Lief Bound

Exposure & Closure w/ Lief Bound

This week Clay, Ronen, & Todd sat down with Lief Bound to talk about rope play, their core philosophies as a kink educator, vulnerability, communication, and community. Lief has been a rope Switch for 10 years. They got their start in the Boston rope scene, started teaching in Los Angeles, and now resides in the San Francisco area. As an international rope educator Lief partnered with co-teacher and rope bottom Icarus. Together they work to grow their kinky queer communities through art, education, and a shared sense of compassion and understanding that really shows in their work.

House of Bound: https://www.houseofbound.com/

@Lief.bound on IG: https://www.instagram.com/lief.bound/

@LiefBound on Twix: https://twitter.com/LiefBound

Lief on Fet: https://fetlife.com/users/2889413

HouseofBound Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/HouseofBound

Exposure & Closure class on Shibari Study: https://shibaristudy.com/programs/exposure-and-closure

eXposure & Closure w/ Lief Bound Episode Transcript

This is the Subspace Exploration Project.

Join us for a deep dive into kink, non-monogamy, mental and emotional health, gender expression, and community building.

In each episode, we're deconstructing the gender binary, celebrating queer culture, and creating a safe space for sex education, all while learning from authors, educators, mental health professionals, and folks like you and me.

This week, we sat down with Lief Bound to talk about rope play, their core philosophies as a kink educator, vulnerability, communication, and community.

Lief has been a rope switch for 10 years.

They got their start in the Boston rope scene, started teaching in Los Angeles, and now resides in the San Francisco area.

As an international rope educator, Lief partnered with co-teacher and rope bottom, Icarus.

Together, they work to grow their kinky queer communities through art, education, and a shared sense of compassion and understanding that really shows in their work.

So let's get into it.

So not too long ago, I caught one of your classes on Shibari study, and I just, I thought it was amazing.

I mean, Shibari study is immensely helpful, informative, but nothing I had watched up until that point had moved me the way your class does.

And right away, I thought we had to have you on and talk about the emotional depth of playing with rope, what can be communicated using this tool.

Do you remember the name of the video, which one caught your eye the most?

It was something about gender affirmation.

That was the one that we first started talking about, and doing rope in a way...

I think it was specifically about the things that were insecure about and how to do rope in a way that shines a light on those insecurities, that it still honors them and brings them into your play, rather than hiding them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

By the way, Shabari Study was a wild experience for me.

We flew across to Europe.

We shot 12 hours content over two days.

It was wild.

And so sometimes, as the videos were released, sometimes I forget which one it was.

So thank you for reminding me.

Yeah, I think that that is a through line in a lot of the things I teach.

Because I think because of my trans identity and the amount of reflection I've done on myself, it's hard for me not to put that into my kink, into my work, into my rope.

So I can't just do rope.

I have to embody rope and embody the things I'm doing and honor my partner in that way.

Absolutely.

I think that's a super intimidating thing about rope, is like not knowing, like there are so many things that you can feel uncomfortable about and not knowing, okay, does that mean that I should avoid them in the play that I do or what can I do to make it feel better?

Totally.

I think it depends on the person that you're doing this with.

Right.

Because in large part, especially the majority of the rope that I do, I would say almost 100% of it is partnered.

I don't necessarily do solo tying, but that is also like super fucking cool and rad, and a lot of people do that.

So a lot of, also what I think, people forget when they're teaching rope is, yes, we're teaching how to tie knots, and how to do it safely, but we also have to teach each other how to be in relation to each other, how to communicate to each other, how to be kind and take care of each other.

And I think those are the skillsets that actually create really, it doesn't actually matter how proficient you are at times, single-quality, but do you know how to communicate in need?

Do you know how to receive feedback?

That's what I thought was really beautiful about your videos was The Feelings Game.

That was my favorite.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that because, like we were all saying, it just kind of encourages you to tap into emotions you may not normally want to deal with.

Right, exactly.

It's just kind of right there and raw and it's okay.

It's safe and it's a good thing.

Exposure and Closure was the original video that I watched of yours.

The Feelings Game reminds me somewhat of some aspects of exploring shame and degradation, but it's much more multifaceted and a little bit more welcoming, I think.

I think there's a bunch of reasons for why we went around and started to teach these sort of topics.

I think the first thing is that in Rope and in Kink in general, there's a lot of stereotypical things you can do.

For example, you can have a power exchange where one person is in control and one person has a loss of control.

And a lot of the things that happen in that power dynamic are taken for granted or assumed.

And are not necessarily practiced or talked about.

And I think that's where a lot of the times with BDSM where things go wrong and things go awry or don't go as planned, is because we assume a lot of things about each other.

We assume a lot of intention.

And these exercises, exposure and closure, by the way, is my favorite class we teach.

It is the class I have been teaching for the longest.

And one of the topics that I have been interested in the most, it's actually the first class I ever taught was exposure and closure.

And I think that all of these things kind of help eliminate all of those assumptions that we go into with, like, my Dom is going to act a certain way, my submission is going to look a certain way, and everybody is going to follow this script, essentially.

And I think, again, to go back to, like, my queer identity, like, just by doing Rope, which is historically a heterosexual pornographic art form, like, I am changing that, because I am not a cis man tying a submissive young woman.

Like, I am immediately kind of changing the script on what we think Rope looks like, and therefore, like, I like to teach how to more intentionally do those scripts and play with those scripts and change those scripts to fit you better.

Because that's the real meat there, isn't it?

Like, you can do all kinds of Rope, but like, if you don't have that ability to communicate and change things and hear what the other person is saying and figure out how to incorporate those wants, needs into your play, you're not going to be able to do that if you don't have that shared language or ability to communicate about it.

I think something I noticed about in the videos, too, is as a top, knowing when to step back and let your person just kind of lean into their feelings for a bit and just kind of stay with them while they do that.

And I think that was really powerful.

Absolutely.

And that's a learned skill set.

I think for me, at the beginning of my journey, I was really aware of making sure that I controlled every aspect of the scene as a top, because I felt like if something I didn't control, like maybe something could go wrong.

And I had to kind of actually trust, let's just use Icky for example, because they're the person I tie with the most, I had to learn to trust Icky to have negative emotions, to have negative feelings, to have confusion, and to allow them to sit with it like I couldn't fix it immediately.

Just because someone has an unexpected result of something you do doesn't necessarily mean that you did anything wrong.

It's just that you opened a door, and now you're on the other side of that door, and you are facing the unknown.

And I think that's one of my favorite things about Kink, is we create these safe containers where we can explore shame, we can explore fear, we can explore all these things that if we experience them out in the world, we would probably feel differently because we didn't opt into it.

But because we're opting into it, it feels a lot different.

And I know for a lot of chronic pain folks in particular, Iggy being one of those folks, that opting into pain in particular feels a lot different than the pain they experience every day.

Yeah, absolutely.

The exposure and closure lectures and demos were a way that I hadn't really thought about how to go about tying, like rope tying.

And the way that you so slowly would put on, or sometimes it wasn't slowly, it was really forceful, and pushing them into the tension, bringing it around them, or when you're undoing things, very slowly letting the rope graze the skin.

All of those very...

The way that you're observing Icky and watching their reactions and giving very intentional touches.

I think a lot of that gets so skipped over in the whole rope space part.

You need that time to sit in the tension and have the soft touches.

Yeah, absolutely.

I agree with you.

I think that there's a bunch of things going on where we don't see a lot of that.

I think there is this thing that we talk about in the rope community called the rope escalator where you start off with single column ties, you learn suspendable harnesses, you learn up lines, you start to suspend and then you teach.

And that's kind of the escalator.

Right?

And everybody's on it.

People are basically looking at skillsets as hard skillsets.

I know single column ties.

I know the suspendable harness.

I am ready to do rope.

And they forget that there's this whole emotional side to rope that is honestly, to me, way more important and way harder to learn.

It is very easy to look at a tie and say, oh, I'm doing this correctly or I'm doing this incorrectly.

It is a lot harder to look at your partner and say, am I achieving the goal of how we want to connect in this scene?

I think people are scared of that.

I think there isn't a lot of education on how to do that.

Exposure and closure is part of that in a big way because I feel that there's always this goal of surrender.

There's always this goal of letting go or whatever you want to call it in the book.

It's almost assumed that as soon as somebody puts rope on your body, it will just happen.

It actually almost has nothing to do with the rope at all, which is why I ended up teaching this class as a patternless floor class because I wanted to show that you don't have to have any skill to be able to make your partner feel something.

You can know one or two things, and if you do it with a lot of intention, you don't need to tie the fanciest harness in the world to be able to have a meaningful connection.

Yeah, you're really giving a lot of time and energy to the vibe.

I hate to say this, you're creating the vibe here.

It's really important, you know, it's more important than the rope that's in your hands on your body.

Yeah, I see the rope as like an extension of my hand.

And when I teach rope, like I'll hold up a piece of rope and I'll be like, this is intimidating.

Like people look at a piece of rope, which is genuinely 30 feet of dead grass spaghetti noodle, and people are so intimidated by it that they don't necessarily know that they can use every single inch of that to communicate something.

And I think that's something that like I believe I excel in and I believe I'm able to teach the most effectively out of like, like I could teach at a tie of harness, but like anybody can.

But I think where Icky and I differ is like we're teaching that skill set.

It's a unique thing to see someone show how they're tying, creating those vibes that you need.

Like you don't, yeah, you don't, anybody can show you how to tie something.

People can know how to tie things that they can't show you, give you the tools to create the other part of the container that those ties need.

Well, like every little sense, paying attention to every little like touch and feel and even smells, like smells are really powerful to your brain.

That fascinates me about it because it's, it's not just intimate, it goes beyond intimate, I think.

Like there's a real energy that gets exchanged.

To a smell?

Yeah, even smells.

I'm a real, I'm a really, my nose is really sensitive.

And I really, really, really like aromatherapy type stuff that you can tie in with that, tie in with it.

I get it.

On the topic of doing rope to parts of your body that you have maybe some dysphoria or discomfort on and you don't want to shine a light on.

For example, when I first got into a dynamic with one of my dominant partners, we were doing some rope stuff for my chest to see what felt most comfortable, because I didn't like having my boobs out, because I'm trans, they make me feel uncomfortable.

Super valid.

Yeah.

Reasonable.

And so, but the ties that we ended up doing were kind of made me feel like I was wearing a bra or a bandeau in a way that we were trying to call attention to it in a way that kind of smushes them up.

But then it did not at all achieve the effect that we thought it might.

And so that was...

Yeah, and I'm still stuck on ways to make that more enjoyable.

Totally.

Oh my god.

Number one can hard relate to kind of just shine a light on again, that this is a heterosexual art form that anybody that is outside of that identity is going to struggle with a lot of the ties that are out in the world because they are made for men to tie on women.

Like, yes, there are a lot of people coming up with new ties, and that's fucking awesome, but still, the majority of the ties are meant to pronounce the chest.

They are meant to do things like that because that's the art form we are appropriating and recreating.

And so, yeah, I definitely, like, pre-surgery, I felt a lot of sort of ways and a lot of sort of harnesses.

And I did also feel that when I was in a chest binder, number one, if you want to do any sort of suspension, having any sort of tight binding on your chest can be a health concern.

It can cause to you not being able to breathe.

It can cause to potentially your ribs being injured.

There's a lot of risks to doing that.

It's kind of like almost for me, pre-surgery, I didn't wear a binder.

I tried it when I first came out.

I was like, oh my God, this is amazing.

And then I was like, I can't breathe.

And I almost feel them more.

I feel the breath against my chest.

I'm sweating more.

So I pretty much ignored them until the day they were gone.

But the thing that helped for me is, are you all familiar with the hug harness that I designed potentially?

No, not me.

Awesome.

So I have developed a tie that has a bunch of different positives.

Originally, Icky had a request for a box tie variant, which is when you have your hands behind your back, because box ties are really dangerous and very hard to do correctly, and have a lot of just issues that you can run into.

And I ended up putting the arms in front of the chest like this, and then doing rope on top of that.

And I created a harness that is really sustainable, not just for people that potentially don't want to have their chest be the focal point, but also it creates a more sustainable harness, and it works for a lot of various sizes of bodies.

I sell a tutorial for it on my Etsy.

If you look up House of Bound on Etsy, it's $20.

I've taught it around the world.

I didn't end up teaching on Shavari Study, because they got a lot of content from me, but they weren't going to get that.

And you keep that sweet one for yourself.

But I highly recommend if you're looking for a harness that doesn't put a lot of pressure on your chest but still doesn't make your chest the focal point, I might suggest trying that.

I could shamelessly plug that.

For everybody who's only listening to this, we're talking about a tie where both of your arms go across on your chest, and you're kind of hugging yourself.

And then rope is going around those arms and around your body to reinforce that hug.

We'll make sure to link to it in the episode description too.

That would be amazing.

It's helped a lot of folks, and especially for fat folks as well.

A lot of ties don't work for fat bodies, again, because a lot of ties are designed for skinny fems.

And so that tie is adaptable for large bodies as well.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of...

For the history that I've heard about Shibari is that you can only take it from what has already been made from it, from the history we have of it.

You can only take it so far for certain types of bodies, because it is made, I guess, designed, historically used for these hetero...

tying a thin woman's body and accentuating those feminine features.

Yeah, which is why we got to change that shit up.

That no longer serves us.

It doesn't work for everyone.

Yeah, and I'm definitely not the only one to do it, but that's one of the reasons why I wanted to start teaching, wanting to start developing harnesses, because the people that I was tying and that I love, those ties did not work for them.

And so when what you know doesn't work, you just need to push the boundaries of what rope can be.

Because rope, I feel like, is an endless box that you think you've hit the bottom of the box, and it just keeps going and going.

I've been doing rope for 11 years, and I feel like I still have so much to learn.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Yeah, that shit doesn't stop.

It's always evolving, too, so...

And despite how intricate it is, I think that your videos that I've seen were really, really easy to understand.

And I think that is so important because you use simple, direct language and techniques, and that's really appreciated from someone who really doesn't know much.

Yeah, I think that...

I always teach from the perspective that rope is really hard.

Like, I think that rope is one of the hardest hobbies that you could ever pick up for yourself.

Like, it is complicated.

No one can start out and be good at it.

Like, you have to start out bad at it.

And I know, like, for a lot of folks, because Icky is one of these people, when they started to learn to rope, they were like a perfectionist, and it was very, very challenging for them.

So I have a lot of empathy for anybody that wants to tie, and I don't want to treat...

Like, just for you showing up in a room and wanting to learn, I'm fucking proud of you.

And I'm going to try as hard as I can to make you feel confident and make you feel like you've got this, because, like, you deserve that.

Speaking of boundaries and exploration, I don't remember the term you used, but I believe it was in the Feelings Play video.

Of course, you were talking about a staircase where you find these areas where the bottom finds things challenging, and you rest there and explore that for a bit before you move on.

Can you please clarify, because I don't have the correct term?

No worries.

That was during the Exposure and Enclosure Game.

It was our framework for how to explore vulnerability, because I find that rope can be an outlet to experience vulnerability.

Kink in general can be an outlet to experience vulnerability.

A lot of that vulnerability ends up in the realm of fantasy land.

I one day would like to get fucked by five people in front of the crowd.

That's a huge fantasy.

And the only time I've ever fucked is in private with one partner.

So it's a huge fantasy to imagine opening myself up to...

And in the course we talk about the definition of vulnerability, which is being open to the possibility of harm, physically or emotionally.

And it's that possibility that makes everything delicious for me.

Because hopefully if you negotiate enough, if you have talked to your partner, if you have built up this relationship, it's the possibility of harm, but we can risk mitigate harm and be able to be vulnerable where there is no harm.

Or very mitigated harm, because I also have another tangent where I feel like harm is inevitable and we're always playing with fire when it comes to kink.

There is no safe way to practice kink.

There are risk mitigations to make sure that we don't hurt each other in the future.

The staircase theory is a part of trying to make things safer.

And essentially, instead of having this really intense fantasy and just going for it, maybe we start out with our partner at a local dungeon fucking.

Just like maybe just trying that and seeing how it feels to just do it in public.

And with a trusted person that you already know and see how that goes.

And then so you built the side of your staircase, you try doing that, it works, and then you build a platform.

And you all can just go to a dungeon once a month, once a week, however often you can afford to go to a party.

And you can just play at that level and just have sex in public.

And then maybe after a while, you're like, what if we brought in a trusted friend that we're both into and we've discussed with this third person and we have a free sex in public?

And then that's how you work your way up to that big fantasy while you're being fucked by five people and a crowd is watching you.

And you might have a more successful time achieving your fantasy.

I have gotten some interesting feedback at one point.

And when I was teaching this course, a person in the class raised their hand and they were like, well then doesn't that take away the fun of it if you know exactly what's going to happen and you're prepared for it?

And I guess, sure.

Pick and choose those things though.

You know, I feel like there's a lot of, I started in the scene 11 years ago in the old school realm of like, submissives were seen, not heard, Dom's controlled the room, like you were kneeling next to your Dom, and you said nothing unless you're, like, there was like a lot of rules around like, how much control the top had, and how little say the bottom had.

And I feel like we're starting to get to a point where we're shifting to where we're on an even playing level, and we're deciding things together.

And I think that's better, personally.

That's new school, a little bit of a new take on kink.

But I feel like it's, people are opting in more, and people are actually prepared to bottom for what they want to, and tops feel more confident administering things.

So I don't see the harm in that, but sure.

Of course, there's always going to be different perspectives out there, and they're all valid, if it works for you, to just randomly decide to go for a really high-risk play.

Hell yeah.

Get your rocks off.

Right, go for it.

I like to have a road map of what is happening.

I'm someone who likes spoilers.

I don't care about starting a TV show in the middle.

I like to know what's happening.

But I also think there's a ton of fun in the kink container to not know what's going to happen.

So I get it.

And I think it's totally, you're totally able to have both things in your play.

You can have a general road map and maybe not know specific details or there's room for improv.

But I definitely don't think that those two, they're mutually exclusive, that you can know what's going on and know everything that's going on.

You can still be blind to some things.

I think it's an earned trust, right?

That, for example, Icky and I, who are celebrating five years together in August, we've played a lot over the past five years together.

We live together, we have a dog together, there are so many layers to the trust that we have for each other, and just the amount of play.

The layers of trust allow me to know that no matter what happens, we are going to take care of each other.

And Icky always says this, if they were there here in this room, I'm sure they would say this, but they always say in class that they trust me, that my intentions are always to keep them safe, and they trust that I do not intend to cause them harm, and that's why they play with me.

And then our experience of playing with each other has finally allowed that I can surprise them with things.

I can try new things.

Like, for example, in the Feelings Game and the demo, one of the emotions they picked was alone, and I dropped the line when I was playing with them, which is something I never do.

I tried something brand new on a gig, filming in front of all these people, but we have built up this trust that even though I did something unexpected, they knew it was intentional.

They knew that I made a choice that was supposed to elicit a strong reaction from them, and it did.

And so I don't think I saw this part.

Maybe I looked away for this part.

Totally fine.

It was in the demo of it.

So we like explained the Feelings Game, and then we did a demo.

And in the debrief, we talk about how we got to the conclusion of what emotion I had.

And so you were talking about the emotions that you felt during, after it's all said and done.

Yeah.

So like the idea of the game, which we got from Devil Mask Society.

And the game essentially is that you have three emotions that are discussed before you play the game, and they are picked by the bottom.

I think Ikki picked, I can't remember if it was alone, comforted, and constricted.

Let's just say those three were the words.

I, as the top, have to decide which emotion I'm going to try to make them feel through roping.

And I only get to tie one.

And so when we did it for Shibari Study, and when we teach this, it's kind of always a little different, and we don't really pre-plan our demos because we want them to be pretty honest.

And so I had picked alone.

And generally when you're tying, I teach that your tension on your working end that's attached to the human being is like your communication line, that you should never drop that.

Like if you lose your tension on that line, it can kind of communicate uncertainty.

It can communicate that I don't have you.

Like it can communicate a lot of those feelings.

And in the demo, I purposefully dropped my tension.

And I let it go slack.

And Icky said in the debrief, they immediately felt so alone.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was picturing.

Yeah.

And it's so difficult to be in that position of like restraint, especially if you can't see or move anywhere.

And you don't know if they've dropped the rope and have walked away, dropped the rope and are just watching you.

Right.

Yeah, that can be quite scary.

Yeah, exactly.

And that's what we talk about those high risk play.

Like it is for me, like that is high risk.

Like abandonment is a big core wound for a lot of people, a big core fear for a lot of people.

And so playing with that in a safe container can be a huge risk.

It can also be a safe place to to experience that with the right person.

Yeah, but that's usually like, right?

Like you kind of feel it in your chest.

You've been kind of like, yeah, it's like those things.

Like that's what I really like about rope is like it.

Like you can actually, if you work up to it, fuck with the real shit.

You can really be like, what are you afraid of?

Like what does make you feel shame?

Like what does it feel like when you're alone?

Like those are the things that you're like, if you experience on a normal Tuesday, you have a panic attack, you need to talk to your therapist.

But like, if you are able to create safe containers or safer containers, where you can experience those harder things with a person that loves you, you can maybe work through some shit.

And I'm not saying that this is like absolutely please go to therapy still, obviously.

Please seek all of that.

But I am a fucked up sadist that enjoys really getting into the meat.

Of what it means to be human and relate to each other.

I've told this story recently on the podcast of how I was doing some impact scene with a dominant.

And I was restrained.

I couldn't see anything.

And I started to get a little bit nervous and feel kind of like not quite fearful yet.

But I was starting to get anxious.

I was working myself up because things were hurting, they were escalating.

We switched toys.

He slapped the toy on the ground and it made me jump so hard and burst into tears.

And so like, you know, those things that that like ambient, when you're not really doing anything to the person, but it like really sets a tone and strikes like intense feelings in people.

Was the intention for that scene for you to experience like a heightened like activation or?

I definitely think it was like a I think the intention was a heightened activation.

I'm not sure we specified what we wanted was intense impact play, but I'm not so sure we discussed the intended feelings of it.

Because we weren't sure what would come up.

So we didn't want to take it further into any more fearful getting worked up.

Because yeah, it wasn't the desired.

Yeah, absolutely.

It seems like you found like Ike likes to say like, and I like to say more teaching that like you're creating a sandbox, right?

And the sandbox doesn't have a great container.

And sometimes it's messy, and sometimes the sand splashes outside of your sandbox.

And like, it's frightening when that happens, right?

You're like, oh, no, I couldn't contain the sand, but it's sand.

Like, it's really hard to do that.

And sometimes when you go and jump in a sandbox, sand is going to spill out.

So, I mean, like we handled the situation really well.

We stopped, you know, I cried for a bit.

I breathed, I felt better.

We picked it back up.

Yeah, that's like the best case scenario.

And like I said earlier, like, it's not if but when you experience, like, something unintended or you experience harm in kink.

Because, like, we're constantly butting up against, like, what our limits are, what our threshold are for what we're comfortable with.

Like, we are intentionally, and not everybody does, but at least in my realm, and it seems like it's similar to your behavior pushing boundaries.

Yeah.

Of, like, how far can I take this connection?

How far can I take this moment?

Would we consider that edge play, too?

Oh, I think that...

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I think that most rope is edge play, too.

I would say all of it.

But maybe tying single-column ties in a classroom setting isn't really edgy.

But anytime that you are interacting with another person, even if you are just like, hey, friend of mine, that is, hey, roommate, can I practice a harness on you?

You are both opening yourself up to the possibility, right?

Of course, it's probably going to be okay, right?

If you tie up your roommate for...

But who knows, right?

So I think it's all edge play for me.

And especially if like anytime you lift somebody in the air is edge play.

Are we defining edge play as like...

How are we defining edge play here?

I think for me, edge play is anytime you're opening yourself to the possibility of harm, both physically or emotionally.

So that can be quite a lot of things with definition.

Yeah.

I think some people don't really share that definition, which is not a value judgment at all.

No, yeah, no, I agree.

I know it's not...

People will use different words for things or the same word to mean different things, and that's okay.

Right.

All we can do is clarify what things mean for other people.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people also find edge play to be like, you know, playing with their harder limits and taking yourself up to the edge of like, I don't know if I'm comfortable with this.

I'm coming back.

For sure.

I think for me in my risk mitigation and I like to teach, I don't know if we talked about this in Exposure Closure in this particular, I believe we talked about it in Shabari Study, but I have a framework for consent that is a little different than most folks.

My framework were like generally like a lot of people practice RAC, Risk Aware Consensual Kink, super popular.

I think it's super cool, but I practice RASH, which is risk aware shit happens.

I basically like to assume that everything that I'm engaging in has some level of risk.

That way that if something happens, I'm prepared to manage that as opposed, and I feel like it's less shocking to your system.

If you're like, I'm doing Rope, something could go wrong.

As opposed to like, I am doing a risky thing in Rope, something could go wrong, and then all the other play definitely is not, nothing's going to happen to me.

So like for me, as long as I am, as the top and bottom as a switch, right?

Like no matter what I'm playing, I am always aware that something could go wrong.

So that way when something does, it's not a shock to my system.

And we've also come up with a plan for what to happen, what happens.

And I find that like, there's a lot more intentional responsibility on both parts, about both the top and the bottom, when you both go into it that way.

And hopefully you can mitigate risk and also manage harm better when it does occur.

Improv skills are so important.

Hell yeah.

Hell yeah.

I did improv in college.

I'm not gonna lie.

Yeah, absolutely.

You...

To plan for all the things that could possibly go wrong is an impossible ask.

Oh, for sure.

Absolutely.

So you can only prepare yourself for the possibility that things could go wrong.

You don't really know what.

You don't know.

You could do a few things to prepare yourself, like...

Right.

Scissors to reach for, a pillow, some food, water.

Those are easy tools to keep in your belt for when shit goes wrong.

Absolutely.

For Icky and I, we have two different forms of aftercare.

And I highly suggest that people kind of come up with an aftercare when a scene goes as planned and an aftercare when a scene does not go as planned.

And to talk about what we're going to do before a scene happens, because I feel like a lot of people plan for the aftercare when things go great.

And they don't necessarily plan for the aftercare when things don't go great.

And that's when a lot of people like I know, for example, like let's say like Icky and I are in a scene and we hadn't talked about what happens if something goes wrong.

And they are someone that needs, they need time.

They don't want to immediately talk about it.

But they would like physical closeness if something goes wrong.

And something goes wrong and I don't know that.

And so I give them space and I'm trying to talk to them and be like, Hey, are you okay?

How can I help?

What do you need?

Right?

And so I'm unfortunately, even though my intention is to help, I am making the situation a lot worse.

I think you also spoke to developing secondary communication for when your bottom goes nonverbal.

And I thought that was immensely helpful.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

Absolutely.

So a lot of the times when people are in heightened head spaces and endorphins are flowing, like we're hitting a lot of adrenaline.

As we're playing, people can hit a certain level of subspace or rope space if we're talking specifically to rope play, where you just feel real high.

And when you feel really high, sometimes it can be hard to communicate effectively as a bottom, and people go quote unquote nonverbal.

I will say as a top, you get to decide whether that is within your risk profile.

I struggle personally with folks that go nonverbal, because if I'm not getting a reaction with you, I don't necessarily know how you're feeling, and it's very vulnerable for me as a top to play with somebody that isn't reacting to the things I'm doing.

I have one partner in particular named Michelle that she does when we play really hard.

When we play really hard, she does go nonverbal.

The first time it happened, I communicated, hey, I'm going to end the scene.

I've noticed you're not communicating with me, and we talked about it afterwards.

We then started to build a framework for what her nonverbalness looks like and what's her safe container.

And what we came to with that is that usually she can at least nod yes or shake her head no.

She can do simple answers, but if I ask her, hey, how is your left arm doing?

She might not be able to verbalize how that is going for her.

There's a lot of things you can do to communicate with someone that has gone nonverbal in a scene.

Icky and I, for example, we do a hand squeeze, where essentially like I will go for their hand and I will squeeze their hand at the top.

And if they would like to communicate with me that things are okay, they will do one squeeze back.

So I do a squeeze, they do a squeeze, me as a top, I'm like, okay, everything's cool.

If I squeeze their hand and they don't squeeze back, or they squeeze kind of rapidly, that tells me that they need a check-in.

Or we need to go into something that's gone wrong after care mode.

I am pretty verbal.

It can definitely be difficult to articulate exact feelings that I'm having.

Most of the time, what I'm able to come up with is like, eh, or like I feel, like sometimes I'm like, I feel neutral about things and I'm like, I don't know, that's not really doing much.

It's something.

So, you know, that also leaves room for the, that can sometimes I feel bad having neutral responses to things, because I'm like, I don't know what guidance to give.

Oh, I think that's absolutely fine.

I think neutral responses are absolutely fine.

Like if you're not feeling an intense thing, like you don't necessarily need to give it something.

But like, for example, like I will beat my partner, Michelle.

Like I will be beating her really hard and I'm getting no reaction.

Right.

That's a scary moment.

When I am truly giving her something to think about and something to react to and I'm getting nothing.

And that's like, I'm like, haha, what the fuck?

Are you in there?

Are you home?

Yeah.

I think it's just I have a lot of empathy and a lot of care.

And I have a lot of.

I don't like and like I said this says this, but like I do I truly do have my partner's ventures, interests and hearts.

I do not intend to harm folks.

And so like not getting like a reaction.

It's like it's hard for me to tell like, are you still enjoying yourself?

Or are we dissociating having a bad time, having a trauma flashback, not feeling good, right?

Like is your nonverbalness just you've hit a level of ecstasy that you're like, do whatever you want to me.

I'm yours, which is like what Michelle's is up to a point.

And then we end the scene, right?

Because usually like she goes nonverbal.

We can play for a little bit longer and then we end the scene, which is what we've discovered.

Or is your nonverbalness, which is, you know, like I know I've experienced that where I've gotten nonverbal in the scene because like I've been triggered or I've been or like something bad has happened.

And I feel like a child that can't communicate anymore.

Like I'm having like some sort of like something someone said, the way something felt like I'm scared and I can't talk.

So like I had a small follow up question that you kind of answered about you and your partner, Michelle.

And when things are getting intense and they go nonverbal.

And so that's your clue that like you've got a little bit longer before you need to wrap that up.

So you don't need another like there's no other indication after that.

That's like, OK, now wrap up.

So Michelle and I are long distance.

We don't get to play a lot.

We've been together for a few years now, but we are play is few and far between.

The last time we were playing together, it was earlier this year.

We were in a dungeon.

We were playing.

I had them tied up, suspended in a pretty minimalistic fucked up suspension.

And I was single tailing them with a whip.

You know, yeah, yeah, it was fucked up.

I don't know what to tell you, it was brutal.

And this was like 30, 45 minutes into the scene.

I had tied them in a TK and I whipped them.

I had put them in a partial and I whipped them.

I suspended them and I whipped them.

And then once they were suspended and they were getting whipped, they went nonverbal, obviously, because I had been whipping them for a while.

And they went nonverbal.

And I kind of expected that because they wanted to play hard and I wanted to play hard.

I kind of knew that was a potential of a possibility.

And I also feel like her nonverbalness is an indication of safety.

She feels safe kind of going to that place with me, which is such an honor.

And I checked in with her once and she gave me a nod.

I gave it to her a little bit harder and I knew that I was going to be done.

And I went up to check on with her and I said, how are we doing?

And she said, I'm done.

And I was like, I knew.

And I think that was all she got out.

And I brought her down and I took care of her.

And I made the rest of the scene.

And it's not like the scene was over.

I still like to think it took my time, but the escalation of the scene was over.

And I think that's something that I also talk about in the exposure and closure.

Like the exposure of it is like for me, like 75% of the scene.

The closure is a very integral 25% part of the scene that needs to happen within the scene.

So I think that like when we want to play horror, we want to tie up our partners in horrific rope and single tail them in public.

It is important to me that I start to take care of my partner before the scene is over.

Like I am starting to take care of them as the scene is ending.

And I feel like that also like I'm not a science man, but I feel like that helps our brains that like we can receive care in a scene.

Like we can and like that not say that like I'm blowing minds here, but like I think that's also like I came from a time in my early days where like you played until you safe worded and then you got care.

Like that was the kind of play I experienced very early on.

Whereas like you played until you hit your hard limit and then somebody cared for you.

And I always felt like that was really challenging for me.

And so like the way I play as a top is like I take you to a moment where we've hit like the escalation of how hard things are going to be.

And then I'm going to start to take care of you or walk you down the staircase if we're going to go with the staircase theory together.

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like the plot of a movie.

You have that rise in action, the climax, and then the care as you're bringing them back down.

And I think sometimes the way people do their scenes is that that climax like happens and then they kind of like they splat.

And then it's over and then you receive the aftercare.

And I think there's something to be like that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Like sometimes you you want to end a scene and you want to feel like you've been splatted on the ground afterwards.

And then, you know, care for it afterwards.

But to incorporate that care before the scene is over and slowly reintegrate them to being grounded and back to Earth is sweet.

And I think sometimes kind of preferred for me, like I like to be brought down into my headspace rather than like left to splat afterwards.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's like a valid form of how a scene can go.

Absolutely.

I think, kind of again, trying to like queer up, trying to bring in some new age stuff, like bringing like a different perspective of like what that can look like.

Just so that like for the folks that like moved that kind of like gentle exit, they can have that.

Yeah.

The joy that you got and the honor that you felt with your partner being able to go to a scary place like that for you is really cool.

And I think there's a lot of times where newbie subs are thinking that they...

It's the goal to be afraid and scared and not know, maybe feel a little bit unsafe, but that's not at all the thing.

And you are totally able to go to those scary places with your partner and still feel safe and trust them and trust yourself.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

I definitely wish baby me and the kink scene would have had that guidance.

I think it's like doing it with the right person makes all the difference, because I think I at the beginning of my journey, I was literally a bunch of anybody that wanted to beat me up or make me feel a certain way.

I was like, hell yeah, but they don't know if they necessarily had my best interest at heart.

And that's just like a lesson learned, right?

It's just to kind of play with people that are focused on you.

Todd, I know you've been developing a sadistic streak, and that has been fun for you in learning about that part of yourself, that that feels fun and good, but also not being...

Absolutely, but I think it wasn't until I was able to trust that I can always maintain that sense of safety for my partner that I was really able to explore that, you know?

Because it was certainly never something that I thought I was going to get into.

Oh, I wanted to say, Lief, we loved having you on.

Really quick, two questions.

Where can people find you, and are you going to make it up to the Folsom Street Fair?

Always.

I am local now.

I just moved from Los Angeles to Oakland, so I am local to the Bay.

This is my home now.

I love it here.

We moved here in December.

You can find me at houseofbound.com.

That's a great way to access me in terms of just finding an email and being like, hey, I want to reach out to you.

I offer lessons, private lessons, private sessions.

If you have a community in your hometown that you think would benefit from some rope education, Icky and I fly internationally to teach.

So no matter where you are in the world, we absolutely want to work with you.

You can reach out at houseofbound.com.

If you want a quick and easy way to try a cool new rope thing or just drop a thank you for anything, you can always just buy a tutorial on my Etsy, which is like if you look up on my website or just go to Etsy directly, if you type in HouseofBound or you type in HugHarness, like it'll pop up in the search.

It's pretty wild how cool Etsy has been promoting my stuff.

Like if you type in Shabari, it's like on the first page.

It's nuts.

It's really cool.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you just want to see more of like what I do want to see and follow my journey, go on Instagram at Lief Bound Ropes.

And you can just kind of see all the cool things I got going on.

And if you're local, like please say hi, reach out.

We'd love to meet new people since we're still new here.

I mean, the Kink community is a great place to find friends.

We really appreciate you and all your wisdom.

I really appreciate y'all asking me to come on the show and talk to you.

We will probably reach out some point in the future, maybe when we're in town for the Folsom Street Fair, and say hi.

And I'm sure we're going to come up with a long list of additional questions to ask you.

Yeah, and next time we can have Icky on and we can talk.

Yes, absolutely.

We would love that.

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