Why You Should Be Practicing

James Arbona wasn't expecting much from the yoga class. The 48-year-old New York camera operator had tried yoga a handful of times only to come away underwhelmed. The flowery metaphors, foreign-sounding chants, and slow stretches hadn't resonated with Arbona, who's an avid basketball player and runner. But this particular class, a men-only offering called Yoga for Dudes that his girlfriend had urged him to try, was different. Arbona enjoyed it. He became a regular. And the difference in the way he felt as a result changed his mind about yoga.

"Before those classes, I remember playing basketball and making one of those moves where my body said, 'Don't do that again!' But after going to the Dudes classes, when I'd play basketball, I'd feel so good," he says.

Lately other men have had similar revelations. Lots of other men. In fact, while yoga in the US is predominantly practiced by women (according to Mediamark Research and Intelligence, 77 percent of practitioners are women), male participation is on the rise. Pure Yoga studio in New York reports that male membership has increased 20 fold. Men represent approximately one-third of all people stepping onto a mat at CorePower Yoga's 58 studios in five states, and Yoga Journal's own market research shows that the number of male practitioners relative to the total number of practitioners in this country has jumped by nearly 5 percent.

How to account for the shift and, in particular, the fact that sporty, guy's-guy types like Arbona are flocking to studios in unprecedented numbers? It's not that men have become more flexible, spiritual, or in touch with their feminine side—qualities that have long been associated with yoga and that in reality still turn many guys off the practice. Rather, yoga, whether in special classes just for "dudes" or simply tailored to be more accessible, is finally meeting men where they are.

"Men shouldn't have to work against their strengths," says Nikki Costello, the New York City instructor who teaches Arbona and other men in her pioneering Yoga for Dudes class at Kula Yoga Project in Manhattan. "It shouldn't be a struggle for men to embrace yoga. Not if they're seen, really seen, for who they are."

Not Your Girlfriend's Yoga

According to scholars, yoga has likely evolved to suit changing audiences for thousands of years. The yoga we know today can be traced in part to practices taught to young Indian boys about 75 years ago to help them develop strong bodies and a focused mind. Modern yoga was also influenced by the fitness culture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, writes Mark Singleton in Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. In the mid-1900s, yoga began a decades-long association with Western women, courtesy of teachers such as Indra Devi and Richard Hittleman, who found fans, respectively, in female Hollywood stars and middle-class at-home moms. For years, the latter group followed along with a meditative style of yoga on daytime public television, swinging the practice further away from the sensibilities of macho men.

But in recent years, a handful of studio owners and teachers like Costello have seen an opportunity to reintroduce men to the gifts of the practice by tailoring classes to them. Costello, who has taught yoga for nearly two decades, first began to reflect on the unique needs of male practitioners in the early 2000s. While teaching at Manhattan's Equinox gym, she noticed that her vigorous sequences and no-nonsense style attracted a larger-than-usual percentage of guys—men who were accustomed to both sweat equity and the unvarnished English used in offices and gyms. "I have my metaphors," she says. "But I don't talk a lot about feelings."

Costello, who grew up with two brothers, says that the Equinox classes gave her ample opportunity to observe at close range the challenges and strengths peculiar to her type-A, sports-nut, desk-bound students. Over time, she says, she came to see a disconnect between the physical attributes of her male students and the 21st-century asanas they could expect to encounter in a typical yoga class.

Male Outreach

There's more than one way, however, to reshape yoga for men. Other studios and teachers have made their classes more appealing to guys by addressing some of the things about yoga that typically keep men away. New England's three-year-old Broga may have a playful name (that's "bro," as in "brother"), but co-founders Adam O'Neill and Robert Sidoti are dead serious about attracting uninitiated men to their studios. For starters, Broga classes, which are about 75 percent male, might begin and end with tunes from Radiohead rather than recorded sitar music and incense. The classes typically blend vinyasa yoga with fitness-type movements such as lunges and squats.

One Small Step for Man

While women still outnumber guys in the average studio, more and more room is being made for men. And there's no doubt that reaching out to men is a smart business move for a booming industry that wants to continue to grow. Meanwhile, studio owners say, every time a big-name pro athlete like basketball player LeBron James or hockey's Tim Thomas champions yoga, more men are inspired to try a yoga class. And efforts are ongoing to round up every last guy who remains in the dark. "There are still so many men not doing yoga," says Mark Schillinger, co-organizer of a pioneering first attempt at a men-only yoga conference called Activation, which was held in San Francisco last fall. The conference was marketed to men who were new to yoga, and it addressed topics such as sex and stress. Though turnout was low, the organizers say they will repeat the conference this year, and they have plans to develop a teacher training curriculum designed specifically for men, reasoning that men will be more receptive to learning from male teachers.