It isn't something that I thought I would ever talk about, but having sheepishly tried it out at the start of the year, I'm pretty much hooked.
Let me explain. If you had asked me a year or 18 months ago I would have, of course, ruled out attending simply on the basis of... well, not for any good reasons, but for lots of deeply held prejudicial ones such as generally (let's face it) yoga is really only intended for hippy chicks and the more spiritually inclined and better dressed male (also known as the gay man, mostly).
Those seemed like quite adequate reasons, besides I have to be honest and tell you that I was kind of concerned by the idea that I might turn into one of those people who carried their yoga mats around with them everywhere they went (and I mean everywhere). Come on you have to agree with me on this one, that's worrying behaviour, right? I'm concerned also that it may be the start of a downward spiral that will lead to me liking Coldplay and telling everyone that they're a great band rather than the dull dinner-party talking point more suited to selling shiny motors that they actually are (OK, so I liked 'Yellow', but so did everyone else on the planet). I'm concerned as well that it might be the first step on the road to some place inhabited by hippy happy clappers -- otherwise known as personal hell ("OMG, you mean you're going to chant every day?").
I'd like to feel I'd be a better person if I could chant, but when it comes down to it, somehow going "om... om... om" and "shanti shanti shanti" just isn't me.
I digress, I'm kind of working my way around to my road to yoga and it really, like most good things, starts at lunch. When you get men in their 30s together, among other things that happen to be true, they like to talk about sporting injuries. This is as true for me as it is for anyone else. If you'll sit down opposite me, I'll happy give you a rundown of when and where. I'll give you a blow-by-blow account with full details. In the last five years or so my sporting activity was mostly related around Chinese Kick Boxing. When I started this, it was as much a surprise to me as anyone else. I didn't exactly fit the mould -- I owned no martial arts videos and did not have a collection of martial arts weapons (you will be pleased to hear that I still don't).
No, for me I was driven to it by the boredom of the gym. I simply could not, no matter how hard I tried, do circuits no matter how loud I turned up my Walkman.
Kickboxing has many advantages. You turn up and for two hours you get told what to do and you come out totally knackered and having worked out any issues you might have had. It's like the testosterone equivalent of "step" or "legs, bums and tums". The downside is, of course, it can lead to a litany of injuries (fractured rib/toe, torn hamstrings and fibrosis in the back), which is not as bad as it sounds because, as I've already explained, being a guy, I like to talk about these at great length.
Obviously, it's even better to talk about when these injuries have been picked up through... well, fighting in a "well I ducked and dived and then he punched me in the face like an express train and I went down like a girl*" kind of way.
I continue to digress. It was the back injury that led me to yoga. Having tried everything from osteopathy (which told me I had a fear of being in a small room with a man who looks like Joseph Mengele), to aromatherapy massages (not really me), to physiotherapy and Chinese acupuncture, someone suggested yoga and I swear it works.
Yoga's funny though, for men at least. The class I go to usually has one, maybe two guys and then 20 women, not to mention the fact that most yoga teachers are a certain kind of women, which brings me back to Susan.
Susan is writing a feature for a women's magazine about men and yoga. She wants to know why they go. She wants to interview me, but after my last appearance in the press this seems, oh what's the phrase? Unwise.
"Not after last time, no way. My reputation is shot through."
"Well, if you insist on calling people plus-sized, I'm really not surprised. Oh come on Gord, I need help."
"I can tell you why I think men go for background, but that's it."
"OK, let's hear your theory."
My theory is very simple and it has nothing to do with modern man getting in touch with his spiritual side. Because, while you could write that, it's just not even slightly true. What it really comes down to for most men (hippy guys who spent too much time chanting in India and will bore your socks off about ashrams if you let them, aside) is that men in their late 20 and early 30s go to yoga for one quite sad and obvious reason: all yoga teachers (and it must be, like, a rule) are incredibly attractive, coupled with the fact that every class has a ratio of about nine or 10 women for every guy.
I'd like to tell the discerning reader something else, you know, some deeper truth but, as so often in life, there isn't one. There is no other way to put it. I hate to come over like a panting teenager about this, but this is the route of many guys I know to yoga.
"That's your theory? Guys go to yoga because the teachers are hot and the male to female ratio is strongly in your favour?"
"Absolutely, if yoga classes were run by a load of hairy East German former Olympians I guarantee you could empty yoga classes permanently of men. It's a sad truth, but it's the truth. And it has terrible consequences."
"How can it have terrible consequences?"
"Well, the thing is when she says 'if you can manage it, put your right hand flat on the floor, rise your left over your ear and turn your head', rather than resisting the urge because it's, well, clearly insane and dangerous, being a guy you think I can do that, no problem'.**"
"Arrrgh, you mean the 'look, watch me, I'm an over-competitive male' thing?"
"That'll be it. My neck is still a bit twisted after last week's class."
"Anyway, feature-wise Gord, you know that our readers don't have boyfriends who lust after their yoga teachers. They're all too cool and their girlfriends are leggy beauties who do not condescend to smile at ordinary mortals."
"I'd always wondered about that."
"The boyfriends of our readers are spiritually enriched by yoga in the same way they are by Helmut Lang and Paul Smith. You know I'll have to write it like it is, don't you?"
I tell Susan that I found out something else rather interesting about yoga this week as well, when a replacement teacher took over from the vacationing Rebecca. She was replaced by the body-perfect and rather far too charming Nathan, who managed to send the 20 or so women in the class into something of what only be described as a tizzy, with comments like "look at you", "Oh, hasn't he got nice eyes", "Oh I really love your teaching style". It was flagrant, I tell you, flagrant.
"Suze, they were cooing, shouting out comments it was like... well, I'm not sure what it was like, but it wasn't yoga."
"You mean that they acted like a bunch of blokes?"
"OMG, you know I think that might be it."
"Well, there's a surprise."
* On the use of the word 'girl' here I (of course) want to make it clear that I am employing it in a gender neutral sense denoting anybody (male or female) who is generally a bit crap at stuff and runs in a manner amusing to others.
** Except if it involves the hips. I have absolutely zero flexibility in this area of the body, which deeply saddens me as it means I am unable to impress my yoga teacher with dumb arse attempts to push my body too far.
The Demographic Shift is a regular column on Brand Republic as Gordon MacMillan charts his own demographic timebomb.
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