Partial suspension

What is partial suspension?

Partial suspension is rope work in which part of the body weight hangs from a suspension point while the rest keeps support from the floor. One foot, a knee, or a shoulder keeps bearing. It is the step between work on the ground and full suspension, and usually the first time someone really feels weight in rope.

What a partial looks like in practice

In most partials one foot is still on the ground, and that foot does more work than the onlooker sees.

Here is how it usually runs. Someone gets an arm tie on the back, on this site gote shibari, with enough wraps side by side to spread the pressure. A line goes onto it, up to a suspension point, and it gets taken in centimeter by centimeter. Somewhere along the way the weight tips: first the heels come free, then the ball of one foot, and what is left is one leg balancing. After that the other leg goes up, often in a futomomo.

The second form sits at a right angle to that: someone lies on the upper back, the legs tied up, and only the lower back comes off the floor. The encyclopedia on suspension in bondage names both in one breath: the moment rope, cable, or chain carries part of the weight, it is a partial. It rarely lasts long. Five minutes is normal.

What the line between partial and full is really about

Load distribution, not height.

In a full suspension, one hundred percent of the weight goes through the wraps on the body. In a partial the floor carries along, and that saves two things: less force per wrap, and a leg that keeps working. That second one is the underrated part.

Rauch and colleagues wrote a review of suspension syndrome for the International Commission for Mountain Emergency Medicine, the circulatory collapse from hanging passively in a harness. Their core sentence: the syndrome is a result of passive, motionless hanging and not of hanging itself. Leg movement keeps the muscle pump going, and without a ledge or wall within reach they advise foot loops to step into. Exactly that comes free to someone in a partial. Two studies in that same review show how much it matters: damage to the arm nerve plexus after ten to twenty minutes of free hanging in a chest harness, expressly when no foot loops were used (1972), and eleven percent complaints among nine test subjects with a support strap under the knees against eighty-seven percent for passive backward tilt (1998). The time to the first warning signs of fainting stays unpredictable, from a few minutes to several hours.

Why people do a partial

Because the body notices that walking away is no longer an option, while the head knows the floor is right there.

The encyclopedia describes the effect of suspension as a heightened sense of vulnerability and inescapability, and names the opposite too: a feeling of floating. In a partial you get those two mixed together.

• For the person being tied, the attention shifts. On the ground it sits with the rope; the moment tension comes on, with your own balance. The standing leg starts trembling after a few minutes.
• For the person tying, this is the place to learn to read load without a whole body hanging off you.
• For a couple, it is often the point where rope stops being decoration.

Less weight just is not the same as little risk. In Khodulev’s series there is a participant who got numbness at the front of her thigh after every thigh tie.

How people build a partial

With many wraps, one line, and a pace that feels slower than seems needed.

1. The tie first. What catches the weight is checked before any tension comes on.
2. Spread. More wraps side by side is a wider bearing surface. Khodulev and colleagues kept one case out of their main group: few rope passes, poorly distributed, and the tie slid. A sideways jerk gave fierce pain in both arms, and days later there turned out to be damage to the arm nerve plexus on both sides.
3. Load slowly. Bit by bit, with the same question in between each time: hands open and close, what changes.
4. Only then the leg. A raised leg is a second bearing point and a second nerve question.
5. And back out. Down goes faster than up, and no one stands steady in the first minute afterward.

Stay off the groin crease if weight comes onto it. The skin nerve of the thigh runs, according to StatPearls, under the inguinal ligament and gets pinched by exactly what a tight hip band does: sustained pressure from a belt or constricting clothing. That complaint is called meralgia paresthetica.

Misconceptions about partial suspension

“A partial is the safe version.” It is the milder version. That is something else. In Khodulev’s series nearly all nerve injuries arose after full suspension, so that direction holds. But the two cases that do not fit that pattern were about a tied-off thigh and about a tie with too few passes. That can happen just as easily in a partial.

“With a foot on the ground you can save yourself.” That standing leg is a countdown clock, not a safety net. After about four minutes it bears noticeably less.

“A partial is a stepping stone to full hanging.” For some it is. For plenty of others it is the endpoint, and that is no half achievement: it is the form with the most favorable ratio between what you feel and what you risk.

What I see myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, twenty-five years in BDSM and trained as a psychotherapist. Bondage is on my list, light or firm, with real hemp, and for the Japanese rope work I have taken courses.

The moment just before something comes off the ground is what has stayed with me most. The line stands taut, nothing has been lifted yet, and still the breathing already changes. I have seen women cry at one centimeter.

The second thing: almost no one reports anything about that standing leg in time. People talk about a tingling arm; they stay quiet about a leg that cannot hold, because tiredness does not feel like a problem. That is why I keep the clock myself.

What you can do yourself

• Set the time before the rope goes up. Five minutes on a timer, because no one’s sense of time is right in rope.
• Let the standing leg switch or come all the way down now and then. Support under a body part keeps the circulation turning.
• Ask for fingers to open and close, not for “are you okay”. To that second question everyone answers yes.
• Keep the groin crease free if weight comes onto it. Sustained pressure on that spot can nag for weeks.
• Have scissors ready and make sure someone can catch before the first line comes taut. A panic snap does not replace that, and hanging alone is not on anyway.

More reading on partial suspension

Within this glossary, shibari gives the whole frame, floorwork explains why work on the ground gives the same aesthetic at a fraction of the risk, and futomomo describes the leg tie that becomes the second bearing point here. On the blog, the art of bondage covers the first steps with rope.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to know how it feels when rope takes over your weight, without having to work out yourself what can go wrong, that belongs with a BDSM date. That page covers how such an evening is prepared.

Sources

• Suspension syndrome: a scoping review and recommendations from the International Commission for Mountain Emergency Medicine (ICAR MedCom). Simon Rauch, Raimund Lechner, Giacomo Strapazzon, Roger B. Mortimer, John Ellerton, Sven Christjar Skaiaa, Tobias Huber, Hermann Brugger, Mathieu Pasquier & Peter Paal, Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine 31(1), article 95, 2023 (DOI 10.1186/s13049-023-01164-z; authors and volume checked against Crossref). Systematic review of 23 studies, drawn up as a guideline for mountain rescue doctors. Provides the finding that suspension syndrome is a result of passive, motionless hanging and not of hanging itself; that active leg movement keeps the muscle pump and thereby the venous return going; the advice to use foot loops when there is no ledge or wall within reach; the recommendation never to hang alone; the summary of Flora et al. (1972) on damage to the brachial plexus after ten to twenty minutes of free hanging in a chest harness when no foot loops were used; that of Madsen et al. (1998) in which nine test subjects with a support strap under the knees got complaints in eleven percent against eighty-seven percent for passive backward tilt of fifty degrees; and the unpredictability of the time to the first presyncopal signs, from a few minutes to several hours. Mountaineering, not rope work: the transfer to bondage is my inference, not the authors’.
• Acute Radial Compressive Neuropathy: The Most Common Injury Induced by Japanese Rope Bondage. Vasily Khodulev, Artsiom Klimko, Nataliya Charnenka, Marina Zharko & Hanna Khoduleva, Cureus 15(5), e39588, 2023 (DOI 10.7759/cureus.39588; author names checked against Crossref, full text via Europe PMC). Survey among four experienced riggers and their participants, ten people with sixteen nerve injuries. Provides that all but one of the injuries arose acutely after a full suspension; the participant for whom every tie around the thigh again gave numbness at the front of the thigh and an unsteady knee; and the case kept out of the main group, of bilateral damage to the brachial plexus, where the authors note there were few rope passes, that they were poorly distributed over the body, and that the tie slid during the session.
• Meralgia Paresthetica. Ryan Coffey & Vikas Gupta, StatPearls, revised 1 May 2023. Medical reference from the NCBI Bookshelf. Provides that the lateral femoral cutaneous nerve is a pure sensory nerve vulnerable to entrapment on its way to the inguinal ligament and the subcutaneous tissue of the anterior thigh; that external pressure from tight belts, harnesses, or constricting clothing is one of the mechanical causes; the complaint pattern of pain and disturbed sensation at the front-outer side of the thigh; and the reported incidence of about three to four per ten thousand person-years.
• Suspension bondage. Wikipedia. Provides the boundary between partial and full suspension, the description of the classic partial as balancing on one foot with part of the weight in a chest harness and the other leg raised, the second form in which someone lies on the upper back with the legs tied up, and the described effects of vulnerability and inescapability alongside the feeling of floating. Written by volunteers; used here only for the definition boundary.
• Japanese bondage. Wikipedia. Provides the Japanese names 立ち吊り縛り tachi tsuri shibari for the standing partial suspension and 片足上げ吊り縛り kataashi age tsuri shibari for the one with a single leg raised. Here too the note holds that the article is written by volunteers.

Related terms

• Shibari. The tradition this is a phase within, with the four rising forms side by side.
• Floorwork. The step before it, where the floor carries all the weight.
• Groundwork. The same step under its other name.
• Futomomo. The leg tie that holds the raised leg in most partials.
• Gote shibari. The arm tie that usually catches the weight.
• Carabiner. The metal between rope and suspension point, and why the load should not sit sideways there.
• Panic snap. The snap that can release under load, with the limits on what it can take.
• Asanawa. The natural-fiber rope this happens with.
• Predicament bondage. The setup where the part you carry yourself is exactly the price.
• Suspension. The step after it, where the last support point disappears too and the muscle pump in the legs falls still.
• Strappado. What happens to the shoulder the moment it has to carry the weight in its extreme position.