Until the World Explodes: How does Rope Meditation feel? (part I)

I met Sara a few months ago.

She was burning with curiosity. An inquiry of both mind and body, that continued through the session and also beyond.

I often ask my guests to share their impressions, and sometimes they are happy to write about the experience. But Sara also had many questions. Over the following weeks after the session we began writing to each other in a shared Google doc. We became pen pals. It turns out writing letters and tying share this quality of allowing you to meet someone in a strangely deep way.

This is the first part of that conversation. We talk about how we each discovered rope, and about the memories of that day, some of which have already faded from our conscious minds, while others seem to remain somewhere else.

Pablo: What made you curious about Shibari in the first place?

Sara: I’m pretty sure the first time I ever saw Shibari was around 2016 when I was living in Taiwan and someone told me about Japanese Photographer Daidō Moriyama and his work. I hadn’t really had much of an opportunity to explore it further, though, until we met.

Something that confuses me about Shibari is that it feels like it’s both sexual and not sexual. It’s erotic, but also artistic.

But you’d mentioned that you don’t enjoy BDSM. I’m curious about how you started with Shibari. Who introduced you, and how was it presented to you?

Pablo: I discovered Shibari completely by accident. I had just arrived in Japan and I was going through a period of many personal changes.

Someone invited me to a performance that ended up being a workshop. When I first encountered it, I felt exactly the same tension you describe. This was almost ten years ago, when Shibari was much less developed as an artistic practice outside of BDSM. It felt darker and more taboo.

Looking back, I think part of the confusion came from my own relationship with sexuality at the time. I was afraid. I see how easily desire can turn people into objects and leave us isolated from one another. Part of me was hesitant because of that association.

But the experience itself did not feel that way. There was something different about it. What I felt instead was a kind of raw presence between two strangers, almost like absolute care. For a moment the usual distance between people seemed to disappear.

With time I started to realize that there was something more fundamental than sex. It had to do with the possibility of a real encounter with another person, without any agenda, where something new can emerge.

I began to think that what we often call sexual energy might actually be a deeper creative force. It is the same kind of energy that appears when a poem is written, or when you meet someone for the first time and feel inspired, excited, alive. In Shibari you can sometimes access that same energy without sex and without producing anything, even without talking. Nothing material is created, and yet something real comes into existence between two people. It may not be erotic, but it has a quality that eroticism sometimes has.

When we met, were you thinking about this tension before our session? Did you feel nervous or hesitant in any way? And what ultimately made you decide it was something you wanted to experience?

Sara: Yes, of course I was thinking about all that. But at the same time, I think one of the things that made me so interested in meeting you, and so willing to trust you, was that I saw that you were doing something different. I can’t say I was super nervous, honestly... I actually told my mom recently about the whole experience, and she and I both agreed I’ve done stupider things while traveling.

You just came into my life so naturally. I’d arrived in Japan for work and had less than three days total to spend in Tokyo when I came across your Instagram and saw you offered private sessions. I looked around on your website, and I saw how you wrote about what you’re doing. I had just started reading The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav on the plane ride over, so when I saw your background in physics, philosophy, and machine learning, I immediately knew I had to send you a message.

The longer backstory is that I’d also just experienced two confusing rejections – one personal, one professional, one right after the other, and I was doubting myself and my intuitions a lot. Right before I left for the trip I had actually met someone who had offered to practice Shibari with me, but it never ended up happening. Maybe because I still don’t know much about Shibari, I’d understood the offer as inherently erotic and implicitly sexual, so I was super caught off guard when he later told me he wasn’t interested because he was saving his energy for a monogamous relationship.

I’m very openly poly, and I consider it a core value of mine. I respect that everyone knows what’s best for themselves, but I’ve never really understood monogamy. I feel very strongly that we are each “in a relationship” with literally everyone and everything else in our lives, and we seem to be healthier and happier as humans when we can fully acknowledge and honor that – and each other – with honesty and respect.

So yes, the sexuality piece was totally there for me.

Perhaps more significantly, though, I’ve been moving into this new phase of my life in the past year where I’ve been learning so much about my body, and finally healing a lot of chronic pain that’s troubled me for nearly two decades. I’d been making all these other more heady connections as part of that process, and I was slowly realizing that what I was feeling was a kind of spirituality.

It was all really unfamiliar feeling… very jarring and confusing, even isolating. I’ve considered myself a “devout agnostic” since I was a kid, but I’ve spent most of my adult life going through these awful anxiety-depression cycles just trying to make things make sense, or at the very least, how to let things go…

That kind of stuff is always somewhere on my mind, honestly.

All that’s to say, when I reached out to you, I knew you were offering something I really wanted to experience. And from your very first response, everything about interacting with you has been comfortable, natural, welcoming, and peaceful. Walking up to your studio that morning, I wasn’t nervous – I was really excited. I knew I wanted to arrive with an open mind, so that’s what I did.

Now that we’ve met, I’m really curious how your one-on-one sessions integrate into the rest of your life. I know you have a wife and daughter, and you perform often with your wife. It seems like you’re also constantly interacting with strangers and travelers like myself. At some point I realized that all my memories of our session are from a single, special afternoon on the other side of the world, but you get to do this all the time!

I’m wondering what it’s like to do what you do so frequently and with so many different kinds of people. Do you have a community in Tokyo with whom you regularly practice, for example? What does your day or week look like in the time leading up to a session like the one we had? Are there any rituals or practices that you always do to prepare?

Pablo: That’s a very interesting question. I do not really experience a clear separation between my work and my life. Everything is intertwined: my friendships, my art, my practice. In that sense, the one-on-one sessions are not something outside my life. They are deeply part of it.

What I love most is working with many different people. Everyone is unique, and each person brings something new into the space. I am constantly learning. There is also a group of people I practice with regularly, but in some sense the session itself does not change that much. When we enter the space of the ropes we return to being strangers. It’s like a parenthesis where the ordinary world, and even your usual self, almost disappears.

Then there are the artists I collaborate with, including my wife. With them, I also practice often, but the intention is very different. We are making something together: an image, a performance, a world. In those moments we are exploring a shared vision. It is less inward, more forward.

Before a session I need to prepare well. I try to sleep enough, rest, and eat something light but sustaining. I like to clean the studio while thinking about the person who is coming. I prepare the incense, adjust the small details, sometimes place a new object there, like a horse talisman I bought for the Year of the Horse. I also choose the sweets. I visit a few shops I like, and see what is seasonal. That has become one of the things I enjoy most about the work.

After the session, I do not have a specific ritual. I am just very tired, very hungry, and ready for a bath. I do not do many sessions each week. That has actually been one of my challenges. I would like to practice more often, not only because I love this work, but because I want to share it with more people. At the same time, I think three or four sessions per week is probably my limit. Beyond that, I start to become too busy, and I do not think I can offer each person the quality of presence they deserve.

I want to ask you also, since it’s already been a few weeks since the session. Today, what do you remember most vividly? Was there a moment when something shifted? In your body, your emotions, or physical sensations?

Sara: I remember your hands and your breath. I remember you started with “I hope you enjoy” and you ended with “thank you”. I remember the taste of sulphur in that single crystal of salt you gave me before we began. I remember being in awe of how you seemed to know exactly where to go and what to do without my ever having to say a word…

I think as far as my perception of time goes, you made an impact from before we even met in person. I told you over messages – I’m always rushing. I don’t want to, but it happens a lot, and it’s stressful. You kept slowing me down, reminding me that there is never a need to rush.

I had started our session very intentional about receiving. I wanted as much as possible to let go of any impulse to act or influence or control the experience. The irony, of course, is that those desires are in themselves an attempt to control. There was a point towards the end where I let those go too, and we felt really in flow together. I remember our fingers dancing and bodies swaying, and it all felt very intuitive and intimate and comfortable and close, even though we’d hardly even met in any conventional sense.

I remember in the last couple hours, I kept getting distracted by the thought of our time coming to an end. I felt a deep longing to stay in that space forever and a frustration with myself for being so prone to distraction and averse to reality. That’s kind of how that trip to Japan was for me in general – I felt genuinely suspended in space and time while I was there. It was so surreal.

So when I was with you that afternoon, I remember repeating to myself, over and over,

“I won’t go… I’ll stay here. … All that hurt in the world… There’s too much hurt… I don’t want anyone to have to feel that hurt… I’d rather the world explode… I just want the world to explode…”

“I’ll stay here until the world explodes…”

But what about you? What do you remember most about our session?

More generally, I’m wondering if you could reflect a bit more on those aspects of your work and art that remain consistent, regardless of who is being tied, and those that are dependent on the person. You say preparing for a performance is different from regular practice, for example. But you also say that you “become strangers” with anyone you practice with. “Everyone is unique,” but also “the session itself does not change that much.”

How much of a meditative rope session would you say comes from you and your actions or state of mind, and what role or roles do you expect the person being tied to play? Is the experience inherently dyadic – do you even have to have another (one and only one other) person involved? What would you say constitutes the bare minimum of a rope session, anyway?

Pablo: To be completely honest I don’t remember much about the session itself.

There are a few reasons for that. I have very little visual memory. I don’t really have internal images, so details tend to fade very fast. What I do remember vividly is the conversation we had before we started. I remember thinking your mind was very fast. I thought we are similar in the way we look for connections. I was curious about your perspective of the practice given your background on language and machine intelligence. And I remember the personal story you shared. It left a deep impression that I can still recall today.

Once the session begins, honestly I think my head goes somewhere else. This expression is funny. Actually I don’t think the head goes somewhere else but the opposite. I think I am so focused on what is happening that somehow I am not registering the process. Does this or that happen? I think it gets all mixed and somehow diluted. The process does not form a narrative in my mind. It dissolves as it comes.

I do remember now that you were deep into the experience. More precisely, I don’t remember anything in particular that was challenging for you. I also remember that I had to put an end to the session, meaning that you could have kept going for longer. Which makes sense now reading what you wrote. This is actually not that common for people who come for the first time. Most often I can see the energy going down and it feels right to stop.

This connects to your question about what remains consistent and what depends on the person.

The structure of the session does not change that much. The pacing, the way I approach contact, the attention to breath, tension, and rhythm. These are stable. But the experience itself changes completely depending on the person. Their sensitivity, their expectations, their ability to let go, their inner landscape. Each session becomes a different world. Maybe what happens is the same, but the texture is completely different.

In that sense, I don’t think I have any expectations for the person with me. I see myself as a facilitator of their own experience. I know this is just a posture, I mean, an attitude. I decided to adopt this role. It gives me a frame to see myself in the session, to understand what I do, and also a roadmap to improve.

I don’t have expectations about what should happen. I have seen sessions become moments of transformation, deep relaxation, or sometimes very little at all. Not everyone resonates with it. I don’t fully know why. It could be something I need to learn, or simply that the practice does not align with that person at that moment.

But I don’t have the expectation of the session becoming one way or another. Some people seem to enter very deeply and smoothly into it, and some people less so. In this case, the session is shorter and I still think the person has learned something, maybe just that this is not a path for them. I think of it like the scientific method. No result is also a result. What matters is how you frame it and integrate it into your life.

Regarding whether the experience is inherently dyadic, I think the presence of another person is essential. There is a relational aspect.

I also work with couples and here the work becomes more transparent. The session is no longer only about the individual with me, but about the relationship between them. My role as a bridge is more obvious.

We are not isolated. Our identities are built in relation with others. We are who we are with someone. Which means we are fluid. Our identities crystalize through patterns, on behaviors, and sometimes we are stuck and forget that we can change. In the session, there is a chance to step outside of those patterns and meet again as strangers. As a married person myself I think this can be very valuable.

This doesn’t mean you cannot tie yourself. I know some people do self-ties, but for me it is a different practice. A few years ago I had a back injury and since then I have been practicing yoga regularly. I love it. You come to your body and break through your mental limitations, you can meet yourself deeply and feel in communion with the world. But the sense of care is not there. There is connection, but it is not with another person. I think self-tying is very similar. It is like scratching your head or having someone else scratch it, if that makes sense. You can soothe the itch, but the feeling is different.

I guess both cases (and yoga as well) have this non-dualism aspect. Did you feel like this as well? Or did it feel like your body was leading the experience, or your mind?

Sara: It’s funny, I was really focused on following, as opposed to leading, so I’m not sure I could tell you. Part of the intuitive appeal of Shibari, at least for me, is specifically the ability to experience this kind of freedom from decision making and action taking – the kind that only total vulnerability allows for. There were times that I felt compelled to take back control, especially when I couldn’t sense where you were taking me, or when I wasn’t sure if I’d accidentally crossed a boundary, for example, by allowing my hands to fall somewhere on your body or my mouth to be held open. In those moments I would remind myself to just relax, trust, and receive.

That said, it’s interesting to think about who, or what, was leading the experience. I’m pretty sure the first thing I asked as our session came to a close was, “What guides you?”

I remember your answer at the time: “I don’t know.”

Do you mind if I ask this again? Has your answer changed at all? …What guides you? What is it that you’re tuning into, listening to, or following when you tie, in concrete terms?

Pablo: I still don’t know!

I think it is precisely this curiosity that drives my whole practice. I want to understand what is happening in another person’s mind and body. It may sound strange, but I am often the first person surprised when something works. Very early in my practice, before I had ever studied anatomy, I sometimes felt I could sense what the other person needed or wanted me to do. People often describe this kind of thing in terms of energy and give it a particular explanation. Because my background is in hard science, I was very skeptical. But at the same time I could not ignore the strange experiences I was having. Even now, I do not feel fully satisfied with my own explanation. Part of what keeps me going is the desire to continue studying, researching, and staying close to that question.

At the same time, when I practice, there is also a strong sense of alignment. I have had many interests in my life: poetry, painting, meditation, sports, philosophy. Somehow, all of them feel like fragments of a whole that, for me, come together in Shibari. When I am with someone in a session, I feel connected to all of those streams at once, as if they suddenly form a coherent language.

I realize this answer may still feel unsatisfying, especially if what you are really asking is what I am following in concrete terms during the session itself. And honestly, I still do not fully know. I have some intuitions. I think that when we are relaxed and focused, we become more perceptive. I think that when we move beneath our usual narrative and identity, we can access a more primal kind of language. A session feels like a dialogue in that language.

And I do mean dialogue. Language can be used in many ways. It can explain, persuade, conceal, reveal. In the studio, what I feel I am doing is asking questions. Through rope, through rhythm, through attention, I am trying to meet the other person at that level and listen, learn something about who they are there.

The conversation continues into memory, trust, integration, contact… and moves into philosophy, why we make art, what does it mean to feel embodied, and how to live a life of purpose and balance.

Thank you as always for your attentive reading.

Pablo Aida

If you would like to go with me on this strange journey, considering subscribing to Rope Meditations

I would love to see you becoming part of the conversation with me and Sara. Please, share your thoughts and let the connection extend.