Tokyo, 2025 April 21st
Students often ask me: “What does it take to become good at Shibari?” And as vague as this question may be, there’s this common saying:
“Shibari is not about technique, but about connection with your partner.”
It’s a nice line, and it holds some truth for experienced practitioners. But for beginners, it can be misleading for two reasons. The first is that this saying tends to draw their attention away from safety, which is deeply rooted in refined technique. The second lies in a contradiction about how connection is actually built during a session. A good connection requires a technical foundation solid enough to reduce the attention given to the ropes and increase the attention given to the partner. When a tie is mastered, your focus can shift from the rope to the person in front of you. This ability to stay present and responsive is where shibari becomes meaningful.
To start with, it’s important to understand that, like all arts, Shibari is built on two essential types of skills: hard skills and soft skills.
Hard skills include rope technique, learning patterns, understanding the mechanics of suspension, anatomical knowledge, friction, and tension control. These are teachable, logical, and tend to improve steadily with time and focused practice. Refining hard skills is an ongoing process that takes time, but they can be taught directly during lessons, demonstrations, and workshops. I’ve added a short list of tips at the end of this article to help you sharpen your hard skills.
Soft skills, on the other hand, involve observation and communication with your partner, emotional awareness, and ethical judgment. These are more difficult to teach, as they’re shaped by personality, life experience, and individual culture. Empathy, patience, goodwill, kindness, and genuine care for your partner’s experience cannot be taught directly. These notions are obvious to some people, but can feel abstract to others. However, it is possible to cultivate them through active listening and introspection. I’ve also included a small list of tips to support the development of soft skills.
Both hard and soft skills are equally important, and overlooking either one usually leads to poor or unsafe experiences. With time and experience, I came to realize that the hard and soft skills of Shibari work together: mastering technique creates space to focus on your partner. That attention reveals subtle cues and opportunities to adjust, explore, or deepen the experience which then feeds back into improving your technique.
A spiral sets in motion, revealing that opposing technique and connection is a false dilemma.
I think all experienced practitioners feel this loop, and also its trap. It’s easy to rely too much on technical precision and forget the human being in front of you. Or to focus on connection and neglect safety or structure. Personally, I try to bring both together. I feel this is where I evolve and grow. Even now, after years of tying, I still circle between refining my technique and expanding my awareness. They feed each other. It’s a spiral of growth where I try to stay and I don’t think it ever really stops.
So, to answer the question “How do I become good at Shibari?” I would tell beginners: practice, practice, practice! until the mechanics of tying become automatic, and your attention can shift to the person in your ropes.
That’s the only way the saying “Shibari is not about technique, it is about connection” can really become true for you.
Louis Kordexe
TIPS
I made these lists to illustrate the discussion. These tips are based on my own experience and are not meant to be universal.
Developing Shibari Hard Skills
- Practice a tie until it’s memorized and can be done without thinking.
- Time yourself when tying. Doing time attacks pushes efficiency and precision. Later, tying slowly will feel easier and more fluid. It will make you feel on autopilot and allow for more presence with your partner.
- Use visualization: close your eyes and rehearse the tie in your mind during spare moments (on public transport, while waiting in line, etc.). Mentally create variations of your ties.
- Film yourself tying (with your partner’s consent) to analyze rope flow and your partner’s reactions.
- Study anatomy and locate key nerve points on your own body. Touching or gently pinching them helps you understand how nerve discomfort feels.
- Get tied by other rope practitioners to feel firsthand what your ropes are doing to your partner’s body.
Developing Shibari Soft Skills
- Study kinesics to better read your partner’s state before, during, and after the session.
- Refine your small talk skills to help build comfort. Informal exchanges build trust, ease the atmosphere, and offer subtle clues about your partner’s physical state, apprehensions, or expectations without turning it into an interrogation.
- Observe closely: body language, changes in breath, vocal tone, limb color, hand temperature, facial expressions, sweat, etc. These offer valuable cues about what’s happening with your partner.
- Pay attention to your partner’s responses during the scene. Even silence is a message. A neck leaning into the rope may suggest pleasure; tense shoulders may suggest discomfort.
- Give yourself small “missions” before tying, like: “I want my partner to relax enough to close their eyes or lean into me.” Afterward, reflect on how easy or hard that was to achieve, and what seemed to trigger it.
- Debrief with honesty. Ask what felt good, what didn’t, and what could be improved.
- Reflect on your own perceptions. What you felt during the tie is probably not far from what your partner experienced.
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