Exposure And Closure

In this shibari course, Lief and Icky explore vulnerability through both exposure and closure in rope. They offer lectures, structured exercises, and demonstrations of these concepts to help you understand how to bring intensity and intimacy to your own rope scenes.

Playing with vulnerability is a powerful tool for heightening emotion in ropes. As Lief and Icky explain, this series of classes is all about exploring the ins and outs of physical and psychological exposure in rope. The course is designed to offer an intentional framework for navigating this exciting – and often challenging – type of play, beginning with a lecture focused on defining vulnerability and accessible ways to get there in ropes, incrementally building up to more demanding scenes.

Following the lecture, Lief and Icky demonstrate three exercises that use the principles of exposure and closure to start building up your vulnerability-centered scenes: a ‘Naughty, Nice & Needs’ exercise that offers a practical and fun way of discussing desires; an ‘Ugly Vs. Pretty Rope’ demo that expands on what both ‘naughty’ and ‘nice’ could look like; and a ‘Closure’ exercise focused on untying and ‘putting the person in ropes together after we’ve taken them apart’.

Finally, in the Floor Demo, Lief and Icky put all these elements together for a beautifully connective rope scene that balances demand and reward, surrender and trust, and plays with the full and potent spectrum between exposure and closure.

For some fun-but-effective ties to inspire you to start exploring exposure and closure in your own practice, check out Fred Hatt’s Mini Arm Ties.

* Captions available for this series: English