Shamelessly nude, proudly dressed

Arriving at Ängsbacka is such an experience, and this time to the World’s biggest Tantra Festival!!
SOOO honoured to be teaching and performing here, can’t wait!

I’m super excited, coming one day early, moving my bag of clothes and aerial equipment into the dorm room, I meet my roommate. A yoga teacher from South Africa, we get to talking about freedom and nudity.

He points out that apparently because the festival hasn’t started yet, the females aren’t allowed to be topless yet. “I find that quite weird”, he says, “I mean, it’s so hot, and I feel like if I can be without a shirt on they should also be able to do so! Can’t we all just get naked and be free? Why does everything have to be sexualized?”
Well, it doesn’t.
It isn’t.

This sparked an interesting thought in my mind…
If you’ve ever been on a nudist beach, you know that with all the naked bodies around (unless you’re a pervert who hasn’t been intimate for TOO LONG) it’s quite normal, and not sexual at all.
Even if people are very beautiful, it will still not affect you the same way as if everyone were dressed and one person was half or fully naked. It’s just a different atmosphere, a safe space for de-sexualized nakedness. So for sure, at festivals and other similar events, I’m totally all for having as much clothes on as you (and most people around) are comfortable with.
I myself love being topless!

But I think we should put our clothes on at times, for the sake of variety and mystery.
“But why?!” you may ask. “Isn’t this a part of the oppression? Telling someone to go put their clothes on because it’s shameful to be naked, because now you’re not a child anymore and can’t be naked, why constrict people?”
It’s not about putting people to shame or in boxes.
Essentially, there is nothing shameful about our body.
Consider that it’s all about HOW you tell your children to start wearing more clothes in public, or how you choose to dress yourself otherwise.

This can become a huuuuge political discussion, but I want to keep it simple and philosophical;

If we don’t wear clothes, there is no mystery. No excitement, no tension, polarity or secret! There is less to learn about the person, and more uncomfortable rocks to sit on if you’re nude.
And if you dress too much, there’s that talk also… about how if we show nothing, than even the slightest patch of skin can cause arousal. Probably from the start an ankle would not make you tremble, but now that everyone covers their ankles all of the sudden it’s the best thing ever if you see one! Or an outrage, because it’s considered vulgar.
It really is about balance and how we view things…

Wearing clothes can be so beautiful!
Tell your children to put on clothes when they get to a certain age, to protect some areas. To keep themselves more sensitive, more intimate for themselves not necessarily for sake of others. For keeping mystery, excitement, beauty and just for the sake of wearing pretty clothes.

If we hide it all, life gets boring without seeing or experiencing life, but if we show it all life can also get boring because there’s less to “find out” about. No gift to unwrap… heh.
We tend to make things so negative when it comes to any kind of boundary, people see it as a restriction and try to oppose it.
But what is the point!?
It is so much easier just to enjoy what we have and are dealing with, enjoy each other’s bodies that we might not know about, completely shameless and open, but dressed to the degree you want to.
In the end it should all be about personal choice, from who YOU truly are, and not social conditioning.

Now I will go and prepare for this weeks workshops, whiiiiiiii!

Love and light,
 
//Gypsy Queen