Why men are bending over backwards to take up yoga

The serious physical demands of yoga have long been underestimated by men. Photo / 123RF

Five years ago I was asked to go on a yoga retreat. My editors said they wanted to send a grizzled foreign correspondent, in order to compare the rigours of war zones and ashtanga. No one had ever called me grizzled before (or since). It was only once in situ that I realised I was the victim of a cruel joke, designed to inflict maximum humiliation on my spindly frame.

For yoga, it quickly became clear, is astonishingly hard work. Our silver-haired instructor, Simon, occasionally inquired if "we could see the point" of various excruciating exercises. I found I was rarely able to see anything, due to the tears of pain. On the other hand, I could clearly hear the sound of my vertebrae making various bids for freedom.

So it comes as no surprise to me that a new Harvard University study has revealed that yoga is as good for you as, you know, "proper exercise" - things like cycling that make you pour with sweat and you think (or hope) that you are about to die. You have to go to Harvard to discover this? When I underwent my yoga initiation, I, too, poured with sweat and thought I was about to die. No one gave me a PhD.

Still, the serious physical demands of yoga, even of the slow-paced hatha variety, have long been underestimated by one constituency: men. Yes, for decades the only men in Western yoga classes were the Eastern gurus themselves, sitting at the front, smiling serenely and preaching the benefits of the kind of flexibility that allows you to see the soles of your feet without the benefit of a mirror. Well-heeled women queued to hand over their cash. But not us chaps.

When I was pitched into the fray back in 2009, men made up less than a quarter of the devotees attending to Simon's every word, reflecting national averages. Some of these chaps, I suspected, were not there for the exercise. At least not in class. One had met his girlfriend on a luxury yoga retreat in Egypt, during which four others had coupled up. "There are men who have realised that most of the people on these retreats are women and an awful lot of those women are single," Simon told me.

Five years on, however, much has changed, including my fitness. The youthful hack of yesteryear has given way to an achey-backed, creaky-kneed, weak-ankled, distinctly middle-aged hack of today. There was only one thing for it! Back to yoga.

But this time, when I pushed through the gym door to join my fellow classmates, I was astonished to find that the room was filled with men. Lots of them. Many of them distinctly middle-aged. Some, undeniably, grizzled. What was going on? Was this finally a sign that we chaps have got in touch with our feminine side?

I doubt it. We are men. We will never change. Instead, the same Neanderthal impulse that has driven us all to climb on board ludicrously expensive carbon-fibre bikes with clip-on shoes, even if we're only peddling down to the shops, has trained its primordial fire on yoga. As we strive to hold our Bird of Paradise pose for longer than anyone else in class - particularly that young bloke in the front - we have discovered that this apparently peaceable pursuit has ample scope for fatuous, chest-beating competition.

Then there's the fact that we are physically less flexible than women - so by pushing ourselves, we are likely to incur a self-inflicted injury. Positive chap-nip. Nothing like a risk of competitive injury to get us men flocking in. No wonder we can't get enough. And no wonder a host of "dude-yoga" brands have popped up in the past couple of years. Soon they'll issue shin-pads with the yoga mats. And split the class into teams. And then someone will chuck in a ball...