Psychology of the Body

Psychology of the body

Progressively, over the centuries, society has developed the use of clothing as a mask.

Clothing was originally used and designed to protect people from the elements of heat and cold, to stop themselves from getting burned or frozen. It was also used as a method of adornment to enhance attractiveness and for ritual and ceremonial reasons. In the latter centuries, people developed a cultural dependency on clothing.

Clothes became a mask and a prop for perceived personality and character deficiencies. We frequently see people who would not be seen "dead" without their clothing on.

Clothing is often used to portray an image that is different from the person's perceived inner deficiencies. It is a form of artificiality or masking that they outwardly project to cover up any personality or emotional defects they think they have. People tend to feel that by hiding behind clothing they can metaphorically cover themselves and deny others exposure to the inner-self they perceive to be crippled. The need to do this most commonly occurs in people with low self-esteem.

Fashion
This process is being encouraged by the cultural excesses of fashion magazines in an industry with a very strong monetary interest in the promotion of clothing. These special interest industries create the belief that clothing is an essential to life itself, rather than a practical and fun auxiliary. The tragedy is that many have blindly accepted this. The average person thinks of clothing as one of the necessities of life that transcends mere protection and expands into the realm of personality, character and self-worth.

Guilt
Concurrent with this trend is a parallel trend to automatically associate nudity to sexual activity. Many religions choose to perceive sexual activity as a sin, and by association, choose to see nudity as a sin also. Some religions use this argument as a way of manipulating people into feeling guilty about nudity. Guilty people then think they need the church to forgive them. Also, guilty people can be controlled easily by authorities of any description.

Vibrant, healthy, guilt free people of high self-esteem are traditionally very hard to `manage' or control for churches or governments. Through the combination of the above influences, many societies created laws to make it illegal to go as nature intended.

When is it wrong to be naked? A naked new born baby is not considered wrong or bad. At what age does this child become bad? Is it 18 months or when they are three? A naked two-year-old on the beach is generally considered normal and inoffensive. So, when is a child not a child? Is it four years old or is it ten years old?

People with issues around nudity will often say it is when they reach school age, and that would be five years old. That concept infers that when a naked child on the beach is 4 years 364 days 23 hours and 59 minutes old it is a healthy child with a good attitude to life. One minute later, when the child turns five it is suddenly a naughty, sinful child because he/she is still naked! That concept is obviously a
farce.

Self-esteem

The creation of this absurd attitude often emerges from low self-esteem issues developed at a very young age. Children are influenced by an environment producing many negative attitudes about themselves. They are told, or it is inferred by certain actions, that they are not perfect, not lovable, not good enough, naughty, etc. As adults, they feel a need to camouflage these perceived inadequacies in our personality and character. We often create a series of attitudes and belief systems to compensate for these inadequacies. They also develop a series of masks to `cover up' the weaknesses. For example, the person who feels weak deep down will often put on a 'tough' personality mask and adopt an aggressive posture.

Clothes are used continuously in this process; the weak person uses powerful or aggressive clothing. The 'naughty' person wears clothing designed to give them acceptance and make them appear 'good.' The unloved person tries to show he/she doesn't care wears rebellious and 'unacceptable' clothing. The 'guilty' person portrays themselves in pious and 'pure' attire with the 'holier than thou' attitude.

People who don't approve of themselves deep down also cover up by becoming judgmental of others. They feel that by pulling someone else down, they are bringing that individual down to their lower level. They ensure they always wear the 'right' clothing for each occasion so they won’t be judged badly. People who hate being judged are the very people who tend to be judgmental themselves.

This whole process is unfortunate because the inner low self-image people think they are hiding is not the true self. It is simply another mask at a deep level. The true self lies below that set of belief systems they are taught as a child. In situations where people are able to 'peel off' the outer masks and expose the true self, they always find someone they love and feel good about.

We are born pure, loving and innocent. The sooner we can get back in touch with that, the sooner we get in touch with experiencing the joy of life. The only reason we are not experiencing total abundance of joy, peace, love and financial security is because we are actively resisting those things which are our birth right. We resist them by creating the masks which act to separate us from our true inner selves and block us off from that abundance.

Shutting down
When people use clothing as a means of shutting out the world and covering up to stop the world from seeing their distorted inner self image, they create a tragedy of immense proportions. When hiding behind clothes, people are closing down their body energetically and psychologically. A healthy body has its energy, nervous system, and life forces flowing freely throughout it. When shut down psychologically and physically, the body energy shuts down, distorts and flows abnormally. This manifests major kinks in spiritual, emotional, mental and physical growth.

A suppressed energy system becomes inflexible and rigid. This is easily seen in the inflexible attitudes we encounter so often in our society, as well as the tendency for the human race to develop rigid, inflexible, arthritic bodies.

Interacting with life Closing down and isolating one's energy also has a dramatic affect on their ability to relate to other people and the world. There have been many books recently that demonstrate we are energy systems constantly interacting with all the energy systems in our environment. We draw energy from the world around us. Up to 40% of our oxygen intake is through our skins, (unless we stifle that through excess synthetic clothing and makeup!)

Healthy individuals draw a large percentage of their energy through their skin from the atmosphere, the trees, plants and all of nature. (Unhealthy, needy people will also draw energy from other human beings like parasites.) This also involves a healthy exchange of energy. We draw in and give out energy. Our ability to do this depends upon the openness and flexibility of our energy systems.

When people psychologically and physically shut down, especially through the metaphor of needing clothing to hide from the world, we are not just hiding from other people, they hide from the world. They block the exchange of energy and reduce the total vitality available to them. They also impair their ability to relate to, and interact with, the world. That interaction is an essential criterion for any healthy organism. All cells, animals, plants and humans survive according to their interrelationships with the world around them. Once people insulate themselves, they cripple their ability to grow and process the world as they should.

The need for clothing
There are many ways of insulating and shutting down the processing of life. One prominent method is to shut down through the need for clothing. It isn't the actual wearing of clothing that is the problem, it is the need for the clothing - when they cannot do without clothing because they need it as a mask.

People say, "it doesn't worry me if I have my clothes on or off." That is great if it is really true. How would you really feel going naked to work or naked in public? (Assuming that it was legal for you to do it.) What impact would that have on you? How worried would you be about the way people would judge you? We need to look very closely as to whether or not our clothing is a way of masking and emotionally protecting ourselves.

Disempowerment
This masking, this covering up, this utilizing clothing to shut us down, disempowers us.

Society is too full of disempowered people who hand over financial responsibility to accountants and bankers. They also hand over health responsibilities to doctors, emotional responsibilities to their spouses and are constantly disempowering themselves by giving away responsibility for many different aspects of their life. Even more serious is the way people shut down their own ability to interact in life, draw energy and vitality from their environment, and disempower themselves though their neediness for the masking aspect of clothing.

Mind and health
The mind is a very powerful influence on your health. It is generally accepted in psychology that many diseases are created through your mental attitudes towards your body and ourselves. Unfortunately, our society cultivates a negative attitude to the very bodies they are trying to maintain healthily. Many children are raised to believe their body is naughty and should be covered up - something to be ashamed of. This has a lasting impression on the inner self and the psychology of the persona.

Distorted thinking like this can stay with you to your grave unless you actively seek to correct it. In fact, it can put you in your grave much earlier!

Stress
The negative effect of being ashamed of our body will affect our image of self and be a constant source of stress. Negative body image can be considered a major cause of stress in our society. This will have a profound influence on the body's functioning and its ability to remain healthy and vital because high stress levels are a significant predisposing factor to disease. This can be seen particularly in children who are bought up with distorted body attitudes. Many young children are being prescribed tranquilizers these days.

Sensuality
Sensuality is the primary energic force that 'moves and shakes' the body. The chi (ki, prana) that people hear about in acupuncture and martial arts is simply another manifestation of sensuality. A healthy flow of sensuality determines the general health, vitality, sexuality, and feelings of well-being. Although it ultimately goes deeper than that, the naked body is a metaphor for our sensuality. Nudity symbolizes freedom, openness and sensuality better than any other cognitive process.

People don't have to be naked to reap the benefits of being naked. There are constant situations where it is impossible to be naked because of weather, social, and legal restrictions. We can, however, be 'naked beneath our clothing.'

Being naked beneath our clothing goes way beyond the scope of sensuality. It is an attitude to life. A constant reminder that life flows far better when we open up to it mentally, emotionally, and energically.

There is a constant energy exchange going on between people. In 'healthy' individuals there is a give and take mechanism where our own unique energy flows out to the people around us, and then we, in turn, absorb the energy of others. This is very necessary for balancing the body's energy systems because of the variety of energy we can absorb. In much the same way, it is unhealthy to live on a mono food diet.

People who are shut down, and closed off to the world, short circuit the system and energically isolate themselves from the world. Their energy system stagnates and starts to manifest 'dis-ease' within the system. Admittedly, there are many other reasons for 'dis-ease' but this one should not be ignored. Even if people don't take it that far and just concentrate on the obvious energic/interactive starvation in our relationships, they will find dramatic decreases in our quality of life, personal growth and sense of well-being.