Tina’s Suspended Hogtie

Hey Y’all!!  I’m just doing a quick journal entry of my last “self-bondage” experiment.  Nothing so strenuous as the dog crate thing.  Lol.  Nope.  This one was more about research for a scene in the Valentine’s Day story I’m writing with @crab-hermit.  I’m planning on writing a scene that includes a suspended hogtie (because suspended hogties are awesome!).  The only problem is, I’ve never done one of those.  In fact, I’ve never actually done a suspension before.  So after a couple of weeks of procrastinating, I finally got my crap together and I did one last night.  And I’m so happy to report that it went well, and it was a really, really cool experience!  So cool, in fact, that I decided to write it up and share.  😊

So, I’m aware that some people around here (I’m not naming names) think I might be just a little bit irresponsible with pushing the envelope.  And I guess that’s fair, considering I do so much self-bondage.  I don’t think folks understand the painstaking testing and refining that I do before I actually put MYSELF into a new bondage position.  I have a process.  A lengthy process.  But still, I get the concern.  So, for this one, I called in a favor from my best friend’s husband Lou.  As you may recall, Lou is a first responder, and he was my spotter from the dog crate adventure.  Lou had to pull me out of that one.  Well, he DECIDED to pull me out that one.  Whether or not he HAD to is a matter of some debate.  But I digress.  I promised Lou, I’d only need him for a couple of hours this time, and he was cool enough to help me out.  Thanks Lou!!

So, here’s the set up.  Lou is a strong dude, and he could easily hoist me up nice and high for a suspension.  But I’m trying to create a rig that I can just do on my own, once it’s proven, so I wanted to use my air mats for the “muscle” instead of Lou.  The plan was for me to stack both my mats up on top of each other, fully inflated, so that they’d be about 8 inches off of the floor.  Then, I would get myself into a hogtie, like usually.  Then I’d just add some leather straps under my shoulders, waist and thighs.  I’d also attach a tether to my harness gag and tie it off in the ceiling rafters to support my head.  And then I’d deflate both of the mats, and I’d be left dangling, hogtied, 8 inches off of the floor.  I know that’s not super perilous or anything, but I’m just trying to get the experience of being weightless while hogtied and struggling so I can write about it intelligently.  Pretty solid plan, right?  Right!

OK.  Lou was there in the basement with me.  Out of respect to my best friend Sarah, and because I’m such a modest and shy girl, I was doing this test run with no toys, and wearing regular athletic clothes.  We’re talking yoga pants and a fitted T-shirt.  Hair is in a ponytail.  No nonsense.  Also, the test was only going to be for a few minutes, and I wanted to be able to talk to Lou, so I didn’t use the gag this time.

As for the bondage, I tied my ankles and legs together, above the knee.  I cinched up those rope loops.  I also did my usual method of wiggling my arms through some loose rope lopes up above my elbow with a loose cinch rope tethered up to the ceiling.  I did the same thing with loose rope loops around my wrists only the cinch rope went from my crotch rope, up between my legs, wrapped around the wrist loops, and then up to the ceiling.  The last bit was to run a hogtie rope from my ankle to my wrists and tether it up to the ceiling.  If you’re reading this, you’ve probably read this very set up before.  I do it all the time.

As for the suspension part, I already had measured tethers from the rafters down to the straps that I was wearing around my chest, waist and thighs.  I used really long straps.  I looped each strap one time around it’s respective body part and then the remaining strap formed a big loop that was three or four feet long.  Once I got in my loose hogtie, all Lou needed to do for me was clip the carabiner I had tied to each tether to the loose end of the loop, and I would have a stable suspension base.  I knew that the straps would tighten up once the mats were deflated, and they were supporting my weight.  But I used wide straps with more surface area to spread out the pressure and prevent them from digging into my body more than ropes or thin straps would have.  So, I thought it would be doable.

Anyway, I got myself into the hogtie.  Lou attached the tethers to my suspension straps.  The moment of trust had arrived.  I told Lou to go ahead and turn off the mats, and they began deflating beneath me.

Right away I could tell I did a good job with the suspension strap placement.  I was being well supported.  I was not “sagging” down in the gaps between where the straps were placed.  I can report, however, that I underestimated the amount of tightening the straps would do around my body once they were hold me off the ground.  The strap around my chest, under my arms and above my boobs was quite tight.  I might need to come up with a wider strap or add a towel of something as padding there.  Especially once I start doing this naked, and/or for longer durations.

The other big success was the stability of the suspension.  I wanted to make sure that I didn’t “roll” from side to side.  I estimated that by having the suspension strap loops extend up high above my hogtied body before they connected to the tethers, that would give me the stability of being “lifted” from two points at each of the strap locations instead of just one point if the carabiners were connected right at my body.  I hope I’m explaining this alright.  Maybe the simplest way to explain it is that I didn’t have to balance myself perfectly because the straps were under me and then lifting mostly straight up on both my right and left side good and high before the two sides met at the connection point of the tether.  If you can’t picture it, it’s a lot like the picture below.  Lol.

But I screwed one thing up.  I usually rely on the deflating mats lowering me to the floor to pull out the slack of my tether lines and cinch my elbows, wrists and pull my hogtied ankles down to my hands.  I didn’t even think about the fact that I wouldn’t be lowered because I would be suspended.  Dumb mistake!  So, while I was happy with the suspension, and able to wiggle and squirm really well, I would have been able to get my hands and arms free pretty much whenever I wanted.  So that was a bit of a fail!

“You good Tina?”  Lou asked.  I think he could tell I wasn’t completely pleased.

“Yeah, all good.  How do I look?” I tried to smile but I’m pretty sure I looked more like a dog when you pretend to throw a toy but just hide it behind your back.

“I don’t know Tina.  Looks like your solid.  It’s not too tight, right?”  I didn’t know if he was commenting on the suspension straps in fact being rather tight, or if he was commenting on the fact that my arms were not tied very tightly at all.

“My arms were supposed to be tighter.  I forgot that the slack would get pulled out with me hanging in place.  I’ll have to work on that.”  I could tell that’s what Lou was talking about from how he nodded emphatically as soon as I mentioned my arms.

“Do you want me to do the ground tethers now?”  Lou was going to attach additional tethers from my collar, my waist and my thighs down to some 45-pound weightlifting plates and assorted 50 and 30 pound dumbbells.

“Hang on Lou.  I just want to test this out for a minute first.”  Right away, this felt totally different and really cool.  I was careful at first, just making small twists to the right and a slight turn to the left.  Then I bent sideways at my hip forming a kind of “C” shape with my body.  That much bend caused the tethers to resist.  I could still pull myself into that position but it kind of forced my to lift up at my chest and my legs curled upward so I was arched and cockeyed at the same time.  And all of this time, I had the strange and unfamiliar feeling of being cradled, levitating just above my deflated mats.

“OK Lou, go ahead with the ground tethers now.”  Lou clipped the carabiners from the weighted down tethers to the anchor points I’d made with carabiners on the suspension straps.  He kind of swung me to the front when he attached my collar to the tethers.  Then he had a bit of trouble attaching my thigh suspension strap.  That was probably because it had tightened when the mat deflated.  Again, I’d have to make an adjustment.  Anyway, when Lou was finished, I had the most completely surreal feeling of being pulled apart in all directions.  The straps were lifting me straight up from underneath and all around me.  But their lift was countered by the downward force of the weighted tethers.  I could no longer make any of the bending or wiggling movements that I easily made as though I was swimming in water before the ground tethers.  Every attempt of shift or bend was resisted by a tether up, or down.  If only my hogtie rope, crotch rope and cinch ropes had tightened, I would be in one of the tightest bondages I’d ever experienced.

“So, are you going to struggle now, Tina?”  Lou could see I wasn’t trying very hard.

“I think I’m done, actually.  I need to work on the arms.  They didn’t get tight.”  Lou walked toward me and stood over top of me, examining my ropes.

“I thought something was off.  What happened?”  Lou had never taken much of an interest in my self-bondage.  But lately, Sarah (Lou’s wife) has been messing around with it more and more over here when she stayed over on nights Lou was working third shift.  I wonder if there’s something going on with that…

“It was dumb.  You see how the ropes around my arm loops…”





“You mean the cinch ropes?”  Lou interrupted.

“Yeah.  The cinch ropes,” I answered, surprised he knew the term.  “You see how the cinch ropes go up to the ceiling?”

“Sure.”  Lou is a man of few words.

“Well, I usually get lowered when the mat deflates, and that tightens the cinch ropes.  I wasn’t thinking about the fact that I wouldn’t be getting lowered this time.  My head was starting to feel heavy.  It wasn’t tethered and I’ve been holding it up this whole time.  “Can you go ahead and turn on the mats?”

“OK,” But Lou didn’t move.  He was looking up and down the ceiling tether ropes like he was figuring something out.  After a few seconds that seemed longer than that, he unclipped the ground tethers and turned on the mats which started inflating right away.  Lou stepped back from me and mats.  He was looking down at the mats inflating, rising up to meet my hogtied body.  He was definitely still thinking deep “Lou” thoughts.

“So, you want the tethers to pull the cinch ropes tighter, right?”  Lou asked.  The mats were now fully inflated, ending my little suspension adventure.

“Yep.  That’s what I want.”  I started to pull my hands out from the wrist loops.  I got a jolt when Lou grabbed the wrist cinch rope tether and pulled it straight up.  This tightened my wrist loops up nicely and also caused the attached crotch rope to dig into my.

“That’s how you need the ropes?”  I was still surprised by Lou’s sudden interest in how my self-bondage worked.

“Yes.  But without someone standing there pulling it up.  I need it to work by itself.  Do you mind?”  Lou’s observations were nothing I didn’t already know.  He was trying to be helpful, which was nice and all, but…

“Well, what if you attached the cinch ropes to the ground tethers instead of the ceiling tethers?”  OK.  Hadn’t thought of that.  But I didn’t see how that would solve the “slack” problem.  Plus, I hadn’t figured out yet how to even do the ground tethers without help.  Lou let go of the wrist cinch rope tether.

“Thanks.”  I started to get my hands free.  “I’m not sure how that would help though.”

“Couldn’t we just put the weights on the mat with you?  And they’d lower down when the mat deflates and then….”  Lou was a genius.

“….and then the slack would be pulled out from below instead of from above!”  I finished for Lou, full of excitement.

“You think that would work?” Lou asked.  I actually really did think it work.

“Yes!  I bet that would work,” I now had my hands and arms free of their uncinched rope loops.

“Should we try it now?”  There’s that new enthusiasm again.  I hate to stifle that, for Sarah’s sake, anyway.  She might have to give her a heads up about this…

“Thanks Lou, but not now.  I’ll run some models and figure out the right tether lengths.  I DEFINITELY think it’ll work, but this will take me some time to get it all together.”  Lou was nodding his understanding.  “But I can’t say thanks enough.  This is going to help me SOOO much with the bondage position.  And what we did tonight is already super helpful for me to go ahead and write how my character will feel in a suspended hogtie.

“Nice.  So, it’s a flawless victory?”  Lou asked, referencing the expression we use to describe a perfect score at the shooting range (Lou is one of the police officers I train with in firearms and defensive tactics.).

“Yep.  I’m good here now Lou.  Why don’t you get home to Sarah?”  Lou was already heading up the stairs.

“Alright.  I want to be there when you try it out, ok?”  I smiled huge.

“Later gator!”

“After a while crocodile.” Lou responded.  Sarah and Lou are awesome!

TO BE CONTINUED….