My time with the amazing Lindsay Abromatis-Smith has always left me somewhat altered. She is someone who exists primarily in the magical world. Just being around her, or in her home in the Bronx is a bit like falling down the rabbit hole. I walk into her home and things are … different. There is a a palpable shift of energy. I speak slower, I feel more. Puppets, sculptures of found objects and theatrical masks line the walls.  There is a coffee table made solely of toothpicks suspending from the ceiling.

My first meeting with Lindsay was when she came to sing for a candlelit naked yoga class I was teaching in 2008. Her presence was magnetic. She is someone eyes are naturally drawn towards who holds a certain element of other-worldly mystery and magic. Over the last few years, I have come to know Lindsay as one of the most in touch physical body artists I have ever witnessed. Her body and spirit are palpably plugged into other dimensions from which she sources and creates her art. In her presence, I come to know my own body and spirit more intimately.

This is the first in a series of interviews with individuals who have embraced the practice of naked yoga and have a transformative story to tell about their relationship to their body and conscious nudity. Thank you for taking the time to read them.

Celebrating Our Holy Bodies,

In Beauty,

Isis Phoenix

Name: Lindsay

Age: 32

Occupation: Puppeteer

When I’m naked, I don’t have anything holding me back from being in myself. I love the sensory organ of skin. I like my skin touching things.

I’m a puppeteer. One of the biggest loves of my life is puppetry.

I grew up in a physical theatre family.  The body was always seen as the vessel for story telling.  There’s a surrender that I have to undergo, in order to make the puppet be alive.  I have to step away from my ego and surrender to the will of the thing I am holding.  It can be a very spiritual experience witnessing my body and how it works this other body.

Right now my body temple is having some upheavals.  I was recently diagnosed with ALS – Lou Gehrig’s Disease. My head and my hips are not talking to each other.  My body’s impulse for movement is disappearing.  My wiring is all messed up.  Muscles seem to be totally disappearing in different places.

I’m learning how to slow down and refocus on my body.  I’m re-learning how to take care of her.  I don’t know if I’m redefining what I consider my body temple or going to a different level with it right now.

I no longer hold so true to the idea that the only way to tell a story is through movement.  I’m falling in love with words again and relying on my thoughts and my words to articulate stories so they’re equal with what my body can say.  Perhaps I was relaying to heavy on the physical body rather than the mental body. I’ve been doing a lot of work inside of myself and I’m coming to terms with physically manifesting in a different way.

On days when movement is available, I get down on the ground and roll and undulate and do movements in my spine and lots of spirals.  My body is drawn towards moving in spirals.  I try to put my head on the ground as much as possible, sometimes it feels like I have a magnet in my head, it wants to be near the Earth.  Sometimes I need to absorb the Earth energy into my skull and brain and that will help calm my nerves down.  My body sometimes forces me to be in the state of bowing down to a higher power.  I’m slowing down to my truer nature to hear what’s underneath stuff that I wasn’t able to hear before.  I walk with a cane my dad made me that has arrowheads and fairy hair in it.  I have a pink wheel chair now that I lovingly call ‘the pink stallion.’ It is my unicorn chariot, designed by two puppet maker friends so that I may sit inside of the unicorn in its heart center. It is a surrendering of self locomotion and a transition into articulating to someone else how I want to be moved through space. It also makes me feel like a magic fairy queen!

Even in this time of very powerful body transformation, I want to say to my body ‘Thank you.  I love you.  Let’s keep going.  Let’s keep going.’