In this class, we’ll explore how to navigate a safe and fulfilling shibari experience, ensuring the well-being and satisfaction of both participants.
Since what happens during a shibari session is deeply influenced by the emotions of those involved, many of the tools we have for managing the experience fall within the realm of emotional regulation.
One of the key things to understand about emotions is that we can’t just turn them on or off at will.
While we know our brain generates emotions, that doesn’t mean we have direct control over them.
For example, if you try to make yourself feel sad right now, you’ll quickly realize it’s not something you can do automatically.
You might think about past events that made you feel that way, listen to certain songs, or look at images that evoke sadness, but you can’t force the emotion itself.
That’s not creating an emotion—it’s managing it.
Similarly, if you try to stop feeling an emotion, you won’t be able to do that either.
The emotions we feel at any given moment depend on our internal state, our external environment, and the experiences we’ve accumulated over our lives.
When it comes to desire, we can’t force ourselves to stop being attracted to something. Likewise, we can’t force ourselves to feel attracted to something that doesn’t appeal to us, no matter how much we might want to.
We can learn to eroticize certain things to broaden our erotic repertoire, but this process has its limits.
Emotions, thoughts, and behavioral tendencies are all interconnected.
This means that when an emotional pattern is activated, it brings with it a set of thoughts and behavioral tendencies. This is what’s known as a “procedural schema.”
Every emotion comes with these schemas, which guide how we act based on the context—both internal and external—in which the emotion arises.
Depending on the outcomes we experience, we create a new emotional moment that’s different from the last, which shapes our overall experience.
These shifts aren’t always noticeable, and we often interpret them as “the same emotion.”
But if you think about different times you’ve felt sad, don’t you notice that not all of them felt exactly the same?
In fact, even within the same situation, you likely experienced variations from the moment the sadness started until it faded, even though it all felt like sadness.
Since thoughts and behaviors are things we can control voluntarily, and they influence the next emotional moment, they become part of the tools we can use to manage our emotions.
The term “behavioral tendency” refers to the pattern of behavior that accompanies an emotion, experienced as an urge to act in a certain way, though it doesn’t always lead to a specific action.
Whether we act on it depends on factors like how we weigh the potential outcomes, our ethical and moral compass, our medium- and long-term goals, or the costs associated with taking that action. It’s shaped by what we’ve learned over our lives.
In the case of desire, when it arises, we start seeing our surroundings through an erotic lens.
Our thoughts turn toward things that help maintain or generate new moments of desire, since it’s a pleasurable emotion. Our behavioral tendencies—what we feel like doing—align with the goal of keeping that desire alive.
In a shibari session, we’ll use these tools to work with desire.
Emotional Response
Emotional responses follow a bell curve, with three distinct phases.
First, there’s the build-up phase, where the emotion starts to emerge, and the interplay between thoughts and behavioral tendencies begins. Our tools here are about managing that activation.
Next is the peak, where we pass the point of no return and reach the highest level of activation. Trying to manage the emotion at this stage is pointless. This is where subspace occurs, and it’s easy to see why it’s called an altered state of consciousness. Our perception, thoughts, and desires are completely colored by the emotion, driving us toward things that sustain or intensify it.
In this state, as you can imagine, we’re not fully in control of our cognitive or reasoning abilities, and making decisions at the peak is a bad idea because we might regret them later.
So, what can we do? Enjoy it without exposing ourselves to unnecessary risks.
Finally, there’s the come-down phase, where we gradually return to ourselves, and our thoughts and desires are no longer dominated by the emotion.
This is the phase where we process what happened earlier and where we’ll engage in what’s known as “aftercare.”
As we see it, aftercare isn’t just about cuddles and affection—it’s also about using tools to help us process what occurred in the earlier phases.
This applies to both the person tying and the person being tied.
Communication is essential here, and we need to make sure we’ve come down enough to engage in more complex reflections on the experience.
It’s common for each person to come down at their own pace, so revisiting the conversation the next day can be helpful.
Desire follows a similar pattern, and understanding it is key to using it to our advantage during a shibari session in a way that’s satisfying for both people.
When we talk about satisfaction, we’re referring to what happens at the end of the curve.
With this in mind, we can see that eroticism is an area where we have some room to maneuver—we can make adjustments that lead to a more fulfilling sexuality.
Specifically, what we can do is cultivate it by exploring new practices, interactions, fantasies, and so on, that activate our desire. However, we can’t fundamentally change it—we can’t reprogram our desire to turn it on or off at will, making things that turn us on stop doing so, or vice versa, no matter how hard we try.
The tools we have, then, are those that help us discover, understand, and accept ourselves.