We have postponed the start date of this course while we collect more students. Sign up now!
It's time for the male minority in yoga classes to have a place to call their own, at least for a time and as the mysteries of yoga are first encountered.
It can be discouraging being surrounded by the flexible sex when introduced to yoga. There is a misconception that it's all about flexibility, and male beginners can often feel comparatively like a heavy block of stone. In time, you'll realize that your upper body strength and overall stability are assets, and that you can often feel the lines of force and action in a pose more easily when you don't simply sag into it.
Men are often more cut off from their bodily experience than women. They have been conditioned to keep playing and working through pain, to be impassive and that a real man doesn't feel and doesn't react. Fluid movement has been categorized as ‘female' in our culture and men are limited by conditioned conceptions of maleness. In fact, as recently as the 70′s Toller Cranston took the figure skating world by storm and created controversy simply by raising his arms over his head, which was considered effeminate at the time!
Yoga is terrific cross-training for all sports. For example, running and cycling aren't particularly strengthening for the core, and cycling particularly shortens the all-important psoas muscle between legs and torso. Yoga provides so-called counter poses and counter stretches for what we habitually do in sport, and in life. Yoga makes the spine more limber and can help your golf swing immensely.
Stretching can prevent injuries in strenuous and body contact sport because the joints can safely undergo a greater range of movement.
If you want to get a few more years of active life out of your middle-aged body, yoga can help. It counteracts the effects of aging, from the depradations of gravity to the hardening, drying and shrinking of tissues. Yoga improves overall circulation and strengthens the heart.
Finally, yoga can help you with your mental game in sports and in life. Learn to be more efficient physically, and less stressed both physically and mentally. The self-control developed in yoga has a myriad applications outside the yoga studio.
Please, come and join Zina Richard for this very special course. If there is sufficient interest, a regular men's yoga class may be created.
LOCATION: Santosha Westboro
DATE: 5 Friday evenings, START DATE TBA (we are collecting names)
TIME: 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
COST: $75 + HST