I keep hearing this question so many times from everyone! Finally I sat down and wrote an answer. I elaborated on it in my first live stream in 2020, so those who watched it know the fun part ;)

‍So… I was a weird kid, who wanted to get into the darkest darkness (porn magazines were the darkest darkness for me... I had no internet that time). I saw ropes in some of them, was impressed, but forgot about it.

It got back to me only when I got to the university. I majored in Japanology, and I had an amazing Japanese history teacher, who once told us about Japan-Korea war. I happened to be the only student present at the lecture, because our group was 5 people and 4 of them were sick. So, I had all the freedom to ask as many questions as I wanted. In one of the pictures prisoners on the ship were tied up elaborately. It reminded me of something and I asked my professor about the meaning of it. Professor was pretty surprised and happy with my question, really elaborated on the history of those knots and later sent me a lot of research materials on erotic life in Edo and about modern shibari art.

‍First, I was just digging into it and reading more and more, but then I decided to try tying hojoujutsu (martial art of rope), because I had a tutorial in one of the Japanese books. I got jute rope, asked my best friend to let me do whatever and this is how my practice started! I loved the feeling of connecting in a new way with my friend, creating shapes with rope, being responsible for another person’s experience. It was hard at first to get the ties nice and clean, also very hard to find models, but thankfully to my friends japanologists I had enough people to practice with!

‍I was not very serious about it at first, it was just a hobby. It changed when I saw works of Araki Nobuyoshi, a Japanese photographer, who made shibari known in the western world. His work triggered very different emotions in me. I had a lot of questions. I thought of shibari photos that show more pleasure, less pain. I thought that with shibari I could express what I feel about shibari strongly.

Then I found more artists working with ropes. I loved their work, they inspired me to start creating pictures that nobody was doing yet - with happy tied up women. When I practiced on my friends they were feeling joy, excitement, a lot of positive sensations in their bodies. Nobody looked exhausted after sessions. I wanted to show the world where a kinbaku experience can be delightful and doesn’t have to be considered as a BDSM thing. It can be a story, art of tying a person to a situation, in which they feel safe and happy.

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My real shibari journey began in Japan, where I had an opportunity to create with new friends with absolutely beautiful stories and sceneries. I tried doing a shoot every month, following the changes of Japanese seasons. I lived in a dormitory with a lot of creative and open-minded people from all over the world and many of them became my models. On the photo below you see the very first shibari photoshoot done in Japan. Happened in a girl's bathroom, called ofuro. Then some other people saw my photos and asked if they can try shibari with me. This was the very beginning =)

When I started IG, I discovered that some artists are already doing amazing things with rope, that are far from BDSM. It makes me very happy that there are so many applications of rope and so much creativity in the world!

Thank you for reading this super long post, I hope I answered the main question in detail.

With love,

Anastasia

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