Lyon

The Lyon scene

In December 2016 Rue89 Lyon reported that Lyon Shibari had been created in 2013 by a rigger known as Dragon, and described it as the first association in France devoted entirely to shibari. The association’s own pages give 2014 as its founding year and call it the oldest shibari association in the country. Its founder told the paper that the group had thirty members in its first year and about a hundred by then, and that its task was to give people the knowledge they need to tie safely. At the time, around ten pairs met every Tuesday evening, plus a monthly workshop, at the venue La Méduze to learn basic ties with jute rope; sexual remarks were the one thing banned in class. A year later a CityCrunch writer who had been a member since the start counted 130 members and named two other rope groups in the city, Batjulwon and Place des Cordes.

A volunteer association with its own space

According to the Lyon guide Toolyon, Lyon Shibari has had its own 50-square-meter room with changing rooms and a wooden rig since December 2019. It is run entirely by volunteers, organized in teams for teaching, events, the shop and the premises. Its season combines beginner and intermediate courses, free discovery evenings, open training, rope jams and weekends with guest teachers. The current program offers a seven-class beginner course from September 2026 to January 2027 and stand-alone four-hour classes for people who already know the basics, on topics such as yoko-zuri, side suspension.

Queer and studio spaces

Coven Cordes describes itself as a queer collective whose events are mostly held in chosen mixity without cisgender men, with occasional events open to LGBTQI people or to allies as well. Its head of teaching, Axel, who works as Queerbaku, first tied in 2017, trained with teachers including Akechi Kanna, and has taught with the collective since 2020. Studio du Parc, founded by Baryss and Roxanne, is mainly a shibari studio but also hosts dance, drag and other body-based workshops. Baryss, a musician and dancer, compares a rope session to a dancing couple in which leading and following can switch during the session. Archipel Shibari Lyon, another volunteer association, runs Zlyttia, themed shibari and kink evenings with performances.

Guests from the Naka line

Lyon is also a stop for teachers from the Naka line described in Kinbaku in Europe. Eric Shore, who presents himself as a certified teacher of Riccardo Wildties’s Kinbaku LuXuria, invites Wildties, Kurogami from Turin and Petr Soptík from Prague to teach weekend workshops, which are generally aimed at intermediate and advanced students. He notes that most of these workshops are held in French, while Soptík’s are taught in English.

What the city offers now

A newcomer can start with a volunteer-run association course, a queer collective’s classes, a studio course or private lessons, and go on to jams, themed evenings and guest weekends. The programs cited here are published in French. For what to expect at a first session, see What happens at a first shibari class.