In the BDSM world, "full suspension" refers to suspending a person's entire body off the floor with the aid of ropes, chains, or cables.
The most typical full suspension is an advanced and somewhat risky form of rope bondage. It involves the use of elaborate knots, and many practitioners use modular rope segments that can be quickly released in case the subject experiences a loss of circulation, unwanted pain, etc.
A more extreme version involves suspending a person through hooks placed through the flesh of his or her legs, back, and upper arms. Sometimes people who undergo full flesh hook suspension regularly have large rings installed at important stress points. This type of full suspension was portrayed in the 2000 movie The Cell. In it, serial killer Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) suspends himself above his female victims via rings installed in his back.
I saw a full flesh hook suspension done at one of the Erotic Arts Balls at the Mars night club in Bloomington, IN. A BDSM group from Lexington, KY came out with a slim blond guy on a steel gurney. He already had hooks in his flesh; there was surprisingly little blood. The four other guys then strung him up on thick black rubber cables, and, once they knew the piercings and cords would support him, removed the gurney.
The blonde guy hung there four feet above the stage, nonchalantly puffing a cigarette and sipping a glass of wine. His eyes were glazed with indolent pleasure. His forearms were free, but the rest of his limbs were hooked to cables. His flesh was stretching remarkably around the hooks. The others hovered nearby in the background, clearly worried that something might break loose and send him crashing to the floor in a particularly gory manner.
My housemate's boyfriend had come into town from Philadelphia to visit her and attend the ball. "You'd never see something like this onstage at a public club in Philly," he whispered to me. "The cops wouldn't allow it. Or somebody wouldn't allow it. Damn."
I nodded mutely. I wasn't sure that I'd really wanted to see something like this, but now that the man was strung up onstage, it was hard to look away.
The crew took the guy down after maybe three minutes. I later saw him wandering through the club, his hooks removed and his flesh looking remarkably unmolested.
(For firsthand accounts of people who have participated in these suspensions, read the Flesh Hook Suspension node).