As a bodyworker, I learnt early on that the body carries stories symbolically. For example, the underlying reasons for neck and shoulder pain are often forward-rotated shoulders pulled by too-tight chest muscles. At first sight, the story is told in the body, but with further investigation, it often leads into the mind, where it becomes more personal and complicated; simple truths are nowhere to be found here. For example, these same shoulders can tell a story about a protected heart; but what does this mean?

Let’s start at the very beginning. A developing embryo grows from one mass of cells into three layers. The endoderm becomes our inner organs. The mesoderm forms our skeleton and muscles. The ectoderm will eventually become both our brain and skin. This layman’s understanding fills me with awe for how symbolic the body is – just knowing that when I was ten days old, my brain and my skin were the same things and how they are still today so profoundly connected. As adults, the skin is our biggest organ and senses the world around us. It covers the muscles that move us through life, and deep at the core, there is the spine that keeps us balanced and centred.

Surrounding this somatic layer is the symbolic body. Eastern esoteric teachings often describe an energy which flows through the chakras, along the spine, and forms a field around us. Many practices involve touching this energetic body. We have similar ideas in Scandinavia, but we use a completely different language to talk about them. Talking about a symbolic body is the most helpful way I’ve found so far. It is a metaphoric understanding of oneself. One that can shape how we understand the world and evaluate our place in it.

Tying The Symbolic Body

Now let’s connect this to rope bondage. Tying the hands is the most obvious starting point. Hands are our primary tools to interact with the world around us. Their gestures speak volumes when we, for example, raise a fist against an oppressor or reach out in assistance. Tying them is a concrete symbol that one’s opinion is no longer allowed to be expressed and therefore removes the privilege to participate in shaping reality. It makes the bound person dependent on others and thus removes autonomy. In everyday life, this is, of course, something horrible. Something that only the most vile people in our society engage in, those we certainly do not wish to be running our world. Yet inside the shared fantasy of a power play, it can be an invitation to submit and surrender. So when tying the hands in a rope bondage session, it can be a practical starting point, but it can also be a symbolic expression of stripping away what often defines us as supposedly free acting beings.

Tying the legs is similar. Our legs are what move us in the world. They take us on journeys and adventures and help us escape danger. Having the legs bound is an invitation to stay in the present and face what is to come, to submit to it. I often see feet twitching from anticipation and respond by tying them to ground the emotions. There is an immense difference in bounding the legs closed or open. Spreading the legs exposes and brings attention to the genital area, which is the most fundamental symbol of sex. While tying an aroused person’s legs closed shows that the erotic is not in focus right now. Deciding and communicating through action  the current focus is a part of the power play itself.

Distorting the face with ropes is directly connected to how we present ourselves. I remember many years ago when my first mistress gave me the book Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion (2002). It was to teach me how fashion is all about bringing attention to the face – because that is the pinnacle of human social interaction. So making a face asymmetrical or hindering the possibility of speaking has great symbolic value. Similarly, hiding the face communicates that the attention lies entirely elsewhere.

Working In The Subtle Shadows

Still, one must be careful not to overdo it. Because often, when playing out sadomasochism, things can get exaggerated, whereas it is always possible to express the same symbolic point in a more nuanced manner. Slightly bowing someone’s head forward is an excellent example of this, or exposing a vulnerable part of the body, like the wrists or the neck. If you have seen me tying, you can see that I often rotate the wrist upwards before taking the hands and tying them behind the back. Making this motion also rotates the shoulders open to weaken the arms and expose the heart – probably the most intimate symbol of vulnerability. This ‘huge action’ can even be achieved (with a bit of practice) by rotating the thumb. And that is why touching the symbolic body is so powerful, because even a minimal effort on the part of the one doing the tying can lead to a massive impact on their partner.

For subtlety to work, there must be an environment conducive to allow for it, there must be space enough to allow nuance to breath. It can be more challenging in a club with loud techno music and strobing lights compared to a tranquil living room or temple-like environment.

A balanced human spine is the most fundamental symbol of control. It fascinates me how our bones are constantly balancing – gravity is continuously trying to pull us back into the earth while we do our best to rise and reach high. When the spine is balanced, this is easy and requires almost no muscle tension. But when pulled, or tied out of balance, all the muscles are instantly activated to cope with the situation. Therefore it becomes a tremendous symbolic gesture to hold someone out of balance in a way where they can relax. A rope bondage suspension is the perfect example of this.

The Why Is Always More Important Than The How

When studying to become a medical massage therapist, I thought that how I touched the body mattered, but I soon realised that something was far more critical than even that touch: the ‘why’ or, to be more concrete, the ‘thought’ that I currently held in my mind at the moment of touching. This is especially important to remember when the stakes are raised during intimate settings, when touching a naked body or playing in the realm of the possibly erotic. The brain does not understand the concept of ‘not’ very well. So when in a non-erotic exchange but where there in theory could be an erotic interaction, repeating to oneself constantly, “This is not erotic, this not erotic!” will not be very effective. If anything, it will likely transform the situation into something erotic and awkward for an aspiring massage student who had previously connected nakedness with sex.

How to then align one’s thoughts and intentions with the reality of the current situation? This happens through skillful evaluation of the circumstance at hand. There is always a transmission of information going on between individuals, it is how we can ‘tune in to the vibes’ of a room, for example. Some of us are better at it than others, but it is a skill that can be learned and developed. As a perfect symbol of this we can picture antelopes who all move simultaneously as a herd the moment one of them picks up and transmits the slightest sign of danger.

Interestingly, in both massage and sadomasochism, the more the receiver or submissive surrenders, submits and trusts, the more the giver or dominant can decide on the evaluation. If I do a good job massaging the back of the body first, for example, then there is no issue with my lifting a breast to access a tense pectoralis minor. As the massage therapist or dominant, one can decide whether the mood is erotic, therapeutic, sadistic or anything else. Though I would never mention this to my massage clients, I am in this way dominating them.