The art of bottoming

I realized this morning that even in what I've written here before, there's a real and probably inevitable bias.

Well, several biases.

I tend to write about rope, because that's what I love. Yes, I'm a sucker for a well thrown singletail, but that's not what I do. And I love me some well made canes, and use them with gusto, but canes aren't my little obsession right now, which brings me back to rope.

And of course I write from my own magickal perspective. There are a number of ways to integrate magick and BDSM, and they're not all the same. I write from the perspective of my own magickal biases.

But what I really meant to call out as my bias is that I tend to write as a top. I'm not just a top, but that's the side of me I act from in most of my public play, and hence that's the perspective I'm more likely to write from.

And yet, that leaves more out than I sometimes realize.

I linked earlier this week to a post from Graydancer that really excited me, about rope as a creative art. In the post, and my recap of it, the emphasis is on the artistry and creativity of being a rope top.

But what about bottoming? Is that just a passive art?

I'm going to come down firmly on the side of 'no.' Absolutely not. At least, not necessarily.

I'm working on a longer post right now about yoga for rope bottoms, which I'll post here when it's done. But the theory behind it is this: rope bottoming is a skill, one that can be developed and enhanced through attention and study just like rigging. Some rope bottoming can definitely be passive, and I want to say (again with correcting my biases) that's absolutely okay. Some folks want to be absolutely helpless in the ropes and God knows I love to tie them.

But there's also a path of rope bottoming that is far more active. Some bottoms talk about dancing in the ropes. Some do yoga poses while suspended. Some work very actively on their agility, their patience, their flexibility, to increase the beauty of themselves inside the rope. For those bottoms, being tied is anything but passive. It's an active engagement, a dance, a yoga asana, a kata. It's art.

In ropes or any other endeavor, bottoms walk the edges and bring back the essence of life force and magick. That is an art every bit as essential as topping, and let no top say otherwise. (At least, not around me.)