Nekkid (Part Two)

Oh! what a fabulous story. Just beautiful, in all ways. I hope you are going to - or are already - writing a book with this in.

I've jumped in the middle of course, haven't read part 1 or 3 yet!

This part reminded me SO much of my first time at Harbin Hot Springs. A place somewhat similar to Esalen, although I've never been to Esalen.

I was attending my second Paul Lowe retreat ( a 200%  full on go fearward process in itself). The first time had been in Montreal, just a weekend. Intense, and CLOTHED. It was so amazing, I signed up for the full caboodle in Harbin, meaning about a month.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I stored the words 'clothing optional'. They lay there, hidden, until after an exhausting flight, long bus journey and then a cab drive,  I stepped out onto the path to Harbin, they surfaced again… clothing optional...  I pushed the words away. I wasn't going to listen. Not to the optional part.  I hardly dared to be seen naked in front of my girlfriends or even lovers, let alone strangers.

Yes, I could wear clothes. But some part of me knew that wasn't really going to be an option…

Anyway, there I was, standing at the gates to Harbin. It was night. I had no money for a room so I had gone for “indoor camping”  - meaning sleeping on the floor in the group room. I wandered about in the dark, found the place eventually, the room was empty, phew (ish, I was feeling pretty lost, but I knew no-one anyway). I tucked my stuff into a corner. I knew there was a sauna, so I thought, well, I can handle that. No nude bathing in hot springs for me just yet, thank you very much. I wrapped myself in a towel, and after stumbling about for a while in the dark, I found the sauna. I climbed in, settled myself on a bench on my towel, lay down. Ahhhh. Lovely. After a while my eyes adjusted a little to the dark. I tried to make out the forms in the little room. And then it became obvious: the sauna was full of men, all sitting, all naked,  all looking in my direction.

One half of me shrunk in horror, the other half just had to laugh. I left, that was enough for starters! I went back to my nook in the group room. On the way down I met a young deer, totally unafraid, coming up to me. I knew then that I'd be alright. The next day I threw caution to the winds and walked stark naked up to the hot springs - oh what bliss! I've never looked back really. At least not at that particular fear. 

Since then I've been many times to Harbin, it's almost a second home for me. I've faced many fears there in Paul's groups,  but much deeper ones than the fear that my body was shameful.

And yet as I get older I find myself getting shy again, noticing this already fragile body get more fragile, more transparent, and a little fear rises again….

Wonderful, Mary!  You had me laughing and melting and kicking myself (“Darn you!  You shouldn't have backed out of this trip!”) all at once.  You're a professional writer, so of course you're skilled at evoking scenes and transporting people, but I'll thank you for the obvious anyway:  Thanks for taking us there with you!

If I had come on this trip, I would have been nervous about the clothing optional part too.  I remember when I first got over it, living in Sedona and being initiated into “earth monkey” freedom by a girlfriend who suddenly stripped her shirt off while we were out hiking.  I was shocked at first, and a little shy about disrobing in public, but she was so enthusiastic and unashamed, that I did what any guy would do:  give in!  We got into the habit of skinny dipping in the local swimming holes and taking naked hikes through the forested canyons.  Several times, we joined in on clothing optional sweat lodges.  It was a wonderful, freeing time for me – a person who, for most of his life, had been very shy about his body.  And later, living in Korea, I began to visit the wonderful, lavish bath houses there – which typically were segregated by sex, but still where people did all sorts of things in the nude that I wasn't used to seeing!  I soon grew used to moving around naked for hours in these settings, trying out different medicinal pools, exercising, getting massages….

But now that I'm older, the old shyness is back.  With close friends, I'd probably be able to get past the initial hesitation – but only with an effort, I feel. 

Thanks again, Mary, for these wonderful, heart-warming, humorous reflections.

Best wishes,

Balder

Hi, Mary, you cracked me up again!!  About hiking nekkid:  we were pretty discrete about it.  I would NOT have liked running into other hikers, who probably would have experienced the sudden appearance of naked earth monkeys as rather disturbing!  We only did it in remote areas, off the beaten track.  (Once, while swimming nekkid at a swimming hole, two hikers did stumble upon us; they'd left a watch on the rock near us, and were quite nervous about coming up to retrieve it.  They eventually got our attention, and when they turned their backs politely, I ran up and lay the watch at their feet, then took a lanky legged, nekkid leap back into the water!!)

Anyway, thanks for your great reflections here.  I like how you've taken this into “deeper waters” in your third post, from body image concerns to the deeper nakedness that gets exposed as we dive into contemplative and psychological practice….

Warm wishes,

Bruce

Hi Mary,

I had no idea you had done this…..and funnily enough when I knew you had all gone to Esalen I did wonder about the hot tubs. Like I wondered did you all use it….together…..with other people? And I have to admit, much as I would love to spend some time at Esalen, and envious as I was about you all getting there while Ryan was staying and able to be your host, my usual feeling that I miss out on a lot of the fun by being so far away was somewhat relieved by the fact that I at least didn't have to deal with the “nekkid in the hot tub “thing.

I do remember almost breathing a sigh of relief that I didn't have to deal with that one!
I didn't even have the coutage to ask you about it, I am such a damn coward:-)

So thank you so much for your account. I could identify so strongly with all that you expressed in part 1. Of course this isn't new, we have both observed before the similarities in our responses to these things, and I am in little doubt it's part of the legacy of that Catholic upbringing we shared on different continents, but which had so many similarities in its influences.

However one of the great joys of our forum musings over the past few years is that I have also begun to appreciate the strengths of that background too, so much of who I am comes from the values and core of that tradition, something I ignored or denied for a very long time. I doubt I'll ever go back and embrace it all as you have, I do feel much more at home with the Buddhist nuns where there is just such an acceptance that it's OK to be exactly as you are, right now and if change needs to come it'll happen in its own time. I'm still dabbling and exploring as opposed to deeply committed, but I do value those times enormously.

And of course it doesn't really matter. That was obvious in Boulder, when we alternated your memorable Centering Prayer mornings with David's Buddhist meditations. There is only one place to go, but the routes are infinitely variable.

Please “finish the damn book”, I am so looking forward to reading it.

My own dabblings in the land of the nekkid have been more modest (no
pun intended), but funnily enough I was talking about that only yesterday.

I decided on a Turkish holiday to do the Tuurkish bath thing. Of course I put it off till about the last but one day, I wasn't quite sure what would happen, what the clothing code would be, whether others would be around…oh you'll understand all that. However, it also seemed a bit pointless to spend 2 weeks in Turkey and not have a Turkish bath………………
so in the end I did go. It was fine, there was some wraparound clothing to spare the blushes and not enough other people to be intimidating. It was hot. We were each taken in turn, laid on a marble slab in the centre of the room, in full view of the others and bent, twisted and mauled in some way that was presumably meant to be therapeutic. The assistants were Turkish guys, wearing the wraparound clothing like loincloths. I managed to get through that without decking the guy for daring to touch, but hell was I tense. Hyper vigilant is proably more accurate, if he had moved just one inch on my side of acceptable he'd have been in trouble! Then the next stage, being pelted by bubbles. He had what looked like a pillowcase, full of what seemed to be thick foam, like you'd get on the top of a really, really good bubblebath. Ceremonial whacking ensued-maybe it was just relief from the earlier tension, but I lost it. I got the giggles. I was still face down on the marble slab. At the point where my shoulders started shaking, I got my first telling off. Apparently this was a serious thing. Now generally I wouldn't want to disrespect anyone's culture, but to give me what was obviously a telling off then proceed to beat me up with a bag of bubbles, in seconds iIwas shaking all over with laughter. Other people had started to notice and giggle too, the man got crosser, I swear he tried to hit me harder………but you can't do much damage with a bag of bubbles. In the end I had to sit up, i was howling with the laughter, and the more cross I could see he was, the more it cracked me up. I have no idea what he said but strobgly suspect ot was Turkish for “Fucking tourists….”

That experience was what made me decide when I went to Thailand a couple of years later that I would do the whole massage thing, decided there was something I needed to get out of my system. Forget what you hear about Thailand, sure the erotic stuff is there if that's what you want, it's a country where anything is for sale, but generally there is a huge availability of a whole range of massage options and people pop in while out shopping, before going for dinner, late at night on the way home……and on the beach, on a sunny afternoon it can be the closest thing to heaven.

Thank you, Mary, I laughed with you through lots of part one, and almost cried a few times too. I swear if you'd been a fly on the wall watching me in the ame situation, it would have been closer to everything you described than anything I could write myself.

I am so looking forward to part 3, I already get the feeling there's a deeper, more reflective piece coming. Part 2, your experience at Esalen is beautifully communicated, I agree it should go in the book.

Much love to you, dear friend

Liz

Leaner than lean, sure, and I feel like a size 8 in a size 14 suit of skin when I'm naked, my skin sags so much, so we all have our dislike of our bodies, right? I actually liked my body better when I was fatter, as the skin fit me.

I would have paid more attention if I had known that your butt crack was crooked….dang. Missed the pock-marks too.

How about being at the baths with your new younger boyfriend, who's had a lifetime of not getting enough women, so you're projecting that he's like a kid in a candy store and all the other women are younger and in better shape than you are? Not intimidating at all, no sir. There was one woman lying on a table who I wanted to kill, she was so beautiful.

I'd actually prefer to be on a large public nude beach than nekkid at Esalen. The people there are a very skewed sample. There were no fat people, for one thing. This is something that just doesn't happen in America! Everyone was so freaking fit, and it felt like the smugness was just oozing off of them. But my guess is that they mostly felt like we did, and that only a few of them actually deserved to die for their beauty. The rest were just oozing bravado, not smugness.

Money, actually. They were probably oozing money. I might have been confused.

Um, so, being in a long-distance relationship doesn't exactly breed self-confidence, lol.

I'm off to read part 3.

Liz

P.S. on another beauty tangent:

I took my son to the doctor in part for his acne problem. Said doc put him on Retin-A! Score! So I'm sharing it with him, and I am here to tell you that my AGE SPOTS ARE DISAPPEARING! Ok, attached to my looks? Vain? Beside myself with joy, relief, and inordinate glee? Yes to all. I'm a little disappointed in myself, but you know, it feels so bad when people stop telling you that your skin is beautiful. And I spend too much time in Photoshop getting rid of them.

Mary, You are just gorgeous…….I am on a very expensive internet connection on the Pride of America and I have probably spent 1000 dollars reading Nekkid.   I have a wonderful story to share too, written somewhere in my home computer…..Bodies! so incredible…..this magic mud.
love Jane