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Yes lads, yoga is good for you in many more ways than just making your girlfriend bendy and a bit more chilled out or an opportunity to see girls in yoga pants.

Yoga has been practiced in India for thousands of years; it was invented and popularised by men and until relatively recently was exclusively practiced by men. It wasn’t until the 1930’s when Sri. T. Krishnamacharya (guru to B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, and T.K.V. Desikachar) took on the first female yoga student ever, Indra Devi….So where did the stigma we have in the west of yoga being ‘girly, ‘a bit hippy-ish’ or ‘a bit too gentle for guys’ come from? We will never really know, but it’s definitely an idea we really need to shake.

That being said, over the last couple of years, it’s been great to see the stigma slowly being broken down. There has been an increase in men coming to yoga classes, and with guys like Ryan Giggs putting his success in football down to a regular yoga practice, more and more men are ditching the gym for the yoga mat. And in my experience the macho pre-conceived notion of yoga being “gentle and easy” is usually out of the  window after the first sun salutation.

Will Foden, Pro Rugby Player and flanker for The Doncaster Knights says “I’ll admit that before I ever tried yoga I did have quite a typical, kinda ‘macho’ idea of what it was. But after my first class I was pleasantly surprised…it was pretty hard! Now, after some time, I’ve noticed that as well as obviously improving the flexibility and functioning of my body, it’s also made me think in a different way. In particular after enduring quite a serious injury, opening my mind to yoga – among a few other philosophies – really helped me to remain positive” (…as you may have noticed from the name, he is my brother, but I didn’t even have to pay him to say that!)

Here are five awesome benefits of yoga for blokes:

1. Yoga improves the health of the prostate

Yoga purifies the body and the blood and improves circulation, generally, for all practitioners. For men, poses such as Baddha Konnasana direct the flow of healthy blood to the prostate gland, improving its over all health and functioning and protecting against infection.

2. Yoga is a full body work-out

Yes! Yoga can be a doorway to waving goodbye to dingy gyms and endless comparisons between yourself and the man-mountain ex-boxer who’s on the machine next to you.

A dynamic yoga practice such as Ashtanga or Vinyasa flow, will engage and stretch all major muscle groups, build strength by using your own body as your weight training (especially when it comes to inversions and arm balances) and it will improve circulation and cardio vascular fitness and endurance through deep controlled breathing and the flow of sequences such as Surya Namaskar/Sun Salutations.

3. Yoga restores your energy levels

If you play a lot of sport, or just lead a very busy and stressful lifestyle, practicing yoga and meditation will help to restore the functioning of the body and mind. It’s no great secret that when we are stressed, the body and mind can’t function properly – as much as the ego tries to tell us that we are ‘fine’; repetitive stress, both physically and mentally, do take their toll on the body.

On a physical level, whether your repetitive stress is from playing sport or just sitting at a desk hunched over a computer a lot, over time repeatedly doing one action can cause RSI (repetitive stress injury) or severe damage to the muscles and joints. Yoga counter balances that by activating and limbering up all joints and muscles in many different directions. Also practices such as Restorative or Yin Yoga will help to bring much needed relaxation to those muscles, repairing the connective tissues of the body to a healthy state.

On a mental level, practicing yoga and meditation will calm, de-clutter the mind and help to reduce stress. Stress and worry cause tension in the body. It also is a complete waste of your energy! What asana (the physical practice of yoga) and meditation do is help to relax that tension, re-train the mind to think positively and to use our energy in a more productive way. (That all goes for the girls too!)

4. Yoga Improves flexibility

I’m not saying here that yoga doesn’t improve the flexibility of women too…because obviously it improves everyone’s flexibility. But it is a fact that men are naturally stiffer than women and also commonly suffer from tightness in the hips and shoulders.

Having tight muscles around the hips and shoulders, can lead to numerous back and spinal issues as well as increased risk of injury – particularly if you play sport or exercise a lot. Now I’m not saying that it’s absolutely essential that you should be able to put both legs behind your head, but having an increased range of movement and elasticity of the body will reduce the risk of such issues.

5. And when it comes to the bedroom…

OK, I’ve said it – yes practicing yoga can make you better in bed. If any of you have experienced your wife/girlfriend/partner after getting a little bit bendier through yoga, you may know what I’m talking about, and the same goes for you too. Applying the science and philosophy of yoga as well as your new-found flexibility to your sex life, along with a little practice, can improve your staying power and bring you more in sync with your partner.

So there you have it, see you in the studio!

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