Rope bottoming reflections after the EURIX Round Table - vol.3 The most important question

Disclaimer: All conclusions and thoughts that I share here are filtered through my interpretation of the words of the participants. Even when I quote the others, I do it based on my memory and understanding. The participants consented to me writing an account of our discussion, however they did not authorize this text. Therefore, I take full responsibility for what is written below, however, I want to acknowledge that it wouldn’t exist without the input of all the participants of the round table and I am really grateful to them for showing up and sharing so openly and richly.

This is the third and the last of the articles that resulted from a round table discussion which I moderated during the last EURIX in the Fall of ‘19 and in which Anna Bones and Saara Rei were my main interviewees. The first one was centred around the topics of empowerment and authenticity of rope bottoms. The second one circled around being part of a community and how it impacts our practice. In this one, I summarize the insights from asking the participants a question that to me was the clue of the entire discussion and the one that I was leading towards. 

“What was your mindset and prerequisites for the best rope scenes that you’ve had?”

It was so important to me to ask this question because I believed that it will shift our discussion from theorizing about what is and isn’t important in bottoming to an empirical analysis that will be based on tangible experiences. In the end, the goal of both partners in rope is to have an amazing session. I wanted us to realize how much we as bottoms contribute to that outcome because I believe that we do. I believe that it is not only the rigger who is giving us amazing experiences but it is also us who can facilitate it. And that our good experience impacts our partners as it translates into the beauty of the tie and their involvement and enjoyment. I was hoping that the answers of the participants will give more substance to my beliefs in this regard. And they did.

First and foremost, embrace all the experience

What turned out to be the most important mindset that can make or break our scenes according to the round table participants was the readiness to embrace all the experiences in ropes, and especially the negative ones. It should not have come as a surprise to me as it was perfectly aligned with my intuition about what makes for the best scenes, but it did just because of how strong and unanimous this observation was among the participants. 

Both Anna Bones and Saara Rei (and I join them here) indicated that the most important bottoming attitude that brought the best scenes to them was being open to all the experience, not only looking for and expecting positive emotions but embracing and welcoming everything that comes.

Rope bondage by its nature evokes a lot of negative feelings, fear, pain, panic, helplessness, resignation, sadness, loneliness and rejection, just to name a few. If you close yourself to these, you close off to most of the experience that might be awaiting you in a session and your scene can become quite superficial. On the other hand, if you open up to the negative feelings, if you allow them to fill you up, to speak through your body, it can be a transformative and even cathartic experience.

It is easier said than done, though. You need a lot of courage to show up for all the emotions and bodily sensations that a rope scene might ignite in you. To not shut off your feelings but to take them on and truly experience them. Being able to do that does not come easily. It requires conscious practice and an open and investigative approach. And there are certain conditions that we touched upon in our discussion that can make it easier for that openness to happen.

The importance of trust

Time and again the notion of trust was coming up. Rope bondage is an activity in which the bottom hands over the power over their body and their safety to the rigger. It seems obvious that trusting the person who you give such power is essential. However, this common-sense notion is not always practised among the bottoms, especially among beginners. 

And it is understandable. When I began getting tied, I wanted to do it as much as possible. Just getting into ropes was way more important to me than who's ropes they were. I simply wanted to feel the ropes squeezing emotions out of me as often as I could. Over time it has changed, though. From my own experience, and as I’ve learned during the round table also from the experiences of others, the longer you tie, the smaller the frequency and amount of people that you want to get tied by. And that is not because over time we become elitist and only want to tie with the best or the most famous riggers. Rather, we learn to tie only with people whom we truly trust. And unfortunately, they are not so easy to encounter.

Reasons for trust can be multiple. It can come from knowing the person well, it can come from their skills, from recommendations of other people who you trust, or simply from having a good feeling about the person.

Different people have different means to decide whether they trust to get tied by someone or not. Saara Rei, for example, mentioned among others that she never gets tied by a new person prior to seeing them tie and being able to assess whether they are tying safely according to her standards (for example, locking the tsuri lines properly). I usually don’t consider tying with a new person unless I have spoken with them a couple of times and I feel like I have a good feeling of what kind of person they are. 

No matter what your way to make up your mind about trusting a person is, one thing is certain, getting tied by someone who you don’t trust is a recipe for a bad scene. In the most optimistic scenario.

The importance of clear communication

A statement that clear communication is important in rope bondage sounds like a terrible cliche. Despite that, I am still not sure if we are fully aware of how many aspects of a scene are influenced by the quality of the communication between the partners. 

It is often the case that the crucial part of the communication is taking place before the actual scene. Many participants indicated that having a feeling that their partner is seeing and hearing them prior tying was indicative of how good the scene was going to be. Two things are important to achieve that. First, it is important to be able to communicate your needs clearly and assertively. Second, we need to have trust towards the partner that these needs will be listened to.

To be able to communicate our needs, we need first to know what these needs are. Seems trivial but it is far from that. Communicating one’s needs does not necessarily mean giving a specific scenario that you want your scene to follow. It might also mean expressing that you want your partner to take you anywhere they want and that you are aware of the risks involved. That you are aware that they might accidentally cross your boundaries and you are willing to deal with the consequences. Without the latter statement, you should not count on your partner to truly let go and give you the experience that you desire. As long as they are a decent human being, they will be too afraid to hurt you unintentionally. 

It is also important to communicate your expectations in terms of the emotional intensity that you are looking for. one of the participants indicated that for her being attuned in these terms is one of the most important ingredients for a great scene. For example, I usually go quite deep in my scenes and I also usually get sexually aroused in rope. As great as it might sound, it might not match with what my partner is looking for. It is better to communicate it beforehand and if your expectations don’t match, simply don’t do rope or do it another day when your moods are more aligned. 

Getting to know your body is essential to go deeper

A very important point was raised by another participant who indicated that for her, getting to know her body in ropes, understanding it, is a key to be able to go deeper. This remark was a good wake up call for all of us after we’ve spent a lot of time talking about the emotional experiences, mindsets and feelings in ropes and it seemed like we almost forgot that rope bondage is a bodily activity.

Any mental state that we achieve, we achieve through our bodies. Forgetting about the physical experience in ropes and focusing solely on the mind, misses a bigger part of the practice.

There are many different ways to learn your body in ropes, I believe. For example, you can learn the theory of anatomy and body mechanics. You can try to understand what is happening in ropes to your body and base your feeling of safety on your knowledge and understanding. You can learn to actively protect different parts of your body depending on your conscious actions and execute that protection whenever you feel you should. 

You can also learn your body in ropes more intuitively, not by analysing what is happening to your body on an anatomical level but rather trying to simply feel whether what is happening is right or wrong. I believe that by progressively putting yourself in slightly more difficult positions or observing how different ties of different people feel, and by trying to remember what felt good and safe without necessarily analysing it in detail in your head, you can also learn your body in ropes pretty well. You won’t be able to describe exactly what is happening to you, but you will be able to tell whether you are safe. 

One way or another, treating rope as a bodily practice and learning your body in ropes is essential if you want to go deep. 

Some things come with experience

All skills that I've listed above are very important and maybe even essential if you want deep and satisfying experiences in ropes. And like any skill, they require time and practice to develop. That does not mean that you can’t have great scenes at the beginning of your journey, but simply that the better you get at the things mentioned, the deeper your experiences will become. And there is nothing wrong with that. This actually is where the beauty of rope bottoming is for me and the reason why I feel that I will never get tired of it.

In the beginning, everything is new and exciting. You want to tie with everyone, you want to experience every style. You do not have much understanding of what you are doing, though. You do not truly understand the risks. You do not know why you want to be in ropes. You do not feel comfortable in ropes. You experience a lot of excitement, fear, panic, pain or arousal but you can’t go much deeper. Your body and mind are too alarmed for that.  

With time you develop depth in your bottoming. You become a more aware and full persona in bondage. You build a repertoire of experiences that you can provide to you and your rigger. You are comfortable enough in ropes to begin to experience deeper and more complex emotions. Your mind is not in a state of constant panic anymore and you learn how to manipulate your mental states in ropes, how to play with them and how to express yourself. 

Also, with your growing experience, your partners can push you more and more. They can tie you more intensely because they know that you are aware enough to take part of the responsibility. They can trust that both of you have the same level of knowledge to be able to understand the risks involved and therefore the responsibility for your experiences is more equally distributed. 

With practice, you also learn how to deal with things when they go wrong. You learn what you need before and after the scene, for it to go well, you learn to make informed decisions about your partners and the circumstances for doing bondage. And you can inform your partners better on how to take care of you and provide both of you with a great experience. Over time, you also learn what you can and can’t do. You learn your body, its ability, its strong and weak points, and you are able to communicate them to your rigger. 

Experience makes you also become calmer in ropes. More composed. You learn how to express and communicate without words. You learn to recognize what is and isn’t safe. Thanks to that, your scenes can become longer and more fluent and you and your partner can start to experiment more. As Anna Bones said, at the beginning of your bottoming education you need to learn how to communicate verbally in ropes. How to talk about your experiences to your rigger. 

As you grow in your bottoming, you learn how to communicate less with words and more with your body and facial expressions. You begin to fill ropes with your expression and speak to your rigger with your reactions. You stop talking because you begin to feel and express the unspeakable. It is not anymore about safe or unsafe, painful or comfortable. It becomes a matter of whispers, murmurs and subtleties. The depth of your breath and twitch of your feet. The expressions of emotions that can’t be named.

I hope that reading this article makes you at least partly as inspired as listening to and discussing with the participants made me. I believe that we came to beautiful conclusions about what it is that we do in ropes as bottoms, why we love it and how can we facilitate ourselves and our partners in having even better and more enriching experiences.

Rope bondage provides us with a special space where we can explore the areas of our body and mind which are usually unexplored. It allows us to go to places which people don’t visit in their everyday lives. These places are often dark and scary but facing them with a mature mind, heart and body and with a trustworthy partner by your side can lead to truly cathartic experiences. 

And as much as becoming a good rigger takes years of relentless practice, I believe that becoming a fully developed bottom can take years of practice as well. Not technical empirical practice as it is in case of tying, but working with your mind and body to open up and to persevere, grappling with oneself and one’s fears and teaching your body to accept and adjust to the extreme conditions that you put it through. Finally, being a good bottom also means knowing oneself extremely well and being able to communicate about it. It means knowing how to recognize the people who are worthy to put your life in their hands and being able to let go and truly give it to them when they are.

I am not saying that every bottom should take on this path and I am not saying that those who don’t are not worthy of admiration. The sheer fact that you show up for a scene should be enough as long as its enough for your partner. There is no better or worse here. But what I am trying to say is that there are things in bottoming practice that are truly difficult and require mastery. And that the results that one gets from working on them are tangible and worth putting in the effort.