with Anna Noctuelle
This one-day workshop is designed specifically for educators who want to deepen how they teach, structure, and communicate suspension and transitions via a clear graphical notation system developed by Anna Noctuelle.
Many teachers know the challenge: students take countless photos yet still struggle to reconstruct suspension sequences at home. Transitions blur together in memory. Complex progressions that feel clear in the moment become confusing later. As instructors, we often rely on demonstration and repetition—but lack a precise visual language students can use to truly understand how a suspension evolves, how weight shifts, or how one position transitions into the next. This workshop introduces a graphical notation system for Shibari that functions similarly to choreography notation in dance or musical scoring. It allows sequences to be documented clearly, precisely and read back with accuracy. For educators, this opens powerful pedagogical possibilities. With this system, you can help students understand suspension and transitions structurally—not just visually. Instead of memorising shapes, they begin to see pathways, load changes, directional logic, and sequence architecture. You can write down exercises for them to take home and practice independently. You can design progressive drills that build specific technical skills. You can create playful, educational games where students compose, exchange, and interpret short sequences from paper. Notation becomes a bridge between observation and embodied understanding.
For teachers, the system also becomes a creative and organizational tool. You can sketch out demos before class, refine performance structures without always needing your tying partner present, and draft new exercises before testing them on the mat. It supports clearer rehearsal processes and more intentional curriculum planning. Perhaps most importantly, it establishes a shared language. When multiple educators use the same notation system, we can exchange exercises across venues, align teaching content between cities, compare curriculum progressions, and communicate ideas internationally without relying solely on video or photos. Workshops, intensives, and teacher collaborations become easier to coordinate. Material can be preserved, refined, and built upon rather than reinvented. Throughout the day, participants will learn how to read and write sequences, how to translate live tying into notation, and how to use the system pedagogically: to clarify suspension mechanics, illustrate transitions, design exercises, and support student autonomy. The focus is not only on understanding the symbols, but on understanding how to teach with them. This class is best suited for advanced practitioners who are already teaching and who want to bring more clarity, structure, and creative flexibility into their workshops. By the end of the day, you will leave with practical tools you can immediately integrate into your teaching—tools that help your students think, analyse, remember, and create more effectively.
-
This class is best suited for advanced practitioners who are already teaching and who want to bring more clarity, structure, and creative flexibility into their workshops.
-
In addition to your rope set, please bring a pen or pencil and some paper. Manuscript paper for musical notation is especially helpful if you have it. If you prefer working digitally, a tablet set up for notation works as well.
-
Anna Noctuelle is a highly experienced and versatile Shibari practitioner with over twenty years of dedication to the art.
What began as a personal exploration has evolved into a multifaceted international practice encompassing teaching, modelling, and performance within rope communities around the world since 2016. Grounded in a background in classical dance, choreography, authentic movement, and other embodied disciplines, Anna brings a rare blend of grace, precision, and deep somatic awareness to her work.Her approach to Shibari is profoundly influenced by embodiment, somatics, and emotional attunement. Rope becomes not merely a technical practice, but an exploratory space for deepening connection—both with oneself and one’s own body, as well as with another: their intentions, sensations, boundaries, and physical expression. Informed by her studies in Buddhism, Tantra, and Yoga, Anna’s work carries a contemplative and ritual quality, where movement becomes meaning and connection becomes expression.
As an educator, Anna is known for her embodied, mindful teaching style—one that honours both the physical and emotional dimensions of tying. Her classes explore the meeting point between body and emotion, inviting participants to tune into sensation, awareness, and authentic expression.
At the heart of her teaching is the intention to create a space where people are free to express what they are afraid to express. A space where fears and insecurities are welcomed alongside curiosity, insight, discovery, and growth. Her work invites both softness and courage, listening and expression. Through emotional landscaping, authentic movement, and energy work, Anna supports students in developing nuanced emotional landscapes that deepen connection and presence.
Beyond rope, Anna is a linguist with a lifelong fascination for communication in all its forms. She is the founder and co-host of the podcast Model Behaviour, and the co-founder and curator of Studio Ma, a dedicated tatami room and Shibari space in London. Across all her teaching, she is recognised for creating environments that are safe, inclusive, playful, and rooted in consent—spaces that honour curiosity, experimentation, and self-awareness, while remaining attentive to physical and psychological responses.
Anna’s wider offerings extend into Tantra, Reiki, intimacy and couples coaching. Her Tantra sessions and workshops invite exploration of sacred connection, trust, and embodied presence. As a Reiki practitioner, she offers gentle yet profound energy healing tailored to emotional and physical needs. Her coaching work focuses on communication, emotional depth, and relational resilience, and is informed by lived experience—including her personal IVF journey and her close connection to the 12-step recovery community through her husband. These experiences allow her to meet fertility- and addiction-related challenges with deep empathy, nuance, and holistic understanding.
Across all modalities—Shibari, Tantra, Reiki, or coaching—Anna’s work is rooted in safety, compassion, and authentic connection. She is dedicated to welcoming people exactly as they are, and to supporting each individual on their unique path toward healing, intimacy, and growth.