Why Placeholder actors?

Understanding the concepts of animistic religions and the role of innocent nudity

So, what we do all stems from an animistic tradition of Indian spirituality. Animistic, as Harari points out in his book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind," means believing that objects, places, and creatures are all ruled, observed, watched, and protected by spiritual entities like fairies, elves, etc:

Animism (from ‘anima’, ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ in Latin) is the belief that almost every place, every animal, every plant and every natural phenomenon has awareness and feelings, and can communicate directly with humans. Thus, animists may believe that the big rock at the top of the hill has desires and needs. The rock might be angry about something that people did and rejoice over some other action. The rock might admonish people or ask for favours. Humans, for their part, can address the rock, to mollify or threaten it. Not only the rock, but also the oak tree at the bottom of the hill is an animated being, and so is the stream flowing below the hill, the spring in the forest clearing, the bushes growing around it, the path to the clearing, and the field mice, wolves and crows that drink there. In the animist world, objects and living things are not the only animated beings. There are also immaterial entities – the spirits of the dead, and friendly and malevolent beings, the kind that we today call demons, fairies and angels.

So, let’s say we do something pre-religious here. At the same time, we are anthropologists of the 21st century, teleporting ourselves back to those times when we could feel a fairy in every leaf and communicate with the spirits of nature. Theoretically, if this time of animistic spirituality was really practiced for eons, we would also see the nakedness of the human body in a different way. It's not about sexualization, exploitation, misogyny, defaming, or downgrading. It’s all about innocence, beauty, and admiration of nature’s creations.

In Sanskrit, Jiva (जीव) means all that can actually breathe, all that is alive, all that is nature. Thus, our bodies are part of it. The nudity you see in Forbidden Yoga is about this beautiful innocence. We do not sell nudity; nudity is part of the entire philosophy when it comes to certain practices. We try to make nudity a normal thing so that nobody feels sexualized. This allows energies to calm down and sexual tension to ease, just by being in an animistic state of mind.

The next question is why we use placeholder actors and what that even means. Well, the short answer is that our hologram cannot be accessed by 99% of the couples out there doing these meditations together. Couples are highly welcome to book our projects to solve all kinds of issues, but in the rarest cases do we let them exercise together. They need to exercise with unknown energies, which we call unknown "Bhutas" (भूत). A Bhuta is an animation of nature, a part of Jiva, something like a flower you have never seen before, never smelled before, a canvas you have yet to explore. So, most of our practices are not husband-wife practices. However, in times of divorce and decoupling, it is very interesting to lead couples through these processes with the aim that both of them can find their own space again and regain their own territory of the soul.