How I Went From Closed-Off to Clothes Off
By Asana
I owned a robe for the four foot walk from the bedroom to the bathroom.
That's the level we're talking about. I grew up understanding my body the way you understand a houseguest you're not sure you like. Politely. At a distance. With the door mostly closed. Nobody sat me down and taught me shame. It came in the way weather comes in. One day you just notice you've been carrying an umbrella your whole life and you can't remember buying it.
And here's what should have tipped me off way sooner. I have never once been good at carrying something just because everyone else was carrying it. Tell me a rule and the first thing I do is turn it over and check the bottom for a price tag. Who made this. What's it for. Who decided. Somehow the one rule I never thought to flip was the one about my own skin. I just hauled it around. For years.
So this is the story of how I put the umbrella down. It took me an embarrassingly long time and it did not happen all at once.
The careful years
For most of my twenties, I was, by any reasonable measure, free. Lived where I wanted. Loved who I wanted. Said the bold thing at the dinner table, specifically because everyone was waiting for someone not to. But the freedom stopped at my skin. I changed clothes in the dark. I had a whole choreography for the beach that involved an oversized towel and the kind of contortion that would have made a lovely yoga pose if I hadn't been doing it out of dread.
I thought that was just modesty. Good manners. Being a normal person. Took me years to see it was something quieter and sadder. I was managing my body. Tending it liek a problem that hadn't been solved yet. Always one workout, one season, one good decision away from being allowed to relax into it.
And when I finally said that out loud it made me mad. Because it was someone else's measuring stick and I'd been holding it against myself for decades like I'd signed up for the terms. I never signed up for anything. I inherited it and never once asked who it was for. That kind of thing doesn't sit right with me for long.
The creek
Mine started at a creek, which is almost too on the nose, but life doesn't care about your sense of restraint.
I was on a trip with people I trusted, somewhere green and far from anyone, and they all just went in. Clothes on a rock and bodies in the water like it was the most natural thing in the world. Which, and this is the part that got me, it was.
I stood on the bank doing my usual math. Who can see. What I look like. Whether I've done enough lately to deserve to be looked at. And then I caught myself running someone else's calculation, in someone else's voice, about a body that was nobody's business but mine. The whole equation just fell apart under its own stupidity. It wasn't bravery. It was more like a door clicking open that I didn't know was locked. So I put my clothes on the rock and got in.
The water did not gasp. The trees did not file a complaint. Nobody looked at me like I was a before photo. I was a body in a creek, cold and laughing, and for the first time in my adult life there was nobody in my head narrating how I was doing at being a woman.
That silence. That's the thing I'd been missing and never had a word for. It was never about being naked. It was about being un-watched, even by myself.
Asana and Sasha together in Heavenly Hips
What nature, art and yoga taught me
The creek cracked it open. Nude Art and nude yoga are where I learned to live in it.
I came to nude practice sideways and mostly skeptical, and a big part of why I went is that the people warning me off it couldn't tell me why. Just a vague "you don't do that." That is catnip to me. Tell me something's off limits with no real reason behind it and I will go find out for myself, every time.
I expected it to feel exposing. It was the opposite. Strip off the leggings and the cute top and working to look like a woman who has it together, and there's nothing left to hide behind. So there's nothing left to hide. Just breath and skin and the honest mechanics of a body doing what bodies do. Bending. Shaking. Holding. Letting go.
You can't hate something you're paying that much attention to. That's the whole trick of it. Judgment gets traded for curiosity. Instead of "is this acceptable," your body starts asking "what can this do," and those are two completely different ways to live with the only home you'll ever get.
What freedom actually turned out to be
I thought freedom would feel like rebellion. Loud. A little defiant. Something I'd do at the people who taught me to cover up. It didn't feel like that at all. It felt like coming home. Like setting down something heavy I'd been told was just part of being a woman. There's nothing shocking about it once you're in it. It is the most ordinary thing on earth to live in your own skin without an apology running underneath everything.
And the strange part is it didn't make me more obsessed with my body. It made me think about my body alot less. The way you stop noticing a sore tooth once it finally heals. The freedom was never the nudity. The nudity was just the door. The freedom was finally refusing to carry an umbrella I never agreed to pick up.
For whoever needs it
If you see yourself in the robe, in the towel choreography, in the math you run before you let anyone see you, I'm not going to tell you to go skinny dip tomorrow. That would just be me handing you a different set of instructions, and the instructions were most of the problem the whole time.
The real assignment is smaller and stranger. Notice the umbrella. Notice the narration. Notice how much of your day goes to managing a body that has, this entire time, just been faithfully carrying you around. Then ask who you've been doing all that managing for. I'd bet money it isn't you.
And then someday, somewhere private and safe and yours, put your clothes on the rock. See how quiet it gets.
That quiet is where I live now. It took me decades to find the door, mostly because I kept waiting around for permission instead of just opening it myself. Don't make my mistake. Nobody is coming to hand you the key. It was always yours.
xx, Asana
TL;DR
I spent thirty years carrying shame about my body like an umbrella I couldn't remember buying, mostly because I never stopped to ask who handed it to me. Then one day at a creek I caught myself running someone else's math about a body that was nobody's business but mine, put my clothes on the rock, and got in. The water didn't gasp. Nobody coming. Turns out freedom wasn't the nudity, that was just the door. The freedom was finally refusing to carry something I never agreed to pick up. Nobody's coming to hand you the key. It was always yours.
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