Every few weeks Kat seems to convince the editors to have her write another article about her hobby. But the pickings are getting a bit slim. 

It might be a time for Kat to do some research and write about something worth reading on the topic.

“The traditional yoga poses I teach – many of which haven’t changed for centuries – were designed for men.”

There is no evidence that yoga poses (asanas) go back centuries. We can assume people have exercised for centuries and there is evidence that people practised formal meditation whilst sitting, standing, lying down and walking. But there is no evidence to support the idea that Indians practised “yoga postures” for centuries. Also the notion that asanas in and of themselves constitute a spiritual practice is without scriptural support.

There is evidence that modern yoga practice can be dated back to 1930s Mysore, and that the postures then were designed with pre pubescent Brahmin boys in mind. Not men.
What we can also say is that the main source of the postures was the British Army training manual, which itself owed much to Swedish Ling Gymnastics. Which was founded in the early 1800s.
With this in mind Kat might like to swap her Sanskrit prayer at the beginning of class for the first verse of “God save the King.” It would be more authentic. 

An accurate history of modern yoga would be interesting. Whinging that men aren’t being criticised, isn’t.

A surprising consensus emerged among the men, that fruit was categorically feminine…a man might dare to eat a peach and remain secure in his masculinity; a banana, on the other hand, suggests entirely too much.

I usually enjoy Kat’s articles, but the first paragraph is just b0ll0cks of the highest order.

“Computer coding was the purview of female ‘calculators’, until it was overtaken in the Eighties by hungry hordes of Tech Bros”
This is utter nonsense. I get it than here in 2023 you can pretty much make up your history if it sounds good politically, but programming has always been an almost entirely masculine pursuit. To take one example the key building blocks for modern computing, the Unix operating system and the C language, were built by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie in the late 60s and early 70s.

I always thought women liked yoga because it was an excuse to dress up in clothes that would otherwise be considered age inappropriate. Plus there’s the whole female group activity aspects which replace the berry gathering of our distant female ancestors.
p.s. Anyone who has a heated debate about fruit obviously doesn’t have any real issues in their life.

Since when has fruit been a gender issue? I’ve always eaten loads of them without the urge to wear skirts.

Also strange how horse riding has gone from being a manly warrior skill to being a woman’s past time.

Now that men are rarely manly let alone warriors they seem to be losing many of those manly pastimes eg dancing, fighting, standing up for the oppressed etc

Wow. Some interesting discussions in your house. The food pyramid shows us what to eat. I don’t remember seeing any gender attached to that.

Yoga was always a masculine pursuit in India, but also practiced by women who took up a ” sadhvi” role of renouncing conjugal life. See for instance Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Devi Chaudhurani where the heroine is a lady escaping marauding Muslims to take up a life of arms and strict physical discipline through Yoga.( This was a novel loosely based on a true story).
So Yoga is not strictly either a masculine or feminine pursuit in Hindu ways. Rather it is connected with the celibate life of strict discipline and internal control over pleasurable senses.
What the 1960s counter culture has made of Yoga is something entirely different to Yogas deeply spiritual Hindu roots.
Some of the comments below are steeped in ignorant prejudice of both Hindu philosophy and practices.
As a believer in the Hindu way of life I request that loose dinner party chatter style bon- mots denigrating Yoga and it’s spiritual Hindu roots are not made.

Can’t Unherd find anything else to write about?!!!!

I was raised in the 1970s when loads of men, including my Dad, did yoga, and fruits and foods were not divided into masculine and feminine. There was no Lulu Lemon, no “namaste,” no Gwyneth, no nothing. It was just people in shorts and leotards on cheap mats doing stretches and poses. Men were secure enough in their masculinity that they did not obsess about every food, gesture, or piece of clothing and whether it was coded male or female. What a stunning relief it would be if I could go back to that time now.

I’m a retired US military and married and in excellent condition. I swim three days per week, walk 12 miles per week and do Yoga at home two days and in a morning class every Monday. I am the only male in my class. I enjoy the workout which is challenging. The women there are pretty much as the author describes. They mostly ignore me. There is much to be said about doing poses in a room full of attractive women wearing spandex!
BTW, I eat lots of fruit.

I’ll just leave here this information: Tom Hiddleston, one of the few actors who played in super-hero films without becoming an advertisement to steroids and injectable testosterone, (in Portugal, an actor who used to brag about exercizing almost died due to illegal injections of testosterone) used to practise yoga to achieve fluid movements.

Namaslay?
Probably no better word exists to encapsulate the upper middle class female obsession with yoga currently.

Men work out; women go to fitness classes. amiright?

I guess the author is a member of the chattering classes: People come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

…lovely.

Snore.

Just found this article. I guess I am too late for anyone to ready my comment but here goes.
I started practicing yoga in Miami in 2016. At most classes where I go, just under half are guys. And just for those who are wondering and want it spelled out, none of us are gay or even effeminate. In fact, in my experience yoga is a distinctly heterosexual world – unlike gyms, where gays make themselves so evident and often seem barely able to walk in a straight line because some of their muscles are so over-developed.
On the physical side, yoga builds strength, balance and flexibility. Yet yoga asana (just waiting for the giggling at that word) – the postures – are only one arm of what Patanjali about 2,000 years ago described as the “eight arms” of yoga, the others being: moral restraints (4 of these), positive observances (4 also), breathing techniques, withdrawing of the senses, focused concentration, meditative absorption, and bliss.
Yoga is heady, exciting stuff. At times it has produced for me extraordinary transcendental experiences. What is evident from the article as well as the commentators, however, is a complete disdain for the spiritual aspect of the practice, which is a sad reflection on the materialism that dominates Western culture.

If the ladies want to shimmy about in leggings that look, frankly, as if they were sprayed on, I personally have no objection whatsoever. They don’t just wear them in the yoga studio, they wear them everywhere, it seems.

I do find it odd that this is acceptable to a generation of women that made such a fuss about banning Page 3 girls in the newspaper, but I’m not complaining.