Prologue:

“Yoga for Guys” was first offered at our Yoga Studio Bernal Yoga in San Francisco in 2003. Bernal Yoga operated from 2002 to 2020 when it closed due to the Covid pandemic.

Soon after we first opened Bernal Yoga, Savonn and I were trying to find a way to get more guys interested in taking yoga. We came up with the idea to offer a 3 week Yoga for Guys Series. We were just hoping for a small turnout, just enough to get a handful of guys to come try yoga. Instead, the series sold out. Mostly because the guys in the class were signed up by their significant others!

If you ever thought to yourself, gee I wonder what would happen if there ever was a class where only guys were there? You’re in luck! Keep reading below.

For the rest, TLDR.

Fellow Guys -Remember the moral of the story of the Dr Suess book Green Eggs and Ham. Be open to trying new things. You might be surprised by how much you enjoy something new, even if it seems strange at first.

Disclaimer: The following is meant for entertainment purposes. All characters and events in this story — even those based on real people— are fictional.* Some of this was written a long time ago so please take no offense to the word, description, or characterization of “Guys.” No Guys were harmed during this Series.

The first night of the series was mostly full of guys who did not sign themselves up. The yoga mats they had with them were tucked under their arms with names like Lisa L. written across the top. A sharpie drawn butterfly replacing the dot above the i in Lisa.
They were quiet, polite, and efficient in the single file line they so neatly lined up in as they waited to check in for class.

Nineteen guys were there. Only one was missing. That guy couldn’t make the first night because he tripped while camping and burned his hands when he caught himself just before falling into the campfire. A very guy-like injury that a lot of us identified with and nodded in understanding when he told us what happened on the second week when he joined.

I was a pretty new teacher having only been teaching for a year or so and it was to smaller groups and definitely NOT to all guys who were also new and mostly nervous about what was going to happen. At least we were all in the same boat.

To begin class I said “let’s all just sit on our yoga mats with our legs crossed and…
“What if you can’t bend your knees?!” The question was called out from somewhere in the corner of the room.
A few more choruses of “Me too!” came out.

“Well, sit with your legs straight, I guess, if you can.” I offered.

Naturally I said “this this is a good time for us to go around the room to introduce ourselves and say what other injuries you may have.”
Instead of the usual handful of people with injuries, it was basically everyone had them and all body parts were affected. I thought this being a guys class everyone would naturally pretend that they were fine and wouldn’t say they had any injuries. Not the other way around.

All this oversharing took a good 15 mins to get though and by the end, I realized I might be in big trouble. What I had planned on doing for a guys class was a going to be fun and challenging class where we let our natural athletic abilities master many poses in short order. What I realized is with all the injuries and lack of any yoga experience my fun and challenging class sequence I created was now useless.

To give myself some time to think about what I was going to do I said
“Great, let’s lie on our backs and close our eyes to start. Start by taking some deep breaths.”

Well I didn’t didn’t specify “relaxing” deep breaths because you can breathe deeply with stress-induced or endurance-focused deep breathing as this collective deep breathing was making everyone feel more anxious. After a few minutes with all the coughing, sighing, and shifting around uncomfortably on their backs, I’m surprised someone didn’t yell out. “What the hell is this yoga sh**?!”

I realized at this moment, I was violating a maxim of nature. Similarly to where animals won’t expose their stomachs because of vulnerability to their vital organs to predators- or dominance related factors – men don’t like to close their eyes and take deep breaths next to a bunch of other men in a yoga room where they have no idea what they’re doing or what’s going to come next!

So I knew I needed to get them off their backs. What I should have done was moved to some seated stretching but I panicked a little bit and had them come up to stand at the top of the mats.

It was the beginning of an “out of the frying pan into the fire” moment because the way the yoga studio at Bernal Yoga was setup (due to the room layout) was that there were 2 rows of mats facing in and towards one another. Standing at the top of their mats meant facing directly across from another man making eye contact. And it wasn’t just momentarily to drop the hockey puck on the opening face-off!

The guys stiffened as if they sensed a sharing circle of feelings and intention-setting about to begin, but I recovered a little bit here and had them move for the first time.

Just simply inhaling their arms up and exhaling back down. Simple, distracting, effective.

“Ok, let’s add on a little bit…Inhale your arms up… now EXHALE… touch your toes” I said.
They all sort of bent over but not really.

“What?! your toes…how the heck?!” someone shouted.
Everyone laughed.
“Sorry I meant ‘knees’, touch your knees. Inhale the arms up and exhale touch your knees.”

At least people laughed for the first time and the room lightened but we couldn’t do this forever. I thought about doing the children’s song “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” next but with only the “Head, Shoulders, and Knees” part but realized the chorus would be off.

So, 30 minutes in, halfway through class is when we finally moved to do our first real yoga pose. And yes of course, I made another bad decision and thought we might as well just get it over with and do Downward Facing Dog.

Among other things, Downward Facing Dog is a challenging pose to learn for new students because you’re partially upside down. You’re looking backwards, or down at your mat and you basically can’t see what’s going on in the room around you. Most other yoga poses you can at least see the teacher and other students and be able adjust your alignment correctly.

Not only that, but when you’re a little more challenged flexibility, injury, and experience- wise the pose can take on odd shapes like a human tunnel or ironically, like catching yourself before falling face-first into a campfire. There was just so much grunting, groaning, and straining. I remembering looking out over the room and just being at a loss for what was happening. In the pose, in this class, in my teaching ability….

Everyone came down from the pose and the room was hot, steamy, disoriented and a bit defeated. I was about to admit defeat myself. Summoning one last hail mary I desperately went back through all the mental files of my Yoga Teacher Training to find an answer.

“When you forget what you are going to do in your sequence, put everyone in child’s pose for 5 breaths and go look at your notes. They won’t even know!”

Buddy I thought to myself “you have no class sequence at this point and they can’t even do child’s pose.”

What else, I have about 3 more seconds…

“Simple Backbends can be very calming for a lot of people.”

Thats it! It will mean going onto our backs again but this is my only chance at saving this class.

“Ok, everybody let’s come back down on our back on our mats”
They looked like they might attack me if I made them do the relaxing on their back breathing thing again.

“Only this time we are going to do bridge pose. Bend your knees, place your feet on the mat hip distance apart and lift your hips and lower back off the floor and your chest up to your chin.”

It seemed to be working. It looked right, it sounded right and when everyone came out of the pose, there was finally a room full of tranquility. After just one that one pose, the class energy finally shifted.

Do you know the moment or moments in yoga where you feel that sense of calm, focus, presence, and contentment? And you just feel really connected to your body and the world at large. If you’ve done yoga enough times these moments have found you or you have found them.

This was one of those moments.

The longest savasana (final resting pose) ever came next where the competitive cauldron of masculine territorial fear and uncertainty at the beginning of the class was transformed to resemble a room full of peaceful lions basking next to each other in the summer sun at the end.

Epilogue:

The next 2 weeks went better than the first week. How could they not. Everyone came back every week and wanted to know when the next Guys series would be when we reached the end. There is no next Series I told them. You are now ready to leave and join the regular classes. You are now ready grasshoppers.

If you are a guy or you know a guy who is experiencing a lack of yoga in their life, please seek immediate assistance at www.sellwoodyoga.com

*Credit South Park Disclaimer