produce this state of mind in her, I insisted that throughout her exercise sessions I, not she, would be in charge of determining exactly how much stress her stomach muscles would be made to absorb. Of course, I allowed, and even encouraged, her to communicate to me what her body was communicating to her. On the other hand, it was understood that, even when her discomfort was extreme, only I who would decide when she would be allowed to desist. When exercising muscles, especially muscles which are already sore, there is a pain threshold past which it is difficult to push oneself. Nonetheless, as Amanda already knew from the time she had spent with my fingers probing her navel, there is a second, higher, threshold past which the sort of pain which we were planning for her undergoes a transformation and becomes a subtle aphrodisiac. Amanda was already well acquainted with this aphrodisiac and both knew and was willing to pay the price for attaining it. The second of our strategies for preventing Amanda's exercise program from becoming dull was the establishment of an ultimate goal toward which her efforts would be directed. On the one hand, we wanted to be sure that the goal was realistic. On the other hand, we wanted to be certain that it could not be reached with ease. After some research, we found what we wanted in an advertisement. The advertisement depicted a girl who was literally hanging upside down while performing abdominal curls. The device which kept her suspended was a horizontal bar to which she was attached via a pair of specially constructed, well padded leg braces. Exactly how she could have gotten onto the bar was unclear, but no explanation was required of the purpose for which she had been hung there. Indeed, even though the model in the picture had been carefully selected for the strength of her body, her face clearly reflected the intense strain which she was experiencing. Extrapolating from our own experiences with abdominal curls while lying on the floor, Amanda and I could easily imagine the difficulty of performing them while hanging vertically upside down. In fact, we knew that it would be possible for Amanda to do so only after she had undergone a lengthy and concerted training regimen. Thus, after a brief discussion, we decided that emulation of the model in the advertisement would be the ultimate goal which we set for Amanda. In order to have the goal be an integral part of Amanda's routine well before it would be attainable, we immediately bought the requisite bar and braces. In addition, I decided that, from the outset, Amanda should do her exercises while attached to the bar. For one thing, I knew that this would help her keep her goal in view. Secondly, it was clear that we could easily invent a variety of quickly achievable but interesting approximations to the ultimate goal which we had set for her. Thus, on the very first day when I arrived home and found Amanda waiting, lovely and fragrant in her leotard, I had to figure out exactly how I was going to get her attached to the bar. Amanda is small, but she is neither sufficiently light nor I sufficiently strong for me to simply hoist her onto the bar by like a trussed chicken. The solution at which I arrived sounds a little crude, but it sufficed. First I attached the bar inside a solid door frame at slightly over Amanda's height. Second, I moved a high backed chair so that its back was directly under the bar. Third, I placed several firm pillows on top of a sturdy footstool, which I then moved so that it was touching the seat of the chair. Finally, I had Amanda climb up onto the precarious perch provided by the back of the chair and the pillows on the footstool. With her hips resting on the chair-back and her shoulder blades on the pillows, I was able to first lift her legs the extra inch or two needed to get the clamps on her braces over the bar and to then lower her body again until her hips returned to the back of the chair. Once her legs were connected to the bar, Amanda's perch became much more stable. At the same time, it became obvious to her that just to remain in her present position would be trying and could easily be made quite demanding. For example, although her shoulders and hips were supported, nothing in between was. Also, there was nothing under her head, and so she had to either to raise it, so that it would be in the same plane as her shoulders, or let it dangle off the edge of the pillows. Similarly, she was confronted with the analogous problem about what to do with her arms. Realizing that the solution to these problems could provide the initial stage of her training, I told Amanda that, until I said she could let it drop, she was to keep her head up high enough for her to see her belly and that her arms were to be kept snug against her sides. Although I knew that these instructions would force her to work her stomach muscles, I was not sure exactly where or how hard she would have to work them. In addition, I wanted Amanda to know that I was not her disinterested drill sergeant, but someone whose hope was that her efforts would give us both pleasure. Thus, shortly after I had her assume her pose, I ran my hands over her tummy to determine exactly which muscles were involved and how hard they were working. I was pleased find that it was the muscles in her lower belly which were under the greatest strain. A prominent ridge of tight muscles ran from the lowest point of her pelvis, past her navel, and up to her diaphragm. By pressing against the sides of this ridge, I could make out some of the individual muscle groups which she was using, and I began to massage these both to let her know that I was enjoying their effort and to increase her own awareness them. As my fingers probed and rubbed her muscles, a brave, if somewhat pained, smile appeared on her face. However, after several minutes her smile was replaced by a look of concern, signalling that she was fast approaching the threshold at which, if I were not in command, she would stop. Indeed, in a slightly husky voice, she asked me when I would allow her to rest. Having spent some time considering what criteria to apply in deciding when I would grant her respite, I explained to Amanda that it would be her own muscles, not I, who would determine just how long they would be made to persist and that I would relent only when I could feel that her muscles were on the verge of exhaustion. As the expression on her face left no doubt, my words offered her no comfort. For this reason, I told her that, although I intended to be rigorous, I promised do my best to recompense her for her travail with as much pleasure as possible. To substantiate this promise, I reached behind her back, undid the string which held the middle panel of her leotard closed, and bared to both of us her already trembling tummy. Even though I, and even more she, already knew that her muscles were hard at work, what we saw when I bared her tummy came as a surprise to both of us. In particular, we had not realized just how prominent the muscles of her abdomen had become. The ridge which I had palpated earlier had become a clearly defined bulge which narrowed as it approached her mons and was widest in the vicinity of her belly button. At the same time, we were both fascinated by the way the trembling of her muscles caused her belly button to change shape as different muscle groups became exhausted. With the hope that it would accentuate this intriguing phenomenon, I commenced a gentle but firm massage, concentrating on the region around her belly button. Obviously, the sensation which my finger now produced was more intense than Amanda had experienced in our sessions before the mirror. For one thing, Amanda's tummy was already under considerable duress, which meant there was essentially no way for her to adjust her muscles to ease their accommodation of my finger. Secondly, as distinguished from our earlier games, in this game she had explicitly relinquished control to me. As I had hoped, in spite their increasing her discomfort, these differences enhanced rather than diminished the intensity with which she responded to what was happening to her body. In fact, for at least five minutes, Amanda closed her eyes and performed a wonderfully sensual horizontal dance in which her hips undulated while, except for its ever increasing trembling, her belly remained fixed with my finger embedded deep in her navel. However, in the end, her muscles became exhausted and, as my finger, which by then was more than an inch below the rim surrounding her belly button, told me, they could stand no more. As soon as this threshold was reached, I withdrew my finger, went over to the footstool, and cradled her head in my hands. Although her relief was immediate, her chest continued to heave and her sweat continued to flow, and so I knew that it would take some time for her to fully recover. Therefore I readjusted her pillows to accommodate both her head as well as shoulders and went to fetch a towel with which to dry her damp body. In the short time that it took me to get the towel, Amanda's breathing had returned to normal and her mind had started to drift into that lovely state of lassitude which over-exertion often evokes. As the first step in a plan to make sure she would feel amply rewarded for the travail which she had just born, I carefully removed the remaining string holding her leotard, thereby exposing the rest of her torso to our gaze. I say ``our'' gaze because, in some sense, Amanda was still a little confused about exactly whose body she was looking at. After all, she had relinquished its control to me, and both of us had cooperated in denying it the relief for which it craved. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that she should look upon her body with a fascination nearly equal to my own. What met our gaze was a striking version of the familiar hills and valleys of Amanda's breasts and abdomen. Its most striking feature was the color of her skin. Namely, its usual pleasing pinkness had transformed and acquired a rather mottled but attractive ruddy hue. This change was most pronounced on her lower belly. However, with decreasing intensity, it extended up all the way to her throat, making her breasts even more enticing than usual and her nipples a richer color than I had ever seen them before. From the look in her eyes, I could tell that she was pleased with the effect, and I know that I was. Thus, it was an enormous, mutually enjoyed relief when I reached for her breasts and began caressing them. As my attention to her breasts continued, Amanda's lassitude was replaced by an increasing excitement, and, after completing the disrobing which I had started, I was able to bring her to a well deserved orgasm. The fact that she was still partially suspended did nothing to diminish the experience for either of us. It is one thing to submit to something painful once, it is quite another to continue submitting, even if the pain is mitigated by enormously satisfying erotic pleasure. Thus, I have no doubt that Amanda's ambivalence increased daily as she prepared herself for her stint on the bar. In order to prevent her from becoming sour, I took every opportunity to bolster her morale. In particular, to increase the importance of her body in her own mind, I bought her a variety of new bath oils, powders, and leotards; and to let her know how important her body was to me, before proceeding to her exercises, I insisted on inspecting her body to make sure that she was being careful to keep her legs and armpits smooth and free of hair. Besides the pleasure which we both derived from these luxuries and intimacies, I think that they helped Amanda never doubt that, in spite of the suffering to which we were subjecting it, her body remained something for which we both had enormous respect. Another method I employed to keep her interest high was to make frequent, if only minor, variations in her preparations. For instance, I would sometimes ask her to be sure that her nipples would be clearly visible through her leotard when I arrived home the following day. Because my time of arrival was uncertain, this meant that she might have to keep her nipples excited for as much as an hour or more. In order to make this easier for her, I bought her a pair of little suction cups which, when placed on her nipples, would impart a mild but constant stimulus which was sufficient to keep them pleasingly plump. I believe that the pleasure which she derived from this attention to her breasts was made more interesting by the knowledge that her erect nipples would be refused full satisfaction until her stomach muscles had won it for them. In a slightly different direction, I would occasionally ask Amanda to place a smoothly finished, inch long dowel in her belly button, use a wide sash to bind the dowel tightly in place, and then purposefully worry it back and forth by flexing her newly strengthened, but somewhat tender, abdominal muscles. My idea was that such activities would give her the opportunity to discover and enjoy how much firmer the muscles in her tummy were becoming and, at the same time, to contemplate the ambiguity of her feelings about exposing them to the renewed demands which soon would be made on them. As I had promised her, the difficulty of her exercise routine increased slowly but inexorably. For several days I had her repeat the program of the first day, only instead of waiting for exhaustion before giving her any respite, I stood by her hips and used my fingers to carefully monitor the state of her abdomen. Knowing that, being already sore from the work they had done during earlier sessions, her muscles would complain from the start, I ignored the grimace which would immediately appear on Amanda's face. What I used as my signal was the onset of trembling which would begin near her pelvis and progress up the muscle ridge in her lower belly, a ridge which was becoming more prominent with each day. As soon as I saw that the trembling had reached her navel, I moved from her pelvis to her head. However, I only cradled her head enough to give it partial support. Thus, although my action certainly provided Amanda's muscles with some relief, it gave them less relief than she would have chosen for them herself. Instead of really supporting her head, I used my hands and fingers to caress her flushed face, stroke her hair, and massage her neck. As a result, Amanda's stomach muscles continued to play a major role in the keeping her head from dropping. Nonetheless, the relief I provided was sufficient to allow her muscles to recover. When I saw that the trembling in her lower belly had subsided, I would abandon her head and take up again my post near her pelvis, and we would start all over again. Much to my unmixed satisfaction and her satisfaction mixed with consternation, we were soon able to repeat this cycle several times before her muscles would give up and begin to spasm. On each cycle, I would try different techniques to comfort and excite her. For example, when I was by her pelvis, I would not only bare and stroke her midriff but I might also cup her crotch or run my fingers over the miraculously fine skin at the juncture of her thighs. When I was stationed at her head, I might bare her breasts and see whether, in spite of her distress, I could make her nipples respond. When her nipples did respond, I would be purposefully cruel by making their further pleasure commensurate with the demands which she was making on her abdomen. It took a week before the strength of Amanda's muscles had reached a point at which we felt it safe to take the next step, that being the removal of her hips from the back of the chair but not of her shoulder blades from the pillows on the footstool. Although I had no qualms about imposing some pain on her abdominal muscles, I wanted to take every precaution against producing pain in her back. For this reason, I carefully arranged her body so that gravity would tend to shape it into a gentle concave bow when I slipped the chair-back out from under her hips, and, after a little experimentation, I discovered that this could be easily accomplished by immediately pushing the footstool towards her legs as soon as the chair was out of the way. Once Amanda's body was suspended in this way, I no longer needed to make the position of her head the primary means by which I could control the way in which her tummy was being exercised. Instead, I now had her head and arms fall back comfortably over the pillows supporting her shoulders. When she had assumed this pose, I placed a hand on her lower belly and told her that, as I raised my hand, I wanted her, without flexing her knees, to keep her tummy in contact with my hand by flexing her abdominal muscles to reduce the concavity of the arc in which her torso was hanging. At first she had trouble figuring out just how she could follow my instructions. To help her find out exactly which muscles she would have to use, I located the muscles which tightened when she was doing what I wanted and pressed my fingers into them to make sure that she knew which ones they were. In this way, she soon found that she could do what I wanted, but only if she called on the same abdominal muscles which had been left sore from stage one. Even so, she was pleased to discover the similarity between the movements which she was being asked to perform and those which she made naturally when making love. Indeed, the more proficient she became, the more deliciously salacious was the scene to which I, her audience, was treated. By simply changing the height of my hand, I could modulate the stress on Amanda's stomach muscles. When I sensed that she was flagging, I would pull back the midriff flap of her leotard and administer a couple of brisk, but not severe, slaps to the damp bulge of muscle surrounding her navel. As Amanda knew, those slaps were meant not as a punishment but as a reminder of the goal which we had set for her, and, to her credit, her response was renewed effort to achieve that goal. As in the earlier sessions, I insisted on Amanda persisting until her muscles spasmed, but I permitted her periods of respite, both to give her relief and to prolong the time that her muscles could be made to work. At this stage, relief meant that my hand was lowered to a level at which it required only moderate effort for her to maintain the contour of her body. My favorite way to divert her during these periods of relative relief was to kneel be her side, open her leotard, and play her suspended body as if it were a beautifully curved stringed instrument. One hand would move up along her ribcage, stopping along to way to appreciate the swell of her breasts and tweak her erect nipples before delving into the hallow of her damp armpits and savoring the exquisitely smooth and sensitive skin of her inner arms. Simultaneously, my other hand would descend over her trembling belly on its way to her crotch, where it was soon engulfed in her the well lubricated folds of her vulva. As her body responded, I would modulate the intensity with which I was teasing her, forcing her to earn her sexual gratification by maintaining the rigidity of her muscles. After a week at the second stage of her training, Amanda had mastered her body sufficiently that I was able to bring her to orgasm without allowing her to relax her tummy. In fact, much to her dismay, I purposely began bringing her to completion mid way through a session and forced her to resume exercising even before her orgasm had subsided. Besides the mildly sadistic pleasure which I got from asserting such complete control over her body, I very much enjoyed the lascivious contortions which her torso performed as she struggled to deal with the confused messages which her body was sending to her mind. Because the move to third stage would be such a large one, it took a full two weeks before I was confident that Amanda's tummy was ready for it. My goal for this stage was to have Amanda develop her abdominal muscles to a level at which they would be able to hold her torso horizontal to the floor while she was suspended from the bar. In preparation for this stage, I lowered the bar so that Amanda's rump would drop a foot when I removed the chair-back. I then had Amanda mount her perch as before, only this time after removing the chair from her hips and telling her to straighten her legs, I positioned the back of the chair behind her rump and wedged its legs against the door sill so that it would not slide back. Next, I asked Amanda to cross her arms over her chest and tightly grip her upper arms with her hands. Finally, I removed the top pillow on which her shoulders were resting and told her to lift her shoulders off the remaining pillows. It was a surprise to neither of us that she was unable to comply. Thus, rather than having her continue to struggle and possibly injure her back, I grabbed her under her arms, hoisted her about six inches off the pillow, and told her that she was to let herself down as slowly as possible when I released her. Much to Amanda's credit, she made no attempt to cheat and, in the spite of the consequences for her abdominal muscles, she kept herself off the pillows for a at least ten seconds. Her relief at having her shoulders supported once again was profound, but short lived. As soon as she had caught her breath, I hoisted her up again and made her resume her Herculean fight against gravity. In fact, I made her do five repetitions before allowing her the rest for which, by then, she was in desperate need. Although I had anticipated that Amanda would find that this stage in our program made demands on her abdomen of an entirely new order of magnitude, I had not expected that it would provoke from her an entirely new reaction to those demands. Up to then, Amanda had chosen to not communicate either her pleasure or distress to me verbally. I had been able to guess from the expression on her face and the reaction of her body what she was experiencing, but, until now, she had not described those experiences in words. However, after I allowed her to stay on the pillows long enough to regain her composure, Amanda felt a compelling need to share with me the experience which she had just had, an experience the likes of which she had never known before. She said that the sheer enormity of the effort which we had required from her abdominal muscles had been transmitted through her tendons to every part of her torso: all the way from her shoulders to muscles in her groin, which, as I confirmed by running my hand over them, were still twitching. Further, she explained that when I refused her respite and she realized that her muscles would be forced to repeat their effort, she experienced a desperation which was terrifying and, at the same time, wonderfully exciting. Never before had she realized that by completely relinquishing control over her body, she could alter so thoroughly her relationship to it. Specifically, by the time that I had lifted her for the third time, she stopped thinking of her body as her own. Instead, she found herself emotionally and intellectually detached from her body, and the pain we were making her muscles endure only heightened her appreciation of the body which had once been hers. It was clear to me that the strain imposed on her body while she was holding it horizontal precluded the possibility of my using conventional sexual gratification as a reward for her efforts. Thus, impressed by the profundity of Amanda's ``extra-corporeal'' experience, I wondered whether I could use it as a substitute. What she had just described was undeniably a form of ecstasy, albeit of a sort not usually associated with sex. Instead, it was the same sort of thrill that marathon runners experience when their endorphins kick in and give them the ``high'' which carries them to the finish line. The question was how I was going to aid and encourage her to undergo the requisite physiological and psychological transitions which had allowed her mind to separate from her body and, once separated, to relish the suffering which her mind was making her body endure. Short of hypnosis, there was nothing I could imagine which would guarantee her success. Thus, I had to resort to the chancier method responsible for her achieving the separation initially. Namely, her experience had resulted from my pushing her beyond her limits, and so that is what I decided that I would have to do each time that I put her back on the bar. Of course, I could not expect her to perform such a heroic feat on a daily basis, and for this reason we altered our routine. From now on, Amanda would be suspended from the bar only every third day. On the other days, we would devise various, far less rigorous, routines for her tummy. In the hope that it would enhance the distinction in her mind between her days off the bar and those on it, I marked every third day on our calendar with a large ``ON'' and the days in between with a small ``off.'' In addition, for her off days I tried to introduce routines which would maximize the availability of her body to sexual stimulation. With this goal in mind, I told Amanda that she should wear no clothes while we worked her belly on the off days. On the other hand, I encouraged her to decorate her otherwise naked body with an adornment of her own choosing, be it a piece of jewelry or some other object which she thought would complement her natural beauty. As for the exercises which she would do on her off days, I chose ones which would be distinctly different from the arduous one which she would be doing during her time on the bar. Specifically, I wanted them to be relatively static so that she could appreciate, without undue distraction, her body and what I was doing to it. The first, and, in many respects, the most successful of these exercises had Amanda lying on her back with shoulders and head resting on the seat cushion of a living room chair, her hips supported at the same height as her head by the footstool, and her midriff spanning the empty space between. Even though the demands this position made on her tummy were trivial by comparison to those which had been made on it earlier, Amanda soon learned that her stomach would be given a thorough workout. For one thing, I could and did keep her working for much longer periods. Secondly, there was no reason to interrupt her exercise either to give her relief or to engage in the sort of foreplay which I hoped would lead to the sexual gratification which, at stage three, I could no longer provide her when she was on the bar. Thirdly, there were subtle and amusing variations which I could introduce. For instance, after Amanda's belly was suspended, I would sometimes make her balance various objects on its surface, my favorite being an old bowling ball which had been lying around unused for years. The ball weighs about ten pounds and its curvature is perfectly matched to the curvature of the cup formed by Amanda's navel. In order to keep the ball from falling, Amanda had to carefully monitor her abdominal muscles, and at first she had no trouble doing so. However her difficulty greatly increased when, once the ball was in place, I would turn my attention to the erogenous zones which her pose left vulnerable. Kneeling by her side, I once again played her body like musical instrument, one hand concentrating on the region above the ball and the other buried in her nether regions. As I brought her closer and closer to orgasm, she had to fight her instinct to contract her muscles lest she destabilize the ball and allow it to topple from its precarious perch. For me, her struggle to control her tummy was a delight to watch, but for her it was a source of frustration. Having to balance the ball on her undulating tummy slowed her approach to climax, and, by the time she reached orgasm, her stomach muscles were so exhausted that she would collapse into a fetal position on the floor when it swept over her. Taxing as the off days were, Amanda's days on the bar exacted a far heavier toll on her resolve to continue. My suspicion that she would not always be able to achieve her enthralling extra-corporeal state proved to be correct. In spite of my always insisting that she continue well beyond what she thought were her limits, she entered that state less than half the time. Thus, it may seem hard to account for Amanda's enthusiasm, albeit occasionally tempered, to have her abdomen resume its struggle against gravity. My guess is that, besides her determination to complete the program to which she had committed herself, her determination arose from two sources. The first of these was that, like a marathon runner, she had become addicted to the endorphin induced thrill which she could achieve only if she did continue. My conjecture is that vanity was the second source of Amanda's positive attitude toward her regimen. It was increasingly apparent to both of us that her efforts were producing visible, tangible, and delectable changes to her tummy. As I said before, Amanda's body was succulently charming before we started persecuting her tummy. However, like ninety nine percent of the female tummies on display these days, Amanda's had lacked the tautness which is essential if an untucked, too short blouse is going to be an asset and not a liability. Thus, when after the several weeks of our program, the lovely roundness of her stomach began acquiring an attractive firmness, she was justifiably proud. In fact, I noticed that she had purposefully altered her dressing habits so that, both in public and around the house, her stomach was frequently on display. In addition, when Amanda was hanging from the bar and I had opened the flap over her midriff, we could see and admire the traces made under her skin by the increasing definition of the muscles in her belly. What had been at the beginning a single, undifferentiated bulge of straining abdominal muscles had undergone a transformation and become a pleasingly sculpted ridge in which individual, strong, if somewhat sore, muscles were clearly evident. Whatever the reasons for Amanda's willingness to continue, continue we did. Three weeks passed before I felt ready to move her to the fourth, and final stage, and we made huge demands on Amanda's tummy during those three weeks. Each session on the bar, I would give her less help when she lifted herself off the pillows. Further, I not only increased the number of repetitions which I asked her to perform, but I also forced her to do several repetitions in a row without allowing her shoulders to actually touch the pillows. On those days that she failed to separate her mind from her body, she was often close to tears by the time that I finally let her rest. On the days when she did succeed, she was in a state of exhausted ecstasy when her labors were over. At the end of the third week, I asked Amanda if she felt prepared to take the step which would bring her to our goal. By this time, she had no illusions about the demands which that step would require her to make on the muscles in her belly. Indeed, although she was now able to actually lift herself off the pillows, she knew that it would be an entirely different matter to attempt an abdominal curl while hanging vertically, upside down. Hence, it was with understandable trepidation that she agreed to move ahead. Because I wanted to provide her as much moral support as I could, on the day of reckoning I arrived home in time to be present during her preparations. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I scrubbed her body and took great care to shave off any bits of stubble on her legs or in her armpits. Wrapping her in a large towel, I escorted her to her bed, where I had her lie on her back while I attempted to allay her fears by gently stroking her body. Because anticipation of what lay ahead had disturbed her sleep the preceding night, the warmth of her bath combined with the stroking of her skin had a sufficiently narcotic effect to make her slip into a peaceful sleep. Leaving Amanda to enjoy her nap, I went to make the alterations necessary for her upcoming session on the bar. Basically, all that I had to do is raise the bar to the top of the door frame so that she could hang vertically from the bar without having her head hit the floor. Once this had been done, I let Amanda doze for an additional half hour before waking her. I wanted her to get enough rest to restore her stamina, but I did not want her to nap so long that she would suffer a post-nap hangover. When she was awake and once again compos-mentis, I told her that this time she would be naked during her time on the bar. Even though she had been naked on her off days, previously she had worn her leotard while on the bar, but now I wanted her body totally exposed. In large part, my decision was a completely selfish one: I wanted to enjoy watching her uncovered body. Nonetheless, there was another reason why I chose to make this change of routine at this point in our program. Namely, as I said earlier, Amanda had greatly increased her ability to derive narcissistic pleasure from the changes we were affecting in her body, and so I thought that she would appreciate an unobstructed view of her body as its shape metamorphosed during her upcoming ordeal on the bar. With all the practice I had had lifting her on and off the bar, it required far less time to get Amanda hanging upside down than it took for either of us to become accustomed to the consequences of doing so. Of course, Amanda had a much harder job than I. Because of her inverted position, she was completely disoriented, and the fear which this disorientation engendered was exacerbated by the rush of her blood to her head. But even if one ignores these psychological and physiological disturbances, inverting the human body, particularly one as shapely and distinctly feminine as Amanda's, causes fascinating changes. Suddenly, Amanda's hips were where I expect her breasts to be, and rather than tapering down from her chest to her waist, her ribs now taper up from her chest to her waist. Her breasts themselves had also undergone a dramatic transformation: their usually shadowed, gently curved undersides had become the upper-sides, been pulled nearly flat, and made into her breasts' most prominent surface. Finally, although the features of her face had not really been altered, it took time to get accustomed to seeing her nostrils above the rest of her nose, her eyebrows below the sockets of her eyes, and her hair cascading down from her scalp. Much as I would have liked to spend more time admiring, and perhaps caressing, Amanda's inverted body, I knew that unless her abdomen were put through its paces without delay it would be too late. Therefore, as soon as I saw that her body was stable and in no danger of slipping off the bar, I stood behind her back, circled her hips in my arms, and clasped her firmly to my front. Understanding that I was there to provide support, Amanda pressed her buttock against my chest, clenched her abdominal muscles, and raised her upper body from its vertical position. The enormity of her effort was manifest on both on her face and her tummy. Tears appeared in her eyes, her mouth was wide open as she gasped for air, and her whole face was suffused with a rosy flush. The same flush quickly spread to her entire front, highlighting the ridges of muscle which asserted their presence through the soft padding of her normally rounded belly. Seeing that she would not be able to hold herself up for more than a few seconds, I stretched my hands forward in an obvious invitation for her to grasp them. Once she reached my hands, I was able to get a secure grip on her wrists and thereby partially relieve the strain on her stomach muscles. The look of gratitude on Amanda's face made me hesitate to prolong her agony, and so I asked her whether she wanted to continue. With a brave smile on her sweat covered face, she said that, having come this far, she was determined to reach her goal. Bolstered by her courage and determination, I drew her arms up and toward me until her breasts were grazing her knees. Still holding her wrists, I leaned back far enough to allow me to wrap her arms around her legs so that she could hold herself in the position which, for over a month, she had been striving to achieve. Panting, Amanda clutched her legs while she expressed her elation at having reached her goal by beaming from ear to ear and repeatedly saying ``I've done it, I've done it!'' Amanda's initial success was short lived. After less than a minute, her grip began to loosen as her abdominal muscles refused to cooperate with her desire to stay aloft. When she was again hanging vertical, I lifted her exhausted body off the bar and deposited it on the floor. Needless to say, Amanda was totally drained physically. However, even after she lay crumpled on the floor, her exultation about her accomplishment was hardly diminished. Never had I seen her as radiant than she was at that moment. Reaching up to me, she grasped my hands and drew me down on top of her body, which, in spite of its recent ordeal, was more receptive than I had ever known it before. Amanda made slow but steady progress. With me bracing her buttock, after a week she was able to raise herself until her torso was horizontal, and after a second week she was able to perform this feat several times in row. I was as proud of her accomplishment as she was herself, and I wanted to find an appropriate way to reward her for her heroic efforts. Because the act of raising and lowering her body required all her attention, there was no possibility of my giving her sexual pleasure while she was doing so. On the other hand, now that her body had become accustomed to being suspended up side down from the bar, it presented me with several intriguing options. Standing behind her with my hands on her buttock, I was confronted by her crotch, only a few inches from my face, and was struck by the transformations which her groin underwent while she was doing her sit-ups. In particular, realizing that these must be just the visible evidence of dramatic events taking place beneath, it occurred to me that the insertion of a pair of ben-wa balls into her vagina might enable Amanda to more fully appreciate and enjoy what was happening inside her. Although her previous experience with ben-wa balls had been something of a disappointment, Amanda accepted my suggestion that we try them again, and this time experiment was a great success. As I had guessed, the contraction of her abdominal muscles was transmitted to her uterus and vagina. When her vagina contracted, it tightened around the ben-wa balls, which had been drawn by gravity deep inside her. In order to allow her time to fully experience the resulting sensations, once she had completed her sit-ups I lifted her body, as I had on the first day, so that her breasts pressed against her knees and, while she held herself in place, bound her in that position with a sturdy length of cloth circling her back and legs. Dangling by her feet from the bar with her upper body resting against her legs, from the side Amanda looked like a diver who had been miraculously suspended in the air while in the pike position. But it was the view from the rear which I liked best. Pressed as they were against her front, Amanda's succulent thighs framed her vulva, which appeared to be beckoning attention. Happy to oblige, I brushed aside her pubic hair and ran my fingers along the inviting crease between her labia. After they spread, I delved deeper so that my fingers could verify that, even if her abdomen was no longer working as hard as it had been, her vaginal muscles continued to clutch the ben-wa balls, which they were able to displace but not eject. In spite of its contorted state, Amanda's body responded to my teasing and gave her the pleasure which I hoped that it would. At the time of writing this account, Amanda has spent many hours exercising on the bar, and the results of her dedication are clearly visible. Her tummy is still pleasingly rounded. However, its muscles have developed to the point that they are clearly visible, even when she is not exercising. In addition, although her waist is no narrower than it was, the region around her navel has acquired a new attribute. Namely, the muscles in her lower belly have been so prominent that they have produced a firm shelf along their upper boundary. As a consequence, Amanda's belly button no longer points straight forward but instead is tilted up in a way which makes her waist much better defined. I cannot predict how long we will continue with the program which has produced these changes in her body, but I feel confident that Amanda does not regret her decision to endure the suffering which she has endured while bringing those changes about.