Gymnasium schedule at Burning Man 2017

In a couple of weeks, our theme camp Gymnasium will come again to the much anticipated Burning Man festival. If you read this and plan to be there, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to visit our camp.  You can read about our theme camp idea on its page and check out our last year’s experience.

 

Below is the list of our events, but keep in mind that we plan to do even more than we have announced – so stop by our camp at 7:30 Plaza and you’ll find something fun to do and learn… all in the buff! For example, we got a gymnastics wheel last year, which turned to be a hugely popular toy, and this year we’ll add an aerial rig to our arsenal! And what is amazing is that even our busy schedule is just a tiny fraction of all the “craziness” that Burning Man is!

  • Butt-Cheeky Run Come get your burn started – with the sun’s soft caresses on your butt cheeks! The Ancient Greeks always trained and competed naked – in fact the ’gym’ comes from the word ‘gymnos’, meaning ‘naked’ in Greek. Come experience the freedom of running together in the altogether! Or at least come and see what a great spectator sport it is:) We’ll do a warm-up at the camp and then run wild in the ‘hood and all the way to the Man!
    • Monday, 28 August, 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
  • Naked Oil Wrestling Wrestling is one of the most fun sports you can ever try. It’s also one of humanity’s oldest and was among the major events of the original Olympics. Long before we were kicking balls around we were rolling around in the dirt, putting each other in headlocks! It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete novice who’s never tried it in your life or an experienced fighter, come along and experience this amazing bonding experience in Gymnasium, Black Rock City’s Ancient Greek wrestling school!
    • Tuesday, 29 August, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
    • Thursday, 31 August, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
    • Saturday, 2 September, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
  • Discus-ish Throw in the dark… and in the buff Discus (well, LED-lit frisbee) throw competition followed by ultimate frisbee game (or regular frisbee, depending on the mood). Bare your body, but wear lights! The Ancient Greeks always trained and competed naked – in fact the ’gym’ comes from the word ‘gymnos’, meaning ‘naked’ in Greek. Come experience the amazing freedom of running and jumping and exercising free of clothing! Or at least come and see what a great spectator sport it is:) This is our only night event, but don’t worry about cold – movement will keep you warm!
    • Wednesday, 30 August, 8 p.m. – 9 p.m.
    • Friday, 1 September, 8 p.m. – 9 p.m. (rain date)
  • Naked Piggy-Back and Wheelbarrow Run Race are with us for this fun athletic event! Bring your friends, but choose wisely, as you’ll have to bear them on your back, bareback… or vice versa. Great bonding experience guaranteed! The Ancient Greeks always trained and competed naked – in fact the ’gym’ comes from the word ‘gymnos’, meaning ‘naked’ in Greek. Come experience the amazing freedom of running and jumping and exercising free of clothing! Or at least come and see what a great spectator sport it is:) PS In ancient Olympics this would have been an equestrian event, but BMORG wouldn’t let us bring horses…
    • Friday, 1 September,  4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
  • Nude Yoga + Wine Nude yoga and acro-yoga – for a better flow and connection 🙂 We’ll end the session with drinking wine in your favorite poses, as Ancient Greeks sometimes drank wine in acrobatic poses at their symposiums. Then you could stay for our philosophical discussions sessions. Free your body, free your mind!
    • Monday, 28 August, 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
    • Wednesday, 30 August, 4:45 p.m. – 6 p.m.
  • Naked Philosophy Nudity has the power to surprise and shock, yet why, on reflection, can something as mundane as the naked body inspire simultaneously so much passion and revulsion? To be naked in 21st century western society demands intense self-examination, the questioning and reappraisal of conventional conventions and morality. In this sense, naturism, as the cultural and political movement of nudism is often known, is an inherently philosophical practice. And what better way to do philosophy than naked? We’re sure your college seminars would have been much more fun nude. Come and join us for lively discussions, debates and story-telling. We’ll be discussing naturism, body image, sharing experiences, debating body modification, if and how laws should be changed – really everything related to the human body.
    • Monday, 28 August, 6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
    • Wednesday, 30 August, 6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
    • Friday, 1 September, 6 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
  • Kerameikos (Ancient Greek pottery) Ever wondered how those ancient vases were produced and decorated? Find out at our pottery school at Gymnasium, and you’ll be able to make some ceramics (kerameikos) of your own! It’s a three step process: first, we’ll make the vases of different shapes using coil building techniques; then, we will let the clay dry to apply the slip and carve designs. (You can use the break for lunch or try some of our big toys, such as aerial rig or gymnastics wheel). At the last stage, the pots have to be fired after Burning Man, but we could ship your masterpiece to you, if you’d like! Otherwise, we’ll use it to decorate our camp and use the most appealing ones to award the winners of our athletic events next year.

 

Hope to see many of you there!

Olympics at Sandy Hook beach near NYC on the 20th of August

I thought that this month it’d be very appropriate to organize a sports competition, mini-Olympics of a kind – in the nude, of course – to remind about the origins of the Olympic games in Ancient Greece,

and very much in spirit of Active Naturists and our Gymnasium project.

 

We’ll  have a few events throughout the day on Saturday, 20 Aug (raincheck Sunday) at my favorite Gunnison beach on Sandy Hook peninsula (just across the bay from New York City) :

  • long jump around noon;
  • wrestling around 2pm
  • running and swimming races during low tide time – to run on wet sand/swim in shallower water – between 3pm and 5pm; 100m and 500m;
  • discus throw (frisbee) at 6pm;
  • + there are always volleyball games going on at Sandy Hook;
  • and maybe we can even have some gymnastics and capoeira!

Look out for our Gymnasium banner on the right hand side of the beach (looking at the ocean). See you!

naturist gymnasium 0005 Burning Man 2015, Black Rock City, Nevada, USA

Gymnasium schedule at Burning Man 2016 + 2 tickets available for new campmates

In less than a month, our theme camp Gymnasium will come again to the much anticipated Burning Man festival. If you read this and plan to be there, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to visit our camp. And if you wanted to go but couldn’t get tickets, we have good news for you – two tickets and a vehicle pass are available through our camp, please e-mail us or leave a comment here! New members are very welcome!

You can read about our theme camp idea on its page, and check out our last year’s experience, including the famous naked oil wrestling:

This year we shall enjoy our new big fun toy – gymnastics wheel (aka German wheel), which should be a lot of fun to roll on the playa. And given this year’s theme for Burning Man – ‘Da Vinci’s Workshop’, we can use it as a photo booth to take photographs a la Vitruvian Man.

Screen Shot 2016-08-04 at 23.45.55

Below is the schedule of our events, but keep in mind that we plan to do even more than we have announced – so stop by our camp at 8:15 & Donatello and you’ll find something fun to do and learn… all in the buff!  And what is mind-boggling is that it’s all just a tiny fraction of all the “craziness” that Burning Man is!

  • Butt-Cheeky Run Come get your burn started – with the sun’s soft caresses on your butt cheeks! The Ancient Greeks always trained and competed naked – in fact the ’gym’ comes from the word ‘gymnos’, meaning ‘naked’ in Greek. Come experience the amazing freedom of running and jumping and exercising free of clothing! Or at least come and see what a great spectator sport it is:) We’ll do a warm-up at the camp and then run wild in the ‘hood and all the way to the Man!
    • Monday, 29 Aug, 3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
  • Naked Oil Wrestling Wrestling is one of the most fun sports you can ever try. It’s also one of humanity’s oldest and was among the major events of the original Olympics. Long before we were kicking balls around we were rolling around in the dirt, putting each other in headlocks! It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete novice who’s never tried it in your life or an experienced fighter, come along and experience this amazing bonding experience in Gymnasium, Black Rock City’s Ancient Greek wrestling school!
    • Tuesday, 30 Aug, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
    • Thursday, 1 Sep, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
    • Friday, 2 Sep, 1 p.m – additional match at another camp at 2:15 & G
    • Saturday, 3 Sep, 3 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
  • Discus-ish Throw in the dark… and in the buff Discus (well, LED-lit frisbee) throw competition followed by ultimate frisbee game (or regular frisbee, depending on the mood). Bare your body, but wear lights! The Ancient Greeks always trained and competed naked – in fact the ’gym’ comes from the word ‘gymnos’, meaning ‘naked’ in Greek. Come experience the amazing freedom of running and jumping and exercising free of clothing! Or at least come and see what a great spectator sport it is:) This is our only night event, but don’t worry about cold – movement will keep you warm!
    • Wednesday, 31 Aug, 8 p.m. – 9 p.m.
    • Friday, 2 Sep, 8 p.m. – 9 p.m.
  • Naked Piggy-Back and Wheelbarrow Run Race Bare with us for this fun athletic event! Bring your friends, but choose wisely, as you’ll have to bear them on your back, bareback… or vice versa. Great bonding experience guaranteed! The Ancient Greeks always trained and competed naked – in fact the ’gym’ comes from the word ‘gymnos’, meaning ‘naked’ in Greek. Come experience the amazing freedom of running and jumping and exercising free of clothing! Or at least come and see what a great spectator sport it is:) PS In ancient Olympics this would have been an equestrian event, but BMORG wouldn’t let us bring horses…
    • Friday, 2 Sep, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
  • Greek Dance workshop Let’s dance like it’s… Bacchanalia! Well, not only, but you’ll have fun learning ancient and modern folk dances from Greece. You’ll learn the distinction between the calm and lyrical Apollonian dance and the passionate, “orgasmic” Dionysian dance.
    • Saturday, 3 Sep, 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.
  • Nude Yoga + Wine Nude yoga and acro-yoga – for a better flow and connection 🙂 We’ll end the session with drinking wine in your favorite poses, as Ancient Greeks sometimes drank wine in acrobatic poses at their symposiums. Then you could stay for our philosophical discussions sessions. Free your body, free your mind!
    • Monday, 29 Aug, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
    • Thursday, 1 Sep, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
    • Sunday, 4 Sep, 4 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
  • Naked Philosophy Nudity has the power to surprise and shock, yet why, on reflection, can something as mundane as the naked body inspire simultaneously so much passion and revulsion? To be naked in 21st century western society demands intense self-examination, the questioning and reappraisal of conventional conventions and morality. In this sense, naturism, as the cultural and political movement of nudism is often known, is an inherently philosophical practice. And what better way to do philosophy than naked? We’re sure your college seminars would have been much more fun nude. Come and join us for lively discussions, debates and story-telling. We’ll be discussing naturism, body image, sharing experiences, debating body modification, if and how laws should be changed – really everything related to the human body.
    • Monday, 29 Aug, 5:30 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
    • Thursday, 1 Sep, 5:30 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.
    • Sunday, 4 Sep, 5:30 p.m. – 7:15 p.m.

 

Hope to see many of you there!

Active Naturists are going to Burning Man again with the theme camp Gymnasium

Many of you have been asking whether we are going back to Burning Man with our Gymnasium project, and the answer is definite YES! Thanks to our successful participation last year, we could secure tickets for the core members via Directed Group Sale, but you can still get yours through the main sale – and join our camp too? If you’d like to, please e-mail or leave a comment here!

You only have time until THIS Friday 12:00 (noon) PDT to create a Burner Profile AND register for ticket sale.

Read our blogposts about how this project came about:

– first experience at Burning Man in 2012

– freedom and creativity, just at a smaller scale at Free Form Festival 2014

– FreeForm Festival 2015: camp application approved!

– first experience as a theme camp at FreeForm Festival 2015

– Gymnasium theme camp will be at a prime location at Burning Man!

– Gymnasium schedule at Burning Man 2015

– camp Gymnasium at Burning Man 2015

Our camp’s theme is Gymnasium in its original Ancient Greek meaning, so you can go through ‘How it used to be’ sections of this website to get some inspiration for our camp, be it athletic activities 

or simply fun!

And let’s just reiterate this quote from Wikipedia:

“The gymnasium in ancient Greece functioned as a training facility for competitors in public games. It was also a place for socializing and engaging in intellectual pursuits. The name comes from the Ancient Greek term γυμνός [gymnós] meaning “naked”.

The word gymnasium is the latinisation of the Greek noun γυμνάσιον (gymnasion), “gymnastic school”, in pl. “bodily exercises” and generally “school” which in turn is derived from the common Greek adjective γυμνός (gymnos) meaning “naked”, by way of the related verb γυμνάζω (gymnazo), whose meaning is “to train naked”, “train in gymnastic exercise”, generally “to train, to exercise”. The verb had this meaning because one undressed for exercise. Historically, the gymnasium was used for exercise, communal bathing, and scholarly and philosophical pursuits. The English noun gymnast, first recorded in 1594, is formed from the Greek γυμναστής (gymnastēs), but in Greek this word means “trainer” not “gymnast”. The palaistra was the part of the gymnasium devoted to wrestling, boxing and ball games.”

fun naturist events this spring in the USA

Sorry for having been quiet the entire month of March, but I was busy getting new material in Florida 🙂 While it’s not ready to be published yet, I’d like to announce a few events that sound like fun and well in the spirit of αctive naturists.

In a little more than a week, from 9-12 AprilFlorida Young Naturists will hold their 7th Naked Spring Bash. Joe and I visited their event in 2011 and had great time! And I must say, this year’s schedule looks even better, so it’s a shame I can’t return to the Sunshine State soon again. I like their emphasis on dance workshops this time.

On the 18th of April, Travasuns will have their monthly Indoor Pool Party in Long Island, NY, which will be my last, and unfortunately only second, this season. I usually go to their events throughout winter, but this yeah I’ve had schedule conflicts. It’s a low-key event at a rented gym with saunas, hang-out pool, pizza and wallyball.

Austin Naked Yoga will host Naked Yoga Camp for men on 7-10 May at Lotus Ranch in Wimberley, Texas. My friend Eddy will teach a movement workshop there, say hi if you attend it!

YNOTU (Young Nudists of Texas United) will host their second Nude Games on Memorial Weekend,  22-25 May, at a campground near Dallas. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend again, but the program looks like fun: flag football, tug of war, a few varieties of volleyball among other things. However, it seems to me, they downplayed the athletic component this year. If any of you go there, I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts!

enjoy the spring: naked sport events and a show (NY, Berlin, Texas)

This time, I’m not kidding about naked sport events. I was shocked (in a good way) how many people took my April Fools joke for real – I got quite a few emails requesting the details! Well guys, if you’re ready for mud wrestling with freshly squeezed garlic in the morning at a venue without showers, I know I can rely on you! 😀 Well, we do plan to organize naked sport events and classes, and clearly there’s a demand for that!

Tomorrow is going to be my last Winter Indoor Pool Party party this season (organized by Travasuns in Long Island, NY). Well, I guess we can clearly say the spring has arrived to New York, but it’s still a bit too chilly to enjoy nakedness outdoors. We’ve been to a few of Travasuns’ winter pool events, and it was always fun. It’s a low-key event at a rented gym. They offer saunas, hang-out pool, pizza and even volleyball, which is often unofficially dubbed as naturists’ favorite sport. Given that volleyball is indoors too and surrounded by walls, we rather play it as wallyball

naked wrestling 0001 Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

On the weekend of 10-11 May in Berlin, Tam and I plan to have naked acro-yoga and wrestling jam sessions. Please contact us by e-mail or comment here, if you are interested in joining, and we’ll send you details re timing and exact location. This is also pending on the weather. We haven’t decided as to how many sessions we’ll have, but our approach is the more the merrier. We’ll take advantage of Berlin’s healthy attitude towards nudity and do at least one session in its central park – Tiergarten – don’t worry, we won’t be arrested for doing acro-yoga naked there like in San Francisco. Wrestling might work better by one of numerous lakes in Berlin, as we’re likely to get sweaty. Here is a sneak preview from our naked oil wrestling match a couple of years ago (photos courtesy of Joe). Come and join us!

naked wrestling 0000 Tiergarten, Berlin, Germany

YNOTU (Young Nudists of Texas United) will host Nude Games on Memorial Weekend, May 24-26, at a campground near Dallas. Unfortunately, none of the people form our group will be able to attend, but it seems like fun. In the program: flag football, tug of war, water and sand volleyball, beer mile, 3-legged races, potato sack races, bean bag throw, Frisbee toss and egg toss, yoga, Latin dance class. Highly recommended!

And we’ll have our round-up end back in New York. My friend Alexander Kargaltsev, who I’ve already introduced here because oh his variously themed photo works that often involve nudity, is now developing a play, Crematorium, that sounds shocking and looks beautiful, and it will have plenty of nudity too.

 Former Ukraine. In the south of Putin’s Crimea, a giant factory with chimneys is built: a Crematorium for gays. Four couples are picked to test a new machine to turn them straight. Torture, interrogation, death and cleansing in the fiery furnace await them.

Here is the preview video.

https://vimeo.com/92654893

The shows are set for 29 May – 1 June at Shetler Studios & Theatres, New York. You can buy tickets online.

Hope to see you at these events in New York and Berlin!

running nude: the most human form of exercise

I have written many times that I like running naked, but after I came in third in my first ever naked race, it is a good time to tell why I think running naked is not only fun, but actually is the most natural activity for a human being. We just need to let the International Olympic Committee know. Actually, the Ancient Olympic committee must have known it.

Current evidence suggests that long-distance running was crucial in human evolution. Did you know that humans are the best long-distance runners among all animals? We can outrun even a horse! And one of the keys in our success as long distance runners has been our nakedness. Here are the links to a scientific peer-reviewed article on endurance running and the evolution of Homo [a genus to which our species, Homo sapiens, as well our ancestor and cousin species belong], as well as a short summary in the same journal, Nature, and another one from BBC.

Selection towards endurance running apparently shaped our body from bones to skin. It made us essentially two-legged and our legs longer than in any other ape. Not only skeleton changed, so did musculature, thanks to which we have prominent buttocks: we barely use gluteus maximus muscle for walking, but it is very active during running. Finally, our bare skin, as opposed to fur or feathers in other famous runners among animals, such as cheetahs, horses or ostriches, is an adaptation to prevent our body from overheating during running, as it allows us to sweat effectively with the whole surface of our body. So even though we are poor sprinters compared to many other animals, in the long run – quite literally – we could beat any of them! This ability was and still is used for hunting animals by exhausting them, the so-called persistence hunting.

Thus, people running in clothes, even light ‘professional running’ clothes, is evolutionary nonsense, a totally backward idea so to say. Sometimes you get questions how it feels with ‘things’ swaying and flopping. I’ve never had any issues or discomfort with that, and, at least from a male perspective when you think of it seriously, it’s difficult to see it as a real problem (you may get some insight on this issue from a female prospective from a blogpost on Young Naturists America). In the Bouncing Buns race almost all men ran totally bare, and most women without bras, so I assume most of the participants felt fine running naked. I could imagine it might be an issue for men who always wear tight underwear and for women always wearing bras, if their scrotum and breast are not used to supporting themselves, but that actually doesn’t sound healthy. On the other hand, when I told a friend about me participating in the naked race, he suggested that additional “pendulum” might be actually advantageous if you synchronise the swing with the forward move 😀

I suggest you to test this hypothesis on your own. Go for a good long run, naked run, like a real human 😉