Somehow on its journey west, yoga shifted from a mostly male endeavor to a mostly female one. For as much as I hear about entire professional male athletic teams doing yoga to improve balance and strength, in ten years I’ve never been to a class in which women didn’t outnumber men by at least two to one.

In today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette , reporter Jack Kelly writes about what men are missing when they skip both yoga and pilates. “Men in general are less flexible than women. They’re just put together differently,” Dr. Betsy Blazek-O’Neill, Medical Director of the Integrated Medicine program at Allegheny General hospital told Kelly. She added that many of the exercises men do––like weightlifting––tighten up their backs, making them ripe for some deep stretching.

Author of Yoga for Regular Guys and pro wrestler Dallas Page is also quoted in the story, saying, “Guys, I’m not BSing when I say that in my entire life I’ve never experienced a more profound and gratifying workout than those I’ve had in yoga.”

What the article doesn’t address is why this discrepancy exists. Is it because most magazines about yoga are target women (and do little to challenge “feminine” stereotypes)? Is it because they’re afraid of “failing” at an exercise with such a feminine image? Or is it, possibly, that men are reluctant to partake in an activity which from its arrival in America in the 19th century has been dismissed, disdained, and derided by a scandal-mongering press and narrow-minded onlookers? Or is it the American male taboo against fitted clothing (oh, how we love to make fun of men in tights)?

Whatever the reason, Kelly does point to the incentives for being one of the only men in the room: meeting bendy, glowy women. One guy tells him he started Pilates because, “I thought the instructor was hot.” But he stayed because, he told Kelly, “this gives you a totally different workout.”