WORKSHOPS
I travel regularly across Europe and internationally to give workshops and am available for bookings for workshops, conferences and retreats. You can see the topics I've taught in the past here. If you are interested in booking me for teaching in your community, please get in touch to discuss details. I am happy to tailor workshops to suit the level and interests of your group or community.
To get an impression of my offerings, find below examples of workshops and topics that I'm passionate about teaching. My approach to rope is informed by my background in dance and in linguistics as well as by my somatic practices. I bring myself, my learning and my life into rope and as such my rope teaching is inherently interdisciplinary and holistic in its view. That means I always address both sides of the rope and keep a firm eye on emotional, psychological, somatic and communicational aspects as these build the foundation onto which we can tie.
SEMENAWA LANDSCAPES
Where rope becomes atmosphere, and technique becomes emotional language.
A harness is never just a harness. The way rope wraps around a body, the structure it creates, how it holds weight, how it restricts or opens movement, all of this carries a particular quality.
In Semenawa Landscapes, we explore how to use these qualities deliberately to create different emotional landscapes in rope.
We’ll look at how the choice of harness, the way it is applied to the body, and what we do with it in movement can evoke very different sensations and moods. Earth might feel heavy, grounded and inevitable. Air might invite lightness, suspension and instability. Fire can bring intensity, tension and heat. Water might create softness, fluidity and surrender.
But this isn’t about assigning fixed meanings to particular patterns. It’s about learning to read the emotional potential and then making conscious choices about how to amplify, transform or contradict it.
Why might a strappado work beautifully for a particular quality of intensity, but feel strangely out of place in an airy, flowing sequence? What is emotionally different about a gote and a strappado? How does the architecture of a harness affect the story we begin to tell?
Emotional Impact Play
I & II
This workshop fuses the brilliance of Sanford Meisner's renowned acting technique with Shibari. "Acting is living truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” - and so is Shibari. Through Meisner's repetition exercise, we delve via the verbal into the non-verbal realm, to enhance emotional freedom and versatility in Shibari. This technique, rooted in instincts and spontaneity, goes beyond verbal communication, allowing participants to explore the truthfulness of each moment within the rope practice. Through learning to read your partner's cues and respond with heightened awareness, this practice not only deepens the emotional ties between participants is is also a great tool to elevate your Kotoba Seme.
Gote Clinic
The Gote is one of the fundamental structures of Shibari but there is no single Gote that works equally well for every body, every intention, or every scene.
This workshop is a deep dive into the building blocks, variations and possibilities of the Gote, with a particular focus on adaptation. Rather than learning one fixed way of tying and reproducing it, we’ll explore how different structures behave on different bodies, and how you can make informed choices according to your partner’s anatomy, preferences, experience and the intention of the tie.
We’ll work with several approaches, including stemmed and stemless Gotes, 1-rope, 2-rope and 3-rope variations, examining the distinctive qualities of each. We’ll look at their construction, how they distribute pressure and tension, what they make possible, and where their particular challenges lie.
From there, the focus moves towards individualisation: How do you adapt a Gote when the body in front of you doesn’t fit the textbook version? What changes when someone has different proportions, sensitivities, mobility or previous experiences? How can a model communicate what is happening in their body, and how can a rigger respond without losing the integrity of the structure?
Embodying
the Gote
The Gote is often treated as a starting point, a structure to be mastered before moving on to “more interesting” things. But what happens if we stay with it?
What if the Gote is not simply a technical foundation, but a prologue, the beginning of a journey. A time where we build the emotional scenery, introduce the characters and negotiate the framework?
This workshop moves beyond the mechanics of tying to explore the emotional, sensory and emotional landscape of the Gote. We’ll look at how this structure can create space for anticipation, trust, vulnerability, communication and surrender and how the experience of the tie can change depending on how it is applied, inhabited and received.
Shibari Notation
This is a graphical notation system for Shibari which is akin to choreography notation for dance or musical notation. It was invented to cater to the needs of exploration, documentation, and composition of Shibari sequences, offering both novices and seasoned practitioners an easy and straightforward yet precise method of notation. It serves as a means to document, recall, and construct sequence progressions with ease. Whether swiftly capturing ideas or memorising sequences from workshops or performances, this notation can be of great help. For advanced students, it facilitates the drafting and comprehension of new concepts before trying it out.
More Info here: https://www.shibarinotation.info/
Rope As Ritual
Rope can bind, shape, suspend and restrain. But it can also mark a threshold: the moment when the ordinary falls away and something else begins.
This immersive class explores rope as ritual, ceremony and embodied practice: how intentional actions, repetition, sensory detail and symbolic gestures can transform a scene from a sequence of techniques into something more charged, immersive and deeply felt.
Ritual creates a container. It tells the body: we are entering somewhere different now.
A change of clothes. A particular object placed between you. A word spoken quietly. The lighting of a candle. The sound of rope being drawn through the hands. A repeated gesture. Silence. Eye contact. The first loop around the body.
Small acts can become powerful when they are given attention and intention.
We’ll explore how to use ritual to slow down time, sharpen anticipation, heighten sensation and create a sense of passage from everyday consciousness into a different state of attention.
Finding your Surrender in Semenawa
What does surrender actually look like?
In rope, we talk about surrender as though it were a destination. A moment of letting go. A willingness to endure. A state that simply happens to you.
But surrender is far more than that. It is active rather than passive. Expressive rather than silent. It shifts from moment to moment, shaped by trust and resistance, fear and curiosity, desire and uncertainty, resilience and choice.
It asks both people to take part.
This is a deep exploration of the physical, emotional, and relational landscape of semenawa. Both partners must listen. Both must adapt. Both must allow themselves to be changed by what emerges between them.
There is no single definition of semenawa. There are as many as there are people who practise it. Each of us arrives with our own shape of surrender.
We will look at how intention, movement, tension, and release become tools for storytelling, how rope creates atmosphere, narrative, symbolism, and meaning, and how two people move past technique and into co-creation.
Wild Aibunawa
As a distinct style within Shibari, Aibunawa offers unique opportunities for self-expression. This workshop is designed to help you explore this style from an embodied perspective, using interdisciplinary practices such as somatics,movement and others to develop a personalised toolbox for your authentic expression in
rope and Aibunawa in particular.
We’ll have a look into the nature of Aibunawa. We’ll explore how to foster
connection and presence with each other as well as dealing effectively and
impactful with shame and exposure. Learn to embody subtlety and emotional nuance in your movements and responses. We’ll also share a brilliant tool to refine your kotoba-seme. Our tying exercises will be floor based and partials.
BeCome Touch(ed)
From self-touch to communication, boundaries and erotic presence.
Before we learn how to touch another person, we can learn to listen to our own body. BeCome Touch(ed) is an embodied exploration of touch as sensation, communication and connection — beginning with conscious self-touch and gradually moving towards partner touch, boundaries, desire and erotic presence.
Explore how pressure, warmth, rhythm, stillness and intention become a language. Learn to recognise what your body welcomes, where your edges lie, and how to stay connected to yourself while meeting another body.
A journey into touch, presence, agency and the space between us.
Undress the shape
In this class series, we take familiar Shibari shapes apart to explore what lies beneath them: their technical building blocks, movement, rope handling, somatic qualities and emotional potential.
Rather than treating a kata as a fixed form to reproduce, we explore how the function of a tie shapes its form and how changing the way we build, move through and handle the rope can transform the experience entirely.
Depending on the needs and interests of the community, each class focuses on selected katas or harnesses, exploring different ways of tying them and the different emotional landscapes, sensations and possibilities for play they can create.
Throughout the series, we work with the fabric of the tie as a whole: pattern, movement, tension, touch, rhythm and somatic charge.
(It's a short version of "Semenawa Landscapes")
What People say:
Mia L.
Anna's seminar exceeded my expectations.
Great instructor and role model!
Bodhini
I attended this incredible workshop with Anna, I’ve never been to anything like this before. Anna is amazing and this experience is something which I feel will stay with me.
Thomas P.
Thanks for Sunday’s Workshop. It was so good. The little demos you did were amazing. It was really well structured and paced perfectly.