No time to get to hot yoga class? Well, an industrious manufacturer says he has you covered. SolarSpa LLC is selling a heated yoga mat.
The idea behind hot yoga is warm muscles are more limber and stretchy — during class at a studio, the air temperature is turned way up while you do your poses.
In the process of selecting the best yoga mats, we were basing our consideration on the following criteria (in no particular order): material, quality, performance, price, appearance, customer feedback. Among the definite winners were mats made from natural and eco-friendly materials such as rubber, jute, cotton and various custom blends. These materials seemed to be most reliable and were also featuring the greatest performance characteristics such as cushioning, support and moisture absorption. Unfortunately, mats made from these materials were also the most expensive. The reasons are quite obvious, natural materials are costly to harvest and process, especially if the company is trying to stay nature friendly and harvest from expensive sustainable resources. We realized that it was not possible to cut down on the price if a mat was made of natural rubber or other natural material.
Our primary choices included:
Jade Mats – Second only to Manduka, Jade products are a lot more affordable but almost as good. We say almost because the decrease in price had to be justified by something and this is the density of the material. Jade mats are more porous than Manduka mats and do not as long as a result. However these mats are also lighter and less expensive.
Gaiam Mats – Very affordable, yet high quality products by a very conscious company that strives very hard to keep their quality standards high. These guys are actively involved in the yoga community and make excellent products that are accessible to everyone. Gaiam uses custom blends that include artificial components in their mats, but the price is just awesome.






























