Stretching the stereotype: Men catch on to yoga
Eastern practice offers a host of health benefits
Maybe the guys finally noticed that celebrities such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, John McEnroe, and Sting were doing it. Maybe they noticed the entire Chicago Bulls basketball team deep breathing and gently stretching in hopes of a better performance after the departure of Michael Jordan.
Perhaps it’s because mainstream health clubs are enthusiastically promoting its benefits alongside Nautilus and aerobics. Maybe it is just because many teachers dropped the chanting and incense and added aerobic workouts to attract those who think that sweat, not spiritualism, defines a good workout.
Whatever the reason, yoga suddenly is attracting a host of male enthusiasts in search of more ease in their bodies, stress reduction, and even relief from chronic pain. Yoga’s reputation as a New Age feminine haven is being challenged by an influx of middle-aged male enthusiasts, recently humbled into realizing they no longer occupy the body of a 20-year-old. But even younger men, often more open to Eastern-style pursuits, are crediting yoga with giving them agility and strength to improve their overall athletic life — and almost as an aside, relieve stress in the bargain.
"Men outnumber women about four to one in most of my classes," says Madison, WI-based yoga master Roger Eischens, who holds MS degrees in kinesiology, developmental psychology, and human biology. Eischens specializes in a personal variation of the yoga taught by Indian master B.K.S. Iyengar, which is often considered a more strenuous workout than some other yogic paths.
Eischens suggests the upsurge in male participation may be due to the availability of more male teachers. "Frankly, some men feel uncomfortable with women teachers." "Let’s face it, men stick out like sore thumbs in most classes, so they feel self-conscious. Most men have more difficulty with forward-bending movements and hamstring and lower back flexibility, and women generally have an easier time with those types of postures," says Eischens.
Men, pressured to perform in society, may find their self-esteem is compromised in some yoga classes, says Jonathan Faust, director of curriculum at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, MA, the country’s largest yoga center with more than 20,000 visitors a year, almost half of them male.
"There are so many stress responses to whom men respond in today’s society," says Faust, who has taught yoga for more than 20 years. "Not only are we under tremendous pressure to perform in every aspect of our lives, we somehow are expected to turn it off and relax, too, in order to avoid the risk of chronic diseases that comes from unrelenting stress."
Those stress hormones and release of cortisol keep everyone, male and female alike, in a fight-or-flight response — creating a disease-inducing stress cycle. Unless men can find a way to break the stress cycle, says Faust, the physiological system begins to wear down, beginning with sleep deprivation, progressing to ulcers, immune system compromise, and eventually creating a hospitable climate for heart disease and other chronic disease conditions. Now men are discovering a way to find that stress relief and even address chronic conditions such as back pain and osteoarthritis without feeling silly, says Faust. (See sample stress-reliever technique, below.)
Connecting Men and Yoga |
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| Here is a sample 20-minute-a-day yogic technique to help men break the stress cycle: | |
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Get comfortable. Sitting in a chair is fine. Loosen tight clothing and take off shoes. |
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Take long, deep, slow breaths. |
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Relax your muscles, tightening and relaxing any that feel particularly tight. |
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Repeat a word of your choice over and over again. Any word will work, but "one" is often used, or "peace," or even your own name. |
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Create a focused, yet permissive attitude. If your mind wanders, don’t fight it; just return to your focus word. |
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Continue for 20 minutes. |
| Source: Jonathan Faust, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Lenox, MA. | |
Newly created forms of the practice, such as power yoga, also tend to appeal more to the male sweat-oriented mindset, says Eischens. Faust and Eischens agree that the vast majority of men who sign up for yoga classes do so at the urging of a friend or even a health care professional in search of relief from an injury. "We humans have a wonderful feedback mechanism provided by the universe to let us know when we are overdoing; it’s called pain," explains Faust. "The experience of our suffering brings to the realization that imbalance forces us to change something or the suffering deepens."
"Anybody with almost any condition can do yoga," says Eischens, busting the myth that sitting in the lotus posture or standing on your head is necessary to practice yoga. He de-emphasizes dramatic forward-bending postures and the types of positions that require sitting on the heels or kneeling. Yet participants in Eischens’ classes get a good workout. "They know they’ve worked their bodies," he says.
While the Kripalu Center offers yoga classes from a wide variety of traditions, the Kripalu yoga system, which evolved at the 30-year-old center, emphasizes a gentler approach to yoga with flowing postures coordinated with the breath that, with practice, become a meditation in motion. A class typically includes a beginning relaxation segment, breathing exercises, postures (also known as asanas), and a final relaxation or meditation time.
"Many men protect themselves with what I call armoring,’ which comes from sitting too much and from being self-conscious about their bodies. I have seen amazing results in just a weekend retreat for men who have been able to release that muscular and emotional tension and simply allow their bodies to become more flexible," says Faust.
"It does matter how a person comes to yoga; there is virtually always a transformational effect," he adds.
There are certain types of postures that are inappropriate for specific disease conditions — for example, inverted postures are not advised for people with hypertension, and rounded-back movements are contraindicated in those with chronic back pain. However, a good yoga teacher should be able to adapt to virtually any special need, including students in wheelchairs. "I think it’s important that while yoga may mean the formal practice of asana and pranayama [breathing exercise], yoga means so many things that we should widen our scope of the practice," says Faust.
He notes that the Sanskrit word "yoga" has similar roots to the English word "yoke." "That means union. It means bring body, mind, and spirit into balance, the way Herbert Benson, MD, founder of Harvard’s Mind-Body Institute in Boston discovered when he studied the science behind yoga and essentially demystified it in 1972 with the relaxation response,’" says Faust. "Yoga can be practiced sitting in a chair watching your breath, listening to some favorite calming music, or even taking a walk in the woods. It’s all the matter of attention and focus you bring to the practice," he explains.
Eischens’ method of teaching, like that of many varieties of yoga, focuses on alignment of bones and balance. "When the bones are aligned and the body is in balance, the muscles will release easily into the full range of motion," he says.
Yoga is not competitive, say both experts. People with certain body types may never have the range of motion that those with naturally loose joints enjoy. "What we’re after is to create pure movement around the joint — and it works," adds Eischens. Most yoga teachers advise general slow stretches and smooth flowing movements to avoid injury and caution students not to attempt to stretch beyond their capacity.
Several studies have shown that yoga is helpful in overall conditioning, as well as in treating specific complaints including those related to degenerative joint disease and carpal tunnel syndrome. There have been few adverse effects of yoga reported. Health care professionals who wish to recommend yoga classes to their patients should do some careful research into the qualifications of the teacher, says Faust. "Many, many people out there start teaching without any training or with a weekend workshop. That can be dangerous."
Faust’s best advice to health care professionals seeking a yoga teacher to whom they can refer patients: "Ask around your community. See who is recommended and ask why that teacher is considered reputable. Then take a class yourself. That’s the only way you can know for sure, and you’re likely to get some benefits for yourself in the deal."
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