I'm writing in response to Yoga for men by Dina Zaman. I've practiced martial art for years and recently started practicing yoga together with my Shansou (Chinese kick boxing) training.

After a couple of months of yoga, I find that my stamina for my Shansou training has increased, my breathing has stabilised and that my core muscles (abdominal, oblique, back muscles) have increased in strength and endurance.

This, in turn, provides a stable and strong platforms to deliver my punches and kicks effectively.

In addition, yoga training has increased my awareness of my postures. This provides a great benefit to me, a software engineer, as I spend a lot of hours in front of a computer.

A lot of people with a desk job often suffer from lower back problems because of long hours of sitting with the wrong posture. Occasional stretching exercises will help but yoga exercises increases awareness of one's body while strengthening the spinal and abdominal muscles for support.

One of my yoga instructors is also a Pilate instructor and he occasionally throws in some Pilate moves in our yoga routines. Pilate exercises are used to train dancers and in fact, today some of Pilate exercise are being adapted by US football teams for their training.

Imagine six to seven-feet tall guys doing 'sissy' dance exercises to increase performance! But according to my instructor, some of the Pilate exercises originated from exercises created for boxers which were later adapted for Pilate routines.

So it is a full cycle going from macho moves to 'sissy' exercises and back to macho again. That to me, represents a vibrant cross-disciplinary transfer of techniques with full study of merit and bypassing all prejudices - something that lifts my spirit just by thinking about it.

I'm 32 going on 33. My weekly training now consists of six one-hour Shansou sessions and three to four one-hour yoga sessions. And I'm feeling better everyday.