Shibari for ecstasy : The ecstasy mechanism.
What is ecstasy?
People describe ecstasy experiences in remarkably different ways. One person may experience ecstasy as euphoria, trance, subspace, catharsis, intense pleasure, or excitement; another may describe it as deep peace, bliss, warmth, or a sense of profound well-being. It can also be experienced as surrender, emotional release, loss of self-consciousness, timelessness, transcendence, unity, or a feeling of becoming completely immersed in the present moment.
For some, ecstasy is highly energetic and stimulating; for others, it is quiet, meditative, and almost dreamlike. A person may feel intensely embodied and connected to their physical sensations, while another may describe a temporary weakening of their ordinary sense of self or separation from the surrounding world.
Experiences can therefore look very different phenomenologically, yet they share some fundamental characteristics. What connects them is the fact that they represent a departure from ordinary consciousness. Euphoria, trance, subspace, catharsis, bliss, surrender, and transcendence, they all involve temporary changes in how we experience ourselves, our bodies, our emotions, our surroundings, and even the passage of time. They can all be understood as altered states of consciousness.
Pleasurable altered states of consciousness are not unusual or restricted to extreme experiences. They occur in everyday life whenever our ordinary mode of awareness temporarily changes. Daydreaming, becoming completely absorbed in music, watching a good movie, getting lost in a book, intense exercise, meditation, sexual arousal, driving on a familiar route without consciously thinking about every movement, and getting intensively emotional watching a good are too altered states of consciousness.
Watching a good movie is a simple example of how sometimes we get into ecstasy during our normal day to day life. When a film is powerful enough, we can become completely absorbed in the story, lose track of time, cry, feel intense joy or suspense, and leave the cinema profoundly moved. I would like for you to notice that for that ecstasy experience to happen, the experience depends partly on sustained attention: the movie needs to completely hold our attention. At the same time, the film's images, sounds, music, suspense, emotional relationships, and surprises need to activate intense physiological and neurochemical responses in the body. Then we may have a remarkably powerful and pleasurable altered state of consciousness watching a movie, an ecstasy experience.
The sustained attention path to ecstasy.
As we saw in the movie example, sustained attention is an important feature of an ecstasy state. In the academic literature, this is often discussed through concepts such as mindfulness, flow and absorption.
Subjectively, sustained attention may be experienced by rope bottoms as surrender, acceptance, letting go, and reduced self-consciousness. For riggers, it is usually experienced as flow, where conscious self-monitoring decreases and attention becomes deeply immersed in the activity and the present moment.
During ordinary waking consciousness, the brain continuously evaluates, predicts, monitors, and regulates experience: we think about what is happening, anticipate what might happen next, judge sensations, maintain control, and monitor ourselves and our surroundings.
During an ecstasy state, these higher-order processes can become less dominant, allowing attention to shift toward immediate sensory, emotional, and bodily experience. Executive and self-monitoring activity becomes relatively less prominent while other systems involved in sensation, emotion, movement, and immediate awareness become more dominant.
The neurochemistry activation path to ecstasy.
At the same time, stimulating and emotionally intense experiences may recruit the brain's reward, arousal, stress, pain-regulation, and social-bonding systems, producing a changing physiological and neurochemical state within the body. This can involve systems associated with adrenaline and noradrenaline, endogenous opioids such as endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endocannabinoids, and other neuromodulators. These systems do not all produce the same effect, and it is more accurate to think of them as interacting systems than as a simple collection of “pleasure chemicals.” The exact combination will depend on the activity, its intensity, the person's expectations, emotional state, and the stage of the experience.
Also note that the neurochemical state changes dynamically during a single activity. An intense shibari session, for example, may contain periods of relaxation, relief, pleasure, analgesia, or emotional release, all of those states with a different “neurochemical signature”
There are two main paths into ecstasy, the sustained attention path and the neurochemistry path into ecstasy.
The sustained attention path to achieve ecstasy is about engaging attention, imagination, and emotions. An example of these practices for riggers, could be the use of flow techniques. For rope bottoms, practicing how to focus their attention into their present experience, into their emotions, and into a state of ‘surrender’ in which they simply allow the experience to happen, will help them greatly to achieve ecstasy during their rope session.
The neurochemistry activation patch, by contrast, begins with bodily processes. Breathing techniques, body exhaustion or sensory input practices.
Improving our shibari practice for ecstasy therefore means working on both sides of this equation: making our practice increasingly capable of sustaining attention, while at the same time using shibari to activate the body's endogenous neurochemical systems.
An integrated nervous system
I have distinguished conceptually between attention and neurochemistry practices. I do this because I feel that this is a clearer way to explain how ecstasy works and introduce the different practices that we can use to achieve ecstasy, nevertheless, note that the mind and body processes are in reality inseparable, altered states of consciousness emerge from the dynamic integration of mind and body, not from either alone. The entire nervous system operates as one integrated whole.
Keeping in mind this integrated perspective is essential to understand and engage with practices that produce ecstasy. There's no single "switch" that turns on the ecstasy experience, whether neurochemically, physiologically, or through a brain network. Instead, ecstasy emerges from the convergence of multiple processes; intent, attention, physical engagement, neurochemical cascades, brain network reorganization, and subjective context interpretation. These all contribute simultaneously to achieving ecstasy .
This integrated perspective helps us understand why the same practice can produce different experiences for individuals. And why it can be different at times, even for the same individual. The outcome depends on the entire system's state: current neurochemistry, prior experience, expectations, physical condition, and environmental context all play a critical role.
The approach I use in my ecstasy shibari practice follows this integrated perspective. It is a multi-modal approach to engage the integrated nervous system from multiple entry points simultaneously. It is similar to the one found in other disciplines. Yoga integrates physical postures, breath control, and meditative attention. Many shamanic traditions combine fasting, rhythmic movement, and guided visualization, etc.
In the coming writings, I’ll share the shibari techniques that have worked for me. Some are mainly engaging the mind, while some are mainly engaging the body. Some engage both. But , please remember, it is never about the mind or the body, and neither about one particular practice done in isolation. It is about how we utilize several practices to engage the nervous system as a mind-body integration. In turn, creating a session between a rigger and a model, where both participants (and possibly others) are engaging in “ecstasy shibari”.
References and notes
My notes are on brackets
[ Flow basics ] Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2009.
[ Current scientific consensus about the main mechanisms for altered states of consciousness ] Dietrich, Arne. “Functional Neuroanatomy of Altered States of Consciousness: The Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis.” Consciousness and Cognition, ahead of print, 2003. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(02)00046-6.
[ Mechanisms review, including alternative explanations for altered states of consciousness ] Gold, Joshua, and Joseph Ciorciari. “A Review on the Role of the Neuroscience of Flow States in the Modern World.” Behavioral Sciences 10, no. 9 (2020): 137. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs10090137.
[ Whole integrated system, on the integration of emotions and cognition ] Pessoa, Luiz. “On the Relationship between Emotion and Cognition.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, no. 2 (2008): 148–58. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2317.
[ Overall review of BDSM biology ] Wuyts, Elise, and Manuel Morrens. “The Biology of BDSM: A Systematic Review.” The Journal of Sexual Medicine 19, no. 1 (2022): 144–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2021.11.002.