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| Hi! I am new to the boards.
One of my goals for 2005 is to be more consistent in my yoga practice. I started by going to an Ansura class last night. The teacher is very involved and I found myself pushing myself harder than I normally would.
However... my hands and feet sweat so much, that it became difficult by the middle/end of the hour to hold poses. My feet would slide out under me during standing poses, and my hands would slip during downward facing dog. I have a standard yoga mat--should I try something else? Any recommendations on how to fight this?
Thanks! |
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| I know what you mean! I initially put a large towel on my mat like I do in Bikram but there was a lot of towel bunching in varying asanas. Got one of those towels and mats in one for Christmas and THAT my dear has done the trick--no more slipping and sliding. |
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| If you are sweaty like me, I recommend getting a yoga rug (barefoot yoga and prana make some). Sometimes they are called Mysore Rugs cuz they are popular among ashtanga practitioners.
I also like yogitoes skidless yoga towel. Light and great, but a little pricey. I hear they have some new colors now. 
If you don't want to spend the money on new yoga gear, bring a towel with you. Consider some baby powder (or chalk like they use for climbing/gymnastics/weightlifting) for your hands and feet. Some people like to use a standard yoga strap and place it horizontally across the front of their mats right under their palms for extra friction.
Sometimes I turn my mat over half way through class to have a fresh dry side. Experiment and have fun.
Keith
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| hey Mudflower! Seems to me that those Anusara classes are taught in "hotbox" rooms! whew!
I occasionally go to an Anusara class that my chiro teaches and I sweat my butt off. Alot of the other students bring towels and put them on top of their mat. I use a mysore rug that also goes to Ashtanga w/ me.
There's a towel thing available on the market the one that Bruce suggested is great... I forget the name, but you can probably buy it at yoga.com |
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| Melissa's correct--the store here has several designated for we sweaty folk--I have the Solace one--washes up a treat, dries easily AND as a bonus, at Bikram, after getting up from the mid-point savasana, the darkened outline of my bod on the mat looks like the Shroud of Turin--my teacher even mentioned, "I think I see Jesus..." Any laugh in a Bikram class is a good thing. |
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| Dear Mudflower:
Your sweat can be addressed by two ways below:
1. Improvement in Diet+Nutrition (not only diet). This can take several months or even years to address the whole sweatt issue if that is a real one.
2. Simple cotton cloth by the side while practicing and wiping the sweat before each pose.
OR
3. there may be a mat which absorbs sweat, but that will need frequent cleaning.
Donot sweat the small stuff, I mean sweat, out. (Or, on a humorous side, without offending brother Bruce, attend a Hot Yoga Class and sweat out once for all.)
Neel Kulkarni
www.authenticyoga.org |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
    
| Welcome mudflower Something I have discovered is that if I am nervous or concentrating very hard, I will get sweaty hands. Once you are familiar with the teacher and the style, it may disappear on its own. Or, as a last resort type of thing, you can buy a strong antiperspirant that is used by people who have serious sweating problems. I forget what it is called but I have a friend who says it has made a big difference in her life. |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 2479
Location: A Blue State | I know all about sweat! As an ex-Bikram person, I had learned to deal with utter saturation
during my practice. Then I started Iyengar classes. My teacher let me keep the towel on
my mat during the first two classes, but at the third I was told to get rid of it. 
Then we started backbending, and with my sweaty hands --- oy vey! --- but a hand towel
solved the problem. Just wipe hands, mat, and feet every so often. Iyengar yoga is not
sweat saturated like Bikram.
For Ashtanga classes, I still use a towel over my mat. It used to get kicked into bunches on
jump-throughs, and I managed to catch fingers and toes in it at first, but it's not a
problem anymore. I sweat a lot when I do Ashtanga, no avoiding it, and a sweaty mat
is bad for almost any pose. Dangerous, really.
At home, I use a Mysore rug over a mat (hardwood flooring is too hard for me). That
works very well when I'm sweating, but if the rug is dry is can be too slippery even for
poses like Down Dog and Triangle. I either take it off the sticky mat then or I wet it
a bit.
I suppose that I should take my Mysore rug to my Ashtanga class, right? Wrong.
A towel goes into the wash. I don't feel like getting into a lot of washing of that rug.
I'm not sure whether that makes me practical or lazy.
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| Dear Tourist and Mudflower:
No offense to Tourist. However, please, if you are interested in Health, please do not use the Antiperspirant. The way it works is as follows: It changes the nervous action in the sweat glands so that they can not sweat. With time they destroy the valuable sweat glands and sweating funtion.
But, as Toursit correctly said, if you keep the mind calm, and as Bay Guy suggested (after all he is a Bay person) towel will do very good. You may also use a very absorbing tissue by the side for wiping the palms, for example the tissue used for the Toilets.
Best Luck with Peace of Mind, and Tissue.
Neel Kulkarni
www.authenticyoga.org |
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| Thanks for all the advice! It's reassuring to hear that I'm not the only one with such sweaty palms and feet. I think I'll try bringing a full length towel to my next class to put over my mat. Maybe I'll eventually buy one of those Solace mats.
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
| It is true, Neel, the antiperspirant is not the best idea. For some though, it is a pathological situation and making the glands stop producing is a blessing. I think they even do some semi-surgical procedures to some people to shut down the sweat glands, don't they? Not much of a sweater myself - just a ladylike "glow"  |
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| Ohoooooooooooooooo! |
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| Yeah, a friend of mine in junior high had a sweating issue...She had to use a machine on her hands every night for an hour or so...Don't remember what the contraption did, exactly, but it started to work after a couple of months. |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 2479
Location: A Blue State | The contraption probably had a towel in it. There's such a thing as too much
technology. |
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| Not a big fan of the beach towel, for the reasons mentioned above. Mysore rug works well - you'll need to wet it at the start of class (spray bottle or judicious drippage from water bottle), since it'll be slippy until it gets damp.
The YogiToes nonskid mat is also a good option - light, folds small for easy packing, and dries fast, though the little nubbies can make it bunch up. My personal fave is the Luminaire towel - synthetic, like YogiToes, so all of the benefits apply, but no little nubs. It's sufficiently nonslip once it gets the littlest bit damp.
And antiperspirant is a definite no-no! Skin needs to breathe too! Blocking pores just interferes with your body's ability to regulate its temperature - you'll feel flushed, and you'll be sweating from everywhere else anyway. |
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| Hi there,
I'm actually one of those people who gets rigged up to a contraption every week....it's everything they tell you not to do- I have to put my hands on wet cloths that are placed over metal plates, and then they run an electrical current through for ten minutes, switch the polarity, and repeat. it's not the most pleasant experience (hands itch like mad), but it's an absolute godsend for me, and yoga would most likely be highly dangerous without!
Anyway, I've also been looking into various methods of restricting mat slippage, and came across this UK site the other week with a couple of things on it: http://www.yogamad.com/mats_accessories.php
I ordered some of the liquid chalk, and am trying out in a class tomorrow for the first time. If you like, I can report back. i actually tried some on my hands the other day, and it did make them feel very dry, but quite how it works out for my yoga practice, i'm not sure yet. I'd imagine it's also available online in other countries too. Obviously it's not for those who are opposed to antiperspirants, but if you're like me, you'll try anything!
I'll let you know how it goes.
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
| Neem - definitely report back. This group loves info I am glad to hear from someone who has used the machine thing for sweating and glad to hear it works for you. I am sure there are wonderful natural ways to work with this (and they probably include months of fasting...  ) but sometimes modern medicine is the answer, even though it sounds like something from the Dark Ages  |
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| Thanks tourist, i will tomorrow after class. I hope to eventually get off the machine thing eventually, but being a grad student with a rapidly approaching submission deadline, I don't really want to play around with my nutrition too much at the moment! I have a bunch of things I'm planning to try, but if they don't work (the nurse at the hospital said it could also be genetic) then I guess it's back to the machine....!! |
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| I've also just found this site too: http://www.yogamatters.com/acatalog/Cotton_yoga_mats.html
and they sell Mat 'grip' balls
"Borrowed from rock climbing these are eco friendly squeezable balls filled with a non-toxic compound to help keep your hands dry and improve your grip. Yes - they really work! Unlike liquid chalk products contains no contains magnesium carbonate, alcohol, thickener or perfume."
Colour: Slate grey
Weight:50g
Price: £6.45 / €9,64 Including VAT at 17.5%
Ant they've also got what looks like an all-in-one rug/stickymat. |
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| Well, my iyengar class wasn't really a fair trial for the liquid chalk, as it was a rather gentle one, so I thought I'd wait until I'd tried it out during my ashtanga class today before i let you all know what I thought. I have to say that I was pleasantly impressed. Together with all the vinyasas, the crowded class, and the rather warm room (I didn't see a thermometer, but I'm estimating that it was somewhere in the mid 70s), i did 'glow' as usual, but unusually, I stuck to my mat like a gecko! This is definitely something that worked well for me today, given the set of circumstances. I should note that we also had heated air conditioning in the room though, so this may have kept some of the humidity down, but even so, my hands and feet stayed much drier than they would have done without the chalk. Quite if this would work in hot yoga classes, I couldn't say, but I would probably recommend giving it a go, especially as all there is to lose are a couple of $$$s.
A bit more about the product itself: it comes in a generously-sized bottle (250 ml) which would last a reasonable amount of time given the amount that you actually use each time. Ingredients: magnesium carbonate, alcohol, thickener, scent. In consistency, it's exactly as it is called: literally runny chalk. When you put it on your hands/feet, the liquid evaporates and you're left with a thin white chalky coating. I did feel a little conspicuous at first (I felt a bit like it looked like I was treating some kind of dermatological complaint!) but once I was into the asanas I really didn't think about it any more. Provided you don't touch anything before it's dried, this whiteness manages to stay on your hands, and not rub onto anything else- it probably does a little bit, but not noticably at all; my yoga mat didn't get covered in big white footprints or anything. I think a tiny little bit may have come off on my legs when we were doing tree pose, but again, barely noticable (I only noticed as I was checking to see, and had to look really closely). One thing i will say is that it does really dry your hands out moisture-wise, and because it's so fine-grained, it's not that easy to wash off, so 12 hours later, my hands are still feeling quite dry (this would make a great antiperspirant!). i haven't noticed this dryness quite so much on my feet though, although I have been wearing socks all day.
So yes, i would defintely say try it out to see if it works for you. Obviously it might not work out for everyone, but given my set of circumstances, it definitely has made a difference to my practice.
Hope this helps!!  |
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So much sweat!
