Yeah, yeah, so I bought a Yoga Mat. Laugh it up, get your yuks in…

I had resisted yoga for quite a long time… I even used to have a special name for it - “Boga”. As in: Yoga Is Bogus. How quickly doth my tone change…

See, I’ve been suffering on and off with both shoulder and back pain. Having been to several specialists, physical therapists and even an acupuncturist, I’ve never been able to completely vanquish this irritating pain. The problem seems to be several inflamed muscles that have gotten that way due to poor ergonomic workspaces and a lifetime of just plain overuse of the mouse and keyboard.

But lately, I’ve been giving Yoga a try. And while it never makes the pain go away, it does seem to help when it’s especially bad. Up until now, I’ve been doing yoga without using any mat. This is fine for some of the exercises, but with others, you tend to slip. And the floor exercises would be much easier with some sort of mat.

At first, in the true spirit of Cheaplander, I was going to try make my own yoga mat. But that didn’t pan out, for the simple reason that I just didn’t want to wait to try out other yoga “moves”. Yoga waits for no one. (If you happen to know a cheap way to make your own mat, please send it in!)

I settled on the Gaiam Yoga Mat in purple because it was relatively cheap and readily available. Mine came in at $17, but you might be able to find it much cheaper elsewhere. It turned out I had Amazon credit so I went with it.

This is a pretty standard sized mat at 2 feet by about 5 1/2 feet. It has standard textured surfaces in order to prevent slipping. I think it is a relatively thin mat at only an eighth of an inch thickness. But you don’t want too thick of a mat anyhow for yoga. Still, doing some of the sitting and kneeling exercises kind of hurt once in awhile because of the thin surface.

A lot of people complain that yoga mats are too sticky. This one was no exception, though I didn’t have the problems that some others had. I think it needs to be a LITTLE sticky in order that you don’t slip off. This is a little gross - but remember that when you start to sweat a bit that you’ll appreciate a mat that doesn’t slip as much.

The mat comes in various colors and sometimes has patterns on it. I would avoid getting any decal or printed pattern on the mat as I believe it is susceptible to wear. Plus, some have noted that when stored for a long time, the printed pattern stuck to the other side of the mat when rolled up and caused deterioration.

It actually came with a mini-DVD which I got all excited about. But it turns out it’s merely a sampler of routines, pretty useless if you ask me. Oh, one other thing - there is a picture of a well-known yoga master on the front. It’s rather “racy” for a pic of a guy (he’s wearing pretty much only speedos!), I was very surprised they chose to use that rather than a female yoga instructor - I guess perhaps more women do yoga than men?

Overall, I guess I don’t have enough experience to really rate this mat. But it works fine for me - you just roll it up when done. I do have some trouble keeping it “unrolled” all the way on the floor, but I’ve taken care of it by putting a shirt on the end to stop it from rolling back up. I suspect that with time, it will stay flat better.

You know what, I’ve been biding my time this whole review in order to make a joke… but I just couldn’t think of how to work it in. It was going to be some sort of play on “Yoda” and “Yoga”. Something like “Yoga says: May the Mat Be With You”. Or “Luke, Use The Mat”. Snarf snarf, hahaha.

Gosh, I suck at jokes.