Suspended congress (standing carry)
M/F · Vaginal penetration · Standing
Posed figure
Keypoint template
Attributes
- Position family
- One-on-one
- Primary act
- Vaginal penetration
- Partner arrangement
- Standing
- Penetration type
- Vaginal
- Facing
- Face to face
- Dynamics
- Thrusting
- Support / surface
- Partner-supported
- Participant count
- Two
- Composition code
- M/F
- Source medium
- Both
- Physical difficulty
- Advanced / athletic
- Prevalence in adult media
- Occasional
- Intensity tier (compliance)
- Explicit
Common camera framing
Description: The penetrating partner stands and carries the receiving partner entirely off the ground, face-to-face, legs wrapped around the waist. A Kama Sutra original that survives as the strength showpiece of standing positions.
Variations: Braced against a wall to share the load; hands under the thighs or clasped beneath the seat.
On camera: Full-length profile sells the carry; wall-braced variants sustain longer takes.
AI design considerations: A standing figure bearing a second figure at chest height — the carried figure's legs wrap the carrier and nothing touches the ground.
Historical provenance
Where this position appears in historical sex manuals, erotic art & literature · full timeline →
- Avalambitaka (suspended congress)Indian (Gupta era) →
Kama Sutra — Vatsyayana · c. 3rd century CE
- Driving the Peg HomeArab–Berber (Maghreb) →
The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight — Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi · 15th century CE
She hangs at his neck, braced against a wall, in Burton's rendering.
- Maithuna standing carryIndian (medieval temple tradition) →
Khajuraho & Konark temple sculpture — Chandela and Eastern Ganga sculptors · c. 950–1250 CE
Carved on the temple walls of Khajuraho — the shastra's carry rendered in stone.
- The carried postureItalian (Renaissance) →
I Modi (The Sixteen Postures) — Giulio Romano, engraved by Raimondi; sonnets by Pietro Aretino · 1524–1527 CE
Among the sixteen engraved postures of the Renaissance set.
Depicted in the historical record
Museum-attested works showing this arrangement · full timeline →
- "An Amorous Couple, probably Raja Mahendra Pal of Basohli with a Favorite Queen"Khajuraho, Konark & the Kama Sutra Manuscript Tradition →
c. 1810 · Cleveland Museum of Art (2018.84)
Related positions
Part of the Erotic Pose Catalog open dataset · CC BY 4.0 · keypoints are idealised COCO-17 templates.