Even though yoga has been introduced to the West for several decades now, some men still have inaccurate assumptions, such as its gentleness or flexibility, regarding its practical. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayA 2016 Yoga in America study by Yoga Journal and Yoga Alliance found that in five years, the number of people practicing yoga increased from 20.4 million to 36.7 million. The female to male ratio was severely lopsided, however, from 72% to 28%, meaning that women still dominated the class. But it is interesting to note that in India, Hatha yoga, the physical form of yoga, was once a practice exclusive to men and only began to gain prominence in the early 20th century. Citizens, driven by nationalism, developed a fervor for muscle building and different exercises. Systems merging Western and Indian disciplines were developed in the name of "yoga", their teachers posing as gurus to evade the authorities, traveling the country passing on these combat skills to revolutionaries. Others 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 the time who became a teacher of Guru T. Krishnamacharya. Considered today as the “father of modern yoga”. Krishnamacharya himself would go on to nurture four of the 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 remained a male activity. but by combining certain traditional asanas with Indian wrestling and Western gymnastics, Krishnamacharya created a new and powerful physical system. Designed for Indian male youth, it refused to accept female students and it was only after an introduction to Eugenie Peterson that things began to change. Born into 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 an emerging star of Indian cinema. Through her husband, India's Czechoslovakian diplomat Jan Strakaty, she befriended the Maharaja of Mysore who would introduce and persuade 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 having it published in the country. The death of her husband would cause Dev to move to Hollywood and in 1947 she became the first disciple of Krishnamacharya to cross the continent and open a yoga school in his lineage. Dev was able to adapt yoga breathing and relaxation techniques to help him in his acting craft, earning him a loyal following of Hollywood elite such as Greta Garbo, Jennifer Jones, Gloria Swanson, Robert Ryan and Yehudi Menuhin. Thanks to Dev, skincare and cosmetics specialist Elizabeth Arden became such a fan of yoga that she began offering it as part of her spa's health program, further promoting the practice and its benefits among housewives and American women. From the 1950s to the 1970s, there were two other figures who significantly increased the popularity of yoga among women. Returning from studying yoga in India, Richard Hittleman began publishing books on the subject in the 1950s,.