You can now get shibari pro-tips by email every week. As we hope you have realised, shibari is about a lot more than simply replicating patterns. These can be learned quite readily but what really counts is how you tie. The devil is very much in the detail 😉
Shibari is like sex
As the late Professor Petruska Clarkson, a respected Harley Street sexologist, once said to me “many people treat sex like cleaning their teeth”. By this, she meant that they perform it too mechanically without much thought. I believe shibari is like sex in that it is all about connection; it requires passion and feeling, not just ‘painting by numbers’ by repeating a pattern that you learned.
Whilst many people in the west seem to want to ‘sanitise’ shibari by claiming it is art, the Japanese perspective is very much steeped in the Eros. To quote Nuitdetokyo, a very knowledgable shibari and Japanse SM aficionado:
“… people doing rope, from Itoh Seiu to Yukimura Haruki, and among the person living from Naka Akira to Nawashi Kanna or Yagami Ren always insist on shibari or kinbaku being an erotic and perverted, even though it is beautiful and exciting, activity where the dirtiness, the depravity, the exhaustion, the shame, the communication between the persons is what will create the erotic tension which makes it so interesting.”
In this series, you will discover many of the nuances of the art. Like sex, much is down to your proficiency and perception. By learning these skills, you can avoid being like a fumbling and over-enthusiastic teenage virgin. Your rope partners will thank you for it, especially since there are skills that can be applied from day one, rather that you only discovering them years later by accident or through expensive, advanced tuition. We will be presenting the benefit of years of experience and knowledge learned for many of Japan’s top kinbakushi.
Even if your interest in shibari is not primarily sexual, there’s plenty of advice that will make your tying more fluid, proficient, effective and efficient. Not only that, but we will also help you improve the aesthetics of your work. What’s not to like about that?