February 9, 2025 • 22 mins
This conversation explores the gender dynamics in yoga, focusing on why more women participate in yoga than men. The hosts discuss a research paper that examines the barriers and facilitators for male participation in yoga, highlighting the need for role models, encouragement, and the impact of societal gender norms. They also reflect on the importance of deconstructing these norms to create a more inclusive yoga community.
Takeaways
- Yoga is often perceived as a feminine activity by men.
- Men require encouragement from friends and health professionals to try yoga.
- Self-consciousness and fear of judgment deter men from participating in yoga.
- The marketing of yoga tends to target women, which may discourage men.
- Men are surprised by the physical challenges of yoga classes.
- Encouragement and community support are crucial for male participation in yoga.
- Gender perceptions play a significant role in men's reluctance to practice yoga.
- Communicating the benefits of yoga to men is essential but not sufficient.
- Deconstructing patriarchal norms can help increase male participation in yoga.
- The presence of male yoga teachers can influence men's participation in yoga.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Gender Disparities in Yoga
06:12 Understanding Barriers for Men in Yoga
11:44 Encouragement and Gender Perceptions
17:12 The Role of Marketing and Community in Yoga
22:09 Conclusion and Limitations of the Study
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi everybody, welcome to episode 74 of Yoga Research and Beyond.
We are talking about a paper that looks at why more women take yoga classes, why morewomen do yoga than men do, how do we get more men in yoga, and gender bias in research.
(00:23):
That'll come up too.
That's not what the paper is about, but we will end up talking about that a little bit.
I'm your co-host, Arianna, founder of Yoga Research and Beyond, yoga teacher, strengthtrainer in New York City, and co-founder of New York Stretch.
I'm Jules Mitchell and I live in Las Vegas and I teach yoga teachers, mostly yogabiomechanics, research literacy, stuff like that, anatomy.
(00:50):
And it's in the form of either continuing education or 300 hour yoga teacher training,mentoring programs, that kind of good stuff, learning, learning places.
Yes, so needed.
So this paper is, the title is Men, sorry, don't know why this is making me laugh already,sorry.
(01:13):
Men Need Role Models, Exploring the Facilitators and Barriers for Yoga Participation AmongMen.
It's from the American Journal of Men's Health.
It's by Jonathan Y.
Cagas and his colleagues from December of 2024.
and the research was done in Australia.
(01:33):
So the purpose of this paper, yoga is everywhere.
It's very popular, there's a lot of benefits, but more women tend to do it than men.
And so, you know, why is that?
And this paper explores the reason behind that.
They go into a little bit of, not a little bit, they define what yoga is for us.
How do they define it?
(01:56):
Well, they defined it as yoga is a holistic form of physical activity, including physical,mental, and sometimes spiritual components.
That's how they defined it.
And they talked a little bit about how its potential to promote health and well-being isgreat.
And therefore, it shouldn't only be women that have access to it or should be comfortabledoing it.
(02:17):
And men should be encouraged to do it more.
And they wanted to know what some of those challenges are.
And I'm bringing up the definition because, well, this is a research literacy podcast.
So there's just some fun things that come up in my world teaching that I want to sharewith you here.
And I had one of my students from the past send me a message when I posted this paper onsocial media and she was just not okay with the definition.
(02:45):
You know, she was like, that's not what yoga is, you know.
its position does exercise, yoga's other things.
And I was like, I understand, but that's not what the paper was looking at.
And she was like, well, then why are they saying it that way?
Why are they misleading?
Why aren't they saying we're studying American yoga?
And I was like, well, it's not even done in America, but okay.
(03:06):
You know, or why are we studying like, you know, the physical aspect of yoga?
Like she's really hung up on the wording.
And I had to kind of like,
talk her down a little bit.
And that's part of like the process of research literacy.
You have to like ask yourself, like, what are you getting hung up on and why?
Because that's not what the paper was studying.
(03:28):
The paper was reporting on this whole thing.
And therefore they had to give a definition to help the reader understand the parametersof the study.
It's helpful to know that they weren't talking to the men about attending meditationclasses.
They weren't talking to the men about studying scripture.
They were talking to the men about
classes that are the physical form.
(03:48):
so therefore it's helpful to have that working definition.
Just a few things that I think are worth discussing around critical thinking, some lessonsthat we can take from rhetoric that are important.
And I'm mentioning them because I'm going to be needing to take these lessons fromrhetoric as we go through this podcast, because my bias is going to show up very strong in
(04:09):
a minute.
So I'm going to highlight that here so I can call myself out and you as the listeners cancall me out in your mind when you hear it.
But some of the things that are worth doing some steps are when you like when you're like,why are they defining yoga like that?
You get kind of upset about it.
Like pause and ask yourself like why you're hearing that message.
(04:32):
Like why is this not setting sitting right with you?
You know, that's a first question.
And then after you've kind of sat back and asked yourself, why are you responding thisway?
Then the next kind of step is, can you hear like, or decipher the agenda in the language?
(04:54):
And that can go both ways.
That can be, can you hear or decipher a biased agenda?
Or can you just hear or decipher a descriptive agenda, which is what this is?
I don't think that sounded very biased on like,
you know, what yoga should be, because the point of the paper isn't to convince you whatyoga is.
The point of the paper is how can we get more men into this kind of yoga?
(05:14):
If the point of the paper was to prove or research never proves, but to try to convince uswhat yoga is, then that there might be a bias in that statement that you would need to
decipher.
So just deciphering what the purpose of the statement is a huge part of it.
And then the other part is, you need more context?
And I think in this situation, you don't really need more context for that statement.
(05:38):
In fact, the statement is the provider of the context, right?
It's like telling you, okay, we're looking at group classes that are facilitated atstudios and gyms, and they generally look like you roll out your mat and you do some sort
of physical movements.
And so that gives us the context for what we're about to dive into.
(05:58):
So anyway, those are some things that are worth
keeping in mind every time you read a paper, every time you are on social media, everytime you're listening to someone use research to make a claim, it's important, important
steps.
Okay, back to you, Arianna.
Nice.
So yeah, so the paper is looking at what they call the barriers that exist for why men arenot doing the yoga, and then how to get them to start, and then how to get them to stick
(06:26):
with it.
And they give some rates of the disproportionality of men versus women.
practicing yoga worldwide.
in the US and Australia anyway, so it's 8.3 % men versus 18.8 % women in the US and 2 %men of men and 10.9 % of women in Australia.
(06:55):
So the big difference there.
And so the methods, how did they do this research?
They had four focus groups.
Three with men, one of those focus groups was with women.
It consisted of a one and a half to two hour discussion.
They did some follow-up interviews with two male teachers and one male who missed thegroup discussions.
(07:17):
There were 15 participants total, 11 men up to like 28 years old, four women who had beenpracticing yoga for three to four years, and most
of them did yoga one to three times a week doing vinyasa or yin yoga or ashtanga.
And amongst all the groups, 82 % of them did other physical activities in the last sixmonths.
(07:43):
So fairly active, physically active people.
some interesting, anything you want to mention about the methods before I go into some?
maybe I'll mention that this is a great example of a qualitative research study instead ofquantitative.
A lot of the things we look at are quantitative where they're compiling data in the termof, sorry, where they're compiling data in the form of numbers.
(08:06):
And here we're just compiling data in the form of statements and thoughts.
So they're just getting general themes and general overviews and ideas.
from the free-form conversation that was happening, because there was a group.
So they just kind of let everybody chat and roll with it.
(08:28):
So worth mentioning.
Yeah, yeah.
And so from these focus groups, from these conversations, they noted that men tend toperceive it as a feminine activity, that it's too gentle, it's not competitive enough, and
that the marketing tends to target women also.
(08:48):
So it's not just that it's a feminine activity, but
marketing tends to target women.
There isn't enough male representation in yoga.
And these kinds of quote, mindful and gentle activities don't fit into their perceptionsof what masculinity is.
And some things that they noted.
(09:10):
So when do men try yoga?
It's when this is what kind of made me laugh.
It's like,
when they're encouraged.
I can just picture this whole conversation.
You you should do yoga and whatever, and their resistance to it.
But men are more likely to do it when friends or family or health professionals recommendit to them.
This also made me chuckle that they need persistent encouragement.
(09:34):
Persistent encouragement.
like is it, I mean, is it worth it?
I don't know.
More likely if it's positioned as supplemental fitness activity or if it's therapeutic,they might do it.
And so then, okay, so what happens when, men actually took these classes and tried it out?
(09:55):
It's like,
they suddenly felt self-conscious because they were like, oh, this is actually hard.
And they weren't good at it.
And they felt like they were being judged, like potentially being judged or, you yeah.
And so it was like, well, yes, we do.
(10:16):
Yeah.
I hope more women do.
Although, yeah, you one moment I was talking to
she, I forget what gym she said she goes to, but she said she sees a lot more womenlifting the weights where it used to be more men, so that made me happy.
So men didn't want to feel judged, but then they felt better.
So what happened afterwards?
(10:37):
I think they felt better physically, mentally, and then some of them felt they weresurprised to find, or maybe it was one person, one man who was...
surprised to find that there were so many different styles of yoga that it's you know youcan find something that will fit your your perception of what masculinity is if that's
what you want it to be.
(10:59):
So yeah I just I thought it was a nice flip that they thought it was going to be easy andtoo gentle and then they found that it was quite difficult.
and hard for them and then you know that then that became the reason they didn't want todo it.
(11:19):
So yeah, those were some of the findings.
Yeah, they basically put the findings into like three categories and you kind of saidthem, but I'll highlight them just for categorization purposes.
So the first one was encouragement, right?
So they were like, men need more encouragement to go to yoga.
And, you know, how can we do that?
Like what, type of encouragement would they need?
(11:40):
Was one, know, one of the questions that they were asking.
And so.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Well, well, I guess my question is, if, yoga is primarily like a woman's domain, do youknow what I mean?
The way that they've kind of explained it, more women teach yoga, more women do yoga, morewomen practice yoga.
like they kind of insinuated it was like on us to encourage them, you know, and I, I'm, Iwas a little bit like, why?
(12:07):
Like we're just here doing the yoga.
Why don't.
Why don't you encourage each other?
And of course there are one of, you know, one of the students, my mentoring program is ateacher and is a men's yoga teacher.
And there are, and of course I sent this paper and he was like, I'm so excited.
You know, but, but there's an uphill battle for him and his business because I'm going tosay patriarchal standards.
(12:31):
Like women are the arbiters of community.
And one of the great things that we love about yoga is the community that it provides.
I still have friends that I met in the yoga studio in my early twenties.
We're still a circle of friends.
We're friends through yoga.
We have, I have so many different circles of friends.
have all my international yoga friends.
(12:52):
I have my friends all over the country.
I have my friends in Las Vegas.
Like it was a huge part of community and
We are socialized to strengthen bonds through community.
And I think men are not socialized to do that.
And so it's not that we need to be, we all need to encourage and be more inviting andteach without chakras to be more inviting to them.
(13:18):
You know, it's like, maybe they should take it upon themselves to create community.
And they might naturally navigate.
toward things like yoga.
That was my first thought.
The second one was gender perceptions, right?
That was the sec.
So we had encouragement and gender perceptions.
(13:39):
You touched on all of that.
But again, I think if men would just do the work to deconstruct patriarchy, that would goaway.
I'm doing the work to deconstruct patriarchy.
And so therefore, I go to the gym.
You know what I mean?
Why do I have to change gender norms?
Why do we have to do it?
(14:01):
can't an individual take it upon themselves to realize that this is something that theywant and step outside of gender norms and get it done?
It came up again.
And then the third one was the benefits.
This one really got me the most.
Because it's like, are we not communicating the benefits to them?
(14:23):
And I think of that statistic where single women live longer than married women and menlive longer when they're married than when they're single, because women are always
encouraging men to go to the doctor and get all the benefits.
So again, why is it society?
I don't know that a patriarchal society will ever convince men.
(14:47):
that they should do things that benefit them, that require discomfort, self-motivation,you know what I mean?
Because historically, in the last hundred years, let's just say, a man gets married andthen his wife does all that for him.
And so he's led to a life of convenience.
(15:07):
And so I think if they did the work at the individual level,
and then found the benefits of yoga.
They might go to yoga without having to be nagged by the wife.
Like they even suggested in the paper, like, well, we asked women too, you cause theyinterviewed mostly men, but they interviewed women too, because women often have men in
(15:29):
their lives that they want to go to yoga.
Cause again, it's the woman's responsibility to have the man do certain things.
Men go to the gym.
Of course they go to the gym, but I guarantee you they don't.
they don't do it because of the spiritual benefits.
There's probably some real aesthetic and again, cultural and gender bias behind it all.
But so it's like, we don't only have to live in the way that we've been socialized.
(15:52):
It's okay for us to do the work and make decisions for our health and wellbeing, for thethings that we want and not follow gender norms.
Yeah.
And also just going out of our comfort zones, whether that's, you know, cause that's, youknow, that we get so much benefit about with benefit when we go outside of our comfort
(16:16):
zones.
Yeah.
That's where the growth happens.
So who cares if the, mentioned Lululemon ads.
Who cares if yoga is marketed to women?
What, why does that even a barrier?
and I think like what I, what got to me in, the paper was they didn't mention any of this.
was just like, it's unfortunate.
Yoga is marketed toward women.
And it was kind of insinuating, maybe we should mark change the way we market yoga orsomething.
(16:40):
You know, it was like, no, why don't we just deconstruct.
for ourselves and step into community and step in and then all that, then you what willhappen if everybody does that?
If we all start deconstructing patriarchy, guess what?
We won't be marketing yoga to women anymore.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, like it's not, it's not because of the marketing back to the cause and effect onethat we did the last time.
(17:02):
It's just the way we're all socialized.
We're socialized so strongly to take certain roles and do certain things and appear acertain way.
And we can change that at the individual level and then at the community level.
And I wish the paper had touched on that.
It sounded to me just really like, you guys, you really should cater to men a little bitmore, because they're really missing out on this yoga.
(17:30):
if you just don't be so girly, that's what it sounded like to me when I.
Yeah.
So no hate on the paper.
It was done really well.
I liked the methods.
I liked the message.
It's just because it was such a qualitative paper, I would have liked to see conversationslike we just had, more overarching societal implications.
(17:59):
Instead of, it's like, well, you just have to express the benefits more.
Be more clear to the men.
The benefit telling a man the benefits of yoga isn't going to get him to go deconstructingpatriarchy might.
You know what I mean?
Like, like, I trust me, I've dated a lot of men.
I've had a lot of long term relationships and they always come to yoga with me the firstmonth or two of dating and then they never come again and they know the benefits.
(18:26):
It's not enough to convince them.
Do you know it's like, and it's not my job to
It's not my job to, right?
It's their job to do that work.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That being said, could, you know, it'd be great to have more male yoga teachers tofacilitate that, you know.
(18:47):
Well, I have something to say about that.
I remember hearing this, gosh, maybe like 15 years ago.
I don't remember where it was.
was like at a conference or something.
There was a big discussion and somebody mentioned that there are male yoga teachers.
They're just usually the like authoritative yoga teachers.
(19:07):
You know what I mean?
That it's in the community again, because the community is the woman's domain, right?
We all have
we have many more women yoga teachers and they compared it to like cooking.
More women cook, but we have more male chefs, right?
So like more, because the chef has the more authority than the cook who's cooking everysingle meal for the entire family for their entire lives.
(19:29):
You know, that doesn't get any respect, but the chef gets respect.
Yes, chef.
Right.
And so it's very similar.
I see in yoga, like there are not a lot of male yoga teachers at your studios and at yourgyms.
But somehow we have a lot of male yoga educators in roles like I'm in, you know?
And so how, how, how was that so disproportionate to the amount of people that are doingyoga, taking yoga, teaching yoga?
(19:52):
That's another deconstructing patriarchy.
We're more likely to elevate, you know?
of how yoga came to the US was through all these male authorities that you're talkingabout and then Ashtanga you know was not a female practice when it in India was all young
adolescent teen boys so yeah.
(20:15):
And even, I mean, even just in our regular social world, you know, it's just, you know,we're talking about changing DEI.
And I saw a thing saying like, white men have been the DEI this whole time.
They've been the benefit, you know, like, they get, are disproportionately benefiting.
(20:35):
and you know, is it, if there's not as many male men in the yoga space in the yogacommunity, how are we elevating so many of them?
I wouldn't mind if we had a lot of men out, I, you know, I take yoga at my gym regularly,and I would say it's probably 20 % men on average.
(20:56):
Sometimes we'll get 30 or 40 in a class, but then another class, there'll be none.
So I would say it's about 20%.
You know, I'd love to see more.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.
Yeah, I love this conversation.
Yeah, back to you.
Yeah, but I love it.
(21:17):
It's all, this is what happens.
You read the papers and it spurs up responses.
So that's good.
it's important because then it helps us recognize gender bias and patriarchal standards inresearch.
And so if you're not recognizing it just in other studies that aren't about actuallygender bias and all of that, but you should be able to see it.
(21:42):
And the name of the podcast is Yoga Research and Beyond.
So we went beyond.
We definitely did.
Yeah.
Just to bring it back to the paper before we close out, this was a small sample size interms of some possible limitations.
And as Jules mentioned, this is qualitative research.
it's perceptions of people's perceptions and not hard data.
(22:05):
So it's not generalizable, still insightful.
and they were all white, so that has an impact as well, and it's a Western perspective.
So those are some more limitations on this paper.
Anything else you wanna add?
Cool.
Well, thank you everybody for joining.
(22:26):
Please subscribe and share with your fellow yoga teachers, and let's keep the conversationgoing.
about how we can use research, talk about research to inspire and inform our teaching.
See you next time.
Hi everybody, welcome to episode 74 of Yoga Research and Beyond.
We are talking about a paper that looks at why more women take yoga classes, why morewomen do yoga than men do, how do we get more men in yoga, and gender bias in research.
(00:23):
That'll come up too.
That's not what the paper is about, but we will end up talking about that a little bit.
I'm your co-host, Arianna, founder of Yoga Research and Beyond, yoga teacher, strengthtrainer in New York City, and co-founder of New York Stretch.
I'm Jules Mitchell and I live in Las Vegas and I teach yoga teachers, mostly yogabiomechanics, research literacy, stuff like that, anatomy.
(00:50):
And it's in the form of either continuing education or 300 hour yoga teacher training,mentoring programs, that kind of good stuff, learning, learning places.
Yes, so needed.
So this paper is, the title is Men, sorry, don't know why this is making me laugh already,sorry.
(01:13):
Men Need Role Models, Exploring the Facilitators and Barriers for Yoga Participation AmongMen.
It's from the American Journal of Men's Health.
It's by Jonathan Y.
Cagas and his colleagues from December of 2024.
and the research was done in Australia.
(01:33):
So the purpose of this paper, yoga is everywhere.
It's very popular, there's a lot of benefits, but more women tend to do it than men.
And so, you know, why is that?
And this paper explores the reason behind that.
They go into a little bit of, not a little bit, they define what yoga is for us.
How do they define it?
(01:56):
Well, they defined it as yoga is a holistic form of physical activity, including physical,mental, and sometimes spiritual components.
That's how they defined it.
And they talked a little bit about how its potential to promote health and well-being isgreat.
And therefore, it shouldn't only be women that have access to it or should be comfortabledoing it.
(02:17):
And men should be encouraged to do it more.
And they wanted to know what some of those challenges are.
And I'm bringing up the definition because, well, this is a research literacy podcast.
So there's just some fun things that come up in my world teaching that I want to sharewith you here.
And I had one of my students from the past send me a message when I posted this paper onsocial media and she was just not okay with the definition.
(02:45):
You know, she was like, that's not what yoga is, you know.
its position does exercise, yoga's other things.
And I was like, I understand, but that's not what the paper was looking at.
And she was like, well, then why are they saying it that way?
Why are they misleading?
Why aren't they saying we're studying American yoga?
And I was like, well, it's not even done in America, but okay.
(03:06):
You know, or why are we studying like, you know, the physical aspect of yoga?
Like she's really hung up on the wording.
And I had to kind of like,
talk her down a little bit.
And that's part of like the process of research literacy.
You have to like ask yourself, like, what are you getting hung up on and why?
Because that's not what the paper was studying.
(03:28):
The paper was reporting on this whole thing.
And therefore they had to give a definition to help the reader understand the parametersof the study.
It's helpful to know that they weren't talking to the men about attending meditationclasses.
They weren't talking to the men about studying scripture.
They were talking to the men about
classes that are the physical form.
(03:48):
so therefore it's helpful to have that working definition.
Just a few things that I think are worth discussing around critical thinking, some lessonsthat we can take from rhetoric that are important.
And I'm mentioning them because I'm going to be needing to take these lessons fromrhetoric as we go through this podcast, because my bias is going to show up very strong in
(04:09):
a minute.
So I'm going to highlight that here so I can call myself out and you as the listeners cancall me out in your mind when you hear it.
But some of the things that are worth doing some steps are when you like when you're like,why are they defining yoga like that?
You get kind of upset about it.
Like pause and ask yourself like why you're hearing that message.
(04:32):
Like why is this not setting sitting right with you?
You know, that's a first question.
And then after you've kind of sat back and asked yourself, why are you responding thisway?
Then the next kind of step is, can you hear like, or decipher the agenda in the language?
(04:54):
And that can go both ways.
That can be, can you hear or decipher a biased agenda?
Or can you just hear or decipher a descriptive agenda, which is what this is?
I don't think that sounded very biased on like,
you know, what yoga should be, because the point of the paper isn't to convince you whatyoga is.
The point of the paper is how can we get more men into this kind of yoga?
(05:14):
If the point of the paper was to prove or research never proves, but to try to convince uswhat yoga is, then that there might be a bias in that statement that you would need to
decipher.
So just deciphering what the purpose of the statement is a huge part of it.
And then the other part is, you need more context?
And I think in this situation, you don't really need more context for that statement.
(05:38):
In fact, the statement is the provider of the context, right?
It's like telling you, okay, we're looking at group classes that are facilitated atstudios and gyms, and they generally look like you roll out your mat and you do some sort
of physical movements.
And so that gives us the context for what we're about to dive into.
(05:58):
So anyway, those are some things that are worth
keeping in mind every time you read a paper, every time you are on social media, everytime you're listening to someone use research to make a claim, it's important, important
steps.
Okay, back to you, Arianna.
Nice.
So yeah, so the paper is looking at what they call the barriers that exist for why men arenot doing the yoga, and then how to get them to start, and then how to get them to stick
(06:26):
with it.
And they give some rates of the disproportionality of men versus women.
practicing yoga worldwide.
in the US and Australia anyway, so it's 8.3 % men versus 18.8 % women in the US and 2 %men of men and 10.9 % of women in Australia.
(06:55):
So the big difference there.
And so the methods, how did they do this research?
They had four focus groups.
Three with men, one of those focus groups was with women.
It consisted of a one and a half to two hour discussion.
They did some follow-up interviews with two male teachers and one male who missed thegroup discussions.
(07:17):
There were 15 participants total, 11 men up to like 28 years old, four women who had beenpracticing yoga for three to four years, and most
of them did yoga one to three times a week doing vinyasa or yin yoga or ashtanga.
And amongst all the groups, 82 % of them did other physical activities in the last sixmonths.
(07:43):
So fairly active, physically active people.
some interesting, anything you want to mention about the methods before I go into some?
maybe I'll mention that this is a great example of a qualitative research study instead ofquantitative.
A lot of the things we look at are quantitative where they're compiling data in the termof, sorry, where they're compiling data in the form of numbers.
(08:06):
And here we're just compiling data in the form of statements and thoughts.
So they're just getting general themes and general overviews and ideas.
from the free-form conversation that was happening, because there was a group.
So they just kind of let everybody chat and roll with it.
(08:28):
So worth mentioning.
Yeah, yeah.
And so from these focus groups, from these conversations, they noted that men tend toperceive it as a feminine activity, that it's too gentle, it's not competitive enough, and
that the marketing tends to target women also.
(08:48):
So it's not just that it's a feminine activity, but
marketing tends to target women.
There isn't enough male representation in yoga.
And these kinds of quote, mindful and gentle activities don't fit into their perceptionsof what masculinity is.
And some things that they noted.
(09:10):
So when do men try yoga?
It's when this is what kind of made me laugh.
It's like,
when they're encouraged.
I can just picture this whole conversation.
You you should do yoga and whatever, and their resistance to it.
But men are more likely to do it when friends or family or health professionals recommendit to them.
This also made me chuckle that they need persistent encouragement.
(09:34):
Persistent encouragement.
like is it, I mean, is it worth it?
I don't know.
More likely if it's positioned as supplemental fitness activity or if it's therapeutic,they might do it.
And so then, okay, so what happens when, men actually took these classes and tried it out?
(09:55):
It's like,
they suddenly felt self-conscious because they were like, oh, this is actually hard.
And they weren't good at it.
And they felt like they were being judged, like potentially being judged or, you yeah.
And so it was like, well, yes, we do.
(10:16):
Yeah.
I hope more women do.
Although, yeah, you one moment I was talking to
she, I forget what gym she said she goes to, but she said she sees a lot more womenlifting the weights where it used to be more men, so that made me happy.
So men didn't want to feel judged, but then they felt better.
So what happened afterwards?
(10:37):
I think they felt better physically, mentally, and then some of them felt they weresurprised to find, or maybe it was one person, one man who was...
surprised to find that there were so many different styles of yoga that it's you know youcan find something that will fit your your perception of what masculinity is if that's
what you want it to be.
(10:59):
So yeah I just I thought it was a nice flip that they thought it was going to be easy andtoo gentle and then they found that it was quite difficult.
and hard for them and then you know that then that became the reason they didn't want todo it.
(11:19):
So yeah, those were some of the findings.
Yeah, they basically put the findings into like three categories and you kind of saidthem, but I'll highlight them just for categorization purposes.
So the first one was encouragement, right?
So they were like, men need more encouragement to go to yoga.
And, you know, how can we do that?
Like what, type of encouragement would they need?
(11:40):
Was one, know, one of the questions that they were asking.
And so.
Sounds like a lot of work.
Well, well, I guess my question is, if, yoga is primarily like a woman's domain, do youknow what I mean?
The way that they've kind of explained it, more women teach yoga, more women do yoga, morewomen practice yoga.
like they kind of insinuated it was like on us to encourage them, you know, and I, I'm, Iwas a little bit like, why?
(12:07):
Like we're just here doing the yoga.
Why don't.
Why don't you encourage each other?
And of course there are one of, you know, one of the students, my mentoring program is ateacher and is a men's yoga teacher.
And there are, and of course I sent this paper and he was like, I'm so excited.
You know, but, but there's an uphill battle for him and his business because I'm going tosay patriarchal standards.
(12:31):
Like women are the arbiters of community.
And one of the great things that we love about yoga is the community that it provides.
I still have friends that I met in the yoga studio in my early twenties.
We're still a circle of friends.
We're friends through yoga.
We have, I have so many different circles of friends.
have all my international yoga friends.
(12:52):
I have my friends all over the country.
I have my friends in Las Vegas.
Like it was a huge part of community and
We are socialized to strengthen bonds through community.
And I think men are not socialized to do that.
And so it's not that we need to be, we all need to encourage and be more inviting andteach without chakras to be more inviting to them.
(13:18):
You know, it's like, maybe they should take it upon themselves to create community.
And they might naturally navigate.
toward things like yoga.
That was my first thought.
The second one was gender perceptions, right?
That was the sec.
So we had encouragement and gender perceptions.
(13:39):
You touched on all of that.
But again, I think if men would just do the work to deconstruct patriarchy, that would goaway.
I'm doing the work to deconstruct patriarchy.
And so therefore, I go to the gym.
You know what I mean?
Why do I have to change gender norms?
Why do we have to do it?
(14:01):
can't an individual take it upon themselves to realize that this is something that theywant and step outside of gender norms and get it done?
It came up again.
And then the third one was the benefits.
This one really got me the most.
Because it's like, are we not communicating the benefits to them?
(14:23):
And I think of that statistic where single women live longer than married women and menlive longer when they're married than when they're single, because women are always
encouraging men to go to the doctor and get all the benefits.
So again, why is it society?
I don't know that a patriarchal society will ever convince men.
(14:47):
that they should do things that benefit them, that require discomfort, self-motivation,you know what I mean?
Because historically, in the last hundred years, let's just say, a man gets married andthen his wife does all that for him.
And so he's led to a life of convenience.
(15:07):
And so I think if they did the work at the individual level,
and then found the benefits of yoga.
They might go to yoga without having to be nagged by the wife.
Like they even suggested in the paper, like, well, we asked women too, you cause theyinterviewed mostly men, but they interviewed women too, because women often have men in
(15:29):
their lives that they want to go to yoga.
Cause again, it's the woman's responsibility to have the man do certain things.
Men go to the gym.
Of course they go to the gym, but I guarantee you they don't.
they don't do it because of the spiritual benefits.
There's probably some real aesthetic and again, cultural and gender bias behind it all.
But so it's like, we don't only have to live in the way that we've been socialized.
(15:52):
It's okay for us to do the work and make decisions for our health and wellbeing, for thethings that we want and not follow gender norms.
Yeah.
And also just going out of our comfort zones, whether that's, you know, cause that's, youknow, that we get so much benefit about with benefit when we go outside of our comfort
(16:16):
zones.
Yeah.
That's where the growth happens.
So who cares if the, mentioned Lululemon ads.
Who cares if yoga is marketed to women?
What, why does that even a barrier?
and I think like what I, what got to me in, the paper was they didn't mention any of this.
was just like, it's unfortunate.
Yoga is marketed toward women.
And it was kind of insinuating, maybe we should mark change the way we market yoga orsomething.
(16:40):
You know, it was like, no, why don't we just deconstruct.
for ourselves and step into community and step in and then all that, then you what willhappen if everybody does that?
If we all start deconstructing patriarchy, guess what?
We won't be marketing yoga to women anymore.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, like it's not, it's not because of the marketing back to the cause and effect onethat we did the last time.
(17:02):
It's just the way we're all socialized.
We're socialized so strongly to take certain roles and do certain things and appear acertain way.
And we can change that at the individual level and then at the community level.
And I wish the paper had touched on that.
It sounded to me just really like, you guys, you really should cater to men a little bitmore, because they're really missing out on this yoga.
(17:30):
if you just don't be so girly, that's what it sounded like to me when I.
Yeah.
So no hate on the paper.
It was done really well.
I liked the methods.
I liked the message.
It's just because it was such a qualitative paper, I would have liked to see conversationslike we just had, more overarching societal implications.
(17:59):
Instead of, it's like, well, you just have to express the benefits more.
Be more clear to the men.
The benefit telling a man the benefits of yoga isn't going to get him to go deconstructingpatriarchy might.
You know what I mean?
Like, like, I trust me, I've dated a lot of men.
I've had a lot of long term relationships and they always come to yoga with me the firstmonth or two of dating and then they never come again and they know the benefits.
(18:26):
It's not enough to convince them.
Do you know it's like, and it's not my job to
It's not my job to, right?
It's their job to do that work.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That being said, could, you know, it'd be great to have more male yoga teachers tofacilitate that, you know.
(18:47):
Well, I have something to say about that.
I remember hearing this, gosh, maybe like 15 years ago.
I don't remember where it was.
was like at a conference or something.
There was a big discussion and somebody mentioned that there are male yoga teachers.
They're just usually the like authoritative yoga teachers.
(19:07):
You know what I mean?
That it's in the community again, because the community is the woman's domain, right?
We all have
we have many more women yoga teachers and they compared it to like cooking.
More women cook, but we have more male chefs, right?
So like more, because the chef has the more authority than the cook who's cooking everysingle meal for the entire family for their entire lives.
(19:29):
You know, that doesn't get any respect, but the chef gets respect.
Yes, chef.
Right.
And so it's very similar.
I see in yoga, like there are not a lot of male yoga teachers at your studios and at yourgyms.
But somehow we have a lot of male yoga educators in roles like I'm in, you know?
And so how, how, how was that so disproportionate to the amount of people that are doingyoga, taking yoga, teaching yoga?
(19:52):
That's another deconstructing patriarchy.
We're more likely to elevate, you know?
of how yoga came to the US was through all these male authorities that you're talkingabout and then Ashtanga you know was not a female practice when it in India was all young
adolescent teen boys so yeah.
(20:15):
And even, I mean, even just in our regular social world, you know, it's just, you know,we're talking about changing DEI.
And I saw a thing saying like, white men have been the DEI this whole time.
They've been the benefit, you know, like, they get, are disproportionately benefiting.
(20:35):
and you know, is it, if there's not as many male men in the yoga space in the yogacommunity, how are we elevating so many of them?
I wouldn't mind if we had a lot of men out, I, you know, I take yoga at my gym regularly,and I would say it's probably 20 % men on average.
(20:56):
Sometimes we'll get 30 or 40 in a class, but then another class, there'll be none.
So I would say it's about 20%.
You know, I'd love to see more.
Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.
Yeah, I love this conversation.
Yeah, back to you.
Yeah, but I love it.
(21:17):
It's all, this is what happens.
You read the papers and it spurs up responses.
So that's good.
it's important because then it helps us recognize gender bias and patriarchal standards inresearch.
And so if you're not recognizing it just in other studies that aren't about actuallygender bias and all of that, but you should be able to see it.
(21:42):
And the name of the podcast is Yoga Research and Beyond.
So we went beyond.
We definitely did.
Yeah.
Just to bring it back to the paper before we close out, this was a small sample size interms of some possible limitations.
And as Jules mentioned, this is qualitative research.
it's perceptions of people's perceptions and not hard data.
(22:05):
So it's not generalizable, still insightful.
and they were all white, so that has an impact as well, and it's a Western perspective.
So those are some more limitations on this paper.
Anything else you wanna add?
Cool.
Well, thank you everybody for joining.
(22:26):
Please subscribe and share with your fellow yoga teachers, and let's keep the conversationgoing.
about how we can use research, talk about research to inspire and inform our teaching.
See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.