In an ongo­ing search for the per­fect yoga mat, I’ve just pur­chased Man­duka’s lat­est offer­ing, the new eKO® ultra-grippy mat. Here it is, air­ing out­side so the latex stink will dis­si­pate as soon as pos­si­ble. I can’t wait for my first yoga prac­tice on this mat.

It’s too stinky to use right now, but what I like about this mat are the fol­low­ing fea­tures (based on Man­duka’s claims):

• ultra-grippy sur­face (new tex­ture as you may be able to see in this photo)
• rub­ber base for cush­ion­ing and resiliency
• a sta­bi­liz­ing inner core, to keep the mat from deform­ing
• longer life than most nat­ural rub­ber mats
• closed-cell con­struc­tion ver­sus open cell (so sweat won’t get per­ma­nently cap­tured within the cells)
• zero-waste man­u­fac­tur­ing process

Based on a quick test yes­ter­day, the ultra-grippy sur­face has a lot of promise. I can’t wait to see how it will respond to sweaty hands and feet in the mid­dle of an extended vinyasa flow prac­tice.

I also liked my ini­tial impres­sion of its resilience, bal­anced by the sta­bil­ity. It appears less likely to lose its shape dur­ing prac­tice than the mat I’m replac­ing. The new mat is also 8 inches longer than my aging Jade Har­mony mat.

Goodbye to Jade Harmony

For the past two years I’ve brought a Jade Har­mony Pro mat to class. We’ve been good friends, and have shared a lot of won­der­ful prac­tices together sev­eral times a week. It came with me to a week­long yoga retreat in Mex­ico, which may have short­ened its life, I’m sad to say.

Like all nat­ural rub­ber mats, it has dete­ri­o­rated, despite my care to keep it out of the sun­light and clean it reg­u­larly. There are now per­ma­nent rip­ples at both ends of the mat. Even if they have no per­for­mance impact, the rip­ples dis­tract my drishti.

If the stu­dio is heated, or was heated dur­ing the prior class, the mat quickly deforms under my feet in stand­ing poses. This makes it harder to main­tain sta­bil­ity.

I really like the rel­a­tive light weight of the Jade Har­mony — a joy to carry to and from class.

The new eKO mat will weigh about 75% more than the Jade, in part because I chose a longer eKO mat. At 79 inches, it’s about 8 inches longer than the Jade — an impor­tant fac­tor, given my height. I thought long and hard about car­ry­ing the extra 3–4 pounds, but decided eKO’s fea­tures were a good trade-off, ver­sus the option of buy­ing a new Jade Har­mony.

Stay tuned. I’ll report on how well it per­forms after I’ve had some prac­tice expe­ri­ence on the new mat.

Update. I’ve aired the mat out­doors for 3 days and the room-fill­ing stink has gone. I can still smell the rub­ber when my nose is a foot away, so I’ll smell it dur­ing prac­tice. I’ve taken it to one class, and the sur­face is very grippy, as promised. This was the first 60-minute vinyasa flow class that I was able to do with­out need­ing a towel to dry my sweaty hands. That said, the rub­ber mat does stretch out under my feet in war­rior poses, so it’s not as sta­ble as I had expected. The cush­ion­ing is nice. Net net: Man­duka’s new eKO mat is a very good mat for peo­ple who pre­fer rub­ber mats — but not the all-around per­fect mat.

Update #2. Two, or is it three?, weeks later the mat is still notice­ably stinky. I’ve aired it out­doors a few more times, but most often I drape it over a chair in a spare room after class. Since my first report, I’ve taken sev­eral classes with this mat, and appre­ci­ate its func­tion­al­ity. For super sweaty prac­tices I still need to use a micro-fiber towel under my hands, but my feet no longer slip. My biggest crit­i­cism is the long, lin­ger­ing burnt rub­ber smell that per­me­ates the sur­round­ings wher­ever the mat is aired after class. The smell is also hard to ignore dur­ing savasana or any pose where your nose is on or near the mat.

Update #3. Some­where around the 3‑month mark, the annoy­ing rub­ber smell finally dis­ap­peared. I don’t know if the smell dis­ap­peared as a result of weekly deep clean­ings with an organic soap com­pound, or reg­u­lar air­ings out­doors in a well-ven­ti­lated area. Per­son­ally, I believe it took many hours of air­ing out­doors to dis­si­pate the smell. Now that it no longer stinks, this is my go-to mat for class. I always bring the eKO mat to class, and leave my heav­ier Black Mat Pro for use in my home prac­tice area.