Me on TV
For the first time in about a year, it happened again. Last Wednesday—although I had not exactly noticed myself—one of my long time students, Mara, leaned over to me as class at Berkeley Ironworks Climbing Gym was about to start and said, with surprise, “There are more men than women in class today!” Indeed, of the 16 lunchtime students in attendance, 9 were men. Here, our surprise is not that surprising when you consider that of the estimated 20 million Americans practicing yoga regularly in this country, the vast majority are women. In most of my classes, the ratio is around 10:1. And yet, in the history of yoga, this was not always so. In fact, prior to the 20th century, yoga was a man’s domain, although there were a few exceptions.So what happened as yoga became popular in the US in the 60s and 70s, and then mushroomed in the 90s? Why the big gender switch? What happened to all the men that could have, maybe should have, been jumping on the yoga bandwagon?This question has been one I have long pondered, and in June of this year, I met a man at the Sytar Yoga Therapy Conference in Austin, Texas with an equal curiosity about this phenomenon. He is Antonio Suasys, originally from Uruguay, South America, and now of Marin, California, just up the road about 30 minutes from where I live. As synchronicity would have it, we had both been teaching periodically for a monthly yoga class just for men that our mutual friend yoga teacher David Moreno started a few years back. The Men’s Kula takes place on the last Sunday morning of the month, at the early hour of 7:00 am. Despite the early time, it is well attended, and the men in class seem to be happy to have found an opportunity to practice and study with other male yogis. Oddly, Antonio and I had never met in person until Austin; but once introduced, we were quickly and deeply discussing many aspects of yoga (Antonio is passionate that way!), including the topic of men and yoga. This led to an invitation from Antonio to come up to Marin and be interviewed on his weekly cable yoga TV show Yogi Views. I am not going to give our insights on men and yoga away here, but I am going to encourage you to tune into tonight if you’d like to see the first broadcast of our conversation! It will also be shown again tomorrow, and will be archived on Antonio’s website in a day or so. I hope that you—our YFHA family—will help spread this post around so the show is viewed by as many men as possible. Here is a video clip of part of our conversation on another topic that is near and dear to my heart, yoga’s healing potential, which will give you a flavor of tonight’s conversation.More on that topic next Tuesday! And here are all the details of tonight’s broadcast:YogiViews - An MD's View of Yoga – Baxter Bell Part 1COMCAST Channel 26 - AT&T Channel 99 (Marin County)Tuesday November 11th at 8:30 pm PST, Repeat on Wednesday November 12th at 3:00 pmWatch the program live at cmcm.tv or right after it airs at yogiviews.com.Subscribe to YOGA FOR HEALTHY AGING by Email ° Follow Yoga for Healthy Aging on Facebook
