The knots that relieved my tension
It’s just a hank of rope, lifeless, lying on the floor next to me, but when I pick it up and hold it tightly in the palm of my hand in front of my eyes, the rope awakens and comes to life. It turns into the access key to all my feelings, the dictionary for a language that I forgot to speak, that long awaited return ticket home, to my body.
When I discovered solo rope play and started self-tying, I had no clue the type of journey I was about to embark on.
In the UK, we were slowly coming out of the second lockdown in Spring 2021. Being in isolation while single parenting and simultaneously going through a break up was the straw that broke the camel’s back for my nervous system. I was running on autopilot, performing daily tasks like a robot to ensure that my life show would go on with no interruptions. Everything looked ‘normal’ from the surface but in reality I was totally disengaged from myself and the world around me. How can one feel so numb and so chronically tense at the same time? The words ‘tension knots’ had a totally different meaning back then.
I thought I was doing everything right, trying countless self care routines, reading up all about the latest best-selling self help book, scheduling regular talk therapy sessions etc, but I was still completely desensitized, running on survival mode. I don’t even know how long I had been disconnected for; you can never pinpoint the exact moment when that happens, when your mind decides that it is all too much to bear, so it shuts down all your senses to protect you from feeling it all and break down. But god knows I wanted to feel all the feels.
I so desperately wanted my body back even though it meant carrying all that chronic tension. As a student of Somatic practices, now I know that it was exactly what was meant to happen; my resources were running so low that my mind was wisely trying to save as much energy as possible while allowing me to do multiple tasks at once. In the long run however, living this way was stripping me from being human. I could stand the pressure of juggling work meetings, home schooling, household chores and all other the general day to day tasks without apparently breaking a sweat and yet, I had forgotten how to be present in all of it. Life was a big blur. My perceived control over everything was just a lie I was living in: deep inside of me the only thing I wanted was to collapse under all that structure. It was at the edge of that collapse that I discovered rope play. It entered my life quietly, gently stirring up my curiosity again, providing the scaffolding that I needed to feel soft again, the harness that could hold everything I could no longer hold myself.
The first time I grabbed a rope in my hand my body remembered, immediately, intuitively. I always loved tying, I used to make dolls dresses tying my mum’s old tights in different patterns and I wrapped and wore my babies in slings for years.
I was finally moved again, a yearn I haven’t felt in so long. I wanted to experience and explore the feelings that I was watching in rope related videos for myself.
I had to learn more, so I dived straight into rope studies and started looking for local dedicated spaces. I loved meeting and talking to seasoned practitioners and making friends with other likeminded rope people. I barely knew what I was doing the first time I laid rope on my skin, my ties looked very chaotic and the wraps were definitely full of slack. Nonetheless, the results of tying and the depth of what I was feeling was there from the very first knot. I was present inside my body again, fully witnessing the long awaited process of reconnection. I could feel the tension that had been with me for years finally melting away with each loop. The way rope would slide between my fingers or coil around my ankle activated emotions that finally awoke my physical awareness. Little did I know that while I was getting lost in the patterns of different harnesses I was at the same time rewiring my nervous system.
Practicing self-tying meant I could pause and offer care and tenderness to my hardworking body and it didn’t take long for it to become an integrated part of my life. As I got better at it over time, I started uncovering deeper layers of understanding the relationship between me, my body and its anatomy. Self-tying helps me to sharpen my somatic consciousness everyday.
Now, I know that the way that a specific body part reacts to different knots and harnesses might signal that something needs to be expressed. Does my body feel stiff, or activated, when I wrap rope around it? Have I had a particularly stressful week? I find chest harnesses to be beautiful for example but they are not very easy for me to wear for a long time. However, tying a simple chest harness is a great way to self-regulate when I catch myself struggling to breathe deeply if I am feeling particularly anxious. The feeling of rope on my chest allows me to focus on the micro movements of inhaling and exhaling which helps bring my breath back to a more balanced state.
On a different day, my body might feel soft and ready to receive. I might feel playful even, so I might create a whole ritual and put on a special outfit before I start tying myself.
I love self-tying because it is adaptable, dynamic and caters to my body’s everyday changing needs. Each knot has its own narrative and the story that unfolds always leads to a beautiful experience of embodiment.
Self-tying offers an emotional space where I can be intimate with myself, a new way to experience pleasure and restoration, to sit vulnerably inside my body without judging it. It is a grounding practice that makes me feel whole and present. It gives me permission to be the messy human I am, because no one cares if my knots look perfect or not, there is no performance, no one to pay attention to. Just my undivided devotion to the body I reside in, and it whispering its wisdom back to me.
