Yoga, It’s a Dude Thing

A short daily yoga practice can help men create better mind/body awareness and promote prostrate health.

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There you are reading this with your techno-communication device. Like most guys, you probably are feeling a few aches and pains, your mind might be a bit distracted. How’s your breathing … wait are you even thinking about your breath? There is an easy route to overcome these daily physical and mental challenges. YOGA! Yes, yoga is for dudes too. Don’t believe the hype about yoga and gender. In fact, in India, the origin of yoga, it is considered primarily a man’s pursuit.

The practice of yoga developed over 5,000 years ago in India, and was practiced predominantly by males. –Nicole Carlin

Yoga centers you physically, mentally, and emotionally. Practice on the mat is an effective method to achieve better human functionality. You are challenged to look at your existence in the moment of now and see what needs to be adjusted. The result is a more balanced human being.

Yoga uses the science of breath as a focal point to train the mind for better concentration. Focus and awareness in yoga is an all encompassing thing. Physicality and mentality hone their edges. You are challenged to maintain controlled breath in coordination with each movement. Each movement and posture requires precision focus on every muscle of the body working together. Some yoga postures are beneficial to certain body areas, but all yoga postures require a focus on every muscle working together. All this muscle control will also improve circulation and increase your endurance.

The extreme focus required in mind-body-breath co-ordination is an exercise in total awareness. This awareness carries over into home life, and work relationships. Stress becomes more manageable. The physical effort and breath of yoga help those everyday aches and pains dissipate. You become more aware of your habits.

The awareness of your own meat machine naturally extends outward to greater awareness of your surroundings and through this awareness you are able to control the focus, thought and intention in your life.

You have the choice in how high to turn the yoga volume. You can be satisfied with your relaxed physical state, or you can choose to enhance your physical mass through more dynamic yoga. The dynamic weight baring postures, for example handstands and jumping postures, help build bone density. Constant gentle and controlled impact of weight baring postures signal the body to thicken the bones.

Regardless of how high you set the goal, yoga adapts itself to you. A yoga practice will promote the making and secretion of synovial fluid in tight, painful joints. Flexibility practice should have a clear goal in mind. A kick boxer does not want to make their knees more flexible, they will be risking patella sub luxation and lack of power. Evaluating your goals and purpose of practicing is an important focus you should have. Focused goals help you avoid future injury so optimum fitness can be achieved.

Remember that muscles contract or relax. That’s it. If you are constantly contracting the muscles with out training them to relax then you get problems. Look at a fighter’s back and shoulders in defensive position. When the shoulders are constantly held up to protect the neck the muscles learn to contract and hold that tension. This leads to muscle tightness which eventually leads to pain. A properly aligned yoga sequence balances out the contraction and relaxation of the muscular structure.

How can men benefit from yoga?

Well prostrate health is one significant way! Certain yoga poses bring fresh blood to areas with poor circulation such as the internal organs. Prostate health is directly effected by strong circulation gained through physical exercise. Circulation is part of what keeps organs healthy.

These two postures are a good place to start. Practice for 10 minutes, 5-6 days a week.

It’s really that simple.

Pascimottanasana Pelvic tilt 

Yoga is also helping men survive prostate cancer.

A recent study conducted at the University of Calgary reported that men who took part in an eight-week therapeutic yoga program  … experienced significant improvements in their mood and a decrease in their stress and fatigue levels. Zahavich AN, Culos-Reed SN, Robinson JA, Paskevich D. Examining a therapeutic yoga program for prostate cancer survivors.

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Reduce stress, control emotion, improve the immune system, and increase the rate of recovery – there are so many benefits and reasons why dudes should be on the mat embarking to self mastery. A regular yoga practice helps replace negative habits with habits that enhance your performance.

What types of yoga are suited to men?

There are two straightforward styles of yoga that can specifically benefit men: astanga primary series and for those with injuries, Iyengar. Astanga is a style that was created for the warrior class (Kshatriyas). The creator left out the philosophy of yoga and focused on training the body and mastering the mind. The practice became like a martial art with it’s set sequences that are studied 5-6 days a week. The practice starts to become a way of life and way to empower your life. The empowerment produced by the practice becomes a daily confidence boost needed to seize the day. If you can get through the whole sequence each morning, you will be able to do anything that day!

If all that still isn’t enough to convince you that yoga is a dude thing too, read this:

“Society pushes men to find health primarily through the ‘bodybuilding’ form of exercise. Look at news stands, look at what’s on the television, look at the kind of water-filled balloon bodies that feature in our action movies. I once bought into all that, took the supplements and repped my way to a swollen, muscular body. I was all show and no go. I looked great (in the way that men are told they’re supposed to look) but I had way too much muscle on my frame, my strength was disproportionate, and the body I’d built with all these stable and measured weights simply wasn’t functional in an unstable world. As a frequent traveler, a former professional mixed martial artist, and a personal trainer certified through the NSCA I’ve been able to experiment with all sorts of exercises – from ancient clubs and breathing techniques to the latest gizmos and gadgets. Through it all, yoga has been and continues to be my staple. It brings slow to a society that desperately wants us to go go go. It builds strength not by isolating body parts but by forcing the entire body to stabilize itself and move how it was meant to move: as a single structure. Piling on the plates made me better at piling on the plates, but yoga gave me a kind of sustainable functional fitness that I haven’t been able to build in any other form of exercise.” –Cameron Conaway

Men are bombarded with how they are supposed to ‘be’ by media, culture, and society. This forced implication of what a man is expected to act, look, and think like causes unnecessary stress and emotional damage. The self-awareness and self-control of yoga creates new neural paths in the brain. You are training the brain. When you learn how to breath properly, and can use that control to exercise the brain in concentration practices, the brain changes it’s neural paths. This change affects thought and action. You can overcome the ‘man box’ to become more confident, self controlled, and successful.