Introducing World Naked Music Day

Saturday, August 17 is the first annual World Naked Music Day. Participate, socialize, share pics and support this fun day!

Join us on Saturday, August 17 to celebrate World Naked Music Day! This unique day combines the joy of music with the freedom of nudity, all while raising funds for Music Heals Minds, an organization dedicated to using music for therapeutic intervention for people facing Alzheimer’s, dementia, and traumatic brain injuries.

Use the tags #WorldNakedMusicDay and #WNMD to share your photos, videos, and audio, and help spread the word. Together, we can make a harmonious impact!

Custom #WNMD art by Zaftig Pink

Music and nudity

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, Blink-182, Jane’s Addiction, Iggy Pop, Nick Oliveri, Wendy O. Williams, GG Allin, Amy Winehouse, Courtney Love, Alanis Morisette, Jim Morrison, D’angelo.

Music and nudity. Nudity and music. The above is nowhere near an exhaustive list (please feel free to add to it in the comments), yet the length of it already displays an unspoken relationship between the body and music.

I wonder what it is that binds the two. Is it the rawness and authenticity that music carries that provokes a desire for the body to also want to be free? Is it that both the body and music can carry a universal expression beyond words and the structure of language? A traditional Maori Haka feels and sounds like a warrior preparing for battle. It’s in both the vocalizing and the body enacting it. A lullaby has the same quality, a wistful, lulling melody that the body often follows with a rocking motion to comfort a young child.

The psychology of music

The psychology of music is something that is just scratching at the beginning of it. Books like This Is Your Brain on Music begin dissecting the effects of listening to music, the power of the emotional attachment to music we listen to when we’re teenagers, how earworms get stuck in our heads, etc. The interaction of the brain with music is fascinating. Yet before we fall down the rabbit hole of how music affects our brains, it’s important to understand how our bodies interact with sound as a whole.

In a nutshell, our body perceives sound as vibrations and translates those signals into electric pulses. The pulses spread as they traveled, growing wider and taller with time, resulting in the sound becoming diluted.

Music is a complex set of audio signals. As each signal reaches the ear, the eardrum vibrates like a rubber band; the movement then shifts to the three smallest bones in the human body, which amplifies the vibrations as they pass on to the cochlea, which act as hairs that move up and down, opening up pores that release neurotransmitters into a nerve connected to the brain. The chemicals travel along the auditory nerve and are received, processed, and recognized by the brain as specific sounds, all happening at lightning speeds every millisecond of the day, regardless of whether we’re awake or asleep.

Music and the body

There are over a dozen different areas in the brain that respond to music, interpreting it, producing pleasure and emotions, distilling it into logic such as rhythms, and storing it in different types of memories. The intersection with the brain is why music therapy is so effective. Listening to music triggers the same pleasure centers as eating food, exercising, and even having sex, but before sounds are associated with the brain, they are associated with the body in a somatic way—a cat’s purr emits vibrations that can lower blood pressure, lessen stress and even promote healing. Drumming with something like a djembe can induce deep relaxation, lower blood pressure, and reduce stress. Humming can improve heart rate variability by inducing parasympathetic dominance and moving out of fight/flight into relaxation.

Sound is everywhere, interacting with our bodies all the time. I’ll never forget one of my first-year university professors giving us an assignment to go out and listen to a leaf blower to find the overtones there. Besides thinking that this was an assignment I would make sure not to mention to my parents, I was skeptical about its overall contribution to my learning about music. Yet, once I tuned into those overtones, I heard the world differently, just as we experience the world differently once we become attuned to our bodies in naturism. It becomes both part of something bigger as something bigger becomes part of us. It expands and absorbs harmoniously. Music and nudity. Nudity and music.

Let’s celebrate music and the body

There is music in nature every day. That’s how we get to have music in us. We then get the pleasure of bringing that music out into the world. Whether it’s singing, playing an instrument, drumming, moving our bodies or more.

That’s why there should be a World Naked Music Day. Not just because it’s fun and we can make some great photos (which I am looking forward to people sharing!). Not just because there are already some great musicians playing already (holler out to those with the best punny names). All of these things and also because music is a celebration of our authentic, universal selves that connect us to the earth and each other. Starting this year, we will begin celebrating it annually on the third Saturday in August. 🪐

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World Naked Music Day will also be raising funds to support Music Heals Minds.

Music Heals Minds is a leader in using music for therapeutic interventions that support cognitive health and emotional well-being. Music has the power to reconnect, soothe, and stimulate the mind, especially for individuals facing the challenges of Alzheimer’s, dementia, and traumatic brain injuries. Through carefully crafted musical sessions, Music Heals Minds employs therapeutic techniques like mirroring, eye contact, and verbal prompting to engage participants, helping to regulate emotions, reduce anxiety, and enhance memory recall. By collaborating with healthcare providers and researchers, Music Heals Minds is at the forefront of integrating music into holistic care plans, ensuring that this powerful medium creates meaningful and lasting positive change in the lives of those affected by cognitive impairments.

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Or support them with swag

You can also purchase a limited-time item from the Planet Nude Gift Shop. Proceeds will go to support Music Heals Minds.