Pain and Pleasure

For some people, pain and pleasure are equals. Physiologically, endorphins and adrenaline are chemicals that make people feel good.

Pain and Pleasure: Freud

Sigmund Freud developed the pain pleasure principle, which suggests that people make choices to avoid or decrease pain. In contrast, people can make choices that create or increase pleasure. This principle explains that, in the search of pleasure, people will simultaneously try to avoid pain. This, explained through the concept the libido, brings pleasure after experiencing some pain. The overall experience might include fantasies, feeling, suffering, guilt, humiliation, failure and behaviors characterized by pain.

Here’s Where Shibari Comes In

Shibari or kinbaku is a practice related to BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism). It relates to the pain pleasure principle. The ways you practice shibari or rope bondage depend on how the participants choose to imagine themselves. Similarly, they involve how you implement the bondage towards the other.

Many of those who want to be tied have a natural eagerness to submit. This means giving control to someone else. In opposition, there are also people who enjoy playing the roles of both dominant and submissive. Even more so, complementarily, some partners randomly assign each one of the two roles.

Shibari: Pain and Pleasure

Although kinbaku was first a practice to bind prisoners in Japan, people use modern kinbaku for pleasure. Shibari is something very sexy, but within this sensuality, torture sometimes enters the scene. For example, some rope bottoms (or people who are submissive) like spanks, whips, and electrocution while tied.

Shibari and BDSM, in general, involve extensive negotiation and aftercare, which is based on communication between the bottoms and the riggers before, during, and after the practice. Riggers usually massage and embrace bottoms after practice, especially if it was painful in some way. Rope bondage may look dangerous, but when you practice it correctly it is totally harmless and very much rewarding.