Men and Yoga: A Q&A with Mark Whitwell

Tessa P: Hi Mark, thanks for joining me for this conversation on the topic of men and yoga. My classes are continually almost all women. What can I do to attract more men to yoga? I feel like if they don’t want to come, I can’t help that.

Mark Whitwell: That’s a great question. Yes, something very odd is going on in Western Yoga. Where are all the men? I often ask this in my classes, which can sometimes be 80 or 90% women, depending on the country.

Tessa: And why do you think that is?

Mark Whitwell: It’s a complex issue. Our choices are not being made in a free autonomous vacuum. The problem is, yoga has been popularised as “stretching for girls”, as one student in Germany told me.

We live in a world where gender norms are often tightly and unconsciously policed, so once an activity becomes associated with “women” or “men,” it tends to only attract one or the other. But there is more to it, as women’s activities have typically been looked down upon as lesser than men’s activities.

There is a general cultural scorn for things that women do. Shopping for clothes, for example, is seen as a shallow or vain activity, while shopping for a jetski or a lightup stereo is somehow more noble and important. Men “debate”, women “gossip” etc etc.

So anything that is perceived as a “women’s activity” then becomes culturally seen as less important, not quite dignified for “real men”. These ideas of masculinity are obviously silly, but they are strongly enforced.

And we could go deeper, look at the ancient association of the feminine with the material, the body, physical reality, and the masculine with some superior transcendent essence.

Dualistic philosophes and religions around the world have described the feminine as a snare, a veil, a seductress, the corruption of mortal flesh and women. These women-less men and their stupid ideas have destroyed our planet. We go more into these ideas in the book “God and Sex: Now We Get Both”.

And so think about how meditation culture has rejected the body, rejected asana by and large, rejected yoga or treated it as a lesser warm-up to “the main event”. We come from profoundly body-denying, life-denying, feminine-denying cultures.

Tessa P: But don’t you think, Mark, that modern yoga as practiced in many studios does deserve to be mocked? That it’s understandable when meditators reject it?

Mark Whitwell: Well, there is definitely a problem in what’s going on there, but not mocked, no. everyone there is probably a very sincere person just trying to feel better. You hear about Yoga and so what do you do? You head down to the local studio.

You don’t necessarily at that point have access to the whole big picture, of how yoga has become more like gymnastics, how the breath and devotional aspects were stripped away. Each person going to a sweaty vinyasa class or whatever can be honoured for their intention.

You’re right, its understandable that meditators reject it, but there is a streak of misogyny and anti-embodiment in that rejection. It is the same old duality of mind vs body. What we must understand is that yoga is for the mind. It helps the body too, because it reconnects the mind with reality, so the mind stops bullying the body.

Tessa P: Would you say that women are just more open to Yoga? That seems to be my experience.

Mark Whitwell: Well it is beautifully natural and human to be open to these natural tools. So another way of saying the question is, why are men closed to it?

There is resistance to “women’s activity”, as I mentioned, but it is also a trait of modern masculinity to be very left brain dominant, to be forced to shut down the emotional aspect of life and “harden up” at young ages. The very issue that Yoga would help with.

Tessa P: I’ve noticed that when men do come to class, many of them get very embarrassed of their relative lack of flexibility.

Mark Whitwell: Yes another trait of the male ego is competitiveness, so if we normalise Yoga as flexibility, as strength only without competition, then men wilol come along with those patterns and try to compete.

Most are taught very early on that it’s an utter humiliation and loss of manhood to be ‘beaten by a girl’. So how do we address this?

Tessa P: I hate to say this, but it seems like another trait of modern masculinity is that many men won’t take instruction from a female teacher. And even if a few will take “body stretching exercise”, they certainly wouldn’t take spiritual instruction or guidance.

Mark Whitwell: You know, there is an illusion out there that we live at some peak moment in history, better than any time before. But in the ancient Himalayas, we hear stories of great female gurus, for example those who taught some of the Mahasiddhas.

There was a cultural framework even among undoubtedly patriarchal cultures that could recognise female realizers. Men may have actually gone backwards in this regard. And we are saying in general, of course there are many exceptions.

Women are usually all too eager to accept instruction from male teachers, and often need to stop giving them authority. Or at the other extreme, fetishizing female teachers in biological essentialist cults. Men are usually uneasy but willing to engage with a male teacher, although it is not uncommon for Oedipal “kill the father” type feelings to come forward.

But too few men will really receive from a female teacher. Will really step out of their imagined hierarchies and imagined definitions of manhood and enter into a mutual relationship of caring and friendship, allow themselves to be seen.

Men need Yoga! The socialisation goes very deep, and it has made most male bodies rigid, numb, unfeeling, turning to addictions to block out the backlog of unfelt life.

The average man has immense difficulty being vulnerable, expressing love, affection, touch, playfulness. He has been deprived of his own feminine aspect. And so he tries to “get” it in unhealthy ways outside of himself, creating all kinds of inappropriate behaviour.

Men and women must receive through the crown and the frontal line of the body all the way to the base of the body. There must be a specific way to do this. It’s not just a good idea or wishful thinking.

There must be a practical means to deprogram the body from all unhelpful gender patterns. I’m not saying all of gender is a pattern; we can just do our yoga and see what falls away and what doesn’t.

Tessa P: So what makes the men who do come to Yoga special?

Mark Whitwell: Men who have realised their potential come to Yoga. Men who have seen that there must be a practical means because the social programming is very strong. It takes a lot of courage to honestly see the situation and see that help is required.

Often the men who come to Yoga have gone through great pain or challenges, been forced to see the repeating patterns in their life and take responsibility for their own patterning as the common denominator. They have got serious in life.

My greatest respect and love is for those men who come to Yoga via their partner, who love to learn Yoga from their partner, their guru. Many women are open to learn from their partner, but sadly very few men. It goes back to the hidden hierarchies and the way “women’s activities” are unconsciously seen as less worthwhile or important.

It is ridiculous, but many men have a stubborn refusal to learn things from their beloved, it makes them feel dominated. And to be fair, the inviation to learn is likely to be coming in the form of trying to change them. And no one likes that. If we think someone is trying to change us, we naturally feel rejected and hurt.

Tess P: So what is the best way for women to get men to yoga?

Mark Whitwell: First off, love them. You have to love someone just as they are before you can teach them anything, or bring them to any teaching. See them and love them, don’t try to change them or make them better. They are already the power of the cosmos, already life arising. Our yoga is our process of becoming capable of seeing that in ourselves and in another.

Secondly, be discerning. Invite them to a class where there is an actual Yoga going on, where there is not a whole gendered brand thing going on. You’re not going to get them into a pink glittery studio that is targeting some strange made-up stereotype of femininity.

Invite them to a class because you love it so much you want to share, not because you want the teacher to ‘sort them out’ or fix them. Invite them to learn with someone who will recognise them and their dignity as they are, not try and put them on a wild goose chase of self-improvement towards a future result. Invite them to a class with a teacher you trust to see and love them.

Tessa P: I guess as a woman, I feel more intuitively drawn to teaching to women, caring for women. It feels easier to relate to women. What do you say to that.

Mark Whitwell: Well it’s a beautiful impulse, a caring impulse. I just urge you to expand it to include the men as well. The very best thing you can do for women is to teach men yoga, because the incapacity for intimacy in men is what is causing a great amount of the suffering for women.

You could also ask yourself, do I feel intimidated by men? Do I have any of that gender programming that assumes they are superior? In a mixed class, whose opinion do I care about the most? Who am I looking to? As a teacher, do I give authority away to men?

Yoga is not a prize that we give to women for being better. It is a remedial activity for the hardness and nihilism of modernity, of materialism. It is just simply intimacy with your body and breath and with all others.

Your natural state. It is not a middle-class fun hobby, it is a profound ancient system for reconnecting with reality, an urgent matter. The more we correct these definitions of Yoga, the more appealing it will be to men.

I have to say, there is also a tendency for women to ‘hoard’ yoga. Women have suffered so much at the hands of men, they understandably want female-only spaces. But yoga is not here as a club for women. That can happen elsewhere if it is wished for. Men must be welcomed in Yoga because the greatest thing we can do for women is teach men Yoga.

All of the gendered complication is like a complicated chess game. We look up from the game and see oh, it’s not reality. Reality is prior to all of the complications. Our yoga is our embrace of that.

Tessa P: And so just to summarise, Mark, what would you say are the key steps teachers can take to attract more men to Yoga?

Mark Whitwell: Thank you Tessa. Well we cannot control the broader cultural context, but here are some things we could try:

• Men’s only yoga classes as a temporary solution for over-competitive or fragile men; or private sessions;

• If you are a studio owner with only female teachers, hiring a role model male teacher as a stop-gap to help connect with male students who suffer from lack of receptivity;

• Avoiding obviously gendered branding or décor;

• Meet people where they are at: you can offer a class to people in a context where they are already comfortable. Lower the barriers to entry.

• Take the focus off flexibility attainment completely, make it clear that the breath is the real ‘advanced’;

• Avoid feeding competition: avoid comparative remarks, compliments on physicality, or demonstrating beyond a bare minimum;

• We can mention great female gurus and give examples of healthy teacher student relationships of all genders, and we can facilitate female teachers with male students once we have their trust;

• Avoid glorifying male teachers who are just reinforcing macho stereotypes of strength without receptivity;

• Connect with tradition: use the example and images of great male yogis and teachers to inspire men and break any stereotypes of yoga being only for women;

• Understand and release any personal gendered trauma and anger, so we can receive each student as an individual, not a representative of their sex;

• Emphasise the benefits of Yoga to the actual problems men are dealing with, such as how to connect with partner/children, back pain, injuries, depression, social isolation, etc.

• And the number one: help men feel intimacy, through the specific technologes of yoga practice that Krishnamacharya brought through from the great tradition. With themselves, with others, with life. If you can do this, they will naturally want to come back.

Transcribed July 2021 from a conversation in Lesvos, June 2019.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

Mark Whitwell has been teaching yoga around the world for many decades, after first meeting his teachers Tirumali Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar in Chennai in 1973. Mark Whitwell is one of the few yoga teachers who has refused to commercialise the practice, never turning away anyone who cannot afford a training. The editor of and contributor to Desikachar’s classic book “The Heart of Yoga,” Mark Whitwell is the founder of the Heart of Yoga Foundation, which has sponsored yoga education for thousands of people who would otherwise not be able to access it.