SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, September 27, 2005: Increasing numbers of Australia’s famously macho men are showing surprising metrosexual tendencies, ditching competitive exercise for the meditative calm of yoga. “We are getting the rugby players, the body builders, the gym junkie guys,” says yoga teacher Duncan Peak, a former parachute officer and first-grade rugby player. “He now comes in here and gets humbled by the first posture.” International Yoga Teachers’ Association president Moina Bower agrees men are now far more likely to be seen attempting downward dog poses on yoga mats than a few years ago. “Australian men generally perhaps in the past have looked at yoga as a bit sissy,” she says. Bower also believes the increase in men attending classes is part of a wider acceptance of the practice here, which has stretched as far as the Australian cricket team being accompanied by a yoga instructor during their 2004 tour of India.
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