this is something I wrote a while back when asked a few things about rope bondage and I figured I would post it here so you can get a better grasp of part of me.
In the last few weeks I have been asked a few things about rope and what rope bondage is compared to the much more common types of bondage most people run into in BDSM. Often rope is only used to attach to leather or metal restraints by most people, but actual rope bondage just for the sake of rope is something not everyone seems to know much about. I won’t get into all the styles and forms there is always so much debate on what is shibari and what is not, etc, etc… I will however go into the mood and setting that is or can be rope bondage. I say can be because there is no right answer and there is no wrong answer. There are some basic safety issues but even those change based on the bondage and the people doing it. Just as an example shibari teaches where to avoid putting rope but hojojitsu actually tells you to place rope right on those points, knowledge is your best tool, knowing what the reason is for what you are doing so you can get the effect you want.
Rope bondage cannot be defined as just one thing, because the use and application of the rope can be as different as the individuals using it. The size and type of rope changes dramatically the effect it will have on the body, placement and body position, even how the top chooses to apply the rope changes things all these variables add together to dictate what your bondage scene is going to be.
The body has so many pressure points, pinch points, and arterial pathways that one must really understand the human form, both from a standpoint of safety as well as from a standpoint of pain, discomfort and limitations. Of course of this is important in any bondage but it becomes much more detailed when dealing with rope because it can be placed anywhere on the body as well as it may move as play goes on, the top has to be aware at all times what his rope is doing to the bottom.
One of the key aspects of rope is distribution of pressure, either by using a larger gage rope or my using multiple passes of a smaller gage rope. The application of the rope is another huge factor given that it can be place with intent and feeling, be it harsh and forceful or guided and loving, the mood of the Dom is expressed through the application and the link that the rope gives from Top to bottom. These changes from mood to style can change drastically what the feeling of the scene will be. The real catch is these do not even have to follow logic other than the mind of the Dom.
Rope could be applied with harshness and force but done so with extra wraps and care of placement so that the bondage itself is not uncomfortable, the mood would be harsh but the physical comfort would be nice. There are so many variables that no two sessions would ever need to be the same.
Follow up post.
I often do not like the “old school” BDSM people because they think all skills should be learned from someone old school just like they did… as if that’s the only way to learn… that of course is WRONG!!!
And rope bondage often falls into this area, one because it’s not a skill you pick up anyplace else in life, and two because on average humans are stupid (yes I said it) I have gone to rope events and been to classes, I would tell anyone to do the same if they can because not only do you learn but it’s fun and you get to see and do things you would not on your own… BUT it’s not the only way to learn…
And… in these classes I learned the same thing I learned in school, stupid people outnumber the smart ones by a lot… as I stand there with my sub in the air swinging about I look around the class and see a few other subs in the air, and I see a few almost there… and then I see a bunch of Tops still trying to figure out how to do the chest harness and failing…
Let me tell you about my first ever shibaricon…
I set out my list of classes, I had a slave at the time, planned to do a bunch of intro classes, skip all the advanced classes because I had a few hours maybe at home with rope bondage and some stuff I learned on the net, so I would have called myself a newbie at best...
Day one, took a couple lecture classes no hands on, just to get our feet wet and learn about safety etc, it was basic but I figured I wanted to learn right from the start… and being safe is always the best way to do things.
Then came the intro to suspension class, it was supposed to teach us a basic chest harness and hip harness and get the bottom in the air, geared towards the new to rope and new to suspension type person that I felt I was… one of its selling points was this is for the first time Top and first time bottom who has never left the ground…(that was us)
After a basic demo of what we were to learn, the instructor started to break it down and do it step by step…
Le sigh…
After 15 mins of watching him show how to do the chest harness and some people were still struggling, I skipped ahead and finished the hip and waited… one of the helpers came over checked my work and said go ahead and lift her into the air, and asked me why I was in the intro class….
After that and for the next hour and such of that class I went off on my own, doing some of what I saw in the lectures we started with and flipping my girl here and there…
Then I sat down and changed my whole class selection to take all the other classes I wanted but did not think I was ready for… LOL…
Am I special.. no, I am just better than some, and not as good as others… but classes often have to go at the speed of the lower half of the class, because the average human is stupid…
Not trying to brag here really just trying to point out, often the average way to learn is geared to the average human’s ability to lean.
And another follow up post…
Another question you often run into in rope is about shibari…
You run into rope snobs, shibari snobs, and just really snobby people…
Most of what we do in rope is not shibari if you ask a Japanese shibari master, in fact unless you trained in japan or right under someone trained in japan than you are probably not really doing shibari because shibari has rules some of which most western thinking people do not even understand… some are simple but have other meanings… eastern thinking is where shibari was born…
Shibari uses no knots… but it uses larks heads, wait isn’t that a knot? No, no no.. because it does not cross over itself the right way it cannot be a knot.. What? Yea it’s not a knot if you ask a shibari master, so it can be used in shibari but if you use any knots you are not doing shibari, but knowing what a shibari master calls a knot and what is not a knot is the difference between if your tie is shibari or not… LOL confused yet??? And this is one of the simple rules… also most of shibari is not written down, its only taught from the master to the student and if you are a master you can bend some rules but if you are not a master you cannot… but if a master bends the rules too much or too many than he will be frowned upon… lol, its all very eastern thinking…
But for what we want to do does it really matter if a shibari master would agree that it’s true shibari? Hell no.. lol… I often call what I do neoshibari, you hear that in rope circles some because it means you know what you’re doing is based on the eastern ideas of rope bondage but you acknowledge that you may not be exactly sticking to the rules of what someone else has decided is true shibari…
I stick as close as my western thinking mind can and then do my best…
One of the people on my friends list is Scott Smith. He is one of the instructors at shibaricon… and he is one of them that does not do “shibari” he uses nylon rope and he does not always stick to what others think of when they do bondage… he pulls from mountain rescue techniques, safety harnesses but also throws in some odd things just to be different…
One of the advanced suspension classes I attended with him he suspended his wife from a cricket bat attached to a swivel and then rotated his wife so she was face down and spun her as fast as he could, then crawled under her spinning body while some helpers kept her spinning and poked and slapped things that flew by… (he is an evil man)
He showed us how to make a hip lifting sling with just several passes of rope, no knots at all and two carbineers… he also showed us how to tie a lifting harness on ourselves so we could suspend ourselves…
All of this with nylon rope, none of it used any shibari rules, and all of it was effective… in fact he never seems to use anything but nylon...
Graydancer was another instructor there that taught a class on bondage for sex, using one section of 1 inch diameter rope 12 foot long, and no single tie taking more than 2 or 3 mins… by using your body weight, or your own hands to hold the rope most of them had little or no knots and the few that did were quick knots…
Far too many people get caught up on the “right” way to do things and lose track of the fun….
