Increasing numbers of Australia’s famously macho men are showing surprising metrosexual tendencies, ditching competitive exercise for the meditative calm of yoga.
”We are getting the rugby players, the body builders, the gym junkie guys,” says yoga teacher Duncan Peak, a former parachute officer and first-grade rugby player.
”He now comes in here and gets humbled by the first posture.”
International Yoga Teachers’ Association president Moina Bower agrees men are now far more likely to be seen attempting ”downward dog” poses on yoga mats than a few years ago.
”Australian men generally perhaps in the past have looked at yoga as a bit sissy,” she says.
The popularity of yoga among men and women has been growing steadily, in part due to the influence of celebrity practitioners such as Madonna and Sting and partly because it is now more widely recommended by doctors, she says.
Bower also believes the increase in men attending classes is part of a wider acceptance of the practice in Australia, which has stretched as far as the Australian cricket team being accompanied by a yoga instructor during their 2004 tour of India.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, yoga does not make it into the top four forms of exercise in this country — walking, swimming, aerobic and fitness workouts, and tennis.
But a 2002 survey found that about 3,6% of those who exercised regularly did some yoga — slightly more than those who played a game of Australian Rules football that year.
While women make up about 85% of yoga practitioners in Australia, Bower says more men are becoming involved as a way of handling the stress of their lives.
”Usually they come along, I think, because it releases stress for them and they don’t have to compete,” she says.
Peak, who runs classes at a gym close to Sydney’s famous Harbour Bridge, says about 30% to 40% of his students are male, drawn to the ”power yoga”, or vinyasa, brand his school uses.
Power yoga is practised as a flowing stream of poses done in a heated room to loosen tight muscles further and allow for deeper stretches.
Peak believes that power yoga is more accessible to men than more meditative versions because it allows them to practise poses without losing their masculinity.
Even so, some postures are specifically adapted to suit muscle-bound men.
”With big guys who have played rugby their whole lives, you don’t want him to crank himself into a lotus pose. We would get him to do a modified version of the posture and let him open up slowly,” Peak explains.
It’s an exercise approach in sharp contrast to the tension-filled competitive nature pounded into Australian males from the moment they can first pick up a cricket bat or football.
”Australian guys are brought up on aggression and competition,” says Peak. ”What we try to build up with them is getting away from competition or trying to beat the person next to you. That’s what the guys are really learning.”
Patrick Davis previously swam, worked out at a gym and raced yachts for exercise, but says he became ”absolutely hooked” on yoga after attending one of Peak’s classes six weeks ago.
The well-built, six-foot-three IT project manager now comes to one of Peak’s classes every second day.
”At work, I’ve got a million things running around in my head … coming here gives you 90 minutes of turning your brain off,” he says. ”In a class like this, there’s no competition and there’s no limits. It’s just you working with yourself. It’s pushing yourself without having to compete.” — Sapa-AFP