TES Presents: Your First Flight – Beginning Suspension, with Belle

LOCATION, COST, & REGISTRATION INFO TBD

Students will gain the skills and tools necessary to safely do
basic rope suspensions. This course will focus on both topping and bottoming skills
allowing the participants to grow as a team tying together. Tops will learn about
chest harnesses, suspension lines, suspension positions and balance, and
communication during suspension. Bottoms will learn tips about suspension, testing
ties before they are loaded, making adjustments, speaking up and finding out
preferred ties and positions.

Topics to be covered:
– Building solid chest harnesses
– Assessing tie stability
– Suspension lines Suspension basics
– Normal sensation in suspension
– Testing harnesses on the ground
– Finding more and less comfortable positions
– Making adjustments in ties

Pre-requisites:
– Tops
o At least 2 stable chest harnesses. Only one of them may be a TK/box
tie
o A stable hip harness (ideally 2)
o Ability to take critique from bottoms and desire to solve problems
– Bottoms
o Ability to tell when things are working or problematic in ties
o Comfort speaking up when there is a problem
o Desire to problem solve with top

Required materials
– At least 8 (and ideally 10) 8-9 meter ropes for suspension (nylon, mfp, hemp,
or jute)
– A suspension ring and 3-4 weight rated carabineers OR 6 weight rated
carabineers
– Any aftercare needs

Belle- doesn’t have a specific style of bondage but most of what she does
is based on the Japanese style of bondage. Her goals are to create manageable pain
for my bottoms and to create an experience that both enjoy, meaning that the type
of rope she does at any given time is highly dependent on the person that she is
tying. She really enjoys doing both structured ties and unstructured or informal ties,
again, dependent on the goals of the scene. Her style of presentation is to have as
much interactive time as possible and for the participants share their experience
and bring their knowledge to the class. She tends to prefer leading workshop-style
classes where the students learn the concept through a series of progressive
activities designed to get them to think about their own tying. The goal is to teach
them something that they can apply to their own scenes and their own styles.