nude yoga

Nude yoga is taking off in Vancouver and it's a great experience for anyone uncomfortable in their own skin. Arriving early to the class I didn't want to be the first one undressed so I sheepishly waited for the instructor's cue. I was already familiar with the liberating sensation of freedom at a nude beach. But the intimacy of being in a group of naked men made me accutely aware of my imperfections. Before long I was touched by feelings of our shared fragility. I felt entirely present and honest. Although the class didn't concentrate on the spiritual aspects of yoga, afterward I wanted to live a life of transparent integrity, naked.

Many of us grow up with a dislike and distrust of our body and its processes. My background is WASP, but my mother was undogmatically spiritual and my father agnostic. They never explicitly taught me to feel ashamed of my body or pleasure, but I grew up fearing my body, particularly sexuality. The body seemed obscene because it aroused my homo-erotic desires, desires everyone I knew labelled as perverted, disgusting or sick. I agreed with everyone, but my filthy desires would not obey me and convert to normalcy.

My mind was out of joint with my dick and I covered up any hint of carnality: never dressed in trendy clothes, always bland blues and browns, no shorts or short-sleeves, shirts buttoned up to the neck. School sports were scary; I maneouvered myself onto the shirts team -- once I couldn't get off the skins team and I cried; I was never caught naked in a change room after swimming, the toilet stalls had to do.

I grew up being a believer in cool rationality, an atheist with Buddhist leanings. My beliefs taught me to accept myself but my skin still told me to cover up.

My intense shyness gradually led me to obsess about getting out of my clothes. I started by going alone to nude beaches so that I could keep on my demure persona with people I knew. But nude yoga seems to be pulling away the last layers...I view the naked body as completely human, undeniably sexual, but plenty of other things too. Now I can be naked with anyone, even myself.