One Year of Naked Running

Reflections on One Year of Naked Running
August 2016

One year of blogging about naked running.

Two years of actually running naked.

Identifying and connecting with the masculine fire in my belly, my own orgasm of my psyche has been a profound experience.

Sometimes referred to as the Lower Dantian (in Chinese Medicine, Tao and Tai Chi), or the Hara (in Japanese culture) or the Lena (in Gaga) or the Red Spot (at Tamalpa) and representing two different chakras, this nebulous location halfway between the navel and the coccyx has fascinated man (and woman) for many thousands of years. I have not made it up, but how I experienced it, and have accessed it, is my own.

As I’ve developed my practice, my hobby, of running naked (usually barefoot), what I’ve observed physically has evolved and deepened. Now, in addition to that fire in the belly, I am engaging with the deep depths of the cellular existence of previous generations of man. It may sound hokey, but as I run naked at high-speed – such as across San Francisco for Bay to Breakers this year – I felt and experience a profound sense of the chase, the hunt. I still don’t know if I was doing the chasing or escaping a predator (perhaps the 39,000 people behind me had something to do with that sensation!).

Never in my life have I felt more alive, more raw, more masculine than I do when I’m running naked, especially along a warm sandy beach alone at sunrise.

And, since the beginning of 2016 I’ve begun cultivating my engagement with the fire in my belly even when I’m not running. I can switch it on more and more often every day. I’m developing new vocabulary for the sensation and it is taking on new meaning.

That does not, however, suggest that I will stop running naked. I will not. I will carry on running naked as long as I possibly can and reporting on it in this blog as long as I have something interesting to say about it.