Our mates laugh at us, and we pull their legs over the daftest things so will you get laughed at for doing yoga? Well if we're going to be perfectly honest, the answer is probably going to be yes! You are guaranteed to hear the following comments:

• Yoga is for girls
• You're only doing it to sit in a room full of ladies in leotards
• Have you learned yogic flying yet?

So a better question might be "Is their laughter justified?" With renowned 'tough guys' and even premiership footballers turning to yoga, the answer to that one is a resounding NO!

Like him or loathe him there's no doubt that Bear Grylls is tough. He was the youngest person to climb Mt. Everest, but aged 21, he fractured 3 of his verterbrae in a parachute accident. On his website at www.beargrylls.com he writes :

"I now practise yoga most days as a way of keeping my back strong for my life and I feel this is the key to what I do day in and day out. Sometimes it takes a knock in life to give us the drive to get up and start pursuing those dreams that beforehand are often just fantasies."

Yoga is also being employed by football clubs in the english Premier League. Manchester City midfielder Michael Johnson has recently turned to yoga in a bid to overcome his recent pelvic problems. More details are given on the Premier League website.

These 2 modern examples of men using yoga to improve their health reflect an age old aspect of yoga. Yoga has been practiced in various forms around the world for thousands of years, but most famously in India. In India, yoga has been the exclusive domain of men and it is only very recently in the last 50 years or so that yoga has become popular with women in the west.

This increase in popularity amongst 'the girls' is due in part because of the dance studio style of teaching yoga. For some reason us chaps feel less comfortable in a bright studio, surrounded by mirrors as we sweat and grunt away to music, so we have missed out on this emerging way of keeping fit, improving health, maximizing muscular potential and chilling out. Not to worry however, as the group Yoga4Fellas show us how we can even practice yoga down the pub or at the footy!

So yes, our mates might have a dig when we start yoga, but after a few months, when they see us losing weight, suffering less twinges during 5-a-side or see how less stressed we are, the laugh will be on them!

More articles on yoga for men are at askmen.com and the Yoga Journal.