What has its roots in in the personal transformations of its team members, the #metoo movement, the rash of school shootings, and research on suicide?
The innovation from Eastern Oregon University known as Kula Dudes.
“Research indicates that suicide is the 7th leading cause of death for men and that 25 percent of the entire population of men in the U.S. have zero close friends in which to confide,” says Kula Dudes faculty team member Spencer Harber.
Those kinds of uncomfortable statistics are what Harber and his team mates are looking to combat—through yoga.
Harber says that while many people think of yoga as a kind of physical exercise, it actually goes much deeper, stretching into spirituality, ethics, and other planes of personal transformation. But many men aren’t unrolling their yoga mats.
A 2016 Yoga in America study found that 28 percent of yoga practitioners are male, and while that number was up from 17.8 percent in 2012, Kula Dudes would like to see it even higher.
Harber and Michael Herbst, a health and wellness student at EOU, have developed a curriculum that incorporates positive psychology along with physical “lab activities” that bring greater awareness to how humans hold behaviors in the body.
Look for their mobile yoga studio in Klamath Falls next Friday, including a yoga starter pack for men.
From the Kula Dudes: “We will be doing yoga and meditation work at our InventOR booth and it will be open to all that wish to participate!"