Rope as Medicine Sessions
For exploring power, surrender, intimacy, and transformation.
What are Rope as Medicine Sessions?
Rope as Medicine sessions are one-on-one experiences that bring together rope, touch, and somatic awareness to explore the deeper patterns shaping your relationships, desires, and sense of self.
You might have a simple curiosity about rope bondage, or perhaps you're ready to explore something deeper: control, surrender, intimacy, pleasure, or meaning.
People often leave these sessions feeling grounded, euphoric, and more resourced to meet the challenges of life with clarity and empowerment.
You May Be Drawn to This Work If…
You are used to holding everything together and are curious what might happen if you let yourself be held, supported, or guided instead.
You've become guarded, skeptical, or disconnected from pleasure and want to explore what it might mean to soften without abandoning your discernment.
You have a habit of orienting your life around other people’s needs, and want to reconnect with your own desires, boundaries, and sense of purpose.
You know something in your life wants to change, but meditation or therapy hasn’t helped that much—and you're wondering what your body might have to teach you.
You don't need to know exactly what you're looking for.
We can discover it together.
“During our last session, Glory was able to articulate in a single sentence something I’ve been trying to identify after years of therapy. They helped me in ways I didn’t think possible.”
— Jonathan
What Does a Rope Session Look Like?
We begin by creating the scene together. I meet you where you are, listening for what you're feeling, and where you want to go. From there, the shape of our session emerges.
If this is your first time in rope, our time together will be more exploratory. I'll guide us to discover in real time what you like and what you don't. If you already know what you want, or have a specific challenge or feeling you're ready to move through, we can approach the session with that clarity as our compass.
Through attuned touch, rope bondage, and grounded presence, I guide your body to relax into the present moment.
Every session is different. Some bring grief, fear, or anger to the surface. Others feel restful, sensual, or enlivening.
Clients often describe feeling profoundly cared for in the containment of the rope, while reconnecting with parts of themselves they've long neglected.
Coming out of a session, we move slowly and with care. Being in the rope can be a mind-altering experience, and you may find yourself in an altered state. We give you as much time as you need to arrive back into your body.
From there, we check in and debrief. This might happen sitting together, cuddling, or over tea—there is time to process what you experienced and learned. In the days that follow, I check in via text to support your continued integration.
Who This Is For
Rope as Medicine is for anyone who wants to explore surrender, intimacy, embodiment, and their relationship with power.
Over years of this work, I've come to recognize three archetypes of people who especially benefit from my support. These aren't fixed identities, but rather, common ways we have learned to protect ourselves from life’s challenges.
The Atlas:
The one who carries everything.
You are extremely capable, responsible, and accustomed to being the one who holds it all together. But you're getting tired of carrying the world on your shoulders.
Through rope, the Atlas can practice being held, receiving support, and discovering that surrender doesn't diminish your strength.
The Atlas can transform into The Sovereign: the one who discerns what is theirs and chooses what to carry.
The Cynic:
The one who resists and protects.
You are skillfully perceptive and discerning, but disappointment or hurt may have given you armor. You long to experience pleasure, trust, or deeper connection, but struggle to soften and receive.
Through rope, the Cynic practices staying discerning without closing off to pleasure and possibility. She learns to name what she needs, feel strong in her vulnerability, and refine her attunement to sensuality.
The Cynic transforms into the Siren: the one who creates and welcomes pleasure into her life.
The Martyr:
The one who self-sacrifices.
You know how to care for everyone else, but you also abandon your desires and disappear into service. You may have lost touch with your own wants and needs.
Through rope, the Martyr can practice receiving as fully as he gives, discovering that his needs matter. He doesn’t have to earn love through usefulness.
The Martyr transforms into the Devotee: the one who gives from free will, and knows they are worthy of love and devotion.
Boundaries and Consent
Consent, in this work, is a living, mutually co-created agreement about what we want to engage in together. Before we even touch the rope, we will create a roadmap for how we'll build trust, navigate challenge, and stay rooted in our authentic Yeses throughout the experience.
In our negotiation, I offer a range of options along a spectrum, rather than a fixed menu. We talk through the feelings and emotions you're open to moving through, how much we want to check in, and how much experimentation on the fly is welcomed. We explore the spectrum of eroticism—from technical, to sensual, to erotic play—and the range of comfort to discomfort.
I ask what body parts, types of touch, or activities are off limits for you, and whether there are any injuries, sensitivities, or limitations to your typical range of motion I should know about.
Lastly, I ask about feedback: How will I know if you're having a good time, and how will we communicate if something needs to change? Understanding and creating communication tools ahead of time allows us to trust how we'll navigate challenges when they arise.
In these sessions, I am in the role of giving, and creating the experience that best serves you in the moment. Drawing on Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent, this framework helps us both stay clear about who the touch is for, whose desire is being served, and encourages you to receive without expectation.
What Changes?
Many clients begin to experience greater comfort with surrender after a single session.
With ongoing work, clients are able to build the following skills:
Trust themselves more deeply
Set and communicate clearer boundaries
Stay present with emotions and return to balance
Release shame, fear, and outdated protective patterns
Name their desires more clearly and ask for what they want
Receive support and feel secure in the process
Approach relationships with greater self-trust
Make decisions that feel more aligned with their values
Reframe limiting beliefs and create new possibilities in life
A Client's Journey
One client, raised Mormon and working in a successful creative career, came to me with a desire to build confidence in play. We discovered that he was feeling dissatisfied in both work and relationships.
Through our six months together, he met his shameful parts and released the urge to constantly perform for others. He practiced radical acceptance and no longer stressed over unrequited love. At the end of our journey, he gained the confidence to leave the job and the courage to finally publish the book he'd postponed for years.
If you recognize this kind of shift as something you're ready for, reach out and let's talk.
“With Glory, I’ve discovered the kind of safety that makes surrender effortless—a space where I can meet myself with more curiosity, care, and freedom than I ever expected.”
— Alan
My Transformational Skillset
Many people come to me simply because they're curious about rope. They might have seen pictures online, and had curiosity about what it feels like to be bound, to surrender, or to explore a new kink.
But rope can also bring us into contact with our fears, desires, and deeper emotions. That depth is what Rope as Medicine is about.
I bring together nearly a decade of personal and professional study across somatic practices, trauma healing modalities, BDSM, and spiritual practice. My role is not simply to tie a beautiful rope pattern or facilitate an intense experience. It is to be deeply present with you and support the process of unfolding.
While I am not a licensed therapist, I've studied and practiced integrative somatic trauma modalities as well as Shamanic healing traditions. I trust in the innate wisdom living in our bodies and in Nature, and I believe healing is more than what happens in a therapy room.
Wellness is the healthy balance of spirit, mind, body, and soul.
Rope is one of the ways we can deepen into our bodies, explore our minds, uncover the deeper layers of soul-being, and reveal the light spirit within ourselves.
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The capacity for presence to be a vehicle for healing is deeply researched and practiced in the Hakomi Method, a psychotherapeutic process that draws upon indigenous and Zen wisdom. In my years of studying indigenous Andean shamanic traditions and personal therapeutic work, I’ve cultivated an empathic capacity that allows me to stay deeply present with others without needing to rush or fix their experience.
What I've learned across these presence practices is simple: the act of bringing our attention to something, and bringing love through our attention, helps that thing naturally grow and transform into its next, most true form.
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My sensitivity to the body has been developed through Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy modalities, alongside five years of contact improvisation, fusion dance, and Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms, a movement meditation emerging from the intersection of ecstatic dance, Gestalt therapy, and shamanic traditions.
My physical attunement has also been shaped through my involvement in sex-positive, tantra, and kink spaces.
These body-based practices and activities all validate that our trauma and holding patterns all live in the body. As Dutch psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk explores in-depth in his book, the body keeps the score. By bringing awareness to our patterns and consciously shifting them from a somatic level, we can make lasting shifts in how we move about our lives.
In my sessions, I draw upon most frequently approaches from Hakomi Method, Somatic Experiencing, and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. -
I bring four years of dedicated training and practice in Japanese-style rope bondage, and have hosted 80+ rope workshops and events for newcomers and intermediate practitioners alike. I've taught more than 500 people across the Bay Area, Hawaiʻi, and Los Angeles in the foundations of creating a connective rope bondage experience. My formal training comes from a wide range of Bay Area teachers, many of whom studied under international rope artists and masters. A key inspiration of mine is Midori, the original auntie-domme who introduced Shibari to the West with the first-ever published book on erotic bondage.
My rope practice centers floor rope and one-rope play, while weaving in bodywork, movement, and embodied power dynamics. I hold physical, emotional, and psychological safety as equally important parts of the practice.
Most importantly, I understand rope as a language that communicates with the body.