Bare Necessities: Field Notes From a Naked Yoga Class

Stephan Hengst is standing at the reception as I arrive at the Yoga House, a yoga studio just south of Poughkeepsie. It’s a Sunday afternoon in mid-March, and the long, cold winter we have been enduring here in the Hudson Valley seems to be nearing its end.

Stephan and I have spoken once before on the phone, and I immediately recognize his familiar baritone as he greets me at the entrance. “How nice you could make it!” he says warmly. We share a brief exchange before Stephan points me to the changing rooms.

“You can leave your things in there or take them with you into class,” he says. I step into the changing rooms and carefully take off my clothes. I’ve been attending yoga classes for 15 years, so I’m used to the ritual of disrobing. Every other time before today, I stopped once I reached my underwear. Today, however, the underwear comes off too.

I gather all my clothes into my backpack and head into class, trying not to think too much about the fact that I’m completely naked. The studio is suffused with soft, warm light, and most of the other attendees are already there, some sitting up chatting, others lying prostrate.

I head toward a vacant spot at the back of the room and drape my towel over the mat. From a journalistic perspective, I tell myself this is the best vantage point to experience the class. As I settle in, I realize it’s also the least exposed area, …suggesting I may have subconsciously sought it out as a place to hide—though ‘hide’ is, of course, a relative concept in this setting.

I sit on my mat and wait for the class to begin. I glance around the room discreetly. There are a dozen or more men in the room, ranging in ages and body types. Unlike me, most seem at ease with their nudity.

The class begins, and a gently spoken instructor named Tony puts us through our paces. I am aware of how embarrassed I am by my nakedness and that of the men around me. We’re instructed to hang forward, then move through a vinyasa flow ending in a position called ‘down dog.’ For anyone unfamiliar with yoga, down dog requires placing your hands and feet on the mat while pivoting at the hips. It’s quite a revealing position. When a man executes the pose naked a few feet from your face, little is left to the imagination.

“It’s quite a revealing position. When a man executes the pose naked a few feet from your face, little is left to the imagination.”

I try to focus on my practice, but I find it hard to get past the nudity. Surprised by how much it bothers me, I reflect that I shouldn’t be too shocked; after all, nakedness is still relatively taboo in the culture. New York state’s laws against public nudity include fines and up to three months’ jail time. This legal context shapes public perceptions—even as recently as the 1990s, breastfeeding in public was an arrestable offense. While I’ve always considered myself fairly open-minded, the class forces me to confront how much this prohibition on nakedness has seeped into my unconscious.

I’m reminded of the poem “Snake” by D.H. Lawrence in which he describes confronting a snake on a Sicilian veranda. In the poem, Lawrence wrestles with, on the one hand, the awe he feels at the presence of the beautiful animal and, on the other, the voices of his “accursed human education,” which are telling him to kill the snake because it is venomous. The struggle that Lawrence dramatizes in the poem between our natural instincts and the rules imposed on us by so-called civilization is the same one playing out for me at the Yoga House—albeit with less poetry and significantly more eye contact.

Why can’t I enjoy the simple beauty of the human bodies on display here, not least my own? Why do I live in a culture that makes it so hard for me to celebrate my humanity in this way?

Hengst was asking himself similar questions when he came up with the idea of launching nude yoga sessions in the Hudson Valley.
“Nude yoga is something that has existed in many metropolitan areas for a long time, and, living in the Hudson Valley, it’s something that I always sought out and wanted to participate in,” says Hengst, who offers the yoga sessions through his events organization, Pink Stallion.

“Nude yoga is something that has existed in many metropolitan areas for a long time, and, living in the Hudson Valley, it’s something that I always sought out and wanted to participate in.” Stephan Hengst

Getting the class off the ground required a kind of persistence that had nothing to do with flexibility.
“So I started cold-calling yoga studios to see if they were open to discussing hosting it. Honestly, time after time, I just got, ‘No, it’s not something we’re interested in.’”
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
“It surprised me that in the world of yoga, with its focus on mindfulness, people literally did not want to talk about it.”

Then, about two years ago, Hengst’s persistence paid off when he met Amy Reed and Joyce San Pedro, the owners of the Yoga House. Unlike the others, they were much more receptive to the idea. “They were interested in talking, and we made it happen very quickly,” says Hengst.

In addition to its Poughkeepsie location, the Yoga House offers naked yoga at its other two venues in Kingston and Highlands. Hengst has been producing events aimed at the Hudson Valley’s LGBTQ+ community since 2008 through Big Gay Hudson Valley, an organization he co-founded with his husband, Patrick Decker.

The couple also co-founded Pink Stallion, and while they have spent many years creating community spaces for the region’s queer community, Hengst is quick to stress that the naked yoga events are open to anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation.

“In the last couple of years, we’ve had more than 200 men participate in these classes, representing the full spectrum of sexualities and body types. I’ve had many people tell me, ‘I’m not fit enough,’ or ‘I’m too heavy—or too skinny. No one wants to see me naked.’ But in reality, you’re not there to look at other people. You’re there to practice yoga without the encumbrance of clothing—and if you are staring, you’re not doing yoga correctly.”

“You’re there to practice yoga without the encumbrance of clothing—and if you are staring, you’re not doing yoga correctly.”  Stephan Hengst

I heed Hengst’s advice and, eventually, begin to focus inward—helped in no small part by the realization that everyone else is far too busy with their own bodies to be concerned with mine. We move through several vinyasa flows and balancing postures and end, as most yoga classes do, lying on our backs with our arms at our sides in a pose known as shavasana, or corpse pose.

By now, the mental energy has subsided, and my muscles feel supple and warm. Pro forma, we end class with the Sanskrit greeting namaste, which literally means ‘I bow to you’ and is meant as a shared recognition of the divinity within all beings.

In his poem, Lawrence is fully aware of the majesty of the creature that disturbs his efforts to collect water in the summer heat. He describes the animal as a “king in exile” and feels honored to have encountered it. Yet, in the end, it is the voices of his human education that win out, and he finds himself throwing a log at the snake. He immediately regrets his vulgar act, excoriating himself for having “missed my chance with one of the lords of life.”

There is a lot of garbage we carry around in our heads that stops us from fully embracing life, and while naked yoga might not be your thing, it’s worth sometimes challenging yourself about the unconscious assumptions that might be inhibiting you from living your fullest life. Are they real, or are they just something someone told you to think?

As RuPaul is fond of saying: “It’s important to remember that you’re born naked, and the rest is drag.”

“It’s important to remember that you’re born naked, and the rest is drag.” RuPaul

Pink Stallion offers naked yoga classes year-round at the Yoga House venues in Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and Highland. Find out more at their WEBSITE.