The other day I had a conversation with a friend. We had met online but this was her first time in the studio. We were talking about Shibari. She asked me why some people cry during a session. For me it feels normal. While we were talking, I remembered this story and shared it.
There is a barrier that separates us from the world. I cannot say clearly what that barrier is. When I was a child I had many skin problems. I was always dry and itchy. Whenever I had a flare, my mother became very concerned and tried to ease me with remedies. I remember one day, I do not recall if I was five or ten, but I was lying on the floor scratching myself. After I recovered a little, I thought that this is something nobody can share with me. It does not matter how much they care about me, how much they want to help, at some deeper level I was going to be alone with this feeling. It was not about the itch itself but about the fact that no matter what, I had to go through it and I could not escape. I felt fundamentally alone. Not with despair, but alone.
I think this feeling later made me stay in awe with the world. When I grew older I became interested in poetry. I thought language in general fell short of communicating what I wanted. What is communication anyway. But poetry felt different. When you write a poem and someone reads it, when there is a circle of feedback between two sensitive spirits around a poem, language becomes malleable and you can overcome the limitations of words and the ambiguity of grammar. I discovered Heidegger and other thinkers and felt that language could make a bridge between me and others.
But that bridge did not go very far. It was always circumstantial. I went to college to study philosophy and physics with the hope that I would learn more about this abyss in front of me, that what I felt was a problem that could be solved with the power of the mind. Between metaphysics and mechanics, I thought there must be some equation that could make a bridge I could cross. I grew distant from poetry. It became an empty exercise, like a puzzle, like a tree that falls without making sound.
Eventually I came to Japan. Here I had to give up my old tools. Words were not just imprecise, they were like the stones of a ruin of a forgotten civilization. They seemed like something, but they were not for me. I had to learn a different vocabulary, smiling, bowing, following the flow of the noise.
And then I discovered Shibari.
It was entirely by accident, but that is a different story.
Suddenly the wall disappeared.
The other person disappeared.
I disappeared.
Everything was there.
We feel alone.
But it is an illusion.
We cannot be alone, because we are not separated.
Hermann Hesse writes in Demian:
The bird fights its way out of the egg.
The egg is the world.
Who would be born must first destroy a world.
I loved this sentence.
But I did not fully understand it until I experienced Shibari for the first time.
At birth, when there are no words, only tears can flow.
Yes, I think is normal to cry in a session.
Thank you for sharing your attention.
Pablo