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Sure, you’ve probably began to snore sooner or later in Savasana, but chances are high you wouldn’t care to sleep in your yoga mat all night. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to some Air Canada passengers after their flight out of Toronto Pearson Airport was canceled last week. In line with CBC, as a substitute of providing plush hotel rooms (or no less than an air mattress), the airline handed out yoga mats. Yes, standard, on a regular basis, 6-millimeter sticky mats.
Except for the plain query (Where did the airline suddenly find so many yoga mats?!), we found ourselves pondering another uses for a yoga mat. DMs to YJ contributors and friends ensued, as did the next list of somewhat creative, sometimes practical, often heretical, and somewhat amusing options for using your yoga mat—beyond your usual practice, in fact. Listed here are those we felt appropriate to share:
- Keep things tidy beneath your cat’s litter box.
- Hang a mat behind your desk as a green screen so during Zoom calls you’ll appear to be you’re on the beach in Bali.
- Throw your mats down during your next backyard barbecue to guard guests from the minute shards of broken glass left from that point you tried to hold string lights.
- Roll yourself up in a mat as a substitute of shelling out lots of for a weighted blanket.
- Plop it in front of the bathtub to catch drips when extricating fur babies (or actual babies) from the tub.
- Lie your rolled mat on its side to dam a drafty door or window or prop it partway open.
- Make the concrete somewhat more cozy when standing, sitting, or lying in line overnight to purchase concert tickets.
- Throw it down on the ground beneath you if you and your person succomb to impromptu amorousness. (No rug burns.)
- Use it as a red (or whatever color) carpet to welcome your partner home after work. Also works for a toddler who likes to be treated like royalty.
- Cushion and insulate your sleeping bag from the cold, hard ground. (This also means you could have zero excuses to not practice yoga in your camping trip.)
- Go all Jackson Pollock and use your mat as canvas. (It’s literally the blank page in front of you.)
- Use a rolled mat as a drink koozie. Wedge a chilly bottle into the opening at the top of a rolled mat. Coffee tables are overrated, anyhow.
- Ditch your regular beach towel and use your mat as a substitute.
- Do some upright rows or bicep curls with a tightly rolled mat. #productivity
- Throw a mat down in your bathroom floor so when the crippling anxiety triggered by the nightly news hits, you’ll be able to assume the fetal position and mutter all night about western wildfires, polar ice caps, and the Kardashian Effect without disturbing your partner.
- Or, if sleep isn’t a problem, hug your yoga mat, as a substitute of a body pillow, as you drift off at night.
- Reach enlightenment.
Seriously, though, if you could have a spare yoga mat that’s in decent condition and also you’re eager to recycle it, inquire at a neighborhood school, domestic violence shelter, or animal rescue group to learn in the event that they accept yoga mats as donations. If not, drop it off at a neighborhood secondhand store so another person can come to their practice.
Thanks to Tamika Caston-Miller, Jenny Aurthur, Jenny Latreille, Erin Skarda, Claire O’Brien, MacDuff Perkins, and Jenny Clise for contributing ideas to this piece.