
The
School

of
Tantric
Ropes
We are a non-profit organization that put the human connection first.
We gather people dedicated to a tantric approach to rope bondage
from all around the world. We honor the heritage of Shibari and Kinbaku.

About Us
Our Beliefs
We take the responsibility of communicating our beliefs by linking this page and highlighting what we think is appropriate.
Acknowledge the past
- Tantric rope bondage shares much of the technique and mindset of Japanese rope bondage of Shibari and Kinbaku. The attention to ritual, presence, and the relationship established between people tying – this can best be expressed as Kokoro meaning ‘heart’ in Japanese.
- We also acknowledge that the history of our bondage is not a sacred art-form of the samurai neither an old tantric ritual. It was developed as a Japanese underground movement in the 1940ths with a strong connection to the pornographic magazine Kitan Club and the red light district of Kabukichō.
- The neo-tantric approach to rope bondage was first established in Scandinavia by Andy Buru in 2010.
Acknowledge the personal journey
- Our practice is best learnt by doing. We avoid a black-or-white mentality or dogmatic truth about rope bondage. Presence is our best guide.
- Dedication over time is the key to success. Practicing once a week is only enough to maintain, two or more times is needed to grow.
- We don’t have any mythological explanation, our skills are not “a transmission” or god-given – nor is it scientifically proven in the universities. Therefore our practice is best described as personal journey.
Acknowledge the shadow sides
- We understand that our bondage might be a taboo in normative society, and we aspire to change that.
- We consciously allow our bondage to include all emotions and their expression. It may be loving and caretaking, or painful and shameful, or sexual and hedonistic.
- What may be traumatizing and pathological for one person may be healing and transformative for another.
- We empower people to express their boundaries and support them in avoiding disassociation, spiritual by-pass and peer pressure from society.
Acknowledge the power game
- We use the polarity between the person tying and the person being tied to make our bondage powerful and transformative. We understand the paradox between dominating and holding space, and between submitting and surrendering.
- Establishing a precise frame is mandatory for stepping in and out of the power game. This is done by both the person tying and the one being tied.
- We acknowledge that even if the power game is only a game, and the intention is clearly defined, the results still echoes into the rest of our lives.
Acknowledge the therapeutic relationship
- Acknowledge that a therapeutic setting is different than a personal play.
- Any domination must be an act of service, and therefore the person tying is ultimately only hold space, rather than focusing on their own gain.
- We avoid turning a therapeutic relationship into a private one, by, for example, dating clients.

Our Team

Andy Buru / SWE
Andy is a student of theatre and performance art, a medical massage therapist, a former organizational coach, a conscious kinkster, and a teacher of European and Japanese rope bondage. During his twenty years of journeying into sexuality, he has been a slave, an owner, a hedonist, a purist, a magician, and a slut. Now he makes a living off teaching BDSM to tantra people™

Ia Bergsten / SWE
Ia brings years of extensive experience from the field of bodywork and conscious sexuality & kink into her tantric rope sessions. Her loving, tender yet playful approach allows people to surrender and liberate themselves. She is always curios to explore edges as well as finding new pathways for a more pleasurable and balanced life.

Cherie Ellen / DK
Cherie is a danish based woman and founder of Sacred Relating. She is passionate about slowing down in intimacy and creates a space for soft healing with focus on embodiment and connection. She is sharing her work with couples, women and groups to explore polarity, patterns in relationships and edges that makes us step into ourselves more fully. With a background of supporting Embodied Intimacy for years she has dedicated her work to authenticity and embodiment. Besides that she has a foot in the tantra scene and is working in the field of reclaiming our body, sensuality and sexuality through courses and 1 on 1 sessions.

Testimonials
What People Say
Taking a session has been for me a journey into unknown that opened to a deeper intimacy inside myself and a level of relaxation I haven’t felt before. The strong presence with compassion created that safe space, that allowed for deeper trust to feel deeply into my heart, let go and surrender to life. One session that opened the door to feeling myself deeply from inside in full allowance – a journey into the NOW.
Cristina
Being bound was an extraordinary experience. The calm and focused presence very quickly put me at total ease and I could fully relax into the experience. Within minutes my mind went into “thoughtless mode” and what followed was a journey of bodily sensations, underscored by the tantric pleasure-response that my body readily drops into when I feel safe. It was such a precious gift to be able to experience this level of bliss from a virtual stranger without the expectation of having to provide anything in return apart from my participation.
Annelie

Recommended Reading
What You Should Know
Sexuality in Bondage
Why are we turned on by being tied up? Polarity is my best way to explain it. Polarity (in this case) means that two people take on fundamentally different roles that have strong synergies together. In bondage, it is primarily the roles of tying and tied, but also the parts of dominant and submissive, and masochist and sadist, and many more. By indulging in their differences, they grow together. It works because of the roles can provide the other with something they can’t provide for themselves.
Four Languages of Power
Recently I ran into an old passage from the Aṅguttara Nikāya, an early Buddhist text from 28 BC – It states the following.
” These eight worldly conditions, monks, keep the world turning around, and the world turns around these eight worldly conditions. What eight? Gain and loss, fame and disrepute, praise and blame, pleasure and pain…”
To me, it describes four polarities, and I find these to be essential when playing with BDSM.
Playing
Safer
How do I play “safe” so I can “surrender” – and yet again I realize that it’s one of the subjects I never really wrote about clearly. I wrote about the relationship between safety and bravery, and about surrender, but this text will look at it even more fundamentally. There are three different points I want to cover…
- Prenegotiated consent
- Sharing a fantasy
- On-the-fly consent as a skill

Join a Workshop
No upcoming events
Join the Team
With the aim of spreading the tantric approach to rope bondage, we always look for enthusiastic facilitators. Please contact us to schedule an interview about your relationship to our believes, and be ready with references from people (that are known to the team) whom attended your workshops or session.