The Tree That Fell for Me. Creating Nude Art With Nature.

Asana‍ ‍360 is a playful practice.

 By Asana

There was a crash outside like the sky dropping a piece of furniture. I looked out the window, and there they were, two enormous sycamore limbs laid out across the street, pale and peeling, right where the cars sat. Not a bumper under them. The tree missed everything it could have ruined and left me these instead.

Most people call the city. I stood looking out the window already in love, and relieved no one was injured.

They were thirteen feet of bending, stubborn wood, alot heavier than they looked, close to a hundred pounds, and we carried them up three flights anyway. You cannot muscle something that long. You have to listen to where it wants to bend and go with it, steer it around each landing like you are dancing with a partner who does not speak. By the second flight I was sweating and laughing. This is a thing I know about myself. Once I decide something is mine, the stairs are just a detail.

Then I took my clothes off and climbed on.

Then the real creativity started, which was building the forms. Twining my body through the limbs, finding the shapes where wood and skin become one line, holding still long enough for Keaton to catch it. And here is the part people miss when they see the finished images. I could not make a single one of those shapes without the years of nude practice underneath them.

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When you train with nothing on, you start shaping your practice. No fabric editing the honest line of your shape. You learn where your real balance point is instead of the pretty one. You learn to distribute your weight without lying to yourself about it. That is what lets me fold into a hundred pounds of irregular branch and make it look like the two of us grew that way. The practice is private in your home. The art is what falls out of it.

The tree spent decades reaching. Then it let go all at once and fell, and I hauled the reaching part up three flights and made new shapes out of it with a body I built specifically for this.

If a hundred pounds of dead tree fell in front of your house, would you drag it upstairs, or would you call someone to come take it away?

liek I said. Once it's mine, the stairs are just a details.

XO Asana

Want more fun in your practice check out Asana in Turn On Core, Legs & Arms

TL;DR

A sycamore branch fell in the street, nearly hit the cars, and instead of calling the city I made Keaton help me haul a hundred pounds of it up three flights to build nude art forms with it. The forms only work because of years of nude practice underneath them. Once something's mine, the stairs are just a detail.

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