Although yoga has been brought to the West for several decades, some men continue to have inaccurate assumptions, such as gentleness or simply flexibility, about the practice. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay A Yoga in America study conducted in 2016 by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance found that, in five years, the number of people practicing yoga grew from 20.4 million to 36.7 million. However, the ratio of women to men was severely imbalanced at 72% to 28%, meaning that women continued to dominate the class. But it is interesting to note that in India, Hatha yoga, the physical form of yoga, was once an exclusive practice only for men and only began to gain prominence around the turn of the 20th century. Citizens, driven by nationalism, developed a fervor for strength building and various exercises. systems that blended Western and Indian disciplines in the name of "yoga" were developed with their teachers masquerading as gurus to avoid the authorities, they traveled the country to impart these fighting skills to revolutionaries. There were others who were more interested in reforming the physical culture of the country and one of them was Manick Rao. Rao had a student Guru Swami Kuvalayananda, an incredibly influential yogi at that time who became guru T. Krishnamacharya's teacher. Considered today the "father of modern yoga". Krishnamacharya himself would later raise four of the world's most influential yoga teachers of the 20th century: Iyengar yoga founder BKS Iyengar, Ashtanga yoga founder K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Dev, and TKV Desikachar. Until then, Hatha yoga had remained a male activity. but by combining some traditional asanas with Indian wrestling and Western gymnastics, Krishnamacharya created a new and powerful physical system. Designed for male Indian youth, it refused to accept female students and it was only after Eugenie Peterson's presentation that things began to change. Born to Russian nobility, Peterson and her parents fled to Berlin after the Russian Revolution of 1917 and became an actress and dancer. She renamed herself Indra Dev after moving to India in 1927 and found success as a rising star of Indian films. Through her husband, the Czechoslovakian diplomat of India, Jan Strakaty, she befriended the Maharaja of Mysore who would introduce and convince Krishnamacharya to take Indra Dev as his first Western student. Slowly but surely, Dev would become recognized as the first Western teacher in India, completing her first book on yoga and publishing it in the country. Her husband's passing led Dev to move to Hollywood, and in 1947 she became the first Krishnamacharya disciple to move across the continent and open a yoga school in her lineage. Dev has been able to adapt yoga breathing and relaxation techniques to aid her in the art of acting and this has brought her a loyal following from Hollywood's elite such as Greta Garbo, Jennifer Jones, Gloria Swanson, Robert Ryan and Yehudi Menuhin . Through Dev, skin care and cosmetics specialist Elizabeth Arden became such a fan of yoga that she began offering it as part of the health program at her spa, further promoting the practice and its benefits to housewives and businesswomen. America. From the 1950s to the 1970s, there would be two other figures who would significantly increase the popularity of yoga among women. Returning from studying yoga in India, Richard Hittleman began publishing books on the subject in the 1950s, selling millions of copies.