AIBU to be thinking STFU with your breathing!

[ThoseAwfulCurtains]

We have a lovely, quiet yoga class in a very small studio. Mats are very close together but we work around it. It's very calm, very peaceful except for the 'breathers' - and they are invariably men. Honestly, today I very nearly asked the class 'breather' if he was ok. He was puffing like a donkey through a megaphone! It was so loud it made it difficult to focus on my own breathing and not fall into his rhythm. My friend said the same thing. Sometimes it was even difficult to hear our wonderful, softly-spoken teacher.

Worse than that, I nearly laughed out loud at a couple of points - I thought he was going to whinny.

Is it because they're trying to assert their presence, need an inhaler or are they pretending to be all manly and gym-like?

I just wish they would BE QUIET!
Thanks goodenss there's only ever been 1 of them at a time in the class, otherwise they'd have the windows out.

How annoying. Embarrassing to address. Speak to the teacher, unless she gets so much into the zone she doesn't hear him in the irritated way you do.

Yes it would be difficult and what could she say? One teacher we had who covered classes for a while addressed this by talking a lot about breathing at the start of the class and referred back to breathing softly when things got too loud. She only ever did this when there was a man in the class though so maybe it's more of a 'thing' than I thought.
Maybe I'll speak to last night's teacher after the next class from the point of view of not being able to hear.

Say you can't hear, can't concentrate and find it annoying.

I think it is a bit of a thing with (a tiny number of) men. We've got a few regular men in the class, all of whom are lovely (one did get a lot of teasing when he snored during the meditation poor thing) but there is one man who has recently started and he's always breathing loudly etc.

We have only two men who come to the studio and one of them is a bit of a moaner. I can't tell if it's his way of heavy breathing or if he's suffering, poor thing.

He's never really bothered me tbh. Unlike that one girl whose little dog jumps around licks my nose as I struggle in forward bends

OP I feel your pain. I used to go to the local Buddhist centre for meditation and stopped for this very thing. Again always men doing it. With one man it seemed a very aggressive thing (hard to explain really but there was no real need for him to do it at all) and it totally put me off. I went again recently and the man next to me did it too
I know I am extremely sensitive to noise (has a name but I can't remember what it is) but reading your post made me think maybe going to yoga classes might not be for me if noisy-breathers are rife!

I think some of the noisy guys / ladies at your classes are practising ujaii breathing, which can be pretty noisy but is a wonderful way of deepening practice / anchoring mind. check it out! Over time, one may become more sensitive / a little quieter with ujaii but for a lot of us we are still pretty noisy years down the line! sorry!!!!