I found this gem of an article stored in the card board boxes under the stairs in my home in Seattle. It was written by Abigail Ekue who attended one of my first naked yoga classes in New York City.
#NormalizeErections #NothingToWorryAboutAfterTenSunSalutes #AbigailEkue #GoddessInEveryWoman #CityScoops #NakedYoga
Raed the full story HERE
http://abigailekuewrites.blogspot.com/2013/12/what-naked-yoga-did-for-me.html
Writer. Photographer. Provocateur.
Yesterday, I received an email from Abigail Ekue who’s been interviewed on this blog and also a huge advocate and supporter of naked yoga. She mentioned to me in an email that her recent photography exhibit got pulled from an art show for show-casing a series photographs of nude men, part of her “Bare Men” series. When I went to view her series online CLICK HERE, I saw only beautiful artistic nude photographs, tasteful and discerning. I read below the reason for them choosing to pull the her work from the show which reminds me still how very far we have come and still have to go in releasing shame and transmuting fear around the human body.
…we must pull your work from the exhibition… We usually have a good mixture of genres of photography in the past, including nudes, but this exhibition has seemed to draw out more simpler and softer genres, and your images will not fit into this particular show.”
Bare Men will be an objet d’art. I continue work on my original plan for this project — a solo print exhibit and a photography book. I will update my website and Tumblr occasionally. http://www.abigailekue.com/Nudes.html
Please feel free to give Abigail a shout out for her beautiful work and also re-post to support naturism and nude art.
Nude Blessings,
Isis Phoenix
Great essay on the transformative practices of naked yoga by Mukunda – courtesy of Abigail Ekue’s Blog Random Musings.
Abigail Ekue came to one of the very first naked yoga classes I taught in 2007 and actually ended up writing and publishing an article about her experience. She is a powerhouse of a woman and someone who I consistently learn from. I asked her to tell me about her relationship to her body and if and when she had ever experienced shame.
Abigail Ekue Interview by Isis Phoenix
I’ve always been athletic. When I was young, I loved the swings, jungle gyms, hanging upside down. I had an adventurous spirit. I grew up in New York City – the urban jungle. In our apartment building, I would jump up and down full flights of stairs. Water fights by the hydrants in the summer, snowball fights in the winter. I ran with the boys. When puberty hit boys began to notice me in a different way. And I was noticing them. Puberty was an awakening. My breasts began to grow. My body was changing. My left breast grew faster than the right – ‘Hefty Lefty,’ is what I call her. It was the last time I can remember experiencing being uncomfortable in my body. I was eleven years old.
I’m a weight lifter and kick-boxer. I do yoga, plyometrics, jumping, bounding, power work – box jumps, squat jumps, combo moves, mountain climbing moves – anything that makes me feel powerful. Love the way the body looks and feels when I lift – the quiver, the burn. I never starved myself. I never went on any crash diets. My mom is Jamaican and my father is from Nigeria. Our bodies are round and strong, our butts are high. Black women would warn me to be careful of losing too much weight with all the working out I was doing. Black women are “supposed” to have big butts. I liked being tight and toned. I loved the feeling of being strong. My butt isn’t going anywhere.
I was a personal trainer and a certified Athletic Trainer. I enjoyed teaching people how to take care of their bodies and how to accept them. Now I do that through my art. I’m a writer, photographer, model, provocateur. My work celebrates beauty and darkness. Mainstream would have you believe there isn’t beauty in us all. It’s time to change the mainstream.
Naked Yoga Alliance 