Naturism is a therapy, nature’s therapy for the soul. There is no better way to simply experience the fullness of being alive in the world than to make oneself fully vulnerable to that world. It doesn’t take long for a person to “fit” within the natural world, the world of nature, when one chooses to be intimately present. When one risks being fully and authentically present in nature, it is a process called rewilding. Tossed away are more than one’s…
Okay, so where do I fit into these set of statements made by James Hollis? Is what I am doing by reading Hollis’ book – Why Good People Do Bad Things, analysing so much of my present life and my history; part of what he is asking each of us to do? Perhaps, I hope so. I can’t pretend that I really know what I am doing or why I am doing it all the time. Nor, do I think that most of the…
Life sometimes gives us more that we seem to be able to handle. When that happens, we typically retreat into quietness and depression It’s that old “fight or flight” response that is hard-wired into our bodies, not something that we consciously think about. Yet, there are times when we have time to think when faced with something that is stressing us out. When we have the space and time and place to make conscious decisions about how we will respond, we…
It has been slightly depressing out as far as weather is concerned and I have a cold adding a level of misery to the situation. Of course, this means that my approach to the world is tinged with a sense of greyness rather than the clear light of sunshine. As a result, this post reflects my mood – and in a way, that is honest as it can get. It doesn’t matter that the sun came out this morning. I tried focusing…
It is hard for me to understand which came first, the tendency towards depression, or the trauma that was visited upon me during my childhood, boyhood and youth. I guess it doesn’t really matter. But at times I wonder. Did I have a genetic inheritance of depression? Was that predisposition to depression a factor in marking me as a candidate for abuse by others? Or, were the realities of being abused the root source of depression? I am lucky; I survived…
I know that it has been said so many times that it almost seems redundant to say it once more, but it has to be said. We are born naked – all of us – without exception. It doesn’t matter what religion or what philosophy or what ideology one has; we were conceived the same way – a naked penis inserted into a naked vagina in order for naked sperm to join naked ova (yes, I know that science has…
As a naturist, I get to meet others who are comfortable in their own skin. Some I meet in the face-to-face world, and some I meet in the world of social media. Regardless of where we may have met, the people are real. They have families, they have jobs, they have friends, and they do their best like everyone else to have meaningful lives. No matter how you look at them, they simply come out looking like normal people, because…
To know others who are looking beyond, beneath and within for meaning as humans has given me greater courage to be myself, to dare being fully myself. Others such as Paul Z. Walker and Will Forest, two men who are both authors and naturists, lessens the sense of aloneness and alienation. A long time ago I wrote about how Sydney Jourard’s book, The Transparent Self, had been a part of the influence that helped explain my personal shift to consciously becoming…
It’s summer, yet somehow I woke up to a temperature of 4 Celsius outside. I woke early as is normal. By 8:45 the temperature had soared to 10 C, warm enough to be outside to capture a bit of sunshine on my body. Today, meditation is not as easy on my body as it has been in the past. My left knee is hurting when I assume a semi-lotus position. With age, it seems my body is falling apart, tiny…
There is a real need to take ownership back: ownership of one’s body, mind and soul. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what other people think or say. One’s well-being ultimately falls to what we think and say and believe about ourselves. In the world of nudism and naturism, there is often the same dialogue and drama about the human body as there is among the rest of the human population. There seems to be more should’s and should not’s than one would…