More men are doing yoga

Pittsburgh men just aren’t doing 12-ounce curls with their Iron City beer to get their… Pittsburgh men just aren’t doing 12-ounce curls with their Iron City beer to get their exercise. No, they’re also finding their physical and mental exercise through a rising trend among men: yoga.

As the total number of Americans practicing yoga increases, so is the number of men.

Today, 3.5 million practitioners are yogis – male yoga students – according to John Capouya’s book, “Real Men Do Yoga.”

The trend has Pittsburgh men transcending stereotypes in order to achieve their ideal mind and body workout. Yoga’s popularity continues to increase with Generation X and college men in Pittsburgh.

“Yoga allows my body to move much more freely without the aches and pains of aging,” said Andrew Gzesh, a 15-year practitioner of yoga.

Gzesh, 35, is in the majority of Generation X men at Breathe Yoga Studio in the South Side, two miles from the chaos and congestion of Downtown.

He notes that his favorite asanas – Sanskrit for poses – target potential problem areas that men may face as they age.

“I like pigeon pose because it opens my hips, and triangle pose since it helps relieve tension in my back after a long day at work,” he said.

Although only 16 percent of students at Breathe are men, the number has increased every year since the studio opened three years ago. Men are finding out that yoga can build muscles.

Jody Schurman, 33, an architect, co-owner of Breathe and former gym rat, found that yoga was a better workout compared to weight training.

“Weight training doesn’t hit every muscle when you’re working out,” he said. “Yoga’s been better for me than weight training because I get more strength from yoga because it targets every muscle in my body.”

Yoga is now more accepted in society than it was 50 years ago, Schurman noted.

“Our generation is a lot more liberal in general,” he said.

A few minutes before his advanced yoga class began, Christophe Mihalcea, 38, donned a loose-fitting tank top, took off his shoes and socks and put on a pair of shorts. He grabbed a yoga mat from his book bag and placed it under his arm.

A high-tech computer researcher by day and a yogi by night, Mihalcea gives yoga credit for helping him gain control over his eating habits.

“I think the more extreme I do yoga, the cravings go away,” he said. “I don’t eat as much. I’ve lost 20 pounds in two years.”

But Schurman still enjoys the pleasures of food and drinks, albeit in smaller portions.

“I still drink beer and all that man stuff,” he said. “I’m not the picture of health. Yoga just helps with the cravings. I don’t eat as much.”

As much as yoga’s popularity among men increases, some men just follow the negative stereotypes that come with yoga.

“The biggest stereotype is that men think that if they’re not flexible, then they can’t do yoga,” said Kristi Rogers, co-owner of Breathe Yoga Studio. “But what they really need is a flexible mind to practice yoga.”

The flexible mind does not show up in Lisa Bernardo’s two afternoon yoga classes at Pitt. Only four of the 60 registered students are men.

Even though the national average has men making up 22 percent of all yoga practitioners, a class dominated by women has its advantages for men.

“Part of yoga is the philosophy of yoga – how you see yourself and everybody else,” Bernardo said. “That helps you appreciate that you’re in that man and that man is in you. And on some level, we’re communicating and being at one with each other.”

Yoga can be a man’s primary workout, or it could supplement another form of exercise like basketball.

Michael Malinkowski, a 22-year-old graduate student at Pitt, joined the beginner yoga class this semester. In a class of 23, he is one of the 11 yogis in the one-credit class. He found a workout that he will share with other men in the future.

“I thought yoga would be a good warm-up for my basketball class that I have immediately following yoga class,” he said. “I want to get a teaching job, and I’m thinking that having athletes practice yoga will help them greatly in sports.”

For more than 40 years, Americans have embraced yoga the way a yogi embraces the stillness of movement in savasana – Sanskrit for corpse pose.

In the last three years, yoga practitioners have increased 43 percent to 16.5 million, according to a survey conducted by “Yoga Journal” and the Harris Interactive Service Bureau.

That increase should continue if men could open their mind to accept yoga’s health benefits.

“The hardest thing is getting them to a class the first time,” Schurman said. “And putting up with macho attitudes is tough. But you have to make the decision and say, ‘This is what I have to do. I’ll try it and see what happens.'”