Lola Tiger Nawa

Lola Tiger Nawa is a kinbaku teacher in London, the founder of Ropejam Studio (also written Rope Jam Studio) in North London and the creator of a teaching system called Tiger Nawa Ryū. The studio’s pages also present Lola as an artist, filmmaker, yoga teacher and sound practitioner, and say that each of these disciplines feeds into how movement, rhythm, storytelling and embodiment are taught in the rope classes.

Background and lineage

According to the studio’s About page, Lola’s familiarity with rope goes back to a childhood spent sailing (competitive sailing, in the wording of a course listing), long before any contact with Japanese rope traditions. Lola later studied traditional kinbaku in a lineage the page traces through hojōjutsu, the aesthetics of kabuki theater and modern Japanese kinbaku, and it names Osada Eikichi, Yukimura Haruki, Osada Steve, Nureki Chimuo, Kazami Ranki and Akechi Denki among the masters whose teaching and work shaped the practice. The About page does not say which of them Lola trained with in person. The studio’s listing for its Tiger Aibu Nawa course is more specific: it says Lola’s studies included the teachers Osada Steve, Yagami Ren, Kazami Ranki, Jyuubei and Tenma Haru, and it names the work of Osada Eikichi, Yukimura-ryū, Akechi Denki, Nureki Chimuo and Itō Seiu as inspiration. The same listing credits Lola with more than twenty years of kinbaku practice, and the Learn Shibari page says Lola has taught various disciplines since 1998.

Tiger Nawa Ryū

The studio describes Tiger Nawa Ryū as a personal approach that joins the tenderness of aibu nawa with the intensity of seme nawa, a combination it calls Romantic Seme Nawa. Its working motto, stated on the Learn Shibari page, is “concepts, not patterns”: students should understand the principles behind a tie and adapt them to different bodies rather than copy Lola’s rope, a point the course listing repeats. The Learn Shibari page sets out two Rope Foundations courses followed by a seven-course “Green Path”. It starts with rope handling, frictions, single and double column ties and a two-rope takate kote, continues with Tiger Aibu Nawa (breath, touch, pacing, use of the nawajiri and partial suspension) and Tiger Seme Nawa (restriction, predicament and emotional challenge, framed by consent and communication), and leads toward suspension and personal expression. The studio calls the person tying the bakushi and the person receiving the ukete, and treats self-tying and ensemble tying as forms of the same practice.

Ropejam Studio

The studio announced its website and online shop in August 2024. After three months without its space, it held its first jam in a temporary home in early 2025, and on 1 September 2025 it announced a new studio, twice the previous size, in the building where it had started. Lola writes that the room was laid out according to feng shui principles. Alongside the courses it runs jams, private lessons in the studio or at clients’ homes, and themed workshops such as “Shibari Tango”, taught with the tango teacher Kiran Premnath. In a July 2026 post Lola recalled attending EURIX in Berlin the year before and announced plans to explore photography, film and movement through rope during the studio’s second year.