I want to rant a little before I write about two cool events that we participated in the last month.
One of the things that annoys me immensely in (mainly) the Japanese bondage scene are the copycats (by lack of a better word). I’ve roughly categorized them in two categories.
The first category are the ones that deconstruct one or two bondage’s from photo’s and re-apply these bondage’s to any willing “model” (do note the quotation marks, but that’s a completely different rant). This inexperienced rigger generally applies his deconstructed bondage badly and more often than not the inexperienced “model” is removed from the bondage with a damaged nerve (luckily most of the time not a permanent damage).
The second category takes actual workshops from one or more riggers with a good track record (i.e. RopeMarks *plug* *plug* :)). They pay good money to learn to do bondage safely, learn to listen to and respect the “models” they are going to work with and learn some crucial fact about the human body related to bondage. So far so good, but this rigger stops there and expects to be the best rigger in the world because he has taking “the right steps” to learning bondage. And this rigger has taken the right steps, but these were only the first steps of one long journey. This rigger then boast on the web about learning from “the best riggers in the world” (i.e. RopeMarks *plug* *plug* :)) but is just a copy of that rigger, shows no creativity, takes no further steps to improve and does not grow or create an own style. Because this rigger stops he has become yet another no-name uninteresting copy of the real-deal but boasts an ego that says he’s the new bondage-God. This rigger still hurts unknowing “models”.
To complete this rant… Why? Why? Why do riggers in general and the riggers from the categories mentioned above not see the charm and need of doing bondage without suspension? Why don’t people see the danger? Even if I tell them (when they take workshops from me) they don’t want to see.
Why do I literally see the most in-experienced riggers (M/F) without any usable knowledge of the human body and/or bondage suspend the most in-experienced “models” without any usable knowledge about their own bodies in bondage? It’s an accident waiting to happen and it does happen, in the last two months I’ve had three reports of “models” damaged by an inexperienced rigger. Two of the damages healed within a week, the third looks like a permanent damage.
All damages were done by riggers in the categories I just ranted about… this is a very bad development…
If you feel like I’m addressing you… take steps to improve…
Hello Bob
in fact it reads more and more of these so-called accidents during the bondage.
certainly the one lying on the skill of the performer, to the carelessness between Rigger and model (search Rigger>> pure technology, Model>> the bare attention)
to take the riggers a little load off the shoulders is also the model in question.
not always the damage caused by carelessness of the riggers are caused.
Even the constitution of the models, their muscle tone, and many other factors can produce damage to the nerves, in addition to bondage if not carefully learned and carried out safely
n Switzerland we also provide a higher rate. Nevertheless, we constantly strive to bring safety information provided by us in bondage over again closer to the learner. It does`nt matter whether Rigger or Model
In the future we have to pay even more attention to the model, because it is a good model with a high sensitivity to their body and its signals
This study both riggers, the model ( and the teacher too 😀 )
in 2008 i wrote a Blogentry about a good Ropebunny
hope its OK to post it here too.( sorry only in German, but maybe Google Translate helps you 😀 )
http://dragonrope.com/2008/11/25/a-good-ropebunny-oder-kinbakukinbaku-2/
thanks a lot for your ranting..
kind Regards
Mino
Hear hear! Thank you for sharing your rant, Bob. Well spoken!
You might want to make it clearer though, that we are talking about the people being into ‘japanese _ inspired_ bondage’ and not about the bondage scene in Japan …
On topic I’m completely with you.
Hugs, and to the Dame as well,
A.
Thanks a lot. We have had a similar discussion in the last days with the guys of the “Hamburg Bondage School” and with some other rigger-friends.
And we have no idea, how to stop this.
Rather every week I hear about new nerv damages because of wrong bondage-work.
And I hear some ruomors too, that the fallen hand syndrome happens also to models who are doing floorwork only.
Best,
Matthias
You speak a great truth here. There are a lot of people out there offering to “try their hand” at suspension who have no right to risk the safety of strangers. I, for one, would NEVER sit for someone who hadn’t already put in hundreds of hours of practice learning their craft. I do some rigging myself, NOT SUSPENSION, because I have a great love for the art. I slowly worked my way up into more and more intricate pieces and tried EVERYTHING on myself before I ever risked another body. I poured over thousands and thousands of forum posts and book pages and photo commentary learning about important safety techniques and known hazards before I ever started doing any restrictive ropework. I KNOW I have a lot of practice yet to put in before I’ll even consider doing a full suspension on someone else— and yet, I’ve had dozens of willing “models” begging me to do just that, with no prior knowledge of my skills or experience. It’s scary, the foolish things that people will do…
Its called progress and it’s what happens as more and more people make bondage mainstream.
It’s not too hard to learn a technique, but it much harder to understand a mindset.
Further to be classified an expert in any field takes a long term devotion. In most circles it’s accepted that 10,000 hrs of practice is the baseline of experience where Mastery is achieved. There are far too many riggers out there claiming to be experts and even teaching others with extremely limited knowledge themselves. What they do have is a little more knowledge and experience than those around them, but this is no expert and definitely no Master.