I am available to travel to other cities to present a weekend-long workshop on Yukimura Ryū shibari, focusing on the distinctive concepts, structure, and emotional texture of Yukimura Haruki’s rope.
This intensive is designed for students who want to move beyond simply learning rope patterns and begin exploring rope as communication, invitation, resistance, shame, play, and scene-building.
Classes combine lecture, guided discussion, partner exercises, hands-on instruction, demonstrations, and open-tying time. Students will have opportunities to explore the workshop concepts with coaching, correction, and feedback.
The intensive runs from Friday night through Sunday and can be adapted to suit the needs of the host community.
Intensive Overview
Format: 3-day weekend intensive Friday evening through Sunday afternoon
Structure: Lecture and discussion Conceptual exercises Hands-on tying instruction Partner-based exploration Open tying with feedback Demonstrations and Q&A
Primary focus: Yukimura-style communication, shame, resistance, invitation, and rope play
Recommended experience level: Students should have basic rope handling skills and familiarity with consent, negotiation, and rope safety. The intensive can be adjusted for mixed-level groups, but it is not intended as a complete first rope class.
Friday evening introduces the core principles that will shape the entire weekend. Rather than beginning with “how to tie,” this session asks what Yukimura-style rope is trying to do.
Topics may include:
Yukimura Ryū as a model-centered approach to rope
Rope as communication rather than decoration
The role of 誘い込み / sasoi-komi, or invitation
縄尻 / nawajiri, the rope end as a point of contact and conversation
Shame, embarrassment, resistance, and play as structural elements
The difference between tying rope and tying people
Why simplicity matters in Yukimura-style rope
How small gestures, pauses, and transitions create emotional depth
This class includes lecture, discussion, demonstration, and simple partner exercises. Students will begin exploring how rope can invite response rather than simply impose form.
This can also include an viewing of a Yukimura Haruki video selected from Zetsu’s private collection.
Saturday Workshops
Morning Workshop: Hands-in-Front Ties
Maete Shibari
Generally 9:00 am–12:00 pm
The Saturday morning workshop focuses on hands-in-front ties, one of the most important entry points into Yukimura-style rope.
Hands-in-front ties allow for direct interaction, visibility, resistance, and emotional play. Unlike more restrictive hands-behind ties, maete shibari keeps the model present, expressive, and able to respond with the face, hands, shoulders, posture, and body language.
Students will explore:
Basic Yukimura-style hands-in-front structures
Rope placement, rhythm, and body positioning
Using the hands and arms as expressive elements
Creating invitation and resistance through simple ties
Moving between control and playfulness
Building scenes through small adjustments rather than technical complexity
How hands-in-front ties support shame, teasing, refusal, and negotiation
The class emphasizes tying with attention to the model’s responses. Students will practice reading posture, breath, gaze, and resistance as part of the tie.
The workshop culminates with the kemono shibari, or “beast tie,” a distinctive Yukimura-style hands-in-front tie that brings together the themes of posture, exposure, play, and emotional responsiveness. Students will explore how the kemono tie develops naturally from earlier hands-in-front structures, transforming a simple position into something more expressive, creaturely, and psychologically alive. This final sequence gives students a chance to integrate rope handling, body positioning, invitation, and resistance into a complete Yukimura-style form.
Afternoon Workshop: Hands-Behind Ties
Gote Shibari
Generally 1:00 pm–4:00 pm
The Saturday afternoon workshop introduces Yukimura-style gote shibari, or hands-behind ties.
Rather than treating gote as a purely technical harness, this class explores how hands-behind ties change the emotional and physical relationship between the tying person and the model. The shift from hands-in-front to hands-behind creates new possibilities for vulnerability, containment, resistance, and display.
Students will explore:
Yukimura-style approaches to hands-behind ties
Differences between functional restriction and expressive restraint
Creating structure without overbuilding
Working with posture, balance, and emotional presentation
Maintaining communication when the model’s hands are no longer visible
Transitions from hands-in-front to hands-behind positions
Using gote as part of a larger scene rather than as an isolated pattern
This workshop places special emphasis on pacing, comfort, communication, and adapting the tie to the person being tied.
The workshop culminates with the classic kaikyaku shibari, or open-leg tie, one of the most recognizable forms associated with Yukimura-style rope. Students will explore how a hands-behind structure can develop into a position of display, vulnerability, and emotional intensity. The kaikyaku tie brings together posture, restraint, exposure, and communication, showing how Yukimura-style gote can become not just a technical form, but a complete scene with its own rhythm, tension, and expressive force.
Sunday Workshops
Morning Workshop: Kotobazeme and Open-Leg Shame Ties
Kaikyaku Shibari
Generally 9:00 am–1:00 pm
Sunday morning turns toward one of the most distinctive aspects of Yukimura-style rope: the relationship between rope, language, embarrassment, and emotional exposure.
This workshop introduces kotobazeme, or verbal teasing/scolding, as a technique that interacts with rope rather than merely accompanying it. Students will examine how words, silence, timing, and tone can deepen a scene when used with care and skill.
The class also explores kaikyaku shibari, or open-leg ties, with attention to shame, posture, vulnerability, and presentation.
Topics include:
Kotobazeme as technique, not chatter
How language can invite, challenge, or frame resistance
Using teasing, embarrassment, and shame responsibly
Negotiating emotional intensity before tying
Reading the difference between playful resistance and distress
Open-leg ties as structures of display and vulnerability
Shame as interaction rather than humiliation imposed from outside
Building trust while working with emotionally charged material
This class includes discussion, demonstrations, structured exercises, and tying practice. The emphasis is on subtlety, consent, and emotional precision.
Afternoon Workshop: Yukimura-Style Predicament Ties
Renketsu Shibari
Generally 2:00 pm–6:00 pm
The final workshop focuses on renketsu shibari, or connected/predicament-style ties in the Yukimura tradition.
This is a class on crotch ropes/ties and neck rope (Matanawa, 股縄, Kubi Nawa, 首縄). One common technique in Yukimura’s style of shibari involves the concept of connection or linking (Renketsu, 連結) different parts of the body together to emphasize eroticism and control. For this class we will explore six different ties that show various methods for linking and connecting part of the body together. Students must be comfortable with crotch ties (e.g. having rope between the legs), neck rope, and engaging with erotic elements of shibari.
These ties create situations where the model’s own movement, resistance, and choices become part of the scene. Rather than simply immobilizing the body, predicament ties invite participation. The model may be asked to hold a position, resist a pull, negotiate discomfort, or discover how one movement affects another.
Students will explore:
The structure and logic of Yukimura-style predicament ties
How to create tension between comfort, posture, and choice
Connecting different parts of the body through rope
Building predicaments gradually and safely
Using rope to create emotional and physical dialogue
Designing scenes that involve resistance, frustration, exposure, and play
How predicament ties can bring together the weekend’s themes
This workshop functions as a capstone for the intensive. Students will have time for coached exploration, open tying, and feedback. The goal is to integrate technique, communication, and scene structure into a more complete Yukimura-style practice.
Suggested Weekend Schedule
Friday
7:00 pm–10:00 pm Introduction to Key Themes in Yukimura Style Shibari
Saturday
9:00 am–12:00 pm Hands-in-Front Ties / Maete Shibari
12:00 pm–1:00 pm Lunch break
1:00 pm–4:00 pm Hands-Behind Ties / Gote Shibari
Sunday
9:00 am–1:00 pm Kotobazeme and Open-Leg Shame Ties / Kaikyaku Shibari
1:00 pm–2:00 pm Lunch break
2:00 pm–6:00 pm Yukimura-Style Predicament Ties / Renketsu Shibari
What Students Should Bring
Students should bring:
6–8 lengths of rope, preferably jute or hemp
Safety shears
Comfortable clothing suitable for movement
A notebook
Water and snacks
A partner, unless the host has arranged pairing options
Rope requirements can be adjusted depending on the level and structure of the workshop.
Safety and Consent
This intensive includes emotionally charged material, including shame, resistance, teasing, vulnerability, and predicament-based rope. All exercises are taught within a framework of consent, negotiation, communication, and care.
Students are expected to respect boundaries, negotiate clearly with partners, and participate in a way that supports the learning environment.
The goal is not to copy Yukimura’s rope as a fixed museum object, but to study its living principles: communication, play, invitation, and the profound human presence that rope can reveal.
Saturday Workshops