What Is Body Worship?

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Body worship is perhaps best known as an act of physically revering, honoring, or worshiping a specific body part of another person (although it may also apply to ones own body or body parts) in the context of BDSM practices, sexual fetishism, and/or sexual roleplay.

In fact, most people know about things like breast, buttocks, or foot fetishism, or submissive acts in BDSM practices, kink, or sexual roleplay in which a certain body part has a prominent role. It’s usually about repeatedly and prolonged touching, stroking, holding, looking at, smelling, massaging, kissing, licking, or sucking a specific body part, such as the breasts, feet, penis, clitoris, or anus.

Mind that body worship is an act that can be carried out for the joy of the person who worships or — by contrast — for the pleasure of the one who is being worshiped. It can be practiced in the private sphere, but there are also plenty commercial offerings that involve body worshiping.

Nonetheless, body worship is not only a phenomenon in the sexual sphere. For instance, bodybuilding is a form of body worship too (or muscle worship, if you prefer). It can be a form of whole body worship, or rather being focused on specific body parts, such as the biceps, chest muscles, or calf muscles, and so on, without necessarily having a sexual context. In bodybuilding, the bodybuilder may even worship themselves (their own muscles) or others may worship the bodybuilder’s entire body or certain muscular body parts.

In addition, there’s also body worship in a religious sense. For instance, in Christianity there’s body worship of Jesus Christ’s flesh and blood. It’s a sacrament, a token of love, communion, remembrance and gratitude called the Eucharist, during which Christian worshipers consume bread and wine which respectively symbolize Christ’s body and blood.

Interesting enough, it’s Jesus himself who was at the origin of the Eucharist. In the Gospel of John (verses 53-55) Jesus says: “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is real food, and My blood is real drink.”

By the way, there’s also another practice of what’s called body worship in religions, which is rather the use of one’s own body as a way to participate in worshiping. It can take forms like kneeling, bowing, standing, singing, shouting, raising hands, making signs with the hands, and so on, including washing and purifying one’s body as a token of respect for God or the Gods.

Another fascinating form of spiritual worshiping can be found in Tantra and Neo-Tantra practices. There we may encounter the practice of Lingam Worshiping or Lingam Honoring and Yoni Worshiping or Yoni Honoring, which — simply said — relate to the male genitals (the penis or phallus) and female genitals (vagina and womb) respectively.

Depending on the lineage in Tantra, Lingam and Yoni Worshiping can have a strong physical “embodied” aspect in which a person’s penis or vagina is actually touched, washed, caressed or massaged, and so on. However, in Hindu spiritual practices it’s often the honoring of the symbolic representation of masculine and feminine powers in the universe, typically statues or sculptures that represent the penis and vagina.

Hence, what is actually honored in Lingam Worship is the symbolic representation of the Hindu God Shiva (the phallus), and in Yoni Worship it’s about honoring the symbolic representation (the vagina and womb) of the Shakti Goddess. It’s about honoring the divine union of Shiva and Shakti, which are seen as opposite but complementary sacred powers — masculine and feminine — but inherently being parts of a non-dual whole.

All by all, it’s clear that body worship has only partly to do with engaging in “kinky” or sexual acts. What’s more, body worship plays a very important part in religious and spiritual practices around the world.

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