After teaching yoga around the city, he created a communal practice and study space built of his own holistic vision. A former marine with a prison sentence and a divorce on his shoulders, he needed to center himself and find peace. King started Dharma House after a time of tumult in his life. And how far apart my feet can be while my thighs are still smooshed together. I am managing small talk with two instructors, but all I can think about are the scars on my back from a bout with melanoma a few years ago. Maybe my brain is focusing on other things in order to ignore thoroughly the task at hand. I’m not mad about the naked yoga class I’m about to be a part of-I’m not even thinking about that. If there’s a place to get naked with strangers in Columbus, it’s here. One can hear rain on the leaves, and the rushing of a creek below. The back deck of Dharma House looks out over a wooded ravine. I can’t even step out of my own never-ending brain loop. I can’t unclench my jaw, or stop thinking about a dumb argument from the day before. I spend the time I would have been scrambling for clothes to just think about where my head’s at. But I realize that this class is about only your physical body, your mental state. Usually for an article involving exercise, I’d be looking for some cool, neon and black getup that would look “athleisure-y,” but professional. Turns out, there has been a little press on his nude practice, but none of the writers ever actually attended the class. King spent some time on the phone with me, discussing the article. The class scheduled, the photographer booked, all that was left to do was research for my interview and stew in my own anxiety juices. My decision to take this class becomes more defiant as the days pass. I take note of a few covert negative reactions that seem more tied to my specific physical body than to the idea of nudity in general. I’ve never met her in person, and I have to ask her to shoot the class in the nude. “What does your boyfriend think about this?” I start telling people just to see their reactions. Why cover back up and converse in past tense? Bring in some danglers, however, and I’ve officially stepped outside of my comfort zone.Īdditionally, I plan to complete my post-class interviews in the nude. An all-women’s class would feel like a chill locker room to me. Dharma House offers men- and women-only nude classes, in addition to two co-ed nude classes. That would turn off the animal part of my brain that would feel exposed and afraid, and that’s exactly what I want to confront. I decide that I will not drink alcohol before the class. The people in the photos are overwhelmingly young, slender, female, well-dressed, and white. Fast-forward to modern America: Google image search yoga, and you’ll find that our Western vision of it is worlds away from its roots. They were the OGs of “mind over matter,” and they dedicated their lives to living with power and purpose. Ancient yogis would bury themselves in the earth for 30 days, slowing down their metabolic rates. The stretching and bending we’re familiar with are only a small part of an otherwise life-encompassing practice. Most masters of the practice at that time were older men. Yoga was first practiced between 5-10,000 years ago in South Asia. Speaking of tidbits- can I wear underwear? I go to the Dharma House website over and over, reading through their page of FAQs. I tell everyone in the office and several friends about the class-partly so I can’t back out. I need to make an appointment to get waxed. I schedule a photographer to get images for the article. They weren’t “doin’ it for the ’Gram,” as it were. The first yogis practiced naked or in simple loincloths, focused on their inner-power and fine-tuning their moral compass. This includes practice in the nude, which it turns out, is an ancient tradition. At 5’2” and 150 pounds, parts of me-the jiggly parts-want to take this assignment on principle alone…Īnd it may be hidden under layers of clothing-but there’s only one way to find out for sure.Īt the Dharma House yoga collective on the north side, King offers myriad classes, from meditation to yoga, for every skill level. If I don’t take this assignment, I thought, whomever gets it might be all svelte and Instagram-athletic. “No!” I pull my gaze out of space to stare him in the eye. “If you’re not comfortable,” my editor says, “it’s okay, someone else will probably-” I’m the open-minded, adventurous type… the “confident in my body type” type. This time, he peers over his monitor, eyes wide. I share an office with my editor, and many of our conversations begin with me spinning around in my chair and exclaiming some off-base idea to him, and gauging his reaction. There it is in black and white, on the schedule for classes:
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