Get Naked!

I'm not much of a card player or gambler. I play at playing poker with a few friends every now and then. We indulge our parody of the high stakes poker tournaments suddenly proliferating the television airwaves. Plus, it's an excuse to wear dark sunglasses indoors as do some of the big time champs.

It's been through sheer luck of the draw that I tend to win a good share of hands against my equally not ready for prime time competitors. So, it is because of my rather infrequent, passing flirtation with gambling, I can't for the life of me figure out how I once 1) let myself get talked into a game of strip poker, and 2) managed to lose to the point I had to strip down to my Victoria's Secrets.

I was amongst my best buddies. Nonetheless, the fun and games became a little less funny and a little less game playing when sitting near bare bottomed at the card table wishing I had held 'em and folded 'em about three hands back.

But, you know what? As the game went on, I never laughed more freely and heartily than in that moment with my friends, with the bad cards that were dealt to me, and just how great it was to see each of us lose a little of our shyness, shame and/or vanity about being naked as we each shed one more article of threads as the chips fell.

For so many, the fear of being seen naked ranks right up there with public speaking, death and taxes. We even advise people with public speaking jitters to imagine the audience stripped to their undies or just plain naked as a way of elevating the speakers esteem over a cast of naked observers. Maybe this makes the idea of nakedness worse than public speaking on the hierarchy of top ten fears.

Feeling comfortable in one's own bare skin is a struggle that many Americans deal with as a residual of Puritanical notions about sin, sex, and nakedness. Today, it's the increased pressure to have the ideal physique -- thin, athletic, toned -- that makes 95% of the population afraid to show any skin at all, even when alone.

How you feel about your body is essential to living a life of emotional balance and well-being. Hang-ups about your shape, physique, or just unhealthy shame about sexually related notions about nakedness can keep you from a greater sense of esteem, fully enjoying intimacy, and a healthy sense of humor.

You get one body is this life. Most of us will never have supermodel or Olympian physiques, so get over it! Learn to love the body you have. Take better care of it. Get everything you can out of it.

Go ahead, get naked. Your body is more beautiful than you think. I'd bet on it.