Getting Hooked on the Weird and Wonderful World of Body Suspension

Take a deep breath. On your exhale, I’m going to push the needle through.”

Cere Coichetti keeps his word, and Christina Barbato keeps her eyes shut. Next he attaches the shackles to the hooks in her back. Barbato glances up at Coichetti, and he smiles reassuringly. After she displays a clear sense of comfort, he pulls on the rope, and she rises into the air, held up only by the hooks in her back.
Suspension is a 5,000-year-old religious practice that originated in India. Hindus would suspend each other during a ritual called vel kavadi, in order to show their devotion to the god Murugan. Here in the United States, the Mandan Native American tribe performed similar suspensions on the final day of the annual okipa ceremony — a young warrior’s rite of passage and test of endurance.