YogaBellies founder Cheryl, explains the importance of owning your own yoga mat and takes you through the things to look for when choosing a yoga mat: Practice-based; environmental; portability and aesthetics.
When most people start out with yoga, they tend to use the smelly studio mats provided in class (a haven for disease) or they buy a cheap and nasty exercise mat from Tesco, around the £10 mark. If you are still using a cheapy yoga mat it’s time to think again. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), is one of the most toxic plastics, and you are exposing your body to vinyl chloride, a known carcinogen, as well as dioxins, phthalates and other scary substances that cause cancer and other developmental issues. These mats typically do not have a long lifespan, and when you toss them out, they go to a landfill where they will remain forever because they are not biodegradable. Yikes!
Even before I started teaching yoga, I learned the value of a good yoga mat, not only for my yoga practice, but for my health and my contribution to the environment. Why would you practice on a yoga mat that was damaging our planet and our health with every breath and every asana!
Cheryl MacDonald (a.k.a. Chhaya or the pink yoginii,) is the founder of women’s yoga collective YogaBellies with over 100 teachers teaching the YogaBellies style for women at every life stage, across the globe. She is the creator of the Birth ROCKS natural birth preparation method, a women’s sexual wellness expert and author of Birth ROCKS, The Yoga for Life Journal and YogaBellies for Pregnancy. She is mother of one lovely 9 year old boy and currently lives with her husband in Singapore, loving yoga, all things woman and life in general.
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