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Consent in rope
A short guide on how to negotiate consent in rope and get what you really want Consent in rope is a hot topic these days. There are many words written about empowering the person in ropes to set up or defend their boundaries and creating awareness for the tying person to encourage this behavior. That’s great. There is also a lot of teaching how to negotiate a rope scene including elaborated check-lists. Still, there is an element missing. We believe the “success” of consent negotiation comes not with the most detailed check-list but with getting clear and honest first of all with yourself and then your partner about what your intentionfor…
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The Power of Surrender
Some thoughts on Seme-nawa from a bottoming perspective. My partner and I devote ourselves to a very particular kind of rope bondage – the one that is called “semenawa”. Literally it means “torture” or “tormenting rope”. I like to ponder about what it means in our context of erotic play, not torturing war captives… By definition, “torture” asks for intense experience. Riccardo Wildties: … torture starts when you are passing the threshold of “what is enough”. It is in the moment in which an ordinary bondage scene would stop that torture starts. Semenawa is giving “more than enough”…
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Good Pain vs. Bad Pain
Three Questions strategy to navigate your rope experience and stay safe Pain naturally belongs to the experience of going out of comfort zone. When playing with physical restriction and gravity, compression, extension and torsion and all possible ways of bringing the body in stressful positions, chances are at some point you will interact with pain. The common understanding is that pain exists there to keep you safe. Here is what happens on a physiological level: special sensory neurons called nociceptors respond on damaging or potentially damaging stimuli by sending signals to the spinal cord and the brain. If the brain perceives the threat as credible, it creates the sensation of…
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Boundaries and Limits
When we hear “boundaries” or “limits,” perhaps we think of something negative like a “restriction,” or “obstacle”, something that limits our free expression or experience. I recall a conversation I had with a woman who just experienced her first back bend in ropes and was obviously challenged. She literally said: “That’s not me, that’s just my back” and I said, “But my dear, that is you.” This got me thinking about how deeply rooted this perspective is in us. Reaching out for our idea of how we want it to be, we are almost eager to objectify ourselves. I offer another perspective, borrowed from nature. Imagine river banks holding deep…