Learning the Ropes: my experiences with Shibari aka Japanese rope bondage.

Going from bunny to rigger

My Queen changed my life the day she introduced me to Shibari, the Japanese art of rope bondage.  It was the first time we had played, and it is hard to believe how time passes: it was nearly two years ago–back before I had even begun hormones.  So much has changed.  Selectively out, but still rocking boy mode everywhere, she immediately gendered me as I felt then, and have become.  

She has cemented my appreciation of the dominatrix as a higher calling.  An aspirational role.  One that I would wish to grow up as, were I growing up again.  But in a way, I am.  For one, since I’m still a baby, there is only growth ahead.  Second puberty is next, with my body, libido, and world changing as I undergo female puberty.  Third, it is not lost on me that my life really is beginning again, so much, that I am embarking on a totally new life.

I had sent her my kink test results, which put being tied up close to the top of the list.  Even still, I had never tied before (except as a child with innocent neighborhood games, though even then, I was always the one getting tied).  

If you have been tied you know what it feels like.  If you have not, here is what I have felt.  I am delivered immediately into the ante-room to sub space the second I am told how to sit, or stand, or just put into position.  As soon as the first knot is tied, I am gone.  The feeling of physical helplessness, the loss of agency, the need to trust, triggers so many powerful feelings.  Lust without conquest…a kind of aching desire for the person who is doing it, for their touch, for their words, for their breath.  It triggers fear.  It triggers very deep mommy feelings…and like a little, places me in a dependent role.

I loved it.  Every minute of it.  I knew I would like to do it more.

I met another domme in another city, and unbeknownst to me, she was an expert.  We knew very little of each other, but she decided that tying me up was what she would enjoy doing.  She promptly suspended me, beat me, electrocuted me, and did other rather exciting things…the Shibari alone would have been enough for me, and as it stood, the tour de force which she was, may have been enough, but I am glad to have done it again.

In another somewhat random experience, I had the opportunity to spend a few days in service to one of the world’s leading practitioners of the art form.  Over a series of days, she introduced me to her art.  The kink test was very accurate.  My experiences with her, though erotic, were far more intense from a bondage perspective, and for what happened in my mind.  I don’t believe I have ever been in deeper sub-space, or had are more joyful experience of aftercare.  I was completely out of it for almost an hour after she lowered from the beams.  And she just sat next to me and gently pat my hair as I lay on the floor just as I had come down.  It was intimate, gentle, silent, and beautiful.  It was also spiritual.  Later that night we talked about faith, God, and kink.  It was a day to remember.

Because of my own processing of bondage as therapeutic, I have been thinking about how to incorporate Shibari into the other things I am developing (somatic therapy, reiki) around wellness.  I have been invited to learn from this Master practitioner, and I should very much like to do it.

As luck would have it, during one of my deep training weeks in somatic therapy, there was a Shibari evening.  I managed to get there on time without leaving early and found myself slightly intimidated by the other participants.  I don’t know if there was anyone even within 15 years of my age, as this art form seems to be really taking off with the rising generation.  That isn’t what intimidated me.  It was that everyone who showed up had rope, knew what they were doing, were partnered up.

“Have you been doing this long?” one man asked of the friendly ballerina giraffe sitting quietly on the edge of the tatami mat.

“I’ve only ever been tied,” I answered.  Conversation killer.  “Have you been doing this long.”

“No, not really.  I’m just a beginner.  I went to Japan for a month and have been trying to go once a week for the past two years, and every now and again I get to make it to an event.  I hope to make it back to Japan early next year.”  [I’ll bet many of you readers can guess his nationality!]

“Oh really, me too,” I said.  “I think it’s time to learn.”

At the beginning of the evening, we were asked to go around the room and introduce ourselves and to tell about our experience.  Not a single bunny spoke.  At that point, I was not sure whether I would tie or be tied.  I was just being quiet.  But the facilitator for the evening turned to me last and said, “you’re new here.  What is your experience.”

“I’ve only ever been tied,” I said.  Every head in the room turned towards me.  Every.  Single.  One.

“A bunny,” she said looking at me, “you are MOST welcome.”  And the way ‘most’ rolled around in her mouth before emerging into the stream of her sentence made me feel very welcome.  “But tonight, you will tie.”  I nodded.  One of her assistants was game to be my bunny.  And this proved quite fortunate, as she really knew her knots and what was right and wrong.  As a result, I was able to keep up with the group, to faithfully execute one suspension tie which immobilised her entire upper body…and another one which immobilised her waist, down to her feet, including some artful ropework around her crotch.

It sounds amazing, and it was in a way…it stimulated my brain.  But it was also so complex, that I found no joy in it, and wondered what I was doing.  Who was I kidding?  I feel a slave.  I feel submissive.  

As I become female, I have less desire to be generally submissive.  I also have a Queen.  That is enough.

I wrote to my future teacher to explore the topic further, and mused that I didn’t know what my purpose was in relation to learning this art.  She agreed that I needed to figure that out.

The Companion came into my life at a magical evening themed around Shibari.  Our mutual curiosity of the subject, and her own forward planning, led to me joining her on an-depth course.  We spent most of the evening in hushed whisper, giggles, and laughter as we agreed about how joyful it would be to tie up the men that were present and to give them whippings.

Sometimes I talk about being a witch.  I don’t mean to suggest I am a powerful witch, in the sense that ‘power’ is something that can belong to someone.  At all.  But I am.  There are many constraints on this ‘power’.  First, I do not and cannot and never try to see into the future or even ask about it.  Two, I am incapable of performing or casting any kind of spells or rituals that could do harm, including taking care to eliminate unwished for or unexpected collateral damage.  I can only heal.  I am a white witch.

One of the peculiar ways in which my witchy gifts appear, is that the right people pop into my life in ways that are far from random.  The Companion is a perfect example.  But so too is the Queen.  So too was Ex-Mistress.  My business and work life are surreal in this regard.  It comes from listening…not conscious listening, but body listening. The world becomes much easier to navigate when you follow the queues in this way.

Thanks to The Companion I learned of a Shibari basics training workshop that would last for a few days.  She was already enrolled and suggested I do the same.  I did.  I had an ambiguous feeling about whether I should work with her, because I am terribly attracted to her and her life trajectory, some of which I have alluded to, but which will likely spawn its own post, or several such.  As it happened, we didn’t need to pair, as the school provided bunnies for us.

I am going to say that the experience was exceptional.  It was everything that the evening of tying had not been.  Easy to remember.  Thorough.  Highly instructive.  Patient.  Over the course of two days, with only one break each day for lunch, I tied and retied so many knots that my head hurt, but the lessons sank in.

But something else happened.  Well, two things.  The Companion and I seem to have found a path in friendship which is not tarnished by my kiss.  But in relation to Shibari, something life-changing happened.  

When it was time to have the bunnies assigned to each of us, all of them (two women and one man), turned to me.  One of them, the youngest and prettiest saw that the others were looking and she stepped to my side and took my arm.  It was decided.

This course took in an awful lot of the technical aspects of Shibari.  I left with confidence in how to do all of the basic ties on any part of the body, but also to do basic suspensions.  But it also included an introduction to using Shibari in an erotic way.

The teachers demonstrated, a couple, on each other.  The atmosphere crackled with sexual energy coming from them, and there is no way that anyone present in that room didn’t feel it, became aroused by it.  Afterwards, they spoke.

“It’s important for all of you to remember consent and how that fits with erotic touch, and what you are about to do.  Most of you are in couple, and you will know one another well.  You most likely know already what you wish to do, are willing to do.  But for those of you who are here with a bunny you have never met until today, that can be quite different.  That said, they are bunnies.  They have asked to be here for this.  So you may feel comfort in that.  And the bunnies will tell you if they are not okay with something and feel you have intruded on their space.  Right bunnies?”

“Right,” they answered together.

“You don’t need to shout or anything, you can just make a small sound, like psst, and your rigger will stop.  Right riggers?”

“Right,” we all said.

I asked her, however, and she said she was ready, looking forward to it, and that I should not be afraid to touch her.  Her words and their consequences have unlocked new feelings in me, and also some very welcome comfort around being trans.

Mainly, I begin to realise that many women find that a trans woman is not threatening.  That we are much less threatening than a man.  This is a huge relief to me, because so much of the toxic political discourse is around how threatening we are.  That we are sexual predators.  That we use being trans as a stealth way to gain access to female spaces.  I am sure that there are exceptions, bad apples lurk in every box, but I have yet to meet a transwoman who is anything other than vulnerable.  

And while I haven’t been operated on yet, a consequence of hormones is that my testicles are the size of peas and that my whotsit is half of the size it was before, and it has become very easy to tuck in ways that would make it hard to know even if I wore a bikini.  And I never not tuck anymore.  So, as I stood there in tight yoga pants, it was clear, there was nothing down there.

I don’t think that either of the two women would have volunteered to be with me, and perhaps not even the guy, had I still come across as a straight man.  And this means so much to me.  As a male I had this intense need to not be threatening to any woman, to not make her feel uncomfortable around me, to try and negate or deny my own masculinity.  That was most certainly a part of be being trans as I entered my teens.  I think The Companion and one woman I dated for several years are the only two people I kissed without either being kissed first or without asking permission.  It wasn’t worth the feeling of being sexual with a woman without her inviting me first.  Plus, I have always loved to be around strong women, and part of me felt I was filtering out those who were not, or those who were passive or submissive.  I probably was.

My bunny was pretty, and though relative tall, was very thin.  Not anorexic, just tiny.  She was also a University student, her body was toned, flexible, and her outlook was open.  I was very grateful that she gendered me female from the moment she first spoke to me.  And as an FYI, there was very little about my clothing that would suggest I was trans.  I think it is becoming obvious.  So, I settled into this comfort that my hands and body and my mind were welcome, purely because I am trans.  And this is an extraordinary gift.  Maybe I am now enough of both sexes to be acceptable to either in this regard.

I tied her hands and pulled her close.  She sat between my legs and I moved her body, holding the back of neck, and using the rope to caress her skin.  I puilled her legs, bent her, enveloped her, had her feel my long arms reaching around her, holding her, gently touching her.  She sank into me, surrendered, her eyes closed.  She whimpered.  Her skin was flushed.  She was aroused.  She nuzzled me with her head, and we played.  I became aroused.  Very aroused.  But it was not like any arousal I am used to.  I was aroused not out of lust or a desire to conquer her.  I was aroused because she was aroused by what we were doing.  That she experienced pleasure became mine.  It was intense.

Over the course of two days, we discovered the possibilities of intimacy through rope, and how to talk to each other through bondage.  We became quite close in touch and holding and being held.  What I wondered might never happen, did happen, on a huge scale.  I loved tying her up.  Not because of the knots.  Instead, I could taste her place in submission, could feel her in sub-space, and could feel her energy caress me, and return to me in gratitude.  It was beautiful and was a feeling I never thought I would feel.  Never knew about.

And yes, I now understand what one dominatrix said to me, “I love everything about Shibari.  I love the knots, the artistry, the time, the silence, the sensual connection, what it does to a subs mind.  But most of all, I love the emotional bond it creates between rigger and bunny.”  She was right.  And I felt in me these protective feelings towards this woman who was in my care.  Wanting to give her an experience that she will treasure.

At the end, she said she would like me to let her know if I were to come back for further courses.  That she would happily grow into my tying as I grew as a rigger.  She was a perfect partner for me too.  Patient.  Comfortable.  Kind.  Oh, and I really loved how bossy she was.  “That’s not right”. Or, “I think you have that one backwards.”

At the beginning, before we started in on the class, and seconds after I had told her my name, we asked about each other’s experience.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said.

“What made you want to?”

“A friend mine at Uni told me about it, and told me how great it feels.  She comes here from time to time as a model.”

“Your friend is right.  Let’s hope you find that.  I’ll try my best.  And I thank you for being here.  And you will tell me please if you are at all uncomfortable about anything.”  She nodded.

“What about you?  What is your experience.”

“I’ve only ever been tied.  I’m a bunny.”

“Wow.”

“I’m a slave.  But even slaves need to learn new skills.  Especially good slaves.”

“That’s good,” she said.

Whatever it was, whether her knowing that I was a slave, and therefore totally submissive, or whether it was that I am a trans woman, she surrendered her body to me and trusted me to be vigilant and careful with her and trusted me in erotic touch and her finding her way into sub-space.

And I feel as if I have begun to find my new calling.  After it was over and The Companion and I were recounting our experiences I said, “I really loved that.  I think I want to do a lot more of this.”

“Me too,” she agreed.

I asked one of the teachers, “could I buy a length of rope, or possibly two, so I can practice.  Or how much would you recommend.”

“Six lengths.  That is how many you will be using today for the suspensions.  That is a good number.”  I bought six.  I heard a rerun of the conversation, word for word, when The Companion, several hours later, asked the same question.  We both ended up with discreet brown bags with 48 metres of rope in them.

Life sure is interesting.