Get Naked: It’s Good for Your Brain

by Hank Hyena

Okay, buck naked? I am. Fun. Toes wiggle in the shag carpet. Butt cheeks stick to the chair. Nipples goose-bump. We’re natural… nudists! Our huge organs (skin) tingle with sensual data that’s zipped to our thrilled brains. We feel… wild, healthy, alert, spunky. Alive.

Clothing is crushing us! Trapped in tomb-like textiles, we exile our flesh from experiencing the environment. We atrophy the majority of our epidermis. If you put a plaster cast on a broken arm, the skin starves for Vitamin D; muscles weaken due to strangled range of motion; nerve synapses depress to a whimper of their former joy. Twenty-first century hominids shroud the entire skin palette, obliterating symbiosis with the planet except via face, neck and hands. (Burqa-clad Muslim women lose nearly 100%.) We hide in cocoons, when we could be free as butterflies.

History reveals many cultures that were not clothes-minded. Spartans were basically bare and their victories in pan-Hellenic sports competitions enticed all neighboring Greeks to exercise nude, creating the word “gymnasium” (Greek gymnos = naked). Romans mingled in magnificent bathhouses, enjoying dense communal nudity as they drank, dined, defecated, bathed, read books, argued politics, and watched theater. Adamists — naked heretics — performed stripped-down church services in North Africa, Bohemia, the Netherlands, and England. Pre-Hitler Germans were avid adherents of Freikorperkultur (“Free Body Culture”) with 70,000 attending co-ed Nacktkultur schools. There’s naked Japanese in hot springs, naked Finns in saunas, “sky-clad” Jain monks in India, plus millions of nudists worldwide going to “Nakation” camps, beaches, and resorts, still sporty as Spartans. They hike naked (“free bush rambling”), canoe naked (“canuding”), bicycle naked, ride horses naked, run naked, play volleyball, badminton, ping-pong and chess naked, swim naked, dance naked, do Naked Yoga, Naked Tai Chi, Naked Gardening, Naked Bowling, and you and I, dear reader, we’re both NIFOC — Naked In Front of Computers.

Many famous figures are bare-all aficionados; too many politicians to name, so I’ll just list sci-fi and scientists: Leonard Nimoy, Alexander Graham Bell, Robert Heinlein, and seismologist Charles Richter. Of course, most movie stars skinny-dip at the French Riviera, trying to elude paparazzi seeking pix of Bruce Willis’ willy or Natalie Portman’s port side.

…click through for some benefits to going bare