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Doing some youtube searching, as I’m wont to do on occasion and I came across an older video of human suspensions being performed in Sri Lanka. A Professor Carlo Fonseka takes the opportunity to show that suspension does not take magic or religious devotion to achieve and goes on to show a (presumed) scientist being suspended from six hooks in a superman position. This video is most likely from the late 1970′s as that is when the professor was waging a war of science vs gods, and his main opponent was the Hindu deity Kataragama, whose devotees are known for firewalking and flesh suspensions. Kataragama is also known as Lord Murugan to the Tamil people of India, which is the same deity exalted during Thaipusam.

Despite knowing that religious devotion is not necessary for rituals such as suspension, I still personally find it much more interesting within that context. We in the modern suspension community know that it’s mind over matter, not religious devotion which allows us to suspend, but I personally hope that all of us remember where these rituals originate.

As a follow up to our Halloween Suspensions post, here’s another video, this time shot by our good friend and suspension cohort, Jared.

This video is from a few years back now, and was shot and edited by ihung’s own Drew. To set the stage for this video, it was later in the evening at one of our old ihung & Modified Soul barbecues and Jill, another ihung member, had been discussing a single point chest suspension. We’d talked about it all day, whenever we caught a few minutes that is, as it was a busy day of suspensions. She has a very nice chest tattoo and her artist would kill her if she “ruined” it with some hook scars, so we decided to place the entrance and exit holes in the skull’s eye sockets. That area of the tattoo was primarily black shading and thus easily touched up.

Before I knew it, it was Jill’s turn to suspend. On the outside, I was calm and collected and supportive, but on the inside I was intensely nervous. Chest suspensions alone are awesomely intense, and a single point just amplifies that right on up to 11. Not to mention that Jill is like my younger sister, as she was at the time a newer member of the ihung family and I tend to be protective my own. We get her cleaned and marked for the single 6 gauge Sea Demon hook I’d be inserting, and I’m deep in my own world of concentration so as to get this hook as precise as possible as placement is so important! She takes the hook like a champ, however I’ve missed my exit mark by about 2mm on the shallow side. I assured her that it was fine, with this size of hook, we have some leeway, but again, on the inside, I was super nervous.

I get her rigged in, she puts her headphones in, and well, I’ll let the video do the talking for a minute.

I wasn’t really anticipating the speed with which she pulled herself up, and since I couldn’t see the hook from the ground, it’s rather obvious how nervous I was. In the end, she had a wonderful suspension and the hook held just fine.