If you’ve noticed more dudes in your local yoga studio, you’re not imagining things. Since 2012, the number of men downward-dogging their way to tranquility has spiked from 6 million to 10 million, according to a 2016 study conducted by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance.
And all these self-styled brogis know regular practice has a benefit beyond flexibility: It’s a great way to pick up chicks.
“Guys that are into yoga tend to be introspective,” said New York City yoga instructor Todd Rengel.
“In broad strokes, that’s appealing to the type of woman who’s looking for a man who isn’t stagnant,” he said, explaining that men who practice yoga “want to know more about themselves and how they tick, versus your stereotypical frat boy who’s just into drinking and relatively shallow things.”
Rengel, 50, has been practicing yoga for more than 10 years and says his practice granted him benefits that he doesn’t think he would have found working out at a typical gym.
“It started very much on a physical level and then I found that I was thinking more clearly and I was calmer and that was really intriguing,” he told The Post.
Rengel is now engaged to his non-yogi girlfriend of several years.
Outside the studio, long after the mats have been rolled up and tucked away, brogis claim they have seen social benefits.
“I think it’s totally a turn-on,” said Joseph Alpern, 31, of what women think of the fact that he heads to yoga several times a week, after randomly enrolling in a college yoga class years ago. “It indicates that you’re interested in a healthy lifestyle and you’re interested in being fit.”
And whether you’re a once-in-a-while type or you start every day with a sun salutation, a man who hits the mat knows how to connect with women, according to dating expert Lindsay Chrisler.
“Their capacity for emotional intimacy goes up,” she said of male yogis. “Women sense that, even if they don’t know that that’s what they’re attracted to. They might be attracted to the job or the looks, but what they’re really attracted to is the man’s capacity to pay attention to her … in a way that makes them feel good,” she said.
Alpern, who is a musician, practices mostly hot yoga and never hides his hobby when dating.
“I put it out there because I do want the person I’m dating to be a healthy-lifestyle person with similar values to myself,” he said. “If they do yoga, great, and if not, then hopefully they do other things that make them healthy.”
Alpern also mentioned he’s never met a woman who lost interest upon hearing of his dedication to yoga. “It’s hard to see how that would be the case,” he said.
Yoga “helps with the way that I carry myself and that’s a huge thing that girls look [at because] it shows confidence,” Alpert said.
Which apparently comes as no shocker, as a yogi’s “confidence is what is attractive to women,” said Chrisler, who said women on the relationship hunt value “confidence way over washboard abs.”
Check out the greeting you’d get when entering Alpern’s favorite studio:
That’s not to say there aren’t some hard-bodied brogis out there. Just look at the array of classes available, from a traditional practice, to sweaty yoga in a 95-degree room, or classes set to hip-hop music.
“If you think about the more athletic forms of yoga that have come up in the past couple of years, they’re almost like sports conditioning,” said Natalia Petrzela, assistant professor of history at The New School and fitness columnist for the health-centric website Well + Good.
“Yoga has become more associated with fitness and stress relief, so doing yoga is not at odds with the notions of masculinity in the way that it did when it was primarily a spiritual practice.”
Though today’s classes are packed mostly with Lululemon-clad women, Petrzela noted that the ancient Indian practice of yoga actually excluded women, and only in the mid-20th century did yoga become a “US-specific phenomenon” and largely female endeavor.
Today, given the accessibility of yoga and the rise of corporate fitness, allowing Wall Street men to perfect their tree pose after work, the thought of men doing yoga has become mainstream.
Now, “yoga is associated with being strong and athletic as opposed to being spiritual and flexible, I think that that’s helped a lot,” Petrzela said.
Still, Petrzela, a fitness instructor herself, can see why some men would be hesitant to trade their dumbbells for a yoga mat.
“If you think about the way that we define a ‘yoga body’ in our culture, you think of a thin, flexible woman … and none of that is associated with being masculine,” she said. “But I think that our culture at large is really embracing the ideas about holistic well-being, and a greater appreciation of yoga.”
Despite stereotypes and assumed ideal conventions, curiosity during a Buddhist philosophy class in college got instructor Brian Nygard interested in the practice. He wanted to try meditating.
However, considering himself a “gym guy” at the time, with goals to gain muscle and bulk up, Nygard, 31, first felt frustrated and “overwhelmed” by the practice, mainly because he wasn’t flexible.
He didn’t fall for yoga until what he considers his turning point: He took a class in a larger setting where he felt “more anonymous,” less self-conscious, and more able to concentrate on his own goals and body.
Nygard has now been teaching various types of yoga classes in New York for seven years. He says yoga has had a positive effect on his relationships.
And when asked if women are generally into men who do yoga, Nygard, who typically dates women who do yoga, said with a chuckle, “I think it’s an attractive quality.”
Furthermore, “I think that yoga helps me to see the humanity in people,” he said.
And even though some yoga classes are targeted to athletes and their masculine ideals, Nygard also embraces the feminine characteristics of yoga, which he says encourage habits and traits that can improve relationships.
“I think when people hear about someone who teaches yoga, they say, ‘Oh, this person is conscious and aware and probably would make a good partner.’”
And if you’re a non-yogi who refuses to try a class with a romantic partner? That may well be a deal-breaker in the age of Om.
“If you’re really resistant to trying it, that means you don’t have a lot of flexibility” mentally, emotionally and undoubtedly physically, explained Chrisler, “and that won’t work for being with a woman.”
Dudes have nothing on these sexy yoga masters: