Bina Taverna
Zurich bodyworker and shibari facilitator who has trained in shibari since 2017 and teaches private lessons, couples' sessions and tantra-and-shibari retreats in English, German or Spanish, with a stated focus on consent and trauma sensitivity.
Bina Taverna is a shibari teacher, performer and bodyworker based in Zurich. Her own website is the source for the account below.
Background
Her about page describes a practice that runs across yoga, tantra, dance, breathwork, massage and shibari. She first met shibari in India, as someone being tied, and later learned to tie so that she could hold that space for others; she writes that she spent three years travelling to meet rope practitioners in other countries and exchange knowledge with them. The training she lists includes Thai and Ayurvedic massage, aerial yoga teacher training and breathwork in 2017, courses in sexological bodywork in Zurich in 2019 and 2020, circus pedagogy in South Africa in 2020, a bachelor’s degree in social work from ZHAW in 2021, and a professional relationship coach diploma in 2022 along with courses on trauma, addiction and developmental psychology. She records tantra trainings since 2016 and shibari trainings since 2017, naming tantra teachers such as Daniel Odier but no individual rope teacher. Her site states plainly that she is not a certified psychotherapist and advises anyone who needs that kind of help to see a professional.
Approach
She says her tying draws on ecstatic dance and contact improvisation, and her wider work on BDSM, sexological bodywork and tantra. Her sessions page presents her approach as coming from tantra rather than from BDSM, and describes the space she offers as trauma-sensitive and non-sexual, without nudity or sexual contact. Consent, trauma sensitivity and self-development are the three themes she names throughout.
Offerings
According to her sessions page she offers individual shibari sessions with a conversation beforehand and aftercare afterward, couples’ sessions in which she ties both partners or helps one tie the other, and private lessons that teach tying either on a model or with a mannequin, a friend or oneself. She also runs one- and two-day private tantra and shibari retreats for couples and works in English, German or Spanish. Outside one-to-one work, she performs at festivals and events, with fire shows, dance and shibari suspension, facilitates ecstatic dance gatherings in Zurich, and has appeared on several podcasts and on the radio station Kanal K.