Category: Naktivism

Naked Meditation 4. The forest.

For people who seek a more active approach to meditation I have found two options. The first one, which I will detail here, is one that requires being outside. That means it’s not an option for everyone/all the time. Still, if you have the opportunity, seize it and try this.

So, if you are up for this and have the opportunity – go outside. There is one object you will need for this form of meditation: a tree. Walk around (naked if possible) and find a tree that appeals to you. This walking around is already part of the meditation, a preparation to connect with nature. (Naturists, are you paying attention?)

nude treeOnce you’ve found a tree you feel ‘comfortable’ with, take off your shoes or slippers if you wear any. Stand close to your tree, on bare feet, and rest your palms against the trunk of the tree. Look at your feet, how they are on the ground, in the sand. Then look at your hands, how they touch the tree. Look down and up a few times and understand that this is you, reaching out to a powerful living thing of nature.

Now close your eyes and look down in your mind. You should still be able to ‘see’ your feet in the sand. Now reach down with your mind and feel how your feet are in that sand. Feel it beneath your feet, around your toes. Feel how your feet are your roots, the main part of your body that connects you to the world, to nature. Once you have established that connection through your feet, look up in your mind and see your hands against the tree. Imagine how they are becoming a part of the tree, making you a part of the tree. Feel how a tree would feel, it’s steadiness, its calm way of being in that place since many years, and for many years to come. Try to mould your mind around those traits of a tree, being content in your place while doing what you can to grow higher, taller.

nude tree 2Stay like that for as long as you feel comfortable. When you notice a shiver (cold) or a tremble (fatigue in arms or legs), open your eyes and slowly take your hands from the tree. Thank the tree for being your guide (if you want to do that, if not – the tree understands). Walk around a bit, swinging your arms (don’t forget to put on your footwear if you had any on) to get your blood flowing again and then go home. And take with you the feeling that the tree gave you. Don’t forget: the tree is there for you whenever you need it. You can also go there when it’s colder, just don’t take off your shoes when you don’t feel comfortable then. Staying healthy is smart.

Naked meditation – 3. Another technique

Hello, and welcome back to meditations.

I hope you did your best at meditating over the last days. If not, that’s fine. Meditation is not a must. It should become a ‘want’ once you discover how good it feels and finally it turns into a ‘need’.

Many of you may have found that the first few times this meditating thing went quite well. Some may still struggle. It’s normal for the first few times to go well and then suddenly the whole thing becomes a mess.

You count to 3 and then thoughts are flooding in as if your personal Hoover Dam just broke, and there’s no stopping the bloody thing. Yes, sounds familiar. It’s normal. What happens is that your mind, the thing that’s been taught to be active all the time, suddenly notices you’re not paying attention to the gazillion thing it tries to tell you so it becomes oppressive. It will do what it can to annoy you and yells

LISTEN, DAMN YOU!

But take heart. Meditation will take hold. It will teach your brain to listen to you. Whenever this kind of flooding happens, or when random thoughts pop up, just tell your brain, your mind that it’s okay and that you’ll deal with that later. “but first we meditate.”

This can take a long time (I’m talking months, up to a half year) but as you go on and progress you will find that the practice gets better and easier.

As I promised, here is:

another form of meditation.

Again this is done sitting down. For this exercise you need an object, preferably a simple object like a cup, a mug or a simple vase.

vaseTake a few minutes to look at the object as it stands in front of you. Just look and see how it is shaped. Don’t turn it to see the other side, just picture the thing.

Then close your eyes and repaint that object, let’s stick with the vase, in your mind. Recreate the vase. The shape, the colour, the reflections on its surface (oh yes, there are reflections of light). You will notice that your mind starts yapping at you again, begging for attention.
Remember to tell yourself, “Sure, mind, you’ll get your attention. When we’re done here.”

And you return to the image of the vase in your mind. Keep creating it, improving it, making it as real as you can.

Keep your eye on the time you spend on creating that vase. Do this for about 5 minutes. Then look at the vase and see if you missed some details. If you did, great. You’ll notice them next time. If you had it perfectly shaped, well done too.

Feel free to try this meditation. It may suit you better than the counting one.
There is no need to stick with that first cup or vase, you can take different objects for repainting them in your mind. Just don’t take things that are overly complex or difficult. Meditation is meant to be easy so take easy subjects.

It’s boring.

The idea behind these forms of meditation is to bore your active mind. Your mind is meant to keep you busy but in these modern times it’s taking over too much. You have to be up and at it 24/7, if possible even more. That is insane and not what a human is made for. Alas, the economy demands it. You can resort to the Fukitol pill and just run with the flow, or you can meditate

Teach your brain to be quiet a few times per day so your inner Self, your Soul, pick your name for it, has time to breathe and make itself known.

This is the way you can tap into your Self. Your Self is something else than your mind. Your mind picks up things from outside you and acts on those. Your Self has lots of things to tell you, for instance creativity and understanding and love of nature. Scraping off the layers of stress that you gathered with all your mind-thinking will open up the way to that inner part of yourself. I hope you will persist in the practice and find out wonderful things about yourself you never knew existed.

Happy meditating!

Naked meditation – 2. Meditating

Meditation.
Hello there. Ready to learn a bit more about meditation? You’re at the right place then. Do note that this series of posts is going to cover a few very simple and basic ways to meditate. Ways that anyone can do.

As I said before you need a good place to sit, with as few distractions as possible (none would be optimal) and some time. More about time later though, let’s first get at the real thing.

Posture.
During these meditations you will sit.

Sit up straight but comfortable. It’s best not to cross your legs and hands or fingers so your blood flow is not blocked. Note that this is merely advice. If you really need or want to cross fingers, legs, eyes or anything else worth crossing, do so. Also sit up with your head up straight. Don’t sit in a way that you can lean your head back. That will trigger falling asleep very easily.

Meditation doesn’t look like something active but it is. It’s an activity inside you and that’s an important place to take care of.

The first meditation.
Sit down and close your eyes. Breathe in and out a few times and relax. This is an important introduction to the meditation. Once this is a habit, your body and mind will respond to it quickly and the relaxation will kick in faster. Now you are ready to do the actual meditation.

With your eyes closed and your breathing calm, slowly count from 1 to 7 in your mind. That’s all. Well, of course that’s not really all. The trick is that you don’t force yourself to count. Just count. 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 1… 2… 3… oh, I need to think of the laundry/groceries/anything… damn, I’m not counting.
Yes, you will encounter something like this. That’s okay. Really. The reason that this happens is that our minds are forced to be active and ‘on’ all the time. The moment you start this simple counting your mind gets bored (trust me, it won’t take long) and it will start pouring out all kinds of stuff. It’s normal. When you do notice that you’re not counting don’t get angry. Just breathe in, breathe out and 1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 1… etc. More thoughts will come. An itch will come. At some point you’ll probably hear something. Don’t worry. Accept this things, acknowledge them and then go back to breathing and counting.

Time. clock-20mins
There are 2 bits on time for meditation. One is: how long, and the other is when. To start this exercise you should plan about 5 minutes. That may sound short but this is new and you may get twitchy after a while. Remember: you are probably not used to sitting still this way so there is no need to overdo it from the start. Give it time. Once you feel it gets easier you can add time. Go for 7 minutes. 10 minutes. And suddenly you will find you can do this for 15 minutes. 15 to 20 minutes per session is good. Less is also good. At least you are meditating, and meditating means you’re scraping away at the layers of stress you’ve been accumulating over the years. Each scratch at that is a good thing. You are teaching yourself to be calm, silent, serene. You relax at a core level.

Note that you should not set an alarm for this. Alarms are clocks that force you to do things. You should not force the end of your meditation. Glance at a clock once in a while. If you meditate ‘too long’ that’s fine. It won’t hurt you.
Then the when: once a day is good, twice is better. A morning and an evening session is optimal. Of course you won’t always be able to do this but if you really want it and you start feeling the benefits of it, you’ll automatically want to reserve some time for meditating.

The end.
Once you end your meditation, sit still for another few minutes with your eyes closed. Feel how you feel inside. Stretch your arms and legs. Get the blood flow active again. Then open your eyes and start doing your usual things.
Congratulations. You’ve just meditated.

Next time (should be next week) I will tell a bit more on the background of meditation and introduce another form for if this one doesn’t work for you. In the meantime try to practise this form.

Naked meditation – 1. Preparation.

Yes. You probably all have heard of nude meditation. And you probably are all aware of the nude factor of it as that’s easy to achieve if you’re a regular on this site.

But what about the rest? This meditation thing that people mention? How do you do that?

Is it the stuff where you tie your (naked) body into knots, wrap your ankles around your neck and all that other painful-looking stuff?

Nope, none of all that is needed for meditation. Some people do it because they can. Some forms of meditation need it as it’s part of the practice. I want to help you in getting a peek into a simpler form of meditation, something you can do nearly anywhere.

What do you need for a simple form of meditation?

1. A place to sit comfortably. No need to hang from a stick or stand on a sacred rock on one leg. Find a place where you can sit without being disturbed. If you can find a place without distracting sounds/noises, even better. A backrest? No problem. Just make sure you can sit up straight, which is good for your spine.

2. A technique to meditate. Again, this is not going to be a difficult thing. I’ll outline a few easy ways to meditate for you as I write more about naked meditation. (Most of it can be done dressed too, but you know, clothes… meh…)

3. The desire to meditate. Meditation may sound cool and fun but you may find that after a few times it becomes difficult. I know, that sounds odd for something that’s supposed to relax you but the thing is that many people’s minds are not used to deep relaxation any more. The mind is kept active 24/7 these days by all the stimuli we get from TV, Internet, ads everywhere. Once you breach that hurdle though, you’ll start feeling the benefits.

Are you game?

Naked Crow 4

Believe it or not, I have written “The End” for the 4th Naked Crow book.

I’m going to leave it for a while now, let it cool down, and then I have to rework it. Get the stupids out, fix typos, make bad sentences better. In the meantime I’ve been thinking about the cover art for the new book and this is what I came up with. Sort of.

nc4concept

I like it already. Not sure how much or what will change…

The Scientific Reasons Why You Should Just Always Be Naked

This is a full repost of a great article. Find the original at http://elitedaily.com.

Show a man with a gun… it’s called action. Show a man with a dick… it’s called indecent.

There’s something wrong with the way Americans have come to accept almost every aspect of the human condition except for the most natural one. We’ve accepted guns, drugs and violence, yet refuse to accept bare breasts and genitalia.

Put a man killing and raping women in a movie and it may go on to win an Oscar. Put a naked woman on the screen, and it won’t be allowed a nomination (take “Blue is the Warmest Color” for example).

We’ve become so desensitized to everything, but the one thing that makes us human. We’ve come to accept almost every negative aspect of human nature, yet refuse to condone the most natural state a human being can be — the nude.

With the recent craze of the health benefits of sleeping naked, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were more benefits we’re missing out on by always covering up.

Are nudists colonies onto something? Are we depriving ourselves of essential nutrients and benefits due to our perversion to the human body?

What would happen if we accepted our bodies the same way we accepted everything else? What would happen if we stopped covering up and started stripping down? What would happen if we all just let our bodies hang out in the open and didn’t hide them in dark worlds of porn, indecency and fetishes?

According to Matthew Westra, a psychology professor at Longview Community College in Missouri, “Nudity is a taboo in America because we primarily equate nudity or nakedness with sexuality and we have taboos about sexuality.”

This association between nudity and sex is exacerbated by the use of strip clubs and pornography that have come to represent a wrongful or sinful type of behavior that is only achieved in the nude.

There’s no denying Americans are prudish by nature. There’s also no denying, however, that if we could get past our childish perversions and accept nudity as a basic and natural human form, there would be a lot less “deviousness” and fewer obsessions with the human body — and we could all just stop caring so much about it.

When clothes come off, so do the stigmas

Things are only taboo because we make them that way. People only go searching for something they can’t have because its “illicit” status makes it intriguing.

If men, however, were exposed to nudity on a normal, everyday basis, they wouldn’t fantasize and obsess over it the way 14-year-olds do at the sight of their first breast.

According to Dr. Conrad Manning in his paper “Virtues of Nakedness: Physical & Psychological Health,” “By making nakedness an ordinary, matter-of-fact, common experience, unassociated with sexuality, the unhealthy prurient interest in pornography would be considerably lessened.”

Imagine if men were desensitized to the female body. Imagine if they didn’t feel the need to rip a woman’s clothes off to fulfill some fantasy they’ve created in their minds.

Imagine if men stopped putting all their time and energy into seeing women naked and just learned to live side-by-side with them?

Fewer clothes, fewer problems

Imagine if we lived in a world where bodies weren’t hidden under layers while models with “perfect bodies” ran around half naked? Imagine if we all just looked at each other the way God made us without any implications or idealized notions of the perfect body?

According to Manning, it’s our clothing that creates our insecurities and inability to accept and love each other the way we should.

We put materialistic value on the human form and it’s created mental illness along with body dismorphia and an undesirable environment for humans to live and communicate within.

Early exposure means early acceptance

Like anything, most of our neuroses and phobias form during childhood. But what if we’d grown up in a nude household? What if we’d been taught from a young age nudity is natural and the human body is beautiful?

Studying these effects in their book, “The Naked Child: Growing Up Without Shame,” Dennis Craig Smith and William Sparks found that children exposed to nudity from a young age became either unfazed by the human body later in life and sometimes, psychologically stronger because of it.

More studies were done on this topic. One study published in the Journal of Social Psychology by Marilyn D. Story examined 264 children and their parents. The results proved children raised around nudity grew up with a higher body self-concept.

According to Story, “coming from a nudist family played a more significant role in the children’s positive self body-image than their race, gender, or area of the country in which they lived.”

Baring your body means banning bacteria

In another paradox, humans donned clothing to keep away parasites and filth, yet only created breeding grounds for different types of infections and disease.

While clothes may seem like a way to keep the dirt off, we’re really only harming ourselves more.

In the study “A Naked Ape Would Have Fewer Parasites” published by the University of Reading, “Lyme Disease deer ticks can grab onto our sweaters and sea lice can sneak into our bathing suit crotches.

Cinched-up belts, ties, and clothes impede breathing. Men’s snug pants raise testicle temperature, lowering sperm count and fertility.”

Along with infertility rates and Lyme disease, clothes also contribute to yeast infections and UTIs in women. They are creating problems by trying to eradicate them.

Naked today, alive tomorrow

What if I told you shoes were causing you to lose brain function? What if not wearing shoes meant decreasing your risk for Alzheimer’s? What if stripping down the clothes meant adding up the years?

According to  Dr. Norman Doidge, “Going shoeless is now recognized as an anti-Alzheimer’s, brain-boosting activity because the sole sensation entices your brain into growing extra, efficient neuron connections.”

It seems arbitrary, but walking around barefoot increases brain flexibility. It doesn’t just make you feel young again, it makes your brain feel young again.

 

It’s not just about you and not just about me

Dressed peopleYou. Yes, you who thinks that everyone has to dress. I don’t live according to your standards. I have my own. They are not higher, nor lower. They are simply different.

Just because most people are afraid of a naked arm or a naked leg doesn’t mean that we all should be like that. A naked arm, a naked leg, they are part of us. Of our naked bodies.

You scream about nudity as if it’s the worst thing. Don’t deny it, we all heard it. Despite all the porn everywhere nudity is bad. Bad when someone shows it. Is that because it brings your vulnerability into the daylight? The fact that you peek at naked people when no one is watching? Don’t worry, we won’t tell.

nude personI hear you say that nudists should dress. Like decent people. Meaning like all the people who hide their true self, only showing the outside world the part of them they want the world to know. Be young, be pretty, be strong and happy. Hide the flabby arms, the sagging breasts, the beer belly and the scars. Don’t think of showing the wrinkles and the deformations. Be young, be pretty. Be as misguided as the rest of all those who love their clothes, always and everywhere.

I wonder why you close your eyes to reality? You won’t be young forever. You will wrinkle, flab, crease, scar and sag. Why hide that? Why not show the world that you’re still standing after all you went through? Where is your pride? Is it in the back pocket of your new designer jeans? Do you wear it on the lapel of that fancy jacket that’s in fashion now and gone next year?

Clothes. Why.

Clothes

clothesYour clothes. You wear them.

Not because it’s cold but because you’re told to wear them.

There is a reason for clothes, but not all the time.

tight-clothes-250811Clothes, they are normal. Clothes are a must. You must cover your body for nude bodies are bad. Didn’t you know? Your body is vile, ugly, nasty, no one should see it.

For heaven’s sake.

clothes_too_tight_copyBut clothes limit your freedom. They hide who you are.

Well done you clothes-wearers, for with all your stripes and colours, your baggy trousers and your bulge, you all look the same.

Naked_humanWhy is nakedness shameful? Is there anything wrong with a healthy body? Why has the world gotten so obsessed with nudity that people are less afraid of a gun than of a naked man? Or woman?

Why do we need energy-devouring air-conditioners? To keep us cool underneath all those wonderful layers of clothes that keep us covered. People get nervous breakdowns over not being able to get the clothes that are in fashion.

Go naked. Your skin is always in fashion.

Freeing the nipple

(image courtesy of Twitter)

 

We all have heard of #FreeTheNipple, I am sure. I can’t wrap my head around the weird minds who think that a male chest is any better than a female chest. And to make it worse, it’s often the “christian” fanatics who go on about that. (I’m not a christian, in case you still wonder.) Their god apparently made man after his own image. If this image is restricted to ‘the man’, the male of the two genders, then something is wrong in that image, because there are two genders. That god should have been more careful and should not have created women. Which would of course imply that all men would be gay and procreation would be at least very interesting, which is another item in christianity. But I digress.

This blog-post appears because I support Free the nipple. We’re all people, we all have a body and we all should be allowed to show it. No nipple should be left behind fabric.

If you want to learn more, visit the Free the Nipple website.