For most people hooks are for hanging jackets on or for catching fish. However for Irish-based Sean Dubbs, co-founder of Post Modern Primitive Suspension hooks have a very different use.
The process is very delicate and is typically done carefully by an experienced individual or professional of the field in order to avoid serious injury.
Suspension may require and often has a small group who handle preparations and the process itself.
The actual act of being suspended may take up a tiny portion of time compared to the time involved in preparation. It usually takes a team of three to five people to get someone suspended – a rigger, a piercer and a bio (to clean).
Depending on the position in which the body is to be suspended, multiple hooks are sometimes located around the shoulders, upper arm, and back, as well as around the knees. Sean described a suspension position called the “Superman” where someone has ten hooks in their back.
There are also some positions that they will not do. For example you cannot pierce the centre of someone’s back in fear of damaging nerves.
Suspension can last anywhere from a few minutes to 12 hours. Some people bring along mini DVD players, iPods and their phones.
The skin ripping is very rare (Sean has only seen this once) and they call it a full failure.
Sean got involved as he is a qualified piercing artist. The hooks which are put into the skin for suspension need to put in by a professional piercer and his friend asked him to come along to a meeting and do it.
He ended up trying it himself “and fell in love with it”.
Overcoming a fear and a pain are two of the reasons Sean enjoys it so much but the pain also causes endorphins to release from the brain causing, in essence, a type of high.
There are currently only ten to 12 people practising it in Ireland, all of whom are members of Sean's Group
Large international community. At least one club in every major country and in 29 US states
Sean is going on a trip to Switzerland for “free fall suspension” where you jump from a platform as opposed to using pulleys, however you are supported by a harness.
The group also attended an international convention in Oslo, Norway, at the end of July.
Sean says there is still a lot of stigma attached to it. People think that they are “S&M freaks” or satanists.
