6 men share how yoga has affected their mental health

In honor of Mental Health Week, we asked 6 men how yoga and mindfulness have impacted their lives and mental health. Men's mental health has been pushed under the rug for too long, and these 6 learned the hard way that it takes a strong man to be soft and listen within.

Read their inspiring stories here:

My practice has evolved over the years, as has the way it has influenced my mental health. When I first started yoga, I initially used it to bury emotions. Every day was a path to desensitization and I used philosophy to punish myself and my behavior. While it controlled my emotional state, I couldn't feel anything. My motivation was driven by a rigorous daily practice and a very strict personal ethic. I was unhappy. I was still suicidal. I had fenced myself neatly with a cloak of mysticism and physical prowess that kept people out.

Through Forrest Yoga, I was encouraged to journal and explore these sensations and rules that I had chained myself with. Through this work I could clearly see that I was using yoga as punishment. I sought purification and freedom from death, playing the long game with little or no attention to my own well-being, health, or personal enjoyment. With this in mind, I set out to change my practice daily. This became a practice memorized, a practice motivated by my own needs to get excited by challenges and feel a full spectrum of emotions. Every time I wrote a journal I was able to write my story, and this ended up telling my story out loud. Every time it is written, every time it is spoken, it changes in light of new information and more time to explore the nuances. This has given me a lot of clarity about how I react and how I navigate the maelstrom of emotions while still feeling in control.

Mindfulness has greatly influenced my life by implementing yoga and martial arts from my early 20s. I had not long returned from serving as a Royal Marine in Afghanistan before joining the fire service in my early 20s. Like many others who have served, I had seen some things that were difficult to understand, and as men, there is a cultural tendency to lock trauma away in a box and convince ourselves that these experiences will never affect us again. The truth is that they always do it somehow. In the years that followed, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a number of practices that would really help unlock these boxes.

2 years after my first yoga asana class, I attended teacher training at Samahita Retreat in Thailand. After 3 weeks of contemplation, kriyas, pranayama, study and daily asana, I finally realized that I was storing stuff (sh*t stuff) and lots of it. I think this was the first day that I unlocked the box and began to reflect on previous experiences.

Personally, I have found great value in these practices (in their entirety) which have helped me realize more about our collective existence, the way we think and that “we are not our thoughts or actions”.

Acceptance, understanding and understanding have helped me over the years to calm this constant internal dialogue and build a positive relationship with everything in my past. Of course there are many other methods that can help, but for me these have changed my life for the better.

Over the last few years, I have been very fortunate to share these lessons with others who have had similar experiences, and for that I am very grateful.

Yoga is an accessible everyday practice to support your mental health. Taking time to care for your personal well-being has huge benefits when dealing with the everyday stresses of life. The beauty of the practice is knowing that nothing is expected and it is simply an opportunity to step away from the chaos and take time to slow down, calm down and prioritize.

Michael James Wong, founder of Boys of Yoga, and Just Breathe have developed a simple meditation app for everyday use to support your mental health and well-being in the real world.Available for both Apple and Android.

My yoga practice and subsequent exploration of my meditation practice have had a positive impact on my overall physical and mental well-being. They allow me to take a step back and gain perspective on the things going on in my life. As someone who loves to move, my physical yoga practice nourishes me and is one of my favorite ways to find distraction through focus and take time for myself. My meditation practice reminds me that this life is a gift to experimentally enjoy and find gratitude for all aspects, not just the overtly “positive,” and to accept that all things change. When things are challenging, I know they have won. "Don't be like this forever. I strive not to strive for the unsustainable ideal of happiness, but to return to a state of contentment through meditation so that I can appreciate happiness when it comes.

Yoga has impacted my mental health more than I ever thought possible. I would be the first to tell you that I started practicing purely for physical reasons, but the mental aspect hooked me and kept me coming back.
When I look back on my life before yoga, I feel like most of the time I was angry, stressed, and at war with myself because of ego and a preconceived idea of ​​masculinity.
Yoga gave me permission to soften, to be kind to myself. I realized that I can be calm and empathetic without being less of a man. This changed my whole attitude and approach to life for the better.

Many people in the West do yoga to stay physically fit and relieve stress, and I did too. However, my initial “addiction” to yoga poses is diminishing – my motivation has changed! What was a practice of physical stability has become an integration of important lessons on certain principles such as kindness, truthfulness and self-discipline. Lately, I have developed a sense of yoga community, purpose, and self-actualization in my teaching to maintain emotional health. I realized that “connection” is the opposite of “addiction,” which only created isolated patterns of behavior in me. I now strive to create a yoga community moreaccessibleandincluding, regardless of gender, age, current level of flexibility or fitness or relationship to spirituality - my new intention of reason: people and places, always with intention.