Yoga "Mat"ters har har har

When the props become important, it takes away from the practice.  This has, at least, been my experience.  Sometimes I think that if I could just get that pair of be whatever pants then I'll just rock and then I get them and realize that they suck for my body in a sweaty room practicing ashtanga.  Or, how I don't notice my mat until someone points out that it sucks or I point out that it sucks.  

For example, my first yoga mat ever sucked and it was great!  A cheap blue pvc number that is still in my closet and soon to be moved to the "give away" pile growing behind the couch.  I slipped and slided and had a horrible time in every pose and blamed every kink in my practice on my shitty little mat.  And then, I looked around and realized I wasn't sliding anymore.  Was the mat roughed up a bit (all the pvc floating in the air and soaking through my skin), preventing me from slipping?  Did my sweat glands fly south for the winter?  Was practice less challenging?  Was I using those bandha thingies? 

This was when I loved my mat.  Me and my mat, my mat and me.  Me and my mat in class.   That time--oh do you remember, mat?  That time when I did that pose for the first time and you caught me when I fell?  That was a laugh!  Images of me riding my bike into the sunset with my mat strapped to my back.  Me and my mat sharing a picnic in the park.  Those were the days.

Those were the days before I learned of the dangers of PVC and old blue was shunned to the back of the closet--to dear to throw out, yet too toxic to keep.  That was when I invested in my Harmony mat.  This natural rubber diddy took some getting used to.  It was so sticky I couldn't slide even when I wanted to.  It smelled strongly of rubber.  But when I stood upon it, I breathed it in in all its rubber glory and felt a sense of peace at my earth friendly possession.  But then it was so heavy.  I didn't want to carry it every where.  And was it true?  Was this my rebound mat?  The prospect of using some rental mat sent shivers down my spine, and  yet, I still knew that perhaps I jumped to quickly into this relationship and there were some codependency issues.  

So I broke it off.  I decided to be a free agent.  I would rotate my mats.  I would use rentals.  By golly, I would practice right on the bare, raw, primal wood floor without anything at all.  I was wild and young and thought that I would live forever.  

That idealism, that sweet optimism of youth encouraged me to travel light and forgo packing my mat on my trip to India.  What for?  The prop didn't matter.  I'd use whatever I could find.  What I found was a shitty PVC mat that sent me slipping and sliding like my first months in yoga.  This was when I finally learned of the Mysore yoga rug.  All these years spent looking for the same thing and what I really wanted, what I really needed was always right there in front of me.  And yet, it still was not enough, as Sharath pointed out day after day.  Marble floor + giant floor rug + shitty pvc mat + mysore rug = toes pointing out in back bending and mat wrinkling up.  All highly unacceptable apparently.  He pointed again and again to the big black mats around me.  A Manduka mat.

A Manduka mat?  They are so expensive.  They are so heavy.  Blogging has not yet opened the door to freebie sample heaven.  But practice has.  The world provides.  My teacher cleaned out the yoga mat shelves.  Piles of sad, tired mats slumped in the corner.  But wait--what's this?  A Manduka mat with no tags?  "Can I keep him if not one comes for him?"  

I lovingly unroll my new mat and roll up my old mat.  I slip and slide in pools of my own sweat.  Tomorrow I'll use my rug.