Do you fantasize about being a rigger? Have you already started to explore bondage rigging?
Rope is a classic tool for bondage and discipline in BDSM and fetish life. Rope bondage rigging is a BDSM art that requires skill and patience and has the reward of pleasure and beauty.
What Is a Rigger in BDSM?
If you are turned on by the idea of tying someone up with rope, you may be a BDSM rigger.
The rigger is usually a dominant who enjoys using bondage to subdue or control their lover. A rigger may be any gender or orientation, who is turned on by practicing BDSM. The rigger has a specific interest in tying their partner with a rope, and in learning or using rope arts in bondage play.
If you’re fantasy is to be tied up, you are sometimes called a rope bottom, a rope bunny, a rope model, or the sub.
Read: What Is a Rope Bunny and How Can You Meet One?
Ropes are an ancient, practical way of restraining and securing people and objects. While today’s BDSM dungeons have a playground of stainless steel cages, wrist cuffs, leather ankle restraints, latex vacuum beds, and much more, rope remains essential.
Rigging is considered one of the most artistic forms of BDSM, bringing skill and art, beauty, sensuality, surrender, trust, and intimacy into the practice of bondage.
Read: Bondage for Beginners: How to Get Started
BDSM Play Enjoyed By Riggers
Shibari Rope Bondage
Shibari refers to the art of rope and knot bondage used for centuries in Japan to restrain and torture prisoners of war and criminals. It involves an intricate, skilled system of the rigger performing lacing and tying knots. In recent years, fetish cultures adopted the art and the word for erotic bondage.
In shibari, the aesthetics of rope bondage are extremely important.
Shibari is widely used in erotic and artistic photography. The rope arts in this style are incredibly beautiful and that beauty is as strong an attraction as the BDSM bondage aspect. Many people learn the art of shibari for decorative and aesthetic sensual purposes alone.
Read: Japanese Bondage: Learn Shibari Rope Bondage
Shibari arts involve a rigger’s commitment to learning complex, intricate patterns of tying. However, the person being tied must also learn a unique dance of unusual positions and develop strength and flexibility for advanced shibari patterns and positions.
Suspension Bondage
Suspension bondage is often described as the ultimate in liberation while bound. Being suspended in the air from points of bondage is like floating.
This most beautiful experience is created by the BDSM rigger who carefully balances bondage ties to safely distribute weight. The rigger makes certain that rope tightness will not cut off circulation or cause nerve damage. This practice can be very dangerous with permanent nerve damage possible in just minutes, as well as blood clots.
The rigger will be committed to fully learning the art of safe suspending, and the rope bottom will be committed to fully communicating tingles, pins and needles, or feelings of restrictions.
Read: Suspension Bondage for Advanced BDSM
Self-Rigging
Solo BDSM play or self rigging is an interesting practice. A rigger can perform rope bondage on oneself just as many other kinks can fuel masturbation or solo erotic pleasure sessions. But self rigging means the rigger is also the submissive, so this practice runs deeper in psychological territory versus simply jerking off.
Read: Self Bondage Ideas for Kinky Solo Play
Self rigging can be very dangerous, obviously, so have an escape plan such as a lover set to come home and untie you if you don’t answer your phone. Self-rigging can also choose to focus on sensuality rather intensity, using looser, simpler bonds and enjoying the experience rather than the extremes.
10 Tips for New BDSM Riggers
1. Learn BDSM Rigging from a Professional
It’s really important to learn the ropes from an experienced pro. You can confidently practice tying patterns, and learn more about anatomy and safety, when someone who knows the way is with you all the way.
Read: How to Find a Dominatrix Near You
2. Check Out Rigger Courses Online
Nothing beats in person instruction and experience. However, you can learn a lot and expand your education with some amazing courses online.
Read: BDSM Education: How to Learn BDSM Online
3. Find Your Local Rope Bondage Community
A bondage rigger can learn so much by connecting to a community. Being around like-minded people and sharing your experiences, concerns, questions, ideas, and philosophies is a great way to grow, as well as an obvious way to connect with potential lovers looking for a rigger.
Read: 8 Tips to Find Your Kink Community
4. Invest in Quality Bondage Rope
Riggers quickly discover that different ropes have different properties, such as tooth, texture, and thickness. Skinny ropes cut flesh, smooth ropes don’t always knot securely, rough ropes can rub skin raw.
You’ll want to experiment with different styles and sizes of rope in different materials, from cotton to silk to nylon to hemp.
As a bondage rigger, you may want to use different colors for different lovers or different bondage practices. Every imaginable color is available.
Bondage rope is not particularly expensive. You can spend a lot or you can spend a little, but you won’t break the bank regardless, unlike some kink and fetish paraphernalia that is very pricy. So experiment with many kinds until rigger and rigged have exactly the kind of rope they both love.
Read: Bondage Restraints: 15 Types of Bondage Gear
5. Memorize Foundational Ties First
A new rigger might be eager to administer elaborate ties. But don’t get ahead of yourself. Be patient and learn foundational ties first, such as the single column tie and the double column tie.
Performing simple ties perfectly is the best way to build, and these ties are part of countless other ties as well. Commit to perfection—quality over quantity.
Read: Bondage Positions and Techniques to Try
6. Always Have Safety Shears Handy
Keep a back up plan easily accessible. If a rigger needs to dismantle his or her knots, and something goes wrong, cut quickly to safety.
7. Rope Bondage Requires Practice and Patience
Rigging is an art and it takes commitment, patience, and practice. There’s no hurry. This is a sensual and rewarding journey, but it requires quite a bit from its practitioners.
8. BDSM Rigging Must Always Be Consensual
As with all things kinky, rigging must be consensual. Consent is always key. Don’t try to be a rigger for someone you hope will discover the joys—wait for them to come up with the idea. Don’t try to convince someone who is uncertain that rope bondage is awesome. There are many willing participants. Find them.
Read: How to Find a BDSM Partner
9. Rigging Can Be Sexual or Performative
There are all kinds of rigger events at fetish parties, as well as photography documenting the artwork you create with your rope model. For both the model and the rigger, rope bondage can be sexual or it can be about performing and showing skills.
Read: Why People Like Bondage and Being Tied Up
10. Learn and Understand All the Risks Involved
Don’t minimize the considerable risks of rope bondage. It can be very safe at a surface level and go to astonishing extremes. A rigger doesn’t downplay those risks, but confidently confronts them and learns to control them and be safe.
Read: RACK, PRICK, and Other BDSM Safety Protocols
Are you curious about rigging or already exploring the rigger kink?
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