Natasha NawaTaNeko

Natasha NawaTaNeko is a rope bottom, educator and author based in Berlin. She works with Alexander MA, and together they teach, perform and publish under the name Discover Kinbaku. Her profile on the Discover Kinbaku website says she is known internationally for an embodied approach to rope bottoming.

Discover Kinbaku

The duo’s own account says the two became partners in 2011 and have since studied with European and Japanese teachers; the only teacher they name is Naka Akira, whose semenawa they say they admire. They have taught and performed internationally since 2016, and their site lists teaching stops in cities including Tokyo, Brussels, Lisbon, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Bologna, Rotterdam, Poznań, Toulouse, New York and San Francisco. In Berlin they teach at Studio 6×6. Their offering includes workshops, coaching for couples, riggers and bottoms, performances, salons and keynotes. They also co-founded the Kinbaku Society of Berlin Magazine, which publishes photography, essays, interviews and historical research, and the independent publishing house Die Goldbomben.

Their 2026–27 program in Berlin includes “Omote and Ura”, a Wednesday-evening course from September to December 2026 on the visible and invisible sides of semenawa, and a weekend intensive on floorwork and tying to a hashira, the upright wooden pillar.

Approach

Her profile presents kinbaku as an intimate practice that joins technical understanding with emotional depth, body awareness and human connection, and describes rope as a dialogue between two people. Her teaching aims to help students recognize their limits and communicate more clearly. She names Joseph Kramer’s Sexological Bodywork as a strong influence, along with Betty Martin, Staci Haines and her ongoing practice of Hanna Somatics, and she offers individual coaching for rope bottoms.

Writing and podcast

In 2020 she published Somatics for Rope Bottoms, a collection of essays that her site describes as a guide to embodiment for anyone who wants to feel more of their body, not only for people who are tied. To continue the conversations started by the book, she runs a free international book club on Zoom: monthly 90-minute sessions combine a short talk, a guided solo somatic practice and small-group sharing on themes such as embodied consent, limits and boundaries, non-verbal communication, processing intense impact and surrender. The site stresses that it is neither therapy nor a rope-bottoming workshop, and reading the book is optional. She also writes a weekly blog on embodiment, intimacy and rope.

With Anna Noctuelle and Saara Rei she hosts Model Behaviour, a podcast about rope bondage and shibari in which the three present themselves as rope models and educators. Its episodes, many released in two parts, cover topics such as aging in ropes, relationships and jealousy, embodiment and fashion, alongside interviews with guests such as Gestalta, the owner of the Berlin studio Daruma.