On a recent Saturday afternoon in New York City, four men—a management consultant, a nightclub owner, a professional gambler, and myself—got together for a little male bonding. But this time there would be no pitchers of beer, no buffalo wings, and no incessant talking about baseball (although Brom, the gambler, was wearing a Mets cap). Instead, we would practice a rather unlikely pastime for American males: yoga.

The evening before, when I told my friend Michael that I was taking an all- guys yoga class, he responded in typical locker-room fashion. “A men-only class?” he asked. “Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?”

Well, yes, for some. Since approximately 75 percent of this country’s 15 million yoga practitioners are women, every coed class represents a potential dating pool for bachelors like Michael. But there are plenty of other reasons why red-blooded males might want to give yoga a try—and why a men-only class just might be the best way to go about it.

For starters, men are no strangers to the stress and tension that yoga is so good at easing. But many men find the presence of women in a yoga class more intimidating than appealing.

“The idea of a men-only class for beginners makes a lot of sense,” says John Capouya, author of Real Men Do Yoga. “There’s more of a comfort level for men, who don’t want to be in a class with a bunch of toned women who are kicking their butts.”

The male ego is not the only thing being massaged in men-only classes; instructors also focus on the parts of men’s bodies that are often the least flexible. “Men tend to have greater muscle mass around the locomotive muscles like the quads, hamstrings, and glutes, while women have a greater fat composition,” says Craig Aaron, a chiropractor and personal trainer in Atlanta. Because muscle is much harder to stretch than fat, men often have a more difficult time than women with hip- and groin-opening poses or ham string- and lower-back stretchers. A male-only class can give these areas extra attention.

What’s more, the types of sports men do tend to make their bodies especially tight and sore. “Men accumulate a lot of tension when they play contact sports,” says Aaron, who with his wife, Jennifer coproduced a video called Extreme Yoga for the Warrior Athlete. “For them, yoga is like getting their muscles pressure-washed.”

Now that professional athletes have begun singing yoga’s praises, it’s starting to catch on with the masses. “There used to be this mystique where guys thought yoga was kind of girlie,” says Jim Vatcher, a former Major League baseball player who now teaches yoga at the Jaeger Sports Academy in Los Angeles. “Guys are realizing it can be a useful tool for them, too.”

Indeed, all over the country, classes with names like Stiff White Guys and Yoga for Golfers are appearing among the coed classes long taught at yoga centers. (The class I signed up for was held at New York’s trendsetting Laughing Lotus Yoga Center.) Each of the four of us who showed up for the workshop brought along a goodie bag of male concerns. Rick, a 49-year-old cabaret owner with a voice like a coffee grinder, said he needed to keep his “heterosexual mind from focusing on all those tight little butts in the air.”

Brom said he desperately needed a new stress reliever. “In my profession (gambling), I’m tempted to work 24 hours a day, so I’m really looking for a way to relax.” Paul, the consultant, had signed up for a different reason. Like me, he’d taken some basic yoga classes in the past, but he was turned off by their concentration on poses that come more easily to women. Something, we felt, was getting lost in translation. We were curious to see if a routine tailored to our less-flexible bodies could finally get us hooked on the practice.

Inside the sunny, high-ceilinged classroom, Edward Vilga, our instructor; kept the four of us tuned in for a strenuous 90 minutes, modifying a number of upper and lower body poses to suit our rigid, and in some cases bulky, frames. “A lot of guys think they need to push themselves to do this,” he said as we tried out a seated forward bend. “Just concentrate on bringing your chest forward, and wherever you are, that’s where you should be.”

Brom said he appreciated the class’s noncompetitive ethos, a rare thing in male athletic pursuits. “It would be stupid for people to make fun of or laugh at somebody else,” he said. “It’s antithetical to the whole yoga mind-set.”

Case in point: Of the four of us, only Rick was able to touch the soles of his feet during that seated forward bend. And when he did, he didn’t gloat—in fact, he seemed positively shocked by his accomplishment.

Having attended several classes in which I was surrounded by focused, Gumbylike women, I was relieved to be stretching alongside guys who seemed as clumsy as I am. When Vilga pointed out that Rick, Brom, Paul, and I were simultaneously doing the wrong pose during a warm-up Sun Salutation, we looked at each other and burst out laughing like old college buddies. “We like it better this way,” said Rick, speaking for the group.

Right around then, I realized that I liked yoga, in general, better this way. Here, the practice didn’t seem nearly so exotic or foreign. It felt more akin to an (admittedly sloppy) pickup basket ball game—but one that left me un characteristically relaxed and serene, a feeling that stayed with me throughout the evening and into the next day.

That’s not to say that practicing yoga alongside women can’t be fun, too. “I’m pro-coed myself,” says Capouya. “I like going with my wife, because it’s like we’re working out together but separately at the same time.”

Plus, as my friend Michael would undoubtedly point out, being the only man in an all-female class does have its benefits. “You get sensitive-guy points just for showing up,” Capouya says. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you ask one of the women for help. And hey: You get points for that too!”