nakedness and nudity

i see these two as being quite different.

nakedness for me applies more to our love partner and the family whereas nudity i see as being in a public space without clothes.

nakedness is shedding clothes and looking at yourself with a certain sense of acceptance. i will not go so far as to say with total acceptance, because that is pretty tough i think, well it's certainly tough for me. maybe for you it's easy. but even a strong sense of acceptance is healthy enough. i think we need to have a love for our bodies to be able to roll around on the bed with someone and feel comfortable in our skin. to look, to touch and feel good about the other looking and touching. nakedness to me is feeling free and unashamed to look at each other within the family - accepting a healthy dollop of reservations here for exceptions or certain age-groups.

working towards accepting our bodies 'as is' i think is crucial. and if for some reason we're not happy with being this way, we don't like what we see in the mirror then perhaps embracing and not denying or rejecting, the impetus that this unhappiness may bring to help us set out on the road of healthy changes.

as for nudity ... i believe certain changes, certain growth can only take place once we shed the armour of clothing. to me this is huge. clothing is something to hide behind, something to give us 'a look', the look that we might have cultivated for years. it keeps people out and keeps us from feeling as vulnerable as we ought to feel in order to make profound changes to our thinking. once the initial embarrassment is over i sense a deeper connection with those around me. shed the clothing and walk out with other people who are not clothed and there is nowhere to hide.

i've experienced such stupendous revelations when interacting with others in this way. to witness the rainbow of gender expression that is to be human (real life it is not as most forms would lead us to believe ... tick one or the other box :-); to see the human form 'warts and all' and to see power and beauty reflect in the faces of people who have survived cancer operations led me to look deeply within myself and understand some of my own weaknesses and negative preconceptions.

i've been humbled by the strength people have shown in their nudity.
reducing the anxiety to be seen without clothing also reduces tensions in ourselves that can manifest in different ways. of course we may not all have the opportunity to be nude in public, we can't take our clothes off and kinda walk out into the neighbourhood park, can we? but perhaps by looking around you might find a place, or group where this is possible. if a chance occurs for this, then take it. you also might find such an experience positive.

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profound videos ...

Sometimes I come across something that really holds meaning for me.
These are amazingly powerful:


Why do people succeed? Is it because they're smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an un-missable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.
8 Secrets of success

What should we eat? A powerful example of what food can do for us.
Dr. Terry Wahls - Minding Your Mitochondria

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.
The paradox of choice

Gil Hedley: Fascia and stretching: The Fuzz Speech. Gil Hedley answers some questions on why we need to move, why we need to exercise and to be active. He shows us on a human cadaver, the physical changes that occur in the body, if we do not exercise.
Fuzz buildup in our bodies

Clogged arteries for Dummies is a video created by Dr Michael Clapper: He shows us exactly what arteriosclerosis looks like in the artery. He delivers a powerful demonstration of why we should eat the correct foods.
Clooged arteries for Dummies

At his Stanford University commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, urges us to pursue our dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks -- including death itself.
How to live before you die

TEDxHouston - Brené Brown, vulnerability, joy, creativity, belonging, love
Vulnerability, joy, creativity, belonging, love

Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.
Making the case for anti-obesity

William Li presents a new way to think about treating cancer and other diseases: anti-angiogenesis, preventing the growth of blood vessels that feed a tumor. The crucial first (and best) step: Eating cancer-fighting foods that cut off the supply lines and beat cancer at its own game.
Can we eat to starve cancer?

Louis Schwartzberg presents a project he is working on: Happines revealed from the point of view of a child and an old man.
Nature, beauty and gratitude

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life will be better ...

life will be better ...

this is one of those articles that arrived as an email attachment … you know the ones … the ones i usually delete :-) but this one lives to see another day. the author is unknown.

i’m adding a post-script … a very poignant, personal post-script that i hope will resonate for you and give what is written here a special significance.

We convince ourselves that life will be better once we are married, have a baby, then another. Then we get frustrated because our children are not old enough, and think that all will be well when they are older.
Then we are frustrated because they reach adolescence and we must deal with them. Surely we’ll be happier when they grow out of the teen years.
We tell ourselves our life will be better when our spouse gets his/her act together, when we have a nicer car, when we can take a vacation, when we finally retire.

The truth is that there is no better time to be happy than right now.
If not now, then when?
Your life will always be full of challenges. It is better to admit as much and to decide to be happy in spite of it all.
For the longest time, it seemed that life was about to start. Real life.
But there was always some obstacle along the way, an ordeal to get through, some work to be finished, some time to be given, a bill to be paid. Then life would start.
I finally came to understand that those obstacles were life.
That point of view helped me see that there isn’t any road to happiness.

Happiness IS the road.

So, enjoy every moment.
Stop waiting for school to end, for a return to school, to lose ten pounds, to gain ten pounds, for work to begin, to get married, for Friday evening, for Sunday morning, waiting for a new car, for your mortgage to be paid off, for spring, for summer, for fall, for winter, for the first or the fifteenth of the month, for your song to be played on the radio, to die, to be reborn… before deciding to be happy.

Happiness is a voyage, not a destination.

There is no better time to be happy than… NOW!

Live and enjoy the moment

my post-script:
when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, the doctor came out of the consulting room to give me the diagnoses. he asked whether i wish to break the bad news to her or whether i’d like him to do it. i chose the former, planning to gather the family together and so we could all offer mutual support.

she had worked hard all her life, scrimped and saved and went without, to the point that life became a journey of frugality and self-sacrifice. i can fully understand this, since she came from a poor family, had to gauge out a living and did have to make sacrifices. life was hard for her and she raised her children with determination and overcame the constant struggle to put food on the table.

at the time of the diagnoses, she was in a really nice seniors’ home and had put her name down for a particular apartment that overlooked the harbour. it had a panoramic view over the city and the prospect of living there pleased her so much. we had only just moved her in and it must have seemed to her that she had finally arrived at some glorious point in her life, when the family gathered to break the news of her liver cancer.

she took the news in her stride and asked “so how long have i got … two, three years?”.

“no, only three months” was the bad news we had to give her.

i remember the moment well … she looked away, almost absent-mindedly, paused a few seconds and said “and i was just about to start living”.

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any moment

i found this poem hidden in an amazing book that’s full of truths:
Thus it is by Martin Exeter Published by Foundation House Publication Inc.
ISBN 0 935427 23 6

for me, this poem seems to stab to the very core of meaning in our attitude

        Any moment of hating
                Any moment of lying
        Any moment of resentment
                Any moment of dying

        Any moment of loving
                Any moment of giving
        Any moment of thankfulness
                Any moment of living

        All our moments add together
                Like digits in a sum
        And the answer tells us plainly
                Whether life or death shall come

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