My, my, my, my, manduka

I had been considering buying a Manduka Pro mat for quite some time especially since most of the advanced ashtangis in my class practice on them. I figured that my practice could use all the help that it could get and what better way to quickly progress than by emulating all of the start students?

So after wavering quite a bit and growing increasingly disgusted by the mats provided by the studio I finally bit the bullet and bought the Manduka Pro mat. Normally the mat only comes in black and while black is a great color and goes with everything I didn't want to purchase a black yoga mat. So when I saw the limited edition Black Beauty model on the Manduka website I impulsively purchased it.

I had to wait a long week before it arrived from California and the color was just as beautiful I had imagined. Today was the first day that I was able to practice with it and that mat is unlike any other that I have ever stepped foot on. Unfortunately, it does need some time to break-in because at some points during practice today it felt more like a slip-n-slide than a yoga mat but I'm confident that with continued use I will fall more and more in love with it.

Oh, the other unfortunate thing is that while the mat itself is amazing it didn't drastically improve my practice by any means as I still struggled through the usual culprits. I did however, manage to get a pretty tight hand bind in supta kurmasana for the first time ever with the help of one of the assistants. Coincidence?