Scenes from the naked dinner party

Exploring what takes us into a full-body, heart-connected good time

Twelve on the list. Show up at 6.

And don’t be late! I know that you will.
No matter. Your simple presence is the thrill.

We will take you as you are.
Doesn’t matter what you wear.

Tonight…

…we dine bare.

Meet me at the warehouse and we’ll greet you at the door. Up the stairs, around the corner, where we’ve not been before.

One of us has a kitchen where he cooks great feasts.
Tonight he’s prepared to feed gentle beasts
green leafs and soft cheeses and roasted delights,
while I’ve procured blankets and candles to light.

With love and intention, we made this little world inside the world—
a welcoming place for community love to unfurl.

Let’s be here together.
We’ll mark the turn of the weather
and share the light that has ripened us all summer long.

Bring flowers. Bring wine. We’ll have a good time.
Appreciating each other in the fullness of form.

We know exactly how to stay warm.

But first!

Before we strip:

let’s take a little trip

into the inner world.

So we might

really

be here

together.

How do we open the door to heaven?

I’m always trying to get down to the world within the world. Which is not so much a place as it is a dimension of life where I feel whole and empowered, while at the same time feeling those around me in their wholeness and their power. And then we’re all sharing this in-on-the-joke playfulness, a sense of belonging and connection, without anyone compromising their uniqueness to fit in with the group.

It’s a feeling of leaving the predictable behind, going off-script together and co-creating a unique moment. Sometimes I call it entering Eden.

It really feels like heaven on earth. I’m sure you’ve experienced it from time to time—those moments when everything feels like flow. No awkwardness or forced happiness. You feel both relaxed and alert at the same time—safe and comfy but also fully engaged with life and the people around you.

The question for me, right now, is: how do we get into this Eden mode?

So on the night of this naked dinner party, which I hosted with my chef friend at his kitchen studio in Montreal, I wanted to try out a few practices that might take us into a deeper sense of presence before we all got naked. Maybe we could open up the door to heaven?

The getting naked part, I knew, would be easy—these are all friends I see regularly at the bathhouse on Tuesday evenings or at Tom’s house for naked movie night.

My desire for this night was to drop down into a deep and embodied experience together. So here’s what we did.

Spell 1: connecting to erotic energy

There’s no getting into Eden if we don’t take our sexual energy with us. To me, this is the main reason why so many modern experiences and gatherings feel dry—everyone is keeping their horny energy locked up, afraid of it, ashamed of it, and unsure of how to share it with each other.

Sharing erotic energy does NOT have to mean engaging in sexual play. It’s more about carrying that sparkle in your eye, where you’re enjoying the gentle buzz of pleasure in every interaction. Not staying in boring conversations or letting oversized egos run amok—instead breaking through politeness and predictability by bringing ALIVENESS and playfulness to the moment.

So, to connect to this part of ourselves at the naked dinner party, I invited all 12 of us sit in a circle, inside a cozy little nook in the studio, while I led us through a meditation.

Really, it’s more like a guided adventure into the inner world—I lead us all down, down, down, out of the mind, into the broad space of the heart, where we collected the inner child who lives there (the tender part of us we don’t normally reveal in rooms full of men). Then we leapt into the river of emotions and swam with the current of inner-feeling until we fell into the pool of erotic energy down in our sacrum. It’s a whole thing.

There was some resistance from my friends. One had some wounds from parents who used meditation as punishment, another was reminded of his unpleasant memories from his churchy childhood, and one friend is simply skeptical of all energy work. But to me, this was all beautiful, because as they shared these feelings, we got to know each of these people better, at a deeper level.

And still, by the end of the meditation, we were all sharing a vibe—something deeper, a little more grounded in the body. There was a quiet hum in the room. A large sheet of the nervous energy had fallen away.

And just by acknowledging the presence and innocence of erotic energy, we had welcomed it to take up space in our gathering, opening up a portal for a multidimensional experience together.

Spell 2: sharing from the heart

The next thing I know about slipping into Eden is that, at some point, we have to share a slice of our tenderness with each other. We have to get real.

This step welcomes soul into the room. Otherwise, it’s easy to keep your heart sheltered while your libido-charged, mind-based personality does all the maneuvering and there’s only so deep we can go in our connections.

This doesn’t mean that we unload all our baggage into the room. That’s a fast way to tank the night and bring the energy down. We can connect that way, but we’ll be connecting through shared misery. And the point of the naked dinner party is joy. This is why I like connecting to erotic energy first—it plugs us in to the juice that uplifts us and makes us playful, so that even as we share vulnerability, we feel strong and vibrant.

So now that we were buzzing, our second ritual was to share something about what was alive inside us right now, something unresolved, something tender and true—money troubles, heartbreak, sexual insecurities. And as we shared, the people on either side of us slowly undressed us, so that as we revealed our bodies we also revealed our hearts to each other.

This part took my breath away.

One by one, I watched this room full of “men” unveil a glimpse into the complexity of their inner worlds: the sweetness, the uncertainty, the fragility, the weakness. They took off their armour and let us see who was underneath. And at the same time, we got to watch the comrades at their side remove the layers of clothing to reveal their animal bodies. It was sexy, it was romantic, it was profound. I was turned on and falling in love with everyone.

I longed to have a filmmaker there, documenting such rare and precious magic. But of course, part of the magic was the safety we felt there with each other, that we were protecting each other’s truth as something sacred.

Surrounded by so many courageous, honest, good-hearted men who were willing to try connecting in a new way—I could have cried.

Instead, the wild things got hungry and impatient and it was time for us tender beasts to feast.

Let the naked frolic in their joy

The spell has been cast, the dish has been cooked
We’re all here together, we’re all off the hook

With nothing to hide and no games to play
We can be with each other in a glorious way

Sharing and prancing and talking and teasing
Throwing arms ’round each other and pulling in close