Yoga gets dunked on a lot. Even more when you are a guy doing yoga. It is seen as a feminine and hippie kind of thing.
But that’s a dumb way of thinking, of course.
Yoga is good for flexibility, training your balance, focussing on your breath and staying calm and it even trains strength. A daily yoga session of ten minutes can keep you stretched, flexible, and calm.
As I said, yoga for women is already pretty popular. I know multiple women who do yoga on a regular basis. Men, not so much. But I want to change that, and inspire men to step out of their comfort zone, break the patriarchic view of yoga and keep them fitter.
Who in here has experience with yoga already? Please share your tips and visions!
I used to do yoga with a group of people as an extracurricular activity during my teenage years. With that, I mean that I did it for three weeks by insistence of one of my parents during a time where I did zero exercise. I absolutely loathed it, to the point that the experience still has me disregarding yoga as something to practice to this day.
It was years later however when I began to understand what was it that made me dislike it the most, and truth be told, it was nothing regarding yoga in itself, but the whole culture surrounding it: the talks about auras and chakras, about mantras and vibrations and all those concepts painted in an exotically orientalist light that so strongly attracts new-age “spiritual” westerners and, probably, gives it that “feminine and hippie” image that you speak of too.
If there is a chance in the future that I may be practicing yoga with a group of people again, that will be only if I ever find a place where it is practiced with a secular tone, with the same approach to the sport that you would see in someone practicing tennis, weighlifting or almost any other sport. And it is too my opinion as that yoga would get many more practicioners if it began adopting that image to the general public as well.
I really only do yoga as a form of exercise and a breathing method, and it has some nice effects for me.
I already supposed you did, judging from your post. The problem is that, at least where I live, you are forced to practice alone if you want to do yoga only as a form of exercise, because any place where you search for group practice you will inevitably what I describe, perhaps with one exception or two at most if you are lucky and living in a major city.