One bar prison

What is a one bar prison?

A one bar prison is a bondage bar with four cuffs, with which both wrists and both ankles are fixed at one point. Whoever is in it stands bent forward, with the hands at the height of the feet. There is no established Dutch name for it; the scene uses the English term.

What a one bar prison does to the body

The bar takes away three things at once: the walking, the getting up, and the catching of a fall. That last one is the point people overlook.

The literature is blunt about the duration too. Any position that brings limbs into an extreme and holds them there for a longer time can cause damage that is sometimes permanent, even in the most flexible people.

What to watch for

For fainting, and for the clock. A one bar prison keeps someone upright while they cannot sit down, and that is exactly the combination in which it goes wrong.

StatPearls describes that a vasovagal episode begins with a trigger that is often pain or emotional stress, usually combined with the blood distribution that goes with an upright position, and that the heartbeat can drop so far that the heart stops for a few seconds. More than a third of people go through something like this at some point. In an ordinary scene you would then sink through your knees; in this thing your weight hangs from your wrists and your lower back.

Practical: keep it short, stay in the room, ask about tingling fingers and a light feeling in the head, and make sure the closures can open without a key or in one move. Anyone who turns white or goes quiet comes out right away.

If you want to feel a tightly fixed position like this once without having to watch the clock yourself, I keep an eye on that for you during a BDSM date.

Sources

• Vasovagal Episode. Rebecca Jeanmonod, Deepank Sahni & Michael Silberman, StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf, updated 17 July 2023. Gives that the trigger for a vasovagal faint is often pain or emotional stress and usually coincides with the central blood distribution that goes with an upright position, that the heartbeat can drop so sharply that a few seconds of asystole occur, and that more than a third of people go through such an episode at some point.

Related terms

A one bar prison is bondage in metal form: the object does the work that otherwise comes from rope.

• Restraints. The cuffs the bar ends in, and the difference between leather, nylon, and steel.
• Handcuffs. The upper pair, with the nerve on the thumb side of the wrist.
• Wrist cuffs. The cuff version of that same upper pair, wider and lined.
• Ankle cuffs. The lower pair, and why those are different cuffs.
• Hogtie. The same linking of wrists and ankles, but lying down instead of standing.
• St Andrew’s cross. The other piece of furniture where the position does the work and time is the limit.
• Cage. Bondage furniture of the other kind: locking in instead of fixing.
• Panic snap. The closure that makes the “open in one move” from the previous paragraph possible.
• Predicament bondage. The same impossible position, but with a second option that also costs something.
• Pillory. The same bent-forward stance, but in wood instead of rope.
• Spreader bar. The bar with the reverse effect, with the word history.
• Spreader bar. The same object under its English name.