In the foreword to my book, Joseph Kramer wrote “we all are rope bottoms”. I fully understood his meaning only later. We all are learning to feel. As a society, we have a task of redefining the value of the experience, of life itself, really, from the “success/failure” framework to the value of living the experience itself, from something that appears to something that is experienced from within, at the moment.
I come from a very conservative upbringing, where there were a lot of rules about how things should be done. It was not till my thirties that I recognized that life is not something lived by internalized rules, but the feelings. For some, it happens even later: only after a painful divorce, or burnout at the height of a “successful” career, we start realizing that something is systematically wrong.
Coming back to the rope bottoming, I always saw it as a practice of coming back to the body, re-learning to feel, to be present, to attend to the intimate moment with our beloved ones. A lot of it is about learning to ask questions, not memorizing the answers.
Questions like “How do I feel at the moment?” “Do I feel safe with this person?” “What am I looking for?” and so on.
It never became boring for me, not even after a decade (wow, it’s more than 13 years now), not even with the same partner, tying about the same stuff… I find it quite fascinating how deep it goes and how much truth it can reveal, in a few simple movements…
I wish you all beautiful rope bottoms out there another exciting year of practicing what you love, discovering the endless depth and intimacy with your partners, practicing safety, practicing taking healthy risks, practicing feeling pleasure and aliveness in your bodies <3
*Picture thanks to Scot Kinbaku from out Showa workshop in Kinbaku Lounge, Copenhagen, in 2024.