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“There have been women that have come that have had body issues, problems with their weight, who have felt like they have benefited from coming to the classes in a big way,” says Annette, yoga instructor at Naked Yoga London, who also teaches the class naked.
When you see Jennifer Kries today, it’s easy to assume that she hasn’t struggled with body issues, or that she instantly took to the idea of naked yoga because she has a good body, but that’s not exactly the case. Naked yoga wasn’t something she would ever have considered doing until a good friend suggested giving it a go, and she did—with unexpected results. “My self-consciousness about my body just evaporated because the other women were so welcoming, respectful, kind, and relaxed. Any shame I thought I would feel disappeared.”
Kries uses a skinny-dipping analogy to illustrate the innocence of nakedness, believing that doing yoga undressed can reconnect women with that “feeling of innocence and purity and joy we had as children, as little girls, before life with other people—grown-ups, in particular—happened.” Naked yoga, she says, “is one of the most powerful ways I know to cultivate abundant self-love, compassion, and courage.”
If you’ve ever been to the Russian baths, or perhaps a sauna, you know that after a while the foreignness of being naked slips away and, as a friend aptly put it, “skin becomes just skin.” Kries hopes that doing naked yoga alone at home, or with friends, will open women up to talking about their bodies with other women, and ultimately rediscovering a sense of their own beauty.
There is an even deeper reason why Kries “felt compelled to create this series.” She is a survivor of abuse, and she wanted to bring women a hands-on way to heal, appreciate, and get in touch with their bodies so they could move through the world empowered and whole. Naked yoga has been a part of her own healing process, starting with that initial class in San Francisco. Working through the asanas (hatha yoga postures), she began to change. “I was overwhelmed by emotion. I finally felt like I had given up the fight, the body armour I felt I always had to wear was not needed anymore… I felt happy deep inside. I can confidently say that this work, more than anything I have ever done, has served to free me from my past in ways I never could have imagined.”
