Care and Feeding of your Yoga Mat: Part 1
Tapas® Original Yoga Mats
This is the first in a series of articles about your Yoga mats, their history and their care. You, our Yoga community, have inspired us to write about this based on your questions to our customer service associates. Each post will focus on a different Yoga mat. Please keep the questions coming! We love to hear from you.
Yoga Mat History 101
Things in the Yoga world have not always been as easy as they are now. Back in the olden days of Yoga in the U.S., practitioners had to deal not only with the challenges inherent in practice, but also the added difficulty of sliding around on a variety of different types of floors. I liken it to how our parents had to walk miles to school in rain and snow, uphill both directions. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration—as were our parents’ stories—but Yoga practice was far more challenging before the advent of the sticky mat.
Standing poses were an exercise in frustration. No matter how much we might have wanted to expand into these naturally expansive poses, we were always holding back, just trying to keep from ending up in unintended splits. Dog Pose was another major challenge, especially for those of us with dry hands.
The first sticky mats were introduced to the Iyengar Yoga world by Angela Farmer. These mats were cut from European carpet underlay. They were a godsend to those of us who’d been struggling against slick floors. Before long these institutional-green mats were in every class and workshop I attended around the country. But because these mats were not made to withstand human body chemistry and lots of movement, their surface began peeling under our hands and feet within a few months.
That’s when Sara Chambers, founder of Hugger Mugger, decided to develop a sturdier, stickier yoga mat. In 1990, she worked with a U.S.-based company to develop the Tapas® Mat, the first-ever nonskid mat designed specifically for yoga. The same U.S. company still makes our Tapas® Original, Tapas® Ultra, Pilates and Tapas® Eco (aka Tapas® Terra) mats.
Most Yoga mats on the market are made from PVC. On the upside, PVC is incredibly durable. I still have a few Tapas® Original Mats from the first batch Hugger Mugger sold in 1990, and they haven’t peeled or worn through. They’re not as sticky as they were in their prime, but they are still quite functional. On the downside, PVC is a petroleum-based product. Some PVC mats on the market contain toxic heavy metals and phthalates. We are happy to say that our mats have never contained these substances.
Eco-friendliness is not simple. While we advocate and sell many eco-friendly mat options—and we love these mats!—they are more likely to need replacement sooner than PVC mats. The balance for each Yogi is to decide whether buying biodegradable, sustainable mats is more or less eco-friendly than buying a mat that you may never have to replace. This, of course, is a question that each of us answers for ourselves. It is why we continue to offer many options.
Any mat will last longer if it is cared for. Depending on what mats are made from, the care can be quite different. In the coming weeks, we will post care and feeding instructions for all our different types of mats, including our PVC-based mats (Tapas®, Tapas® Ultra, Tapas® Performance, Tapas® Ultima, Pilates, Tapas® Travel, Nature Collection, Ultra Nature Collection and Tapas® Eco (aka Tapas® Terra)), our rubber mats (Native and Urban), our TPE mats (Earth Elements), our Sattva Jute mat and our fabric mats (Cotton Yoga Mat, Practice Rug and Solace Mat).
Next week: Care and Feeding of your PVC Mat, including the question we’d all love to know the answer to: “What’s that oily film on my new PVC mat, and how do I wash it off?”
Charlotte Bell discovered yoga in 1982 and began teaching in 1986. Charlotte is the author of Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice, published by Rodmell Press. Her second book, Yoga for Meditators (Rodmell Press) will be published in May 2012. A lifelong musician, Charlotte plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony and folk sextet Red Rock Rondo, whose DVD won two Emmy awards in 2010.
November 28th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
[...] the advent of the sticky yoga mat in the 1980s, students and teachers of all styles of yoga used a hodgepodge of different types of [...]
March 26th, 2012 at 12:40 pm
[...] Carpet remnants substituted for blankets. And the latest, greatest (at the time) innovation was institutional green sticky mats made from European carpet [...]