Guys go yoga

By Paula Rath
Advertiser Staff Writer

Firefighter and bartender Randy Kong, shown here working out at Yoga Hawaii in Kaimuki, enjoys increased flexibility. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

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).