Blanche DeVries Bernard

but now it's like this place that you can still go and visit and um basically a very rich banking guy i think came along and um because it was like frequented by some quite high profile people and then a banking guy basically ended up getting um putting money into this hotel and the space kind of like takes away from its like raw anchor of what it was i suppose and then the other person to think about this person again very very interesting I hadn't actually heard of her fully um I'd heard of the name because I'm in the world of like I did my yoga training so I kind of you always hear these kind of people like banded around but Essentially, and again, I'm not going to pronounce the name probably correctly, but I was really interested to kind of like read more about them.

But this person, Blanche DeVries, she opened this yoga gymnosophy institute in New York in around the 1990s.

around 1990s or 1920s, which kind of makes so much sense when we're talking about gymnosophy and the dates that we've spoken about.

She then married this yoga tantra teacher, Pierre Bernard.

Perhaps that's what we're actually speaking to.

And actually, that's what I am trying to work out in my own space is.

is that like the work that I do with the pelvis it can't be easily repackaged and sold in a commercial aspect but it can exist as a beautiful grounding point of reference for people to find more hope and that's I think what naturism and nudism provides for me is that there is hope because when you meet the people within it and you see the culture around it hope exists but if that's repackaged and put into a naked yoga retreat it's not the same energy it's not the energy that we're speaking to and also I'm putting myself out on a constant pedestal talking about the vulva vagina and even more so layered with naturism and nudism and I'm doing it on purpose to test the social construct that exists within today's society which because nothing I've done to this point has meant that I've had an easy route of it and I'm really trying to stress test it essentially and that's why I'm like I don't have all the answers but I can see the the dots and I'm trying to join them up and I think that I can slowly do that and I stress test what we're dealing with in society and see whether and how I'm silenced along the way as a woman talking about it in a way that generally seems to be that women are silenced and have been and haven't really been spoken to and put on enough of a pedestal for doing the work they've done for gymnosophy and nudism and naturism along the way in our history celebrating and thanking them for what they've done they truly believe that this space is necessary in fact the yoga teacher that we spoke to who taught in New York and was then shadowed by her potentially problematic partner she actually taught yoga into her 90s from my understanding and she had a studio in the 1980s her own studio and We're talking about Blanche DeVries.

So truly these women who believe in it are always going to keep themselves like reinventing themselves to believe in what they passionately believe in if it's like genuinely rooted in wellness and that's what I consistently speak to.