Hogtie

Safety

English Wikipedia notes that the position presses on the abdomen and can make breathing difficult, a risk it calls postural asphyxia, and says breathing should be watched throughout, especially when gags, collars or extra rope make the tie stricter. Rope 365 likewise names backbends among the positions that restrict breathing.
Medical opinion on the position itself is divided. A 1998 review of police-custody deaths by Chan, Vilke and Neuman concluded that the hogtie position alone does not compromise breathing to the point of asphyxia and attributed the deaths to other factors; ESINEM Shibari Classes, discussing such findings, notes that police and health staff are now often taught to avoid face-down restraint or keep it very short, and stresses that the study concerned sudden deaths only and does not show long, unattended hogties to be safe.
ESINEM Shibari Classes also warns that pulling the arms behind the back, as in a hogtie, can overstretch the brachial plexus, the bundle of arm nerves near the armpit, and that the risk grows with body weight and with pressure forcing the shoulder down.

Hogtie and gyaku ebi

The hogtie is the Western name in a pair of closely related ties. Japanese Wikipedia describes gyaku ebi (reverse shrimp) as a tie in which the upper body is bound and the legs are drawn from behind toward the head, arching the back, and says that the English for it is hogtie. Rope365 lists gyaku ebi shibari as an alias of the hogtie, while Shibari Study and Andrea Ropes treat the two as similar rather than identical, with the gyaku ebi marked by a more pronounced arch.

Forms and difficulty

Crash Restraint’s tie index shows how varied the family is: ankles-to-wrists, ankles-to-chest and speed hogties are listed under basic floorwork, and a knees-apart hogtie under intermediate floorwork. Shibari Safety treats the hogtie as a basic position but notes that it needs propping and support. On that basis Kinbaku World lists the basic forms as beginner ties.

Where to see it tied

These are free public tutorials by the teachers named below. Kinbaku World has not tested them. Read safety before you start, and find in-person teaching on the places pages.

Ebi McKnotty, Rope365: Day 36: Ankles to Wrists is a written page in English, the first day of Rope365’s hogtie week. It has captioned photographs of wrists and ankles joined, a question of whether the ankles and the wrists are tied together or separately, a note on the nerves at the wrist, and a self-evaluation checklist.
Corps à Cordes: Basic Hogtie, version 2 is an 11:46 silent video: no speech, no captions and an empty audio track. The tied person is clothed and lies face down on a rug while the tying is shown; a French on-screen card about the school appears partway through.

Variations by teacher and school

For descriptions of the arched hogtie also called gyaku ebi, see the gyaku ebi page. The differences below are among teachers of the Western-style hogtie.

Rope365 (Ebi McKnotty) starts its hogtie week with the wrists tied to the ankles and calls it the most classic version. It leaves open whether the ankles and the wrists are tied together or each separately, and says the choice changes how restrictive the tie is.
The same week anchors the legs to a chest harness or a box tie instead. Rope365 says a harness that loads the chest tends to restrict breathing more but is less likely to cause nerve problems, and that the box tie makes nerve pressure harder to avoid.
Rope365’s third version puts the arms behind in a strappado position with shoulder straps, which it says takes some of the load off the wrists. Rope365 describes two shoulder-strap variants, one using single column ties and another using a bight.
cee, who writes Autostraddle’s Shibari 101 series, builds the hogtie on a chest harness or a box tie and attaches the ankle ropes to it. cee gives the reason that this spreads the weight of the legs across the chest instead of putting it on the wrists, as in the more Western-style ankles-to-wrists tie. The ankles get a double column tie or the leg tie from the series.
Shibari Study’s glossary notes that the hogtie may also be called utsubuse shibari. The same glossary defines utsubuse shibari, in its own entry, as a face-down suspension; see utsubuse zuri.

How it developed

English Wikipedia says the hogtie was first applied to pigs and other young four-legged animals, which is where the name comes from, and that on farm animals three of the four limbs are tied. It describes the human hogtie as any position in which arms and legs are bound behind the person and connected.

Autostraddle calls the wrists-to-ankles form the more Western-style hogtie, and Rope365 calls it the most classic one. Rope365 says the strappado position used in its armbinder hogtie was a common torture position in medieval Europe and in Edo-period Japan. Rope365 lists gyaku ebi shibari as another name for the hogtie and Japanese Wikipedia gives hogtie as the English for it; the gyaku ebi page covers that link. No source consulted dates the first use of the hogtie in rope bondage or credits it to a person.

Risk

The risk is rated high. The position usually puts the person tied face down with the arms drawn behind, which is where the sources locate its two main dangers: breathing and the nerves of the shoulder. Sources disagree on how far the position alone restricts breathing, as the safety notes explain. English Wikipedia’s general safety advice is never to leave a bound person alone, and ESINEM Shibari Classes cautions specifically that long, unattended hogties should not be assumed safe. This page describes the tie; it does not teach it.