If you drop in on any yoga class, women will mostly fill up the room. A woman will likely teach the class and a woman most likely taught the teacher's training class. Men are consistently represented in growing numbers but they still don't compare to an overwhelming presence of women in the yoga industry.
Yoga offers many people a relaxing remedy for an over-stimulated, over-scheduled, multi-tasking life. Put simply, practicing yoga is a choice to improve one's health, said Barbara Ruzansky, founder and director of West Hartford Yoga.
Before coming to yoga over 25 years ago, Ruzansky suffered from eating disorders and depression for years. She was medicated, in therapy and trying all recommended medical treatments with no success. An introduction to macrobiotics eventually led to the discovery of yoga, Ruzansky said.
"Yoga provided me with tools to handle my roller coaster emotions," said Ruzansky. "I later got off medication. I was able to stop therapy. I was hooked"
Jen Stier, a recent graduate of the WHY teacher training program, practiced ballet for 10 years before trying her first yoga class. It took Stier a full week to recuperate from that May 2009 class, she said. Stier says she's faithfully practiced yoga every day since, and that choice changed her whole life.
"I was shocked at how hard it was," said Stier. "But I was more impacted by what the teacher was saying…about breathing and about life."
Stier described her personal challenges coping with an internal fight-flight response elicited in the everyday world. After dedicating herself to learning new yoga poses, she "learned to breathe through any pain and discomfort and just stay with it," she said. That lesson was something she could apply to her everyday life struggles too. "It taught me not to cut and run," Stier said."I'm now comfortable with uncertainty."
From Ruzansky's vantage at the helm of WHY, she finds many women have a basic desire for more personal, face-to-face connections. "There's nothing like coming together in the room. There's a vitality and oneness," said Ruzansky. "People are so deeply connected. Their hearts are wide open.""When I was younger, I lacked total confidence in my body," said Kristin Hotchkiss, a yoga teacher at several area studios, including the new West Hartford studio called Sacred Movement, located on Hotchkiss first tried yoga at her local parks and recreation class in 2003, and by 2004 she began an intensive 200-hour instructor training program. The decision was about self-exploration rather than a career path but the investment since paid off in many ways, including financial.
Hotchkiss had worked as a 410K Plan manager for a decade before a 2010 layoff. Since then, yoga has become a "full-time focus" and one of two part-time jobs that pay the bills, she said.
"With yoga, I really began to connect with my body and felt healthier. I was driven to try more challenging athletic events," said Hotchkiss, now a finisher in multiple full- and half-marathons, century bike rides, and triathlons. Hotchkiss recently launched a website www.yogafitwithkristin.com to help build her practice.
According to the latest "Yoga in America" study -released by Yoga Journal in 2008- about 72.2 percent of U.S. practitioners are women compared to 27.8 percent men. The poll surveyed 5,050 respondents, a statistically representative sample of the total U.S. population collected by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau on behalf of Yoga Journal. When asked if the numbers still made sense, Ruzansky agreed it's a fair representation, allowing for some upward growth of men that join class.Aside from a healthier and stronger body, some of the biggest changes inspired by yoga are ones that take place on the inside. Before yoga, Stier said she was too inhibited and self conscious, focusing on the opinions of others. Today she enjoys a strong self of herself and has a more confident focus on her own opinions and interactions with the world.
"It's liberating," said Stier. "Yoga allows people to shed layers and drop the façade that they usually walk around with every day."
By KATHLEEN SCHASSLER
Courtesy:West Hartford News
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