MJ Thanks for jumping in and helping out! 

Marielisa Thanks for your question! Yes, you can suspend from the self-tie version, and you're right that you would want to close this in a more robust way than Gorgone does in their demo. Using a half-moon friction like seen in the first tutorial or two L frictions would both be good options, closed with a final half hitch. 

We always recommend only using the harnesses you find on our site in the ways that our instructors show them. However, you could experiment with a Y hanger from the top band and chest band. A few things to note about doing this: a hanger like this has the potential to add pressure to the side of the arm right where we're trying to avoid load, and so a body position with a slight face up tilt to it can help to avoid this. A y hanger tied on the front like this also can't be easily attached when a bottom is in a face down position, as you can't tie it from the back and slide it to the side, nor can you easily get the rope in there in the front when the harness is loaded. Hope this helps!

A larks head will work just fine! One reason to use an overhand is that it doesn't require you to pull your whole length of rope through to build it, so from a handling perspective there's a small advantage to using the overhand. But try it both ways and see what you prefer :)

Finally, this is a great question to ask our Discord community! You can share pictures there and get lots of troubleshooting opinions. If you're on the Discord already or if you join and post about this, feel free to tag me and I'll take a look at your pictures and offer some more suggestions. 

Hi! Thanks for your question. Fuoco here to answer your question. This is a tricky one to answer without being able to see what you're tying. My first instinct would be to ask you where the suspension line is being attached (closer to the chest will lift the chest more and load the legs in a more secondary way). My second suggestion would be to make sure that your thigh wraps aren't just tight around the thigh but that the stem you create with them is also very taught. Even as you just begin to apply the slightest amount of lift, you should be able to feel down the lines that travel between the gote, ankles, and thighs, and ideally you'll feel that there is an even taughtness where the lines branch between the ankle and the thigh. If the line to the thigh is at all slack, the thighs won't pick up, even if the rope around them is tight. 

Thanks for your question! It's a really good one. Putting your carabiner through the bite isn't the same as rope on rope, as the added friction that you generate through the lift has the capacity to stress the rope quite a lot. So using a carabiner can have a big impact on how much load you actually generate when lifting, and consequently, how much you stress your rope. However, you're absolutely right that a carabiner right through the bite is a less ideal choice from a safety perspective than putting the carabiner through the epsilon or through a double bight. The method that Gorgone shows here of putting the carabiner through the bite might be an okay choice for a load line attached to a very light part of the body, like an ankle, that won't be heavily loaded during the suspension. A safer choice is definitely to clip into the hanger or a double bight, and that's what we'd recommend for any main load like (like the suspension line on a chest harness or hip harness).

Definitely! A loosely tied and loaded blindfold is a great alternative to hair rope :)

Thank you so much for this feedback! We've made a note of this to reference when casting upcoming productions! 

This is a tengu pattern, not taught on our site. But if you search for "tengu" you'll find other harnesses a lot like this!