The Quest for the Perfect Yoga Mat

See my lat­est post for an update on this quest.

For some time I’ve been look­ing for the per­fect yoga mat, but have not yet found it. Over time and with daily usage the mat becomes a kind of sacred place so it’s impor­tant that you find one that really fits your needs and val­ues. Here’s what I’ve learned over the past cou­ple of years.

My ideal mat would fit all 3 of my usage sit­u­a­tions:

• daily in-home prac­tice,
• weekly use in my yoga class (drive to class plus a 5‑minute walk each way to the parked car), and
• monthly travel by plane to remote loca­tions for usage in a hotel room.

My ideal mat would also be “green”: zero-waste in man­u­fac­ture and eas­ily bio-degrad­able when even­tu­ally dis­posed of via land­fill.

In hopes that this will help other yoga prac­ti­tion­ers choose wisely, here are some things to think about.

Shopping Is Difficult

Shop­ping for yoga mats is chal­leng­ing because you rarely have the oppor­tu­nity for side-by-side, hands-on com­par­isons in either stu­dio or retail envi­ron­ments. This is a para­dox, because a mat should be expe­ri­enced before pur­chase. Most stu­dios stock a sin­gle brand and type of mat; most recre­ational stores offer lim­ited selec­tions, and the same is true for yoga spe­cialty stores. At least where I shop, it’s rare to see more than a sin­gle brand per store.

So that leaves you with the online shop­ping option, rely­ing upon abstrac­tions: com­par­ing ven­dors’ claims, cus­tomer tes­ti­mo­ni­als, and the con­sumer reviews you read on blogs, Ama­zon, etc. This is a real issue because, in an ideal world, you’d do the equiv­a­lent of “test dri­ves” before com­mit­ting to a par­tic­u­lar mat. And even worse, if you buy and later dis­card a mat that doesn’t suit your needs, you may be adding to land­fill waste unless you buy your next mat from a com­pany that offers recy­cling.

Ven­dors make shop­ping dif­fi­cult because there’s no stan­dard­iza­tion of ter­mi­nol­ogy used to describe prod­uct fea­tures, espe­cially when it comes to mat thick­ness or den­sity. The very same ven­dor that uses inches to describe the mat’s width and length may use mil­lime­ters to char­ac­ter­ize its thick­ness. And there’s no way to describe the mat’s den­sity, resilience (spring, bounce, firm­ness, etc.) or cush­ion­ing qual­i­ties. That’s why you really want to expe­ri­ence the mat first before buy­ing it.

The online prod­uct images are quite lim­ited, so you’re left rely­ing upon your imag­i­na­tion. As a result of this, I’ve now bought sev­eral mats (more on that later) in my quest for the per­fect mat.

Thinking Through Your Needs

There is no sin­gle ideal mat that will fit everyone’s require­ments, at any price.

Some of us are tall, oth­ers short; some weigh more than oth­ers; and some of us per­spire a lot through our hands and feet. This means that the def­i­n­i­tion of “the per­fect mat” is spe­cific to the per­son, and his or her usage occa­sions – how, where and how often the mat will be used. So think about what you need and why, and don’t take other con­sumer com­ments on blind faith with­out think­ing about how well they apply to your unique sit­u­a­tion.

Here are some key func­tional con­sid­er­a­tions, before you get into the val­ues-based choices of how eco-friendly the mat is, or how much you like its color:

• Size
• Weight
• Den­sity and resilience, cush­ion­ing
• Anti-slip char­ac­ter­is­tics: stick­i­ness, tex­ture, per­for­mance when wet with sweat, etc.
• Porta­bil­ity
• Flex­i­bil­ity (i.e., how well it rolls up or folds for car­ry­ing or stor­age pur­poses)
• Dura­bil­ity
• Smell

The chal­lenge for peo­ple shop­ping for mats online is that most of these attrib­utes are best explored by expe­ri­enc­ing them hands-on, rather than read­ing prod­uct reviews or ven­dor descrip­tions.

Size

Size mat­ters. If you’re tall, you’ll want a longer mat. If you have long arms, you’ll prob­a­bly want a wider mat. Clas­sic mats are 24 inches wide  — a bit nar­row for peo­ple with long arms and legs. If like me you’re 5’8” or taller, the typ­i­cal 68-inch mat will be too cramped. The widest mat I know of (but haven’t tried) is 30 inches.

A big­ger mat is going to be less flex­i­ble, and may “fight back” as you try to stuff it into your car­ry­ing sack. A denser mat will also be less flex­i­ble – bet­ter suited for in-home use or sit­u­a­tions when it doesn’t have to be packed up, rolled or folded, and stowed very often.

Weight

Com­fort­able mats, in gen­eral, weigh more than those opti­mized for porta­bil­ity or travel.

Big­ger mats (longer or extra-wide) will out­weigh the clas­sic 24-by-68-inch mod­els. At present the mats that are con­sid­ered to be the top-of-the-line mod­els are also the heav­i­est, tip­ping the scales some­where in the 8‑to-10 pound range. You’re not too likely to find yogi­nis lug­ging these big mats to and from class every day.

Because there’s no ideal mat that’s both com­fort­able for daily use and easy to carry, yoga mat man­u­fac­tur­ers tend to mar­ket a “pro” style mat as well as one opti­mized for travel (often called “lite”). So this sug­gests there’s a real trade-off between weight and com­fort.

The mat I use every­day at home weighs 8 pounds; the one I carry to and from class weighs between 4 and 5 pounds. My class mat is too big to fit into a suit­case with­out fold marks that last a while. To put this in per­spec­tive, my 15-inch Mac­Book Pro weighs less than the mat I bring each week to class.

Because com­fort and a larger size mat­ter to me, the mats I use most often aren’t suit­able for air­plane travel or being car­ried in a suit­case.

Comfort

Com­fort mat­ters, espe­cially if you have bony knees or issues with wrists, shoul­ders or ankles. (Boomers, beware!)

Char­ac­ter­is­tics related to the thick­ness of the mat, its den­sity, or stiff­ness ver­sus resilience are impor­tant trade-offs for poses in which sen­si­tive joints or knees must bear your weight. (The Mex­i­can wool folded blan­ket is the tra­di­tional solu­tion for needed cush­ion­ing in these weight-bear­ing poses.)

Some peo­ple pre­fer softer cush­ion­ing, while tra­di­tion­al­ists tend not to like mats that have a lot of “give” to them. And if you weigh more than a bal­let dancer or a woman who wears size 6 clothes, a thin mat may not pro­vide enough cush­ion­ing. Your fin­gers may push all the way through to the hard sur­face beneath.

I don’t advise putting a mat on a car­peted floor unless you have no other alter­na­tive (such as a hotel room). There’s too much insta­bil­ity when a car­pet is involved, and it will make your bal­ance poses more chal­leng­ing.

My every­day mat is quite dense and 1/4‑inch thick, with min­i­mal cush­ion­ing for some­one like me with a non-dancer’s frame. I’m almost sat­is­fied with its com­fort, but even so, I layer a cheapie mat beneath it for extra cush­ion­ing. Because I’m work­ing in a room with a hard­wood floor, the sta­bil­ity is fine.

Anti-slip/Traction

If you sweat a lot dur­ing asanas, you will want a mat with good anti-slip qual­i­ties. You may even want to layer an anti-skid towel on top of your mat (my solu­tion for in-stu­dio prac­tice), or a highly absorbent towel that you use peri­od­i­cally to dry your hands and feet. Some peo­ple pre­fer the anti-skid towel for hygienic rea­sons, espe­cially if they use mats owned by the stu­dio and shared among mul­ti­ple stu­dents.

The prob­lem with the towel-on-the-mat approach is that vig­or­ous or vinyasa-style asanas will cause the the towel to wrin­kle, and that can inter­fere with com­fort or con­cen­tra­tion. The bet­ter solu­tion is a mat with enough trac­tion-con­trol qual­i­ties to avoid the need of a towel layer.

Portability

Another big fac­tor to con­sider is the need for porta­bil­ity: how often will you carry your mat between home and stu­dio, or to remote des­ti­na­tions? How will you travel, on foot or by bike, car, train or plane?  Must it fit in a back­pack or mes­sen­ger bag because you ride to class by bike?

The porta­bil­ity issue is less chal­leng­ing if you drive to class and sim­ply need to carry your mat between home and stu­dio. It’s trick­ier for peo­ple who have to travel by plane for busi­ness or vaca­tion sit­u­a­tions.

This is the usage fac­tor where I’m least sat­is­fied. As a con­sul­tant, I’m on the road at least once a month, and my cur­rent travel mat is very dis­ap­point­ing. It’s too small, it’s not com­fort­able, it doesn’t lie flat, and it smells. It’s only virtue is that it folds eas­ily into a suit­case and pro­tects me from the grungy car­peted floors you find in most hotel rooms.

Unfor­tu­nately, cur­rent air­line bag­gage poli­cies make it too expen­sive to carry a mat any­where other than folded up inside your suit­case. I’ve tried sev­eral mats while trav­el­ing but am far from sat­is­fied with the options that work within air­line bag­gage con­straints. Given today’s extra bag­gage fees, you could buy a new mat with the price you’d have to pay to check one as extra lug­gage on a roundtrip flight. ($25 times 2.)

Durability

The rule of thumb seems to be that eco-friendly mats will be less durable than syn­thetic mats. That’s because eco-friendly mats are often made of nat­ural rub­ber or hemp; because they’re designed to be bio-degrade­able, they have shorter use­ful lives. A rub­ber mat will be sen­si­tive to sun­light, so you won’t want to leave it out in a room that gets a lot of sun­shine. Sun­shine will dis­color it, and then shorten its life.

A fac­tor that’s prob­a­bly related to dura­bil­ity and cush­ion­ing is how well the mat per­forms dur­ing jump poses or or poses where you’re push­ing in oppo­site direc­tions, like war­rior poses. Some mats will deform and then spring back, as I dis­cov­ered with a Prana E.C.O. Sticky mat I bought recently from EMS. It’s very com­fort­able and nicely cush­ioned, but it deforms dur­ing vig­or­ous poses. Def­i­nitely not a mat I’d want to use every­day.

My Man­duka PRO is prob­a­bly one of the most durable mats on the mar­ket (backed by a life­time guar­an­tee). I’ve been using it for almost 2 years, and it’s not uncom­mon to read con­sumer reviews from peo­ple who’ve owned and used one hap­pily for a decade.

My Experience

In my quest to find the per­fect mat, here’s what I’ve tried and what I’ve expe­ri­enced:

• Man­duka Black PRO Mat – my every­day in-home mat, and my favorite for sit­u­a­tions that don’t require travel
• Man­duka PRO­Lite – my class mat, trans­ported to the stu­dio each week in a car­ry­ing sack and stored flat (half the weight of its big brother)
• Man­duka eKO – pur­chased in hopes that it would work well for class and travel sit­u­a­tions (more on this later)
• Lul­ule­mon rub­ber travel mat – packs up eas­ily, but not com­fort­able and wrin­kles eas­ily on hotel car­pets; the tex­ture is uncom­fort­able when shift­ing foot posi­tions; smelly; degrad­ing from fre­quent fold­ing; owned less than a year
• Prana E.C.O. Sticky Mat – used in a vaca­tion set­ting; OK for peri­odic use, nicely cush­ioned, good anti-slip qual­i­ties, but deforms too eas­ily dur­ing vig­or­ous asanas; bet­ter suited for petite yogi­nis
• Wai Lana Yogi Mat – my starter mat; very slip­pery, defor­ma­tion issues; works poorly on a car­pet; now used as an under layer on a hard­wood floor
• Yog­i­toes Skid­less Pre­mium Mat Towel – used in class every week on top of my Man­duka PRO­Lite (to absorb sweat from vig­or­ous prac­tice ses­sions in a warm, but not hot, room). This is essen­tial because my stu­dio mat is way too slip­pery with­out it.

Manduka Experience

What I’ve learned is that the mat that sat­is­fies me for daily home prac­tice (the Man­duka Black PRO Mat) is com­pletely unsuited for travel by plane, and imprac­ti­cal for weekly stu­dio use. Because I have to walk sev­eral blocks from the parked car to and from the stu­dio, it’s too large and heavy to carry between home and stu­dio. It does not roll up into a small pack­age. Hence my multi-mat approach.

The Black PRO Mat has devel­oped great karma and now feels sacred. I look for­ward to recon­nect­ing with it every day.

The Man­duka eKO has proven to be dis­ap­point­ing. Even after sev­eral months air­ing in a good-size room, the rub­ber smell is still quite strong. Com­pared to the more neu­tral Black PRO Mat, its sur­face tem­per­a­ture ranges from cool to cold, even on warm days. (I’d pre­fer not to notice the tem­per­a­ture of the mat.) The cush­ion­ing is nice, but not suf­fi­cient; I’m too aware of my fin­gers sink­ing through the cush­ion to the hard­wood floor beneath. Despite the manufacturer’s claims about its anti-slip qual­i­ties, when my hands are sweaty, I slip. This has been dis­con­cert­ing on some hand­stand prep poses… As a result I don’t use it as often as it prob­a­bly deserves.

And yes, as oth­ers have writ­ten, I do notice a “white bloom” that devel­ops on the Black PRO Mat when­ever I use it, a residue of dead skin cells, I guess. I clean it sev­eral times a week with Ver­mont Organic Soap, and that keeps the bloom at bay. What I’ve found more sur­pris­ing is that the tex­tured sur­face is wear­ing away in the heavy-use spots: the places where my hands and feet are posi­tioned for down­ward fac­ing dog or moun­tain pose… So far, except on super hot days or dur­ing a very vig­or­ous prac­tice, I haven’t had too much trou­ble with slip­page. On hot days I keep a towel nearby to wipe off the sweat.

Other Brands

I use the Yog­i­toes Skid­less towel on my mat in class because I have to – too much sweat-induced slip­page oth­er­wise – but I pre­fer to do with­out it while prac­tic­ing at home. I don’t like the way it wrin­kles, and it doesn’t have quite enough trac­tion until my hands and feet warm up and start to sweat. But I do appre­ci­ate the fact that I can throw it in the wash­ing machine after class and wash the sweat away…

I’m def­i­nitely not sat­is­fied with my travel-by-plane expe­ri­ence so far. Noth­ing pos­i­tive to say.

Disclaimer

It feels awk­ward writ­ing this blog post, given the essen­tial con­flict between yoga prin­ci­ples and con­sumerism. But the mat is impor­tant. Used daily, it becomes sacred space so it’s an impor­tant deci­sion for the seri­ous prac­ti­tioner.

Shop­ping for a yoga mat is chal­leng­ing and there are many trade-offs involved, so I hope that shar­ing my expe­ri­ence and per­spec­tives will help other yoga prac­ti­tion­ers avoid my mis­takes.

Dis­clo­sure: I have no rela­tion­ship with any yoga prod­ucts devel­oper or man­u­fac­turer, and have never even spo­ken with any­one from such a com­pany.

Namaste.