No Mat...

A friend tried to post this the other day...

"Yoga is all about you and your mat..." I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly Bob, had I not this very day attended a studio operated by a great teacher here in Seattle, Katerina at Yogiway. (www.yogiway.com) She has dispensed with mats, and says that she believes we are constrained by the mat. The class had me somewhat disorientated, and there was a tendency to float around the space but I could sense that I was liberated from something. Her entire floor is padded to the depth of a little more than two regular mats. It feels very comfortable and very safe, although you do feel that if another practitioner were to stray in your direction you have no right to exclude them or any artificial boundary to indicate 'your space.' She mops up and sanitizes after every class. I have clung to my mat, and the Ashtanga rug that covers it as representing the place where I do my practice and take care of myself, but after today I wonder if its only real value is as the sponge for my sweat.