The healing power of naked yoga
Mark shares his journey to loving the skin that he's in.
A recent guest on the Naked Men Talking podcast was Mark - a London-based guy who's an enthusiast for naked yoga.
In the conversation, we talk therapy, navigating shame, and bucket-list naturist aspirations.
Let's start at the beginning - when did you discover and start to explore the world of yoga?
Yoga was one of those things that I’d never tried, never wanted to try, never thought was going to be me.
But it all happened during the pandemic. I was feeling really quite grotty with myself and how I looked. I was bored stiff of going for runs.
I had been seeing a counsellor and chatting to her about body-confidence and she went, you should try just doing something naked, which kind of came as a surprise to me.
I looked about and I didn't know what to do, and then just came across a friend who was doing a naked online yoga session and I thought, well, I'll give it a go.
On a fateful Wednesday evening during the height of the first lockdown, I joined a group of about 12 guys doing naked yoga and it was quite fun and I thought, well, I've got nothing else to do, so I signed up for a package of them.
By the end of the second lockdown, I was doing two classes a day and starting to see my body changing and feeling good about it, and it suddenly twigged that actually this might be an activity for me.
Then, the lockdown lifted, and I went into the studio - which is in central London - and I did my first one-on-one session with a tutor, naked.
It's probably the first time I'd ever been naked with someone in a non-sexual situation. I did a couple more sessions and I really loved it.
Then, I tried to book a couple more sessions after that, and he said no - you have to come to join a group. I did that and since then, I've been doing it daily ever since.
So, you were seeing a counsellor or therapist who said what you might need is to do something naked - how did that feel when that advice was presented to you?
It came as a surprise - it wasn't what I was expecting.
I’d been talking a lot about growing up gay and the shame of that and the shame I felt in my own body and how uncomfortable I was with it.
I kind of expected the whole, well, let's get to the root of the problem, and find out where this comes from.
But actually her response was, you kind of just need to embrace it and embrace yourself and try doing something where it feels non-judgmental.
It had to be something naked where I could be myself, but with other people - and particularly other guys - who were naked. Something non-sexual where it was all about normalising the body and feeling comfortable in the body and sharing that experience.
She didn't specify the yoga but that was the first thing I came across.
It didn't take very long to feel comfortable being in a space and looking around and looking at these other people to realise that everyone's body was amazing and my body was lovely and it's the only one I was going to get.
Also, no one was judging how big I was, what shape I was in, whether I was cut or not - it didn't really matter.
It was such a wonderful, refreshing and empowering experience to just be naked with people and shedding all the barriers and things that I put up over the years. It really worked.
Interesting that the advice was - let's not try and unpack all of the shame and trauma that you're carrying with you, let's just try and find ways to navigate through that and move forward. So, you found online classes of naked yoga and you said your first one was a group of 12 people online? How did that feel sitting there, waiting for that camera to go live, on your mat, naked, thinking - okay, I'm about to do naked yoga with people I've never seen before?
If I'm honest, at the start, I was incredibly nervous about it and it felt a little sordid. My previous experiences of not wearing clothes online were for very different reasons.
This was very, very exposing.
But actually - very, very quickly - it was easy to tell that everybody else was nervous or uncomfortable and it wasn't judgemental. It was actually really friendly.
We'd do the yoga, then we'd chat a bit for half an hour afterwards. We'd all have a cup of tea.
It felt like being part of a community - a community where I felt accepted
I thought it would feel very sort of hypersexual. I'm not saying that times there weren't feelings for other people or it wasn't arousing in that sense, but it wasn't hypersexual - it was just all natural and part of the whole thing.
Talk a little bit more about that first in-person session - you went from getting really comfortable with your online naked yoga classes and building that network of people in that sort of headspace. But then at the end of lockdown you made the move to go - okay, let's have a one-on-one in-person naked yoga session. You said that was the first time that you'd been naked with someone else in a non-sexual context - is that correct?
It's totally true. I'd never loved my body before. I'm the kind of person that, on the beach, I'd get changed with the towel around me.
Suddenly, here I was - I walked into the yoga studio and the tutor was there, already naked. I went to the changing room and got undressed, came out and sat in front of him.
It was intimidating in a sense because here I am, just as I am, without shame and without judgement and without performance.
He changed the way that I thought. It helped me address so many other things as well.
The yoga wasn't just exercise - it became a real way of life for me and introduced me to other guys that were happy being naked and comfortable in their bodies and celebrating that.
There was that moment of fear when he said he wouldn't give me anyone more one-on-one sessions and that I needed to join the group. But he was right. It was post-pandemic and just after everything had lifted - there was a room full of people but probably three-quarters of them had never done it before either. There was solidarity in that, as well as exhilaration and liberation.
Moving beyond the yoga, in this new relationship you have with your body and with getting naked, do you experience social naturism in any other context apart from yoga?
With the confidence I found in my body, I did some modelling for photography, for artists. I've always worked with a lot of artists, but I've never taken my clothes off for them. That was a great way just to kind of be comfortable in my skin.
The naturist world is quite small - the gay naturist world is probably even smaller. I was soon introduced to a lot of people - people were doing coffee mornings, board game nights, just nice events that you could be naked in. It's really quite liberating just to kind of enjoy your body in those ways.
I’ve got to the point now where I'm almost offended by the prudish attitude towards the body. This is sort of like a reformed smoker, but I was so ashamed of my body for no reason - well, for many reasons, but for no actual reason. I'm now quite offended by people who find just the human body, which we all have, offensive.
You describe yourself as a sexual person and, just looking at your Twitter, you sort of lean into that sexual energy of getting naked on the internet. Is there also a bit of an exhibitionist side to you?
I think we're still at a point now where non-sexual nudism is still hidden away.
I couldn't - on other social media platforms - share a picture of me doing naked yoga, or just here's me enjoying the park naked.
The actual non-sexual, just enjoying your body without clothes on, is still kept within the darker worlds of sexuality.
I am a very sexual person. I always have been. But now I am happy to show my body, but I don’t consider myself an exhibitionist - that’s not a kink for me, it doesn’t turn me on.
But if posting sexed-up naked photos on the internet is not a turn on from an exhibitionist point of view, what's the intention behind the posting? Is it a validation thing? Is it an advocacy thing as you were talking about in terms of normalising sexual situations, sexual bodies, that kind of thing? What's your intention with that activity?
If I was saying it was advocacy, I think that's me pushing it a bit, stretching the concept a little.
There's a lot of validation in it - you want to feel attractive, to feel confident that people like what they see.
The validation aspect is perhaps linked to this healing process you've been on in terms of your body-image? In the way that doing naked yoga helped you move past your shame, posting naked photos on the internet may also be part of that process of leaving that shame behind you somehow?
It definitely is.
There is a common theme among gay men - particularly of a certain age. I'm one of those that grew up under Section 28 - I didn't know who I was or what I was. I couldn't see myself reflected in anything.
The only thing I felt was shame - shame in my body and also shame in the way I felt.
For me to share my body naked and sexually online is a way of trying to claw back a sort of understanding that there's nothing wrong with this - there should be no shame in this. I want to celebrate it.
What about your bucket list for naturist activities? What's on your vision-board in terms of things that you'd still like to try or experience?
I would love to kind of delve in a little further into what it means to be me and naked. I've been working a little bit recently with some tantric practices in yoga.
I'd love to do some retreats - just have a week naked with other guys, understanding ourselves a little deeper.
If someone was a bit curious about giving naked yoga a try, what advice or guidance would you give them?
Just do it.
Even if it feels quite frightening at the start, pick somewhere with an established community where you know it's going to be safe and welcoming. Be honest and let people know that it’s your first time - people will go out of their way to help you.
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