One of yoga enthusiast Patrick Presley’s first moves was to pick up a book - Real Men Do Yoga: 21 Star Athletes Reveal Their Secrets to Strength, Flexibility and Peak Performance (HCI, 2003).

“It isn’t a chick thing,” author John Capouya assures the male reader. Going on with “no chanting, no incense, no gurus,” he and yoga trainer Michael Lechonczak point to the chiseled likes of professional football running back Eddie George.

“I doubt even he [Capouya] knows the extent of the influence” his book has had on men, Presley says.

From Florida, Capouya says he wrote the book 10 years ago with the idea that he had spotted a trend: more and more men discovering yoga.

“I thought I was catching a wave,” he says. “It turned out to be smaller than I thought, but more long-lived than I thought.”

Women still outnumber men doing yoga about 4-to-1, according to figures from Yoga Journal magazine.

But the book remains in print, and the author continues to hear thanks from guys like Presley. Most books flutter away like New Year’s resolutions. This one? - still holding its pose.

ActiveStyle, Pages 28 on 01/20/2014