Mat Love Stories #1 - Beverley Nolan

Once upon a time, my yoga mat was a piece of carpet underlay sliced by my yoga teacher from a big roll of umpteen metres. There were three colour choices: white, pale green, and something that would fall into the peach palette. That was it. They were called ‘sticky’ mats and helped stabilise our practice on cold or carpeted church halls and community centres.

This was pre-studio days back in the early 80s, when my teacher also sourced chipfoam sheets from an upholsterer who cut them into blocks, my dad fashioned some wooden bricks out of timber offcuts and, before I had a Pune-belt (the narrow, white d-ring kind), I improvised with an old tie (thanks again, dad) or a soft leather buckled belt; blankets were quite literally from the airing cupboard.

My first mat lasted a good 10 years of practice and several overseas trips; it wore thin and took on a permanent shine that became too slippery to practice on. This was now the mid-90s, and purpose-created yoga mats were rolling out of factories in a growing choice of colours. I bought a box of pinks, purples and plums to sell on to my own students and kept two for me: one to take to classes, one at home, pristine clean, free of playgroup glitter and crumbs. I still have them both. This stuff doesn’t wear out! And, of course, studios now generously provide everything I need to practice and to teach so the longevity of my home mats has increased and with it the sense of nostalgia for all the past practices.