If you’re into Yoga or meditation, or Pilates or any other floor-based discipline, you’ll understand the benefit of having a floor mat. Hard floors take their toll on knees, and pelvic bones. Clubs sometimes provide mats you can borrow, but most people but their own after a while. It gets you off public bedding for one thing! But it’s also a nice thing to own; you get to choose your colour, and you can see it in the corner at home, winking at you with quietly delicious anticipation of your next class.
You can buy an exercise mat for a pound, but of course, you can also spend a lot more. So – what’s in an upscale exercise mat to tempt you? Well, quite a bit, as it turns out.
Most dominant and for me, most depressing, is branding. Silk screen the right logo on your sheet of foam and you can multiply its retail price by a hundred. And what’s depressing is that it works – the masses buy and sellers get rich. Oh well.
One up from branding, in my book at least, is styling. You can buy funky, original, odd, bizarre or beautiful exercise mats, selected to appeal to yourself or to turn the heads of your classmates. And that’s great; why not?
In the top tier there’s functionality; mats that perform better. What’s to perform? Well, durability is one aspect of exercise mat performance. Some mats become honeycombed and turn to dust after a few weeks of use. Some are easily torn. Others smell bad – and that really can ruin your experience. Then there are the different foam densities for you to choose from. Some have more than one density, offering two or more levels of cushioning.
And then there’s King of my Hill – the Pranamat ECO from Advaita. Much imitated since its introduction into the UK in 2010, this mat is the one for me. In my view, it’s not particularly pretty, and the branding, while there, is subtle, but it scores five stars for functionality and - as its name suggests, it’s eco-friendly. The mat itself is made from natural renewables – cotton, linen and coconut fibre. Stitched – no glues, and no bleaches. This provides a cushioned mat, but it’s substantial and highly durable. The top surface of the Pranamat ECO is covered in plastic lotus blossoms, and each petal comes to a point. These points – more than five thousand of them – provide a multitude of surprising benefits. First is the highly sharpened (!) in-the-moment awareness of being; of being in a body; of that body’s position and its movements. Wonderful. These petal points also administer continuous acupressure, stimulating the body’s energy meridians which releases stress and gives you more energy. They massage the skin, improving the circulation of blood and lymph, and releasing natural endorphins. This mat can also be used as a therapy pad, on which to rest painful necks and backs in a variety of configurations.
The Pranamat ECO is available everywhere, but particularly in the UK from pranamat.com. There you can also find detailed instructional videos (beautifully made) on the use and the benefits of the mat. My recommendation? Start there!