Mindfulness and men and spirituality -or culturally masculine at least

I've been leading mindfulness and more general meditation for a while now; quite typically two or three times a week in the university I work with. Sometimes further afield. One of the things I had realised recently was that the groups' gender composition reminds me a bit of the churches I work with; more women than men. There are some men who come along but typically there are women only or only one or two men in the groups. And it turns out that in research on mindfulness, there are gendered differences which may be related to cultural gender constructions.

... stereotypically, women ruminate and men distract," Britton said. "So for people that tend to be willing to confront or expose themselves or turn toward the difficult, mindfulness is made for [improving] that. For people who have been largely turning their attention away from the difficult, to suddenly bring all their attention to their difficulties can be somewhat counterproductive. While facing one's difficulties and feeling one's emotions may seem to be universally beneficial, it does not take into account that there may be different cultural expectations for men and women around emotionality."

I'm interested in the further research and thoughts about how to identify the composing elements of mindfulness and to package them in a way that might be more accessible to men who actually do fit to some degree the cultural stereotypes of masculinity.

Obviously, I'm wondering whether there may be factors in common with the churches' experience of gender engagement in worship and other activities. In my mind too arises another set of images: Muslim prayers where the situation is pretty much reversed; men pray in our quiet rooms, not so many women do. And I have got to wondering whether the 'forcible' engagement of men in prayer by tradition and scriptural interpretation actually acts as a kind of cultural bulwark to encourage men to be religious. I guess in asking that it seem obvious that the answer must be 'yes' (though there are nuances and caveats to be recognised). I'm also reflecting on my time as one of the conveners of an alternative worship group which was very much weighted towards men participating. Not deliberately, it was just something we noticed after a while. We wondered whether in that set up it was something about using technology and deploying hands-on activity as part of the liturgy which some was enabling of men in the cultured-masculinity of our society.

All of which has me interested to see how the further research works in terms of finding ways to engage men. It's a health and wellbeing issue for that research but I wonder whether there may be insights to be gained for the churches too.