Splitting the bamboo

M/F · Vaginal penetration · Penetrating partner on top

Posed figure

Splitting the bamboo sex position — posed figure showing body placement for 2 people

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Keypoint template

ReceivingPenetratingCOCO-17 template · schematic, not to scale

Attributes

Position family
One-on-one
Primary act
Vaginal penetration
Partner arrangement
Penetrating partner on top
Penetration type
Vaginal
Facing
Face to face
Dynamics
Thrusting
Support / surface
Flat surface / bed
Participant count
Two
Composition code
M/F
Source medium
Illustrative
Physical difficulty
Moderate
Prevalence in adult media
Occasional
Intensity tier (compliance)
Explicit

Common camera framing

Side profile

Description: Alternation, not a fixed shape, defines this Kama Sutra classic (Venudaritaka). The receiving partner lies supine and raises one leg to the penetrating partner's shoulder while the other stays extended along the bed; periodically the legs trade places, the raised one lowering as the extended one lifts, the motion Vatsyayana likened to splitting bamboo. Each swap shifts the pelvic angle, so the position cycles between two mirrored geometries rather than holding one.

Variations: The penetrating partner often holds the raised leg at the ankle; the slow alternation between legs is itself the defining motion, not an optional flourish.

On camera: Side profile is the canonical framing, reading the asymmetric split of one vertical and one horizontal leg; the pose appears mostly in illustrative sources.

AI design considerations: Give the supine figure exactly one raised and one extended leg; that asymmetry is what distinguishes it from legs-on-shoulders, and a symmetric render erases the pose entirely.

Historical provenance

Where this position appears in historical sex manuals, erotic art & literature · full timeline →

  • Venudaritaka (splitting of a bamboo)Indian (Gupta era) →

    Kama Sutra — Vatsyayana · c. 3rd century CE

    The alternating raised leg is Vatsyayana's own image.

Generating this position

A starting prompt composed from the catalog vocabulary. Every tag is verified to exist and not be deprecated. Compose across wardrobe, scene and expression in the prompt builder.

Booru-tag checkpoints

1boy, 1girl, hetero, missionary, on_back, holding_another's_leg, vaginal, on_bed

negative: bad_anatomy, bad_hands, censored, monochrome, 2girls, 3girls, 2boys, 3boys

Image to video (Thrust (deep))

long-range reciprocating motion along the body axis, full amplitude, torso following the hips, camera is locked on a tripod and does not move.

Motion only. The still you condition on must already carry the position, wardrobe and scene: restating them causes drift.

Expected figure count: 2. Global pose conditioning does not make a diffusion model count bodies. Count figures and limbs at full size before judging quality, because thumbnails hide the failure. The tag missionary is broader than this position: missionary spans the whole supine face-to-face family with any leg configuration, flat, leg-locked, folded, both legs held, and discards two things. The asymmetric shape (one leg raised to the penetrating partner's shoulder while the other stays extended along the bed) is only partly recovered by the singular holding_another's_leg; the permitted vocabulary's symmetric leg tags cannot help, since legs_up requires "both legs... thrust upward into the air". And the periodic alternation of which leg is raised, the motion that names Venudaritaka, has no tag at all: danbooru's leg vocabulary is entirely static-posture, so nothing in the permitted vocabulary encodes a repeating swap between two mirrored postures.

Identifiers in other vocabularies

How this position is denoted elsewhere, and what each mapping discards. Full table in the crosswalk.

  • missionarybroadershared with 5 other positions

    missionary spans the whole supine face-to-face family with any leg configuration, flat, leg-locked, folded, both legs held, and discards two things. The asymmetric shape (one leg raised to the penetrating partner's shoulder while the other stays extended along the bed) is only partly recovered by the singular holding_another's_leg; the permitted vocabulary's symmetric leg tags cannot help, since legs_up requires "both legs... thrust upward into the air". And the periodic alternation of which leg is raised, the motion that names Venudaritaka, has no tag at all: danbooru's leg vocabulary is entirely static-posture, so nothing in the permitted vocabulary encodes a repeating swap between two mirrored postures.

  • Venudaritaka (splitting of a bamboo)closeKama Sutra

    Attested source name. The alternating raised leg is Vatsyayana's own image.

Actions this position admits

The position fixes who is where. These are the beats that are physically possible in it, from the action catalog. Contact through the characteristic beat is intermittent.

Idle / micro-motionPose settleApproachDisrobeCaressEntryThrust (shallow)Thrust (deep) (characteristic)Thrust and holdGrind (rocking)Grind (circular)Manual strokeRepositionClimax reactionAftermath

Camera moves that suit the geometry: Arc (partial), Push in, Overhead descend.

Also known asone leg up missionarybamboo split
Kama Sutra: Venudaritaka (splitting of a bamboo)

Related positions

SpooningSquatting cowgirlStanding face-to-face (leg raised)Standing rear entry (bent over)Standing rear press (against wall)Suspended congress (standing carry)
Back to CatalogUse in Generator

Part of the Erotic Pose Catalog open dataset · CC BY 4.0 · keypoints are idealised COCO-17 templates.