Many people are aware of the benefits of yoga. Breathing exercises, meditation, and poses work together on your mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.
According to a recent survey, only 24% of men in India reported practicing yoga, versus 31% of Indian women. Yoga is deeply rooted in Indian culture, and it remains highly popular in the country. While precise statistics on the percentage of Indian men practicing yoga are limited, India is estimated to have approximately 150 million yoga practitioners, which represents a substantial portion of its population.
Globally, yoga tends to have a higher proportion of female practitioners, but its appeal among men in India is growing due to increased awareness of yoga's mental and physical health benefits
This is the smallest difference between men and women in a reported country (the biggest difference was in South Korea, where 44% of women and only 9% of men reported practicing yoga).
Why are men less likely to practice yoga?
Perhaps it’s because modern yoga is marketed towards women since they tend to be more flexible and encouraged to practice a “gentle” sport. Meanwhile, men are generally encouraged to bulk up rather than focus on stretches that can be considered more feminine.
5 Rules For Yoga For Men
Consistency is Key: Practice regularly for sustained results.
Pair Poses with Breathing: Deep breathing enhances the physical and mental benefits.
Listen to Your Body: Modify poses to suit your level.
Combine Practices: Integrate poses for strength, flexibility, and mindfulness in your routine.
Cool Down: Always end your session with relaxing poses to integrate the benefits.
It’s important that men today take care of themselves, and yoga is the perfect approach!
Here are 10 compelling reasons to do yoga for men with exercises!
Build Muscle
One of the main benefits of yoga for men is that it allows you to build, sculpt, and tone muscles.
Many believe yoga is about flexibility only. This is simply not true. Yoga is an amazing practice because it provides asanas for every system in the body: muscular, skeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, lymph… you name it, there is a yoga pose for it!
Yoga can help build strength by using your body weight as resistance.
- Plank Pose (Phalakasana): Strengthens the arms, shoulders, chest, and core.
- Chair Pose (Utkatasana): Works the thighs, calves, and core muscles.
- Boat Pose (Navasana): Builds core and hip flexor strength.
- Chaturanga Dandasana (Four-Limbed Staff Pose): Engages the arms, chest, and core.
- Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II): Strengthens the legs, shoulders, and arms.
Repetitive movements and yoga sequences done in a flow are extremely affecting all-over muscle builders.
“Asanas keep the body healthy and strong and in harmony with nature.” - B. K. S. Iyengar
Become More Flexible
Of course, yoga can help men become more flexible.
Men are more likely to experience stiffness, lack of flexibility, and less mobility than women due to biological and lifestyle reasons.
The more you do yoga, the more you’ll see the benefits of each sequence of poses. With practice, breath control, and determination, anything is possible. However, don’t forget that while yoga can make you more flexible, you don’t want to overdo it and attempt poses that could injure you, so use caution!
Stretching-focused yoga poses enhance flexibility over time.
- Downward Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana): Stretches the hamstrings, calves, and shoulders.
- Seated Forward Bend (Paschimottanasana): Lengthens the spine and stretches the hamstrings.
- Bound Angle Pose (Baddha Konasana): Opens the hips and groin.
- Cat-Cow Pose (Marjaryasana-Bitilasana): Promotes spinal flexibility.
- Pigeon Pose (Eka Pada Rajakapotasana): Deeply stretches the hip flexors and glutes.
Improve Your Concentration
It seems quite apparent that yoga will improve your physique, but yoga also helps your concentration.
By requiring you to focus on different parts of your body to sustain a pose, you develop the skill to control your mind and awareness.
Especially when balancing, your whole body needs to be working together. You’ll need to pay attention to areas where the integrity of the balance is weak so you can consciously strengthen them.
Yoga helps cultivate mindfulness and focus.
- Tree Pose (Vrikshasana): Enhances balance and mental focus.
- Eagle Pose (Garudasana): Requires concentration to maintain the twist and balance.
- Lotus Pose (Padmasana): A classic meditative pose for mental clarity.
- Dharana Techniques: Incorporating focused breathing or gazing points (Drishti).
Condition For Other Sports
While yoga is a sport in its own right, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do other sports, too. Yoga can also be an important part of your training alongside your main sport. The sport you’re doing will affect the yoga you should do as there are some that go incredibly well together.
If you are bulky and lift many weights, practice Balasana, Uttana Shishosana, Anjaneyasana, Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, Bhujangasana/Salamba Bhujangasana, Prasarita Padottanasana, Scorpion Twist, and Baddha Konasana.
If you’re a runner, try Trikonasana, Parsvottanasana, Vajrasana, Parighasana, Ardha Kapotasana/Rajakapotasana, Prasarita Padottanasana, and Ardha Hanumanasana.
For any sport you do, there is a series of asanas that can help you feel and perform better!
Exercise to build overall body strength:
- Virabhadrasana III: Builds strength and balance in the legs and core.
- Ardha Chandrasana: Enhances balance while opening the chest and hips.
- Dancer’s Pose (Natarajasana): Combines strength, flexibility, and balance.
Improve Your Balance
Are you familiar with the tree pose? It’s a great pose for working on your balance. Why not work on it with yoga? When paired with effective breath control, there are many poses that can improve your balance by having you hold them for a few breaths.
When you’re more balanced, you’re also less likely to experience accidents like bumping into things, dropping things, and misstepping in your daily life.
Balancing poses improve stability and proprioception.
- Warrior III (Virabhadrasana III): Builds strength and balance in the legs and core.
- Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana): Enhances balance while opening the chest and hips.
- Dancer’s Pose (Natarajasana): Combines strength, flexibility, and balance.
- Crow Pose (Bakasana): Develops arm and core balance.
Reduce Stress
“Yoga does not always cure stress. It neutralizes it through increasing awareness and by changing self-perception.” -Debasish Mridha
Yoga is a great way to relax thanks to meditation and breathing exercises (Pranayama). In Hatha yoga, you marry your breath and movements together, creating a rhythmic, moving meditation.
When you focus on the well-being of your body during yoga practice, you let everything else in the world fade away.
When you meditate in Savasana at the end of asana practice, you allow your mind to let all your thoughts quiet down.
Relaxation-focused yoga postures calm the nervous system.
- Child’s Pose (Balasana): Relaxes the back and mind.
- Corpse Pose (Savasana): The ultimate relaxation pose to release tension.
- Legs-Up-the-Wall Pose (Viparita Karani): Soothes the mind and promotes circulation.
- Cat-Cow Pose (Marjaryasana-Bitilasana): Synchronizing movement with breath reduces anxiety.
- Alternate Nostril Breathing (Nadi Shodhana): Balances the nervous system and induces calm.
Mental Fortitude
Parallel to stress reduction is increasing your mental strength.
Many yoga poses are quite challenging. If you practice yin yoga, especially, you'll find that you are required to sink deeply into stretches that might not feel all that great, but offer great benefits when held for 5-10 minutes.
To devote time to your yoga practice, work on focusing your mind on your practice, learn to make peace with discomfort, and dedicate time to meditation and pranayama all increase your mental strength.
It's similar to the mental fortitude experienced by athletes, trekkers, artists, and people who take ice baths. When you concentrate through discomfort, you allow yourself to become less sensitive to other things in life.
While you don't want to become desensitized, as in unable to have feelings or emotions, it brings a lot of mental peace to not be highly reactive to small problems.
When you encounter a difficult situation in life and you have a strong mental fortitude, you are more likely to be able to digest and handle the situation faster, rather than flounder in panic and fear.
Lose Weight
Since yoga is a physical activity, you’ll naturally begin to lose weight!
When you practice yoga you simultaneously build muscle and stimulate the heart and respiratory system (which burns more calories). More muscle in the body means you burn more calories at all times, not just during exercise.
Did you know that you breathe out calories every time you exhale? When you combine exercise and breathing, you burn even more!
Practice Pranayama techniques like Kapalabhati, Bhastrika, Dirga Pranayam, and Sama Vritti to increase your respiratory function, cardiovascular function, and therefore your calory-burning efficiency.
Prevent Injuries
Yoga is a great activity to help you become less prone to injury.
The strength portion of yoga asana combined with the stretching and mobility portion, combined with the mental portion all comes together to create a stronger, better-conditioned, more aware mind and body.
You’re less likely to make a wrong move, and if you do, you have the strength and conditioning to decrease the chances of injury!
“Yoga practice can make us more and more sensitive to subtler and subtler sensations in the body. Paying attention to and staying with finer and finer sensations within the body is one of the surest ways to steady the wandering mind.” ―
Decrease All-Over Pain
With yoga, you not only decrease the risk of new pain, but you can also even heal old injuries and improve how your whole body feels every day.
With careful and repeated practice, nerve, muscle, and joint injuries have been lessened and healed with yoga.
Each person’s injuries are unique and require specific care, but some healing poses include Balasana, Matsyasana, Cat-Cow (Marjaryasana & Bitilasana), Apanasana, Supta Matsyendrasana, Anjaneyasana & Ardha Hanumanasana flow, and Viparita Karani (legs-up-the-wall).
Furthermore, digestion can be improved with yoga practice! Certain poses help stimulate the digestive organs, and the production of bile and help get things moving while improving the quality of digestion.
You may find that frequency and quality of defecation improves. You might also find that you have less gas or less trapped gas. Where you may have had certain food sensitivities in the digestive system (like difficulty digesting raw veggies), you might experience improved digestion with regular yoga practice.
Poses that can help with digestion include all twists, Dhanurasana, Salabhasana, Pavanmuktasana, Sufi Grind (in Kundalini yoga), Mrigiasana, Malasana, and Balasana.
BONUS! 11 - Improved Libido
One of the most intense benefits of yoga is increased desire and performance.
After all, when has being stronger, more toned, more flexible, in less pain, and with better cardiac function and less mental distress ever been a hindrance in the bedroom?
Yoga increases energy and stamina. It also increases testosterone production, and some poses can stimulate the pudendal nerve, which is responsible for the health of the groin area.
Convinced of the benefits of yoga for men? Find a private yoga tutor today on Superprof! You can learn virtually or face-to-face with hundreds of teachers to choose from!
Yoga isn’t a practice exclusively for women. It comes with so many benefits that men should be able to reap, too!
Enjoyed this article? Leave a rating!
Loading...
