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Photo courtesy of Keith Loop
Gymnos, the root word in “gymnasium,” is ancient Greek for “naked.” In the days of Socrates, male athletes exercised and competed completely in the nude. Recently, thanks to Manhattan yogi Aaron Star and others like him, this no-fashion trend has been revived in certain yoga circles around the country.
Monday nights in Denver find Keith Loop leading a group of men in Tantric yoga and meditation -- every last one of them wearing nothing but the skins they were born in. At first glance, this may seem like a thinly disguised excuse for same-sex hookups (which it may be, in some urban markets), but according to Loop, who has taught the class for three years, it in fact creates a unique opportunity for transformation.
When you’re naked, explains Loop, “You’re exposed; bare; your ego has nowhere to hide.” Participants are confronted with their own body image issues and their imperfections, the supposedly “inauspicious" parts of themselves. For men, who as Loop puts it “tend to bond superficially,” this is an uncharacteristic experience of vulnerability which can -- with the proper guidance -- lead to the radical acceptance of oneself and others in the group, opening a gateway to step into one’s essential power and experience oneself (and everyone in the class) as an “all-encompassing being.” What may begin in self-consciousness ends in celebration.
Tantric yoga honors both body and spirit as holy, bridging the traditional separation in Western religion and thought between the physical and the sacred. Though this branch is often popularly characterized as “the sexual kind” of yoga, Loop maintains that there is nothing overtly sexual about his class; it is more accurately sensual in its use of the body to unfold students’ highest (and deepest) masculine energies.
Loop strives to create a space where men, gay or straight, can feel completely safe; predators and looky-loos are weeded out in advance through an initial screening process, and those who are wholly uninterested in the spiritual aspects of the practice will typically feel too uncomfortable to return.
Ironically, anyone who might have proved disruptive finds his expectations disrupted.
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