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The Quest for the Perfect Yoga Mat

June 25, 2009 •

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.

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Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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