Lately, a student of mine shared a concern with me. It was about her feeling challenged by her mat, because she felt it was too slippery. While there is lots of truth into blaming some low-quality, cheap yoga mats for being slippery, she didn’t fall into this category. Her mat was a typical Manduka Yoga mat, one that has life guarantee. It wasn’t, however, the eco series which is far more grippier.
Her question, triggered a number of thoughts and past incidents, when either I personally felt the same, or I heard another student complaining about the same issue. It had also occurred to me that some students went as far as to complain that even the stickiest of mats out there in the market still gave them a hard and slippery time. Then, it struck me.
This isn’t, wasn’t and will never be so much about the degree of stickiness of your yoga mat. I had witnessed myself in my own practice to suddenly stop feeling slippery on the same mat I had been practicing for ages. How could this be? And how can it be that the grippiest of mats don’t work for some people? And how come those mats work for some poses, and not for some few ones? There must be another factor defining the experience on the mat except for mat’s stickiness degree.
So then, it came to me: This is more about how truthful and honest you are about your practice. Do you admit to yourself that it’s your flexibility level and the way you practice the poses that increase the chance to feel that the mat doesn’t support you? Yes, my friend, you read it right: The way you practice on the mat and the degree of how truthful and self-aware you are about your practice is the defining factor of how slippery and supportive your mat feels. Let me explain.
Picture this. You are on your mat in a Down-Dog position and you are practicing on a super sticky mat. You are not particularly sweaty, you aren’t dripping. And you follow a well-intentioned instructor’s words “Use Down Dog as a resting pose” and then as a good student, you adhere to that and hang on your joints. Zero muscle activation and support kicks in, your awareness of the breath goes on holiday and you find yourself out of the present moment. While all this happens, there is a process happening under your nose. You are compressing in various parts of the body as a result of absence of muscular activation. These parts vary depending where you are predominantly less mobile in your body. It could be shoulders, hips or any part of the spine. However, your experience is heavenly: you think (I don’t use the word “feel”, because you are out of feeling on that moment) that you are cruising this, things feel easy and you have conquered Down-Dog for the rest of your life. Nothing else to explore, the mountaintop has been reached. Do you resonate with this?
Then, you try the same on another yoga mat, that is less sticky and suddenly you slide big time and start blaming the new mat for not holding up your lazy and distracted ass. The root of the problem goes way back in all those times when you decided to space out and not take accountability for your body position. It might have started from the first time you were inspired by your yoga instructor in your first class a good twenty years ago and you still live by the same truth.
Here’s another scenario for the same case: You find yourself on the mat in a Down-Dog position. You are relatively sweaty. You breathe deeply and feel the breath moving in your entire core, from the pelvis all the way to brain (yes, you can breathe into skull, your sphenoid bones will actually respond and expand to breathing deeply). You have full awareness about which parts of your body support and which don’t support you as much. You take another inhale into those parts that feel disconnected or struggling, you exhale deeply and do your best to off-load the struggling parts and bring to activation the numb parts of yours. You celebrate that shift of perspective, that full moment of one in- and out-breath of true exploration with meaning behind. The class ends and you realise that this moment right there in that Down-Dog of just one breath, shifted your perspective about how you use your body and cause pain in your shoulders unnecessarily. This becomes life-changing: you go back to your mat with thirst to quest for knowledge and you no longer have shoulder pain. And you did that without a good instructor’s input or a treatment by a physiotherapist or chiropractor. It was YOU that came up with everything:
Identification of the dysfunctional pattern
Willingness to abandon the old dogma and explore new perspectives
Successful change and healing, plus acquiring the wisdom that came with this experience, which will enable you to track down transformation even more quickly and effortlessly in the future
In the first scenario, the way the student behaves reflects a group of people who are unwilling to go into the discomfort and become more self-aware, honest with themselves and accountable for their actions. This group of people likes living in the safety and comfort bubble. They live on the surface of things. This group of people is prone to depression, stress and feeling lack of purpose as they receive their stimulations from external factors, that sometimes are out of their control, especially when the Universe will send them the call. The call could translate as a mid-life crisis or burn-out and often this group of people reacts as “I didn’t see that coming, it all seemed fine” whereas what they should have said is “I knew something was wrong, but I was postponing its confrontation for a long time until I got forced and now it is time to take charge of my decisions and actions”.
In the second scenario, we see a student who represents a group of people who find meaning in every second of their life, scratch beneath the surface and always look for ways to grow, evolve and improve their life’s standards. They are willing to see themselves for who they are pragmatically and take action instead of going into victim mode and look for scapegoats. This group of people is far more independent in their decision-making and this may very likely result in a happier life that has been formed by decisions which reflect their true desires. This group of people sees setbacks as a cue from the Universe to problem-solve, adapt and evolve. Instead of going into deep depression, they do their best to act even if they fail (and of course they are not afraid of failing). This allows them to find meaning in both the “positive” and “negative” experiences.
Do you see now how a simple, superficial thought like “My mat isn’t sticky enough” reveals so much more for those who wish to excavate for treasures? Or it provides an excuse for those who wish to bury their head in the sand?
Now, the choice is yours… Who do you want to be?
Much love,
Ilias