Before I actually met my husband in person, we emailed and spoke on the phone a few times. We are a match.com success story if you can believe it. My profile picture was blurry (strike one), I told him I had a personal trainer (apparently that was strike two as he said that’s what girls who are horribly out of shape say), and as if I just callously flirt with disaster I told him I had a long torso. Not realizing how close to strike three my upper half description brought me, he was afraid he was making a July 4th date with some sort of carnival freak escapee. Being a bit of a freak himself (and that’s why I love him) he agreed to the date, apparently was pleasantly surprised at my normal human proportions, and the rest is almost 16 years of fantastic history. Looking back, when describing my physical attributes to the online world I wonder if “open hips” would have been a more appealing description.
Whenever I start talking about my open hips, hubby loves to chime in with few off color jokes, but this story is actually about Yoga. Not the little green guy from Star Wars and not the bear who was filthy for picnic baskets, I’m talking about the ancient art of health and relaxation with such wholesome poses as “downward dog”, “camel pose” (I said pose) and the “easy plow pose”.
When I first started yoga I learned that I have very wide, open hips (ugh, I can already hear him laughing).Before you let your imagination run wild, I don’t mean that in a slutty way. I was born this way and can literally sit in a butterfly position, with the soles of my feet together and my knees touching the floor, then lean all the way forward until I’m lying flat. Go ahead…try it. Most people are lucky if they get halfway there. You’ll be lucky if you can lean forward enough to decide if it’s a “Summer’s Eve” kind of day, much less fold yourself like you’re being shipped out by Amazon.
Freshness aside, let’s get back to my open hips. Last week I was in yoga class doing Pigeon Pose and was literally lying face down on the floor. This is something that usually amazes my instructors, and I even had one announce to the class not to use me as an example because it’s just not normal. So there I was, one leg straight, one tucked underneath me, staring at the floor while doing my deep breathing.
Naturally my mind wandered. Not to enlightenment. To Subway sandwiches. To be fair, this isn’t even close to the weirdest place my brain has gone during yoga.
- Was Snow White having sex with any of those dwarfs? Is there hidden meaning to them singing “Hi Ho”?
- If a smurf couldn’t breathe, what color would he turn?
- Every hand I’ve shaken has held a penis.
- Why is W called double U, shouldn’t it be called double V?
- If I fart in the shower before I turn the water on will it still smell as bad?
- Is a hotdog technically a sandwich?
…and speaking of sandwiches, I’ve loved the veggie sandwich at Subway long before I became a vegetarian. I’ve tried desperately to recreate it at home, but it never tastes the same. As PR nightmares go, it’s hard to top Jared. But I think we all remember the “yoga mat” controversy about what was being put into Subway’s bread. The word on the street is those ingredients have since been removed, which is obviously great news. But for this health-conscious, open-hipped mama, it got me thinking…
What exactly was I rolling around on three to five days a week?
I spend a lot of time on my yoga mat. I’m face down on it, breathing into it and occasionally drooling on it after a particularly relaxing class. If I was making an effort to eat cleaner and live healthier, it only made sense that my yoga mat should be as “clean” as everything else I was bringing into my life.
After way too much research (you’re welcome), these are my top three picks.
(1) Jade Harmony Yoga Mat: Made in the USA with natural rubber in a sustainable manner. Contain no PVC, EVA or other synthetic rubber and BONUS…for every mat sold they plant a tree. This was one of the more expensive mats I bought but I reasoned that I can use it for a long time and it was so highly recommended that I splurged on myself.
(2) Manduka Welcome Yoga Mat: Eco-friendly manufacturing, free of solvents and toxic glues. Made with energy efficient manufacturing as the company strives to minimize environmental waste and make products that last. This is the mat I bought my pre-teen daughter and it was perfect. She was starting to go to yoga and I wasn’t sure if she’d like it so I didn’t want to buy her a more expensive Jade YET I wanted her to have a safe and “clean” yoga mat too. This was a perfect choice for her. After we started going together we got confused on whose mat belonged to whom and would switch off. I found myself using this one more than my Jade.
(3) Gaiam Yoga Mat: This one I don’t personally own…yet but tons of yogis in my studio use it. Both my mats are a plain-Jane blue color but these come in all sorts of fun colors and designs on them so you can be eco-friendly, safe and stylish all at the same time. These are made without the six most harmful phthalates (DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIDP and DNOP – it’s like the alphabet soup of toxins), latex free and they even sell mats just for kids. They’re reasonably priced and this is definitely going to be my next birthday gift to myself.
So there you have it. Three yoga mats that let me focus on my breathing instead of wondering what mystery chemicals I’m lying on. Hubby still isn’t convinced about yoga, he thinks it’s more like if Twister was a one player game. After showing him some of the latest poses I’ve been working on I’m pretty sure I hear him upstairs shopping online for “2-person yoga mat, washable”.
