On Naturism as Humanization

I work for a UN peacekeeping mission and recently transferred to a base in a locality that is now referred to as “the epicenter of terrorism in the world.” Most of the area is controlled by extremist groups and most of my days are spent struggling with the inhumanity we perpetrate on each other. Amidst all of this, I have started a daily routine of an hour of naked yoga.

This is a person space for me to connect with my humanity through my body’s movement and sensations. While it is an internal practice of connecting with the self, it is also a reminder to me of the importance of humanization in a space characerized by forces of dehumanization. In a study of what facilitates the ability to kill someone in combat, it was found that the more layers of material between one person and the other (i.e. clothes, masks, windows, the scope of a rifle), the easier it was to dehumanize that person. This is one reason why the study found that snipers did not have the same kinds of reservations to pulling the trigger as those fighting in close combat, even though the latter faced more personal danger if they didn’t pull the trigger.

Taking this logic in reverse, the more layers we peel off, the more we see each other as humans just as fragile and tender as ourselves.  I think this is one of the biggest draws for me to naturism: the ability to literally and figuratively “strip away” that which facilitates our prejudice and dehumanizing tendencies in order to see each other “as we are.”