On the depth of gentle bondage

People can often sense from what I put out there in the world visually, that my tying style is gentle, but I haven't often expressed myself in words. For some reason putting it into words feels more vulnerable. Words are easier to pick apart, words feel like they have to 'make sense' in order to be valid. However, in this blog post, I am going to try and express my own perspective and why my tying style is the way it is. As I am also on my own personal path of self discovery through this art form, and at the core of it is vulnerability.

Being in rope is hard. Its hard because you're putting your body in the hands of someone else. Of course you have solid consent negotiations beforehand, but once the session starts, it is asked of you to temporarily 'let go' of your bodily autonomy. Mentally it is quite the hurdle, especially if you're used to being in control or if you have a mind that's always racing (like mine).

 'If its so hard, then why are you putting people through it?' My answer used to be: 'I'm a little bit of a sadist'.

Depending on the style of rope you practice, it can also be hard in the sense that it hurts. Rope doesn't evade pain, it's actually more often than not part of the experience. When I get suspended, I feel physical pain as my (physical) pain tolerance is actually quite low. The pulling on my legs, like my flesh is being stretched apart, or the deep pressure in my chest as I'm hanging upside down. Its all hard for me. My body alternates between the surrendered state of stillness and the wriggling movement of discomfort. I have a lot of sensory sensitivities too. A clothing tag rubbing me the wrong way can already feel intensely uncomfortable, let alone meters and meters of rope haha.

So now you might be wondering, if it's so hard, why are you putting people through it? My answer used to be: 'I'm a little bit of a sadist' and although I still think this is true, over the years I've learned about myself that there is so much more to it than getting pleasurable kick out of it in the kinky sense.

In life, we all struggle and we all feel pain. This pain is rarely chosen. From heart wrenching grief, to motor accidents, to generational trauma, the flavours of pain are endless and forever evolving. We endure, and we often endure alone. Especially within patriarchy, emoting your pain is seen as weak, so we wait until we are in private to let it all out. Or worse, we never let it out at all and we burrow it deep down into our bodies where it lives as tension. It is paradoxically what connects us all, and at the same time what creates our armour towards each other.

The microcosm of a Shibari session that I create reflects the macrocosm of a world I wish to live in.

Within a rope session, someone chooses to go through something thats at least challenging in a mental sense, with me. What a deep trust is that to have? How incredibly intimate? We go through it together. It just makes my heart swell with love writing about it. It is the most precious thing to me. And now we get to the heart of why I gently pet the people I tie, why I run my fingers through their hair, why I let them lean on me so completely. It's saying: "I'm here, you're safe, there's space for you and your pain, I empathise". Even though I put them there in the first place, that's the duality of the experience. The microcosm of a session that I create reflects the macrocosm of a world I wish to live in. A world were we endure, but we're softly held by each other.

I've often been isolated in my hardest moments. Sometimes through my own doing, sometimes because there was simply no one there to hold me. You often hear that people's calling becomes the healing they need(ed) the most themselves, and although it might be a bit cliché, it has definitely been the case for me.

What I've just described in this blog post, is the spiritual background hum that underpins my 'gentle' style. I haven't talked at all about the role of pleasure. This I will do in a future post, because if gentle is the background hum, sensual pleasure is the foreground concert lol. Very juicy stuff, but I'll write that one once I'm ovulating.