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GREG MARZULLO
Friday, January 27, 2006
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 yoga, and you forget you’re naked."
But I have not forgotten. When in particularly open positions, it’s hard not to remember that I’m naked. Downward facing dog comes to mind with derriere up to the heavens while bent in an upside-down "v." Instead of focusing on the breath, I’m focusing on how well I’ve shaved and when.
AARON STAR IS the founder of New York’s Hot Nude Yoga studio. He created the group in 2001, and although the studio has gone through its ups and downs, Hot Nude Yoga is going strong with on-site classes and private sessions. Star recently launched a line of four DVDs sold as a package.
"To come into a naked environment for most people it’s a shedding of a lot of the ego," says Star, 33. "The thought of being nude for a lot of people is a process of becoming naked — meaning vulnerable."
Star developed two DVDs devoted to partner work. I coerced my boyfriend into trying the one titled "Tantra," an exploration of sensuality through yoga poses and breath work.
"I don’t like to use the word erotic, because it denotes a lead-in to sex," says Star. "It’s more like celebrating sensuality, celebrating touch."
For my boyfriend and I, it was celebrating laughter. There was a forced feel to the intimacy in the video for the two of us who have been together for almost five years. We seriously tried to work on the breathing and help each other, but more often than not, we broke into hysterics, tears running down our cheeks.
Although there were plenty of guffaws, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful my partner’s body is. He still works as an actor and dancer, and I noticed the differences between us. I experienced no jealousy — only a vague sense of melancholy glossed with nostalgia.
THE THURSDAY CLASS at D.C.’s gay naked yoga is easier in terms of physical demands, but it’s much harder on my mind. This time I am fool enough to stand in front of the mirrors.
My eyes immediately go to my self-determined problem spots when doing any of the poses.
"My ass really is huge," I think, or, "Well, that’s not as attractive as I was hoping," or "Letting my stomach relax feels good, but it sure as hell doesn’t look pretty."
Interestingly, I am much more willing to be supportive of others in the class. Looking around the room, I think about how wonderful it is that people of varying body types and looks can come together and be naked in a non-sexual supportive environment.
"There’s an element of rawness that happens in this class," says Star. "You can’t really hide behind anything, because there’s nothing to hide behind."
During the practice, I begin to wonder about what kind of positive effect this practice could have on gay men, straight men, women of all orientations and transgender folks. How much time do we spend fussing over our bodies, mourning natural shifts in our physical being?
In a rash of new idea excitement, I contacted Kathleen DeBold, executive director of the Mautner Project, a locally based national lesbian health organization. After a few days of hunting around, she came up with no groups of women in the area who currently engage in naked yoga.
" I found lots of them who would like to and would start it," says DeBold.
After witnessing the camaraderie of the D.C. group, I think of how beneficial this practice could be to all the elements of the so-called "gay community." Taking it further, what would happen if gay men, lesbians and transgender folk allowed themselves to be nude in front of one another?
After exposing their bodies and vulnerability, I wonder if these factions would begin to experience a softening of misguided understandings like their tense muscles giving way to the postures.
There are a couple of moments during each class when I really get it. I move through my personal drama and into a place of focus and freedom. I see beauty. I see power. I see expression and a feeling of connection. However, I usually snap back into my mental patterns of self-deprecation and over analysis within one block of the studio, but for that hour and a half, I’ve let it all go.
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