Yoga isn’t for women, nor is it for men. It’s not for golfers, tennis players, celebrities or professional football players. The 5,000-year old science of yoga, with its step-by-step processes and techniques, was not developed for the purpose of being modified, fragmented, labeled or used for competitive purposes. In fact, yoga is gender-neutral, timeless, non-competitive and meant for every “body” on the planet.

The practice of yoga, defined and detailed by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras, was designed to still the natural turbulence of the mind, as well as the restlessness of the body. Today, the sutras continue serving as a guide for modern-day yoga practitioners to arrive in their own time at an experience of non-duality and a deep realization that in our most basic form, we are all bodies of invisible energy and consciousness. Although many changes have occurred and innumerable individuals have re-interpreted the sutras, the father of yoga’s definition continues to hold true: “Yoga is the restraint of mental modifications.”

While nationally recognized figures in the field of yoga, such as former war veteran Eric Walrabenstein, founder of Yoga Pura, in Phoenix, Arizona, suggest shifting away from one of the mental modifications—that yoga is a physical exercise primarily for women—local Southwest Florida men are practicing and modeling the holistic physical, mental and emotional benefits of yoga that everyone can attain. In an attempt to open up the minds of their friends and family members that are hanging on the, “Should I or shouldn’t I,” fence, local men speak to Natural Awakenings about inviting more individuals onto the mat.

Cesar Rios teaches gentle yoga, vinyasa flow, power flow, yoga with props and Acro Yoga at Naples Yoga Center, in North Naples. Also a Thai yoga bodyworker, Rios has been involved in some form of movement for 30 years. He began practicing yoga in 2009 as a result of his chiropractor’s suggestion that it might help him to avoid surgery. “My doctor was right, ” says Rios, who was recently interviewed by a local private club that asked him to teach yoga for golf. Rios initially declined the opportunity, citing his desire not to participate in the further fragmenting of yoga.

“I know that soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, seniors, injured or physically challenged individuals may need specific attention, modifications of poses or particular assists with postures. However, golfers don’t need a special kind of yoga. In my opinion, when we compartmentalize yoga and remove its spiritual aspect, we are feeding the ego material for its mental modifications regarding what we need or want,” clarifies Rios, whose students are encouraged to drop their expectations for the practice. Minus anticipation, students are more open and receptive to experience through connection, breathing and movement, rather than intellectualizing a practice that is meant to be felt.

An off-and-on student of yoga for many years, Suneel Narra, a Naples resident, finds that yoga’s focus on feelings in his body, rather than his mind’s rationalizing, judging and obsessing, supports his recovery process. “I appreciate my yoga practice and its spiritual aspect, which has been integral to recovery. Yoga’s powerful tools for cultivating focus have given me a source for serenity and peace of mind,” says Narra, who moved to Naples to be close to the BKS Yoga Studio, in Naples where he could learn about a variety of yoga styles. His overall preference is Meredith Musick’s BKS hatha yoga class. “I attend twice a day and have experimented with Bikram, Iyengar and kundalini styles of yoga at the same studio.”

Narra attends 12-step meetings and estimates that he has participated in approximately 100 yoga classes in nearly three months. Vulnerable enough to admit a mistake, Narra assumed that kundalini yoga was an easy class for women. “Not so. It was one of the most physically challenging classes I’ve ever taken, and just as intense as ashtanga yoga,” he shares.

In 2002, when Kevin Piotrowicz looked at a photo of himself, he didn’t like what he saw. “I saw my bad posture and decided that yoga was the answer to improve it,” says the student of Iyengar yoga who practices at Health & Harmony Center, in Fort Myers.

Piotrowicz, a process engineer who lives in Fort Myers, first tried yoga at home using a DVD. He moved on to a group class at a local gym and noticed that what he really needed was individualized attention to help him gain the flexibility he had lost in his leg muscles due to many hours of water polo and bike riding during his high school and college years. In addition to better posture and increased flexibility, yoga practice also eliminated Piotrowicz’s knee pain.

Piotrowicz has often recommended yoga to his male friends. “I’ve never understood why they haven’t followed through,” he admits. “One guy went because a woman he was interested in was part of the class.”

Piotrowicz notices how yoga has changed his personal life and relationships. “I can now distinguish when my friends are projecting their issues onto me.  Because of yoga, I remain calm and detached enough to step back. I recognize that their stuff has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them. Yoga is the de-stressor that keeps me from reacting,” he says.

Fort Myers resident Tom Bauman has also studied yoga at Health & Harmony for seven years. The flight attendant for Delta Airlines notes that exercise was never a personal friend until he encountered B. K. S. Iyengar’s yoga. “Yoga is a way of life, an attitude that transcends fitness in so many ways. It’s a journey with many doors that keep opening,” he advises. “The more I learn, the more I want to learn. “

Bauman is especially grateful for the community experience of yoga and how it fosters interpersonal communication. “My fellow yoga students and I share a common purpose, which generates feelings of relaxation and comfort that allow us to reach out and forge friendships by sharing thoughts about our experiences.” Another thing Bauman likes about yoga is that it’s portable and goes with him everywhere. He also notes that it helps him perform better on a professional level and get more meaning out of his work.

Tom DeBoni’s lifetime interest in all things of the Eastern world led the Fort Myers resident and Vietnam veteran to take a yoga class in college, where he was a student of the physical sciences and engineering. He dropped out of the class because he felt the instruction lacked any methodology or a rational process that he could follow. “Without proper preparation, I was unable to do more difficult postures. I lost interest. In 2012, I took an Iyengar class at Health & Harmony and discovered that it had a method I could follow. This helped me understand why I did this before I did that,” says DeBoni, who found comfort in knowing that even though postures could be achieved through proper adaptation and physical props, such as wooden blocks or belts, any individual with mobility and flexibility limitations could still fully benefit.

The more flexible body on the yoga mat next to Joel Waltzer in class at BV Yoga, in Naples, is of no comparative interest. The dermatologist, who captains Dermatology Naples, is a certified certified yoga instructor. More interested in tuning into his body to deepen his practice than he is with his mat neighbor, Waltzer says, “I can be in my fullest expression of a modified posture, present to my breath and deeper into my practice than the flexible person beside me.”

A sports injury got Waltzer on the mat to increase his flexibility and range of motion. Now he doesn’t think of yoga in such terms. “My practice is based on whatever alignment and abilities I have now. I just get on the mat, breathe and focus,” says Waltzer. Due to his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis, Waltzer concedes this has been at times more challenging than his potent physical yoga practice that includes meditation and active self-inquiry as tools of transformation.

Waltzer, like yoga students and instructors, sees yoga as a metaphor for life. “We meet the struggles of our mind in poses. The mind says this isn’t comfortable; this is difficult. Our first instinct is to move out of the posture because the mind says you can’t hold this pose. When you remember to breathe, you get out of your head. A thought arises. You let it pass. In the next moment, you notice that you are holding the posture. This struggle shows us that we can breathe our way through difficult life situations, rather than run from them,” says Waltzer, who joined his wife to make lemonade out of lemons.

Their first fundraising activity, Jan Can for the Cancer Alliance of Naples, which was supported by the BV Yoga community, raised $30,000. The second, Yoga Can, which raised $60,000, was supported by three other yoga studios and the Naples Beach Hotel.

From BV Yoga, in Naples, to Kenya and Israel, Jim Mooney has practiced with hundreds of yoga students under his wife’s instruction. This successful businessman is also fully trained through BV Yoga and notes that it is common to see a fairly equal balance between men and women students in BV Power Yoga.

Mooney asserts that every open-minded male or female willing to learn can attain increased muscle strength, better balance and an improved cardiovascular system from yoga practice. “What they have to understand is that yoga is a practice, which means doing it again and again in order to become better at it. While men get that golf requires regular practice for improvement, they don’t view yoga the same way. Men are willing to play innumerable rounds of bad golf until they improve. They aren’t willing to practice yoga until they see improvement, because they think that the flexible person next to them is judging them. What they don’t realize is that this is the ego’s way of interfering, and that their mat neighbor is mindful of their own body and breath and not interested in anything beyond. No one expects an amateur yoga student to assume a perfect posture, just like no one expects an amateur golfer to score par,” he quips.

Gus Komninos, a Naples resident, teaches at BV yoga in his spare time. The full-time stockbroker’s first yoga encounter happened at the New York Sports Club, a gym near his Manhattan branch office. A runner and a weightlifter, Komninos admits that his first class was tough, and that he practiced for 10 years before telling his co-workers. “When I let my guard down, stopped telling the guys that I was working out at the gym and told them about my yoga practice, I was well received. Their response inspired me to take on teacher training.

“Yoga has been such a powerful force for change in my life that I tell anyone who has issues with anything from physical weight to parenting, to spousal relationship or love—take a yoga class. The far-reaching effects you will see are so grand that they are beyond your imagination,” enthuses Komninos.

Walrabenstein recommends that first-timers find a class that meets their expectations of targeted benefits. “Remember that yoga is supposed to serve you in enabling your best life possible. If for you that means a vigorous workout, go for it,” he advises. “Even the most physically oriented yoga styles can carry profound mental and spiritual benefits and can lead to a deeper, more rewarding practice over time.”

Yoga knows no barriers, limitations or gender. It reaches across the millennia to animate anyone that is open to receiving its profound message of self-knowledge and self-empowerment. Grab a mat and practice. The most obvious discovery will be that yoga is more influential off the mat than it is on—although it’s really great there, too.