One of the essential skills that I teach is holding space in order to approach sadomasochism from a space of listening rather than doing. The more one can attend to details, the smaller the acts of domination can become. How gently curving the neck, if just a fraction of an inch, and accepting that gesture can communicate the entire control exchange. I have a deep fascination with studying submissive and dominant body language. Or, in other words, how we present and perceive ourselves. This method of bondage is not painful but instead includes even the smallest modifications of posture. Like a neck corset that keeps the spine straight, making it impossible to turn the head and survey the surroundings, telling the body to focus on the task at hand, therefore, forcing trust in the surroundings. Or a gentle massage which says: You are not responsible for being in control right now.

Back in Berlin, I met Mark Yu, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, who planted the seed of listening inside me. He said things like.

– Just listen to the Qi to avoid placing your rope on a nerve.

And demonstrated how a massive full-body orgasm oscillates between a build up and release of tension. I found it very annoying back then because I could not understand how it worked, but now many years later, I think I comprehend him better. In hindsight, I feel sympathy that a room full of European engineers isn’t an easygoing audience when teaching an eastern esoteric practice.

Space Over Content

Lately, I’ve been practising a tea ceremony, and my teacher talks about the relationship between space and content. I am a content-first person. That means whenever I have some space in my schedule or environment, I tend to fill it with content. So, if there are five minutes until I’m meeting a friend for coffee, I take the chance to watch another snippet of a Youtube video that has been open in a tab forever. However, I also noticed that this has slowly changed since I left my career job. As a result, there is less furniture in my home, fewer clothes in my wardrobe, and less clutter.

Sadomasochistic play is a space-first practice. When I teach how-to build muscle memory with knots, patterns, and positions, it is to create more space. The effort makes it possible to approach tying as listening and reacting to submission. That means that I tie the hands of my partner because they want to submit to me. Not the other way around, and this is important to me. Therefore I can’t preplan a session but only listen to the power dynamic that unfolds between us.

Many beginners find my approach scary because they ‘must’ admit to wanting to submit, and that can be a vulnerable thing. But, deep down, everyone is longing for submission. So the real question comes down to trust and who is worthy of our submission. Before the trust is there, I see my tying mostly showing that I can listen and take care of the power they have given me. Once someone is ready for submission, only a symbolic gesture is needed to establish the power dynamic, like patiently waiting to be tied in the seiza position, a slightly uncomfortable kneeling posture popular in Japan.

Learning to Listen

There is a simple exercise to practise listening. First, tie the hands in front of the body and move the rope between the arm and the body. Next, you pull on the rope while you twist your partner’s spine. Listen to their body language, breath, and tension, to explore how deep you can make the rotation. Finally, you can extend the twist into the hips and neck with the help of your hands. The more you listen, the deeper they are likely to go.

Listening is not only the function of the dominant; the bound person can also benefit greatly from listening better. They must make space for and listen to their own emotions and allow themselves to feel and express themselves. If they get too caught up focusing solely on tensing their core to protect their back in a deep backbend, there won’t be space for listening. The solution, in this case, is obviously to make the bondage less extreme. The relationship between space and content is not black-or-white but instead an encouragement to value space more than content. In short, the suggestion here for the dominant to listen to the submissive, who is in turn listening to themselves.

One thing I love about the listening approach to domination is that I can make the power dynamic more delicate, for example, by slightly bowing my partner’s head forward or pulling an already tight rope just a fraction harder. These details become cues for surrender, and once mastered by listening to the submissive, they can form a secret language between the two. In a way, it’s very philosophical, but what comes first, the domination or the submission?

The strong alpha male archetype is not always as desirable as it might first appear. If one is the last man standing after all competitors have been destroyed, there is something unattractive in being chosen only as there are no other options. Just as exercising a lot of violence for a tiny bit of submission isn’t very dominant but somewhat tyrannical. Instead, learning to listen is the first step to doing more with less, resulting in more control. Control as a form of self-mastery is a more desirable masculine trait in a normative setting. This is hard to learn because it is about removing rather than adding. Space over content. All the while maintaining the same presence.

Why Bondage Practitioners Are Generally Good Listeners

Technically skilled rope bondage practitioners get very good at listening because that is required when moving into suspensions, which require a high skill level or else you might damage your partner. For my practise, it became all important for me to learn to apply presence to every aspect of my sadomasochistic play. My tea ceremony teacher taught me to lift the water cauldron with one breath and to centre it in the heart; this way there is no hesitation. I like to interpret this advice from a theatre perspective, with the concepts of preparation, action and reaction. Everything that one does follows that same flow. In my world, this means preparing to wrap the body in rope by listening for the right moment, for the breath, and for my partner to be ready to receive something heavier. Then I act and wrap, and again I listen for the reaction that will eventually trigger my next move. The action itself but a tiny part of the scenario, possibly even the least significant one.

It becomes harder when we feel that we have heard or seen it all before. When we first meet someone, there is no future, no past, no stories, only the present. This state of openness becomes difficult to sustain once a relationship develops, and why the eastern arts always encourage maintaining a ‘beginner’s mind’. Rope bondage can be one such practice to help listen to the present. My tea teacher has tea, I have my ropes. By mastering the supportive structure around the practice, one has spare energy to fall in love with the details, to notice the small nuances that were never before noticed because the surrounding noise was so loud. One helpful trick: periodically make a sanity check and ask yourself, What do I hear? Is it the present, a future dream, or an old memory? As my tea teacher would say, Who is the one speaking now?