Dudes, Do Yoga

The female-dominated fitness activity is welcoming to guys to improve body and mind

David Michael Scott’s first yoga class was typical for a guy.

“I remember absolutely hating it,” Scott recalls. He thinks about trying to twist his arms and legs into eagle pose. “I remember thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing?’” Scott says.

That was 13 years ago, when a girlfriend at the time convinced him to go. Scott was going to stick with martial arts, which seemed more “manly.”

“My thought was, ‘Yoga is for girls,’” Scott recalls.

Today, Scott tells about how practicing yoga was — and is — life-changing. That’s a sentiment shared by many, regardless of gender. But fewer men start or stick with yoga.

“The practice helped me so much spiritually and physically,” Jaime Philp says. Philp has been a certified yoga instructor for more than a decade. He started yoga as he sought relief to physical ailment. Philp has been running since he was 12 years old and worked in construction much of his life.

“The combination of those two things took its toll on my back,” Philp explains. In 2002, that started affecting his running. “Running was my escape, it was my form of meditation, and it wasn’t pleasant anymore,” Philp said. Someone suggested trying yoga, so Philp did.

“It changed my life completely,” Philp says. “I went right back to running with no problems.”

Physical Benefits

Yoga is more than just stretching. There are multiple physical benefits from increased flexibility to improved internal health.

Scott likes to focus on the tangible, external benefits.

“What is key is how it stimulates stabilization around different joints and body movements,” Scott says.

Plus the increased circulation can help internal organs.

Mental Benefits

Yoga also focuses on meditation. Yes, sometimes there’s “ommm” chanting, but often it’s about taking just a moment of stillness and creating mindfulness. Scott was aware that there was a connection between yoga and meditation before he returned to it, but was dismissive. He had used self-taught meditation as a teenager.

“Meditation, to me, was a way to calm my anger,” Scott says. As a teen, he was getting into fights to defend himself. “Meditation was a way to calm my anger and address my depression — my general disposition of life and the world, so to speak,” Scott says.

In his late 20s, Scott started going back to yoga classes about once every month or so, then taught himself man poses with the help of an illustrated book while he lived abroad for the Peace Corps.

While Philp started yoga to relieve physical ailment, he talks more about spiritual healing.

“It changed my whole outlook on my physical condition and my spiritual awareness,” Philp says. And that shows up in his classes.

“When I teach, I use the word ‘awareness’ quite often,” Philp says. “It made me more aware of my existence, what I was doing, what were the reasons for my happiness and unhappiness.”

Mindfulness

Practicing the physical yoga often leads to healthy lifestyle changes. “Yoga asks that you become aware, or it drives you in that direction,” Philp explains. “So it made me aware that my back was not as strong and I wasn’t paying attention enough to it. So yoga turned that around and allowed me to strengthen the proper back muscles necessary to continue my construction work and my running.”

He said it makes him more aware of everything he does physically as well as what he puts into his body, so everything from diet to physical labor Philp does with mindfulness and attitude of healthy behavior.

“As guys, we typically treat our bodies a little bit harder than women, just because of the occupations we typically engage in, so that — in a physical sense — is one of the biggest reasons to begin practice yoga, so that we can offset some of the damage we’ve done to our bodies.”

Getting Started

“One of the mistakes that yoga students make when beginning their practice is going to the wrong class,” Philp notes. “So if you don’t go to a beginner’s class, chances are yoga will turn you off. It will be too much, you’ll think you stepped into something that maybe you’ve bit off more than you can chew.”

There are power vinyasas, which will move quickly from one advanced and challenging pose to the next. There are also gentle and beginner classes to ease into simple poses and learn to grow in the practice.

There are no wrong poses; the point is to try to work toward the textbook pose while maintaining awareness and avoiding injury. Philp said yogis become intimately familiar with their strengths, weaknesses, and limitations.

“You learn to honor those,” Philp explains. “And within those boundaries of your awareness is where your practice lies.”

While it’s popular for women to wear yoga pants and tank tops, Scott and Philp emphasized there is no incorrect attire for yoga. It’s about feeling comfortable. Philp recommends gym shorts or sweatpants and a loose-fitting shirt. Scott says he sometimes shows up in jeans just to mix it up.