Meditation about the waist rope
A waist rope is never just a technical rope. It controls the centre of the body, can become the foundation of a suspension and, at the same time, deliberately creates discomfort and vulnerability. In our style of Kinbaku, it is one of the most versatile ropes – and one of the most essential elements of semenawa.
Practice | Research | Session
When we practise Kinbaku, what are we actually doing? I believe we need to distinguish three very different modes: exercise, research and session. Exercise is where we repeat what we know. Research is where we take controlled steps into the unknown. Session is where we let go of both and allow something to happen between two people.
Free space and structures
Move the hips. Lower the shoulders. Add tension to one foot – and suddenly a completely different figure appears. Kinbaku positions are not isolated shapes but points within a much larger space of possibilities, defined by physics, anatomy and aesthetics. Kata helps us learn to navigate this space. The interesting question is what happens when we begin to move beyond it.
How do positions appear in Kinbaku?
What happens if you start tying without knowing where you want to end? Instead of choosing a position and working towards it, I try to stay in suspense: making one decision, then another, allowing the next step to emerge from intention, intuition and inspiration. Like improvising a jazz piece, the rules and techniques remain – but the final form is not yet known.
Three ways to tie a Gote
A Gote begins before the first rope touches the body. Do you take the arms, does your partner offer them, or do you meet somewhere in between? I see three fundamentally different ways to begin: through martial control, through cooperation or through polarity. The resulting Gote may look similar from the outside, but what happens between the two people can be completely different.
Behaviour based safety concept for rope bondage
As a chemist, I spent much of my professional life working with flammable liquids and explosive gases under pressure. It taught me something important about safety: serious accidents rarely begin with one spectacular mistake. They grow from hundreds of small unsafe behaviours that become routine. I believe the same principle applies to rope bondage – and it offers us a very different way of thinking about what it means to tie safely.
Some thoughts about practice
In Aikido we say: Ikkyo a lifelong. You begin with the simplest technique and return to it again and again, knowing you will never truly perfect it. The same is true in Kinbaku. Growth means daring to learn new things while continuously coming back to the basics, practising them, refining them and allowing them to deepen over a lifetime.
The six most serious mistakes beginners in Kinbaku consistently do
Learning Kinbaku is a journey, and beginners often make the same mistakes along the way. From practising too little or wanting too much too fast to getting lost in technique and forgetting the person in the ropes, here are six lessons I wish someone had taught me when I started.