Some fitness fads require sporty gear and equipment, but the practice of yoga requires only the bare essentials: loose clothes, a mat and time to do the exercises.
The latest trend in yoga requires even less. We’re not talking about aqua yoga, done in a pool, or disco yoga, set to dance tunes, or “boga,” boxing yoga, done with gloves.
No, a San Francisco community center is offering naked yoga, where bare essentials means just that: Men and women are completely nude during the 90- minute class.
This is not the invention of “naked yoga guy” George Monty Davis, who made headlines last year for (legally) striking naked yoga poses at Fisherman’s Wharf, nor a “hot nude yoga” class for gay men, popular in Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles, or in any way connected to Internet-sold videos of voluptuous women doing naked yoga on wave-washed beaches with horses galloping by.
No, the new naked yoga class on Sunday mornings at the One Taste Urban Retreat Center on Folsom Street is meant to be transforming, not titillating. That’s a concept that American culture, with its taboos on nudity, might find difficult to grasp.
The center, which opened 10 months ago, was founded by Nicole Daedone, also a co-founder of 111 Minna Gallery. It offers dance classes and massage, has a small cafe and an art gallery, and hosts various events.
The class is about the challenge of yoga, and about the challenge of accepting — and even revering — one’s own body.
“It’s not a sexual experience,” said Rob Kandell, the center’s business manager. “It’s a heart-opening experience.”
On a recent Sunday morning, yoga instructor Meredith Medland, 33, gave students a sort of pep talk before entering the classroom, emphasizing the idea of the body as a vessel and getting them to calm their thoughts.
Five women and four men entered fully clothed, carrying their mats. Many were in their 20s and 30s, but some were decades older.
The classroom, on the second floor of the old building, is enclosed on three sides by velvety moss green floor-to-ceiling curtains and a white wall on the other. Caramel-colored wooden floors and exposed wooden ceiling trusses create a natural feel, rather than a clinical or sporty atmosphere.
“As we begin to disrobe, start to notice how you clothe this temple, this body, this thing you own, your home,” Medland said. “As you take off your clothes, there’s a level of precision, of consciousness, in the way you fold your clothes. We’re honoring the preciousness, the sacredness, the delicateness of the body.”
The first movements involved stretching arms above the head. Medland, as naked as the rest of the class, faced the group, arms over her head, her patter providing a point of focus for any student distracted by self- consciousness.
“When you lift up, remember you’ve got these limbs — now whoosh!” she said, exhaling. “Bring the arms down, bring the head down.”
In the unlit studio, two skylights sent soft shafts of white onto the students’ bodies, highlighting the curves of their forms as if they were museum statues come to life, moving deliberately and slowly from pose to pose.
Despite the variety in figures, some thin, some heavy, some taut, some sagging, there were no furtive glances at one another’s bodies, no signs of arousal, just deep concentration on the tasks at hand: proper alignment, stretching and breathing.
Lying facedown on mats, students pushed themselves up at Medland’s urging into the cobra pose, legs and pelvis still on the mat, back arching, torso erect.
“Let yourself feel good,” she urged. “This is the body you’ve been given. “Breathing — breathing — good! You look great!”
Later, students stood in the warrior position, left knee bent, right leg extended behind, arms extended outward, parallel to the floor. Afterward, they shifted to the floor for a series of backbend-like moves.
“There’s a misconception that our pelvis, our pelvic organs, are the hardest place to breathe into, but often it’s the heart that is the hardest to open,” Medland said.
With 30 minutes left in the 90-minute class, she had students lie down on their backs and place their left hand on their hearts. “One taste, one touch, one life, one city, one world, one heart,” she said.
After class, fully clothed, participants explained the appeal.
Guy Jara, 36, a computer programmer from Brisbane, is getting back into yoga after an 11-year break from the practice.
“I like the sheer vulnerability of having no clothing and letting everything hang,” he said. “There’s no concealing anything anymore. There’s no place to hide.”
A real estate investor who identified himself only as Ronaldo, 60, said being naked helped him to concentrate on bringing the mind, body and spirit together — the essential purpose of yoga.
“I’ve been doing yoga for 14 years and working two times a week with a private instructor, but my problem is monkey mind,” he said. “I want to be present in the moment, and my mind wanders — ‘Is the class going to be over?’ ”
For him, being naked helps to keep his focus on himself. “I can see where I wasn’t present before and be more with the instructions to guide me into the positions,” he said. “I could stay in them longer, and go deeper. Being present gives a feeling of timelessness.”
Others liked the fact that being unclothed meant they could see the proper body positioning more easily, and make adjustments more quickly, by watching Medland’s husband, Ted McElwee, who acted as a model.
This was the first yoga class ever for Kristin Johnson, 34, unemployed, from San Francisco.
“I wanted to approach yoga from a nonphysical, nonsuperficial way, because a lot of it is about cute outfits and competitiveness,” she said. “Doing it nude, I thought there wouldn’t be any of that. It would be internal, about me.
“Without clothes, I was able to move even more,” she said. “Man! Not having anything on is so freeing. I don’t know if I could do yoga with clothes on.”
Her classmates apparently don’t take the naked truth too seriously. Everyone laughed.
From SFGate
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