Author: Paula Rath
Publication: The Honolulu Advertiser
Date: June 1, 2004
URL: http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Jun/01/il/il01a.html
Tom Mc Tigue of Hawai'i Kai works
in the high-stress world of finance. For years he kept stress at bay by
open-ocean racing in his kayak. He even completed the treacherous Moloka'i-
to-O'ahu race 15 times.
Those activities came to an abrupt
halt when "I blew my heart out in the middle of a canoe race and had to
have open-heart surgery - four surgeries in 14 months. After all that the
only thing I could do was yoga, but it turned out to be the best thing
I could do for myself," he said.
Mc Tigue took up Ashtanga yoga (often
referred to as "power yoga") at Yoga Hawaii. After a few months, "My doctor
said, 'Whatever you're doing, it's working, so stay with it.' " And he
has.
Yoga isn't just for women anymore.
Today's yoga is a heart-pounding, muscle-testing sweatfest that will chase
lesser men back to their free weights.
A Harris poll conducted in 2003
for Yoga Journal reports that 23 percent of yoga enthusiasts are male,
many of them opting for the more extreme forms of the discipline, such
as power yoga, a set of flowing movements that test strength and conditioning.
Mc Tigue found that doing yoga not
only reduces stress but builds core strength. "It's also helped my overall
athletic abilities because of all the coordination of mind and body."
Firefighter and bartender Randy
Kong of 'Alewa Heights has run marathons and competed in triathlons for
years, as well as doing weightlifting, but he often sustained injuries.
About three years ago he began taking
Ashtanga yoga classes to work on flexibility. "It has helped a lot," he
said. "The benefits are in stretching and strengthening my back. I've learned
better posture and how to lift properly. It's also helped me to focus and
be more calm."
Kong said it's a vigorous 90-minute
workout. "I'm still working to improve. It's a challenge and there's no
way you'll ever master yoga."
When he first did yoga at work,
the other firefighters teased him. But not now. "They don't tease me anymore
'cause they can't do what I do," he said, laughing.
Paul Michael of Moanalua took up
Bikram (often called "hot" yoga because it is conducted in a heated room
that's between 95 and 105 degrees) about a year and a half ago.
He was hooked from the first class
he took on the North Shore. "It's done wonders," he said with sweaty enthusiasm
as he slugged down a couple of bottles of water after a Saturday workout.
"It has massively improved my surfing ability. I'm 53 and I'm surfing better
now than I was 30 years ago."
Michael refers to yoga as "90-minute
open-eye meditation." He's especially impressed with what yoga has done
for his flexibility, endurance and cardio fitness level: "I can get pounded
by a 20-foot wave and just relax."
After incurring injury in the gym
while lifting weights, Eric Yamaguchi of Hawai'i Kai turned to yoga. He
had heard that it would assist in rehabilitating his shoulder. Now, after
three years of yoga three times a week, his shoulder is 95 percent recovered
and he's hooked on Ashtanga at Yoga Hawaii.
In addition to the rehab benefits,
Yamaguchi appreciates the increased flexibility he has achieved. He has
gone back to lifting weights now and finds there is a big difference in
how he feels after yoga and how he feels exiting the gym: "After (yoga)
class I feel relaxed and energized at the same time. After going to the
gym I just feel exhausted."
The Arizona Republic contributed
to this report.
. . .
Power yoga, the om of the brave,
strong
Walk into almost any yoga studio.
There is lilting piano music. Mats. Blankets. Pillows.
It's all so, well, cushy. Something
Oprah would love.
So why is it that more men are becoming
involved in a discipline in which the chief goal is to allow you to get
in touch with yourself? After all, there are so many types of yoga that
will make you pay for your insolence.
The 5,000-year-old discipline is
transcending its image as an exercise designed to stretch your mind as
much as your hamstrings.
David Romanelli, who co-owns a yoga
business in Phoenix, says the yoga landscape has taken one giant leap toward
men.
"Guys really like classes like power
yoga because it's more about working muscles than a spiritual thing," he
says.
Yoga has attracted professional
athletes, including NFL running back Eddie George, NBA star Kevin Garnett
and golfer Tom Lehman.
Yoga is not for sissies, and Mike
Lange can attest to that. The 59-year-old is a big, strapping guy who does
bench presses.
Lange, 6-feet-6 and 230 pounds,
is capable of the most complicated yoga movements and can hold positions
most people would find impossible without ropes and Velcro. He finds yoga
as demanding as running up a mountainside, and embraces the practice for
its calming effect.
"You can leave everything outside
and just be inside yourself," says Lange, who started yoga two years ago
at his wife's insistence. "I like that it's not just physical, but mental
as well.
When we do the relaxation before
the poses, the stress goes away."
Ah yes, the relaxation period, where
you lie back on a mat and let the soft piano music float over you.
During a recent visit to A Desert
Song, a yoga studio in Phoenix, the room was quiet save for the muted tones
from the CD player. Fifteen women and three men lay silently on their mats,
too relaxed to care that the teacher was 10 minutes late. Or they had learned
to suppress the rage within.
The exercise started slowly, with
students, still in prone positions, taking deep breaths as the instructor
said, "Feel it in your back, the site of universal consciousness. Now reach
into the center, the core, the anchor of your being and feel your energy."
Whereas this would have had some
guys streaming for the exits as fast as if a Meg Ryan movie had just started,
the males of the yoga pack remained.
The participants then sat up, clasped
their hands in front of their chests and offered three solid chants. But
once the class rose to its feet, the exercise became serious. Over the
next 70 minutes, students stretched this, lifted that and contorted themselves
in ways that most people experience only in chiropractic exams.
Please, can we go back to the chants?
Or let us pause to reflect silently on the power within, just enough time
to put out the fire now laying waste to every muscle still capable of sending
"help me" signals to the brain.
Longtime yoga enthusiasts insist
it is about inner strength, about testing your own boundaries and finding
what is most comfortable to you. But yoga rookies, especially guy rookies,
often attempt moves way out of their league because they don't want to
look bad.
Lange says he had to adjust to the
fact that competition has nothing to do with it, going against the basics
of guy enlightenment.
Katherine Roberts teaches yoga for
golfers, a class in which men outnumber women 9-to-1.
Men feel comfortable in classes
where there is less "Oommm" and more "Oh man, this is tough," Roberts says.
Now that yoga is mainstream, guys have few problems assuming the lotus
position.
A look at the yoga landscape is
a testament to its popularity. You find low- cost yoga gear at Target,
Wal-Mart and Kmart. Books, DVDs and magazines are everywhere, from Barnes
& Noble to Best Buy. Last year, Nike introduced its yoga shoe (the
$55 Kyoto).
- Scott Craven, Arizona Republi
