Is yoga a women’s sport?
This is not sensational or anything new, but an observation at the studio (like others) is the very low attendance of men contra women. Even the men’s changing room is ¼ the size of the women’s and once a woman asked if she could use the men’s showers as there was a long line in the women’s and not a man was in sight – so why not use their facilities? So what is going on? Is yoga only for the flexible and thin woman? Or for the unmasculine man?
Sexual stigmatization of yoga is nothing new and everyone probably has a stereotype of what type of person practices yoga. However there are of course all types of men in the studio and even male teachers and it would be interesting to understand WHY these men go to yoga. Everyone can benefit from yoga and sometimes a man with a certain health status REALLY could improve their health with yoga, so what’s stopping them?
Molly and I want to investigate the reasons for why men do or do not practice yoga. A preliminary research question is:
What are the barriers and motivators for men to practice yoga?
To further investigate this we want to make qualitative interviews with a few males teachers, a female teacher and a male student from within Hot Yoga Hellerup. After the analysis of the interviews a survey will be created for all students and surveyed from other studios as well as Hot Yoga Hellerup. Hopefully this will give a clearer insight of what is going on and give insight to help a yoga business attract more men.