Jan 27, 2006  |  By: GREG MARZULLO  | COMMENTS     

I’ve never been good at letting go. I clutch an image, an idea or a self-perception until it cracks, leaking out deeper meanings or, more likely, further questions and confusion. Lately these mental wanderings have been grounded in my body.

Up until recently, I was a full-time actor and dancer, but since that identity has died, my body is also undergoing a transformation of its own. It’s not quite as responsive, tight or, in my mind, as attractive. I want to let go of this old self grounded in body, but a desperate panic to "stay beautiful" overrides all other thoughts of personal metamorphosis.

So it was with some forced bravado and inner trepidation that I took on the assignment of exploring the growing gay naked yoga phenomenon. I decided I wouldn’t allow myself to stay home and work alone with the DVD instructional series "Hot Nude Yoga" by New York’s Aaron Star. I had to experience the openness, vulnerability and risk in the flesh, as it were, by attending a class of D.C.’s own all-male gay naked yoga group.

I met with one of the group’s organizers, Alvah Davis before my first class session.

"It’s very warm and supportive," Davis, 51 and gay, assures me about the group. "We’re absolutely open to men of all stripes: young, old, out-of-shape, in-shape, experienced or inexperienced. It’s become a group that’s welcoming to anyone who comes through the door."

Davis helped to found the group a year ago. Eight to 10 people met weekly in Davis’ house, because finding a space for gay naked yoga was challenging to say the least.

"We were rejected by eight or 10 different possible spaces," he says. "We wanted to be upfront about who we were. We finally found the place where we meet now and very quickly seemed to reach an understanding."

The group currently meets three times each week in a private yoga studio in Northwest D.C. The address is only given out to those who seriously inquire about the group through its website. The studio’s director and the group organizers are not sure the building owner would approve of what they’re doing because of the assumptions some might erroneously make about a group of gay men doing naked yoga.

"We want to practice [yoga] in a serious and devoted kind of way," says Davis, again dismissing my concerns about a sexually charged atmosphere.

THE MOMENT OF truth has arrived. I’m in a room full of men I’ve never met, and as I begin to take my clothes off, I can feel myself donning my emotional armor. After acting for 15 years, putting on a mask of my own design for an audience is easy work. I come off as confident and unconcerned with others’ opinions.

On this night, there are almost 20 attendees, pre-stretching on yoga mats, chatting with friends, ready to work and all of them requisitely naked.

Jeff is the instructor for the Tuesday and Thursday classes and he immediately establishes a supportive environment in the room through his soothing tone of voice and his encouragement of the students to use the yoga practice as a way to center themselves.

I have judiciously chosen not to be in front of one of the large mirrors in the front of the room so I can focus on the exercise, rather than how I (and everyone else) looks in the buff.

And the exercise is vigorous. Using breath as a support for all movement, we find ways to deepen the postures, challenging our bodies and minds to focus only on this moment and nothing else. The instructor guides us into different postures. Some movements focus on balance, some on strength and some on stretching. We vary between holding a pose through a number of breaths to a kind of yoga aerobics, speedily moving from one position to the next.

"A lot of people assume that there is going to be something sexual about it and people will get hard-ons," says Andrew Gray, a full-time yoga teacher at different venues all over the city. Gray teaches the Sunday naked yoga class which focuses on an active, less meditative workout along with partner work. "After 15 minutes, you really start focusing on the ...