Dear fellow yogis, it is time we clean our mats. Reaching Samadhi is difficult enough - a stinky mat doesn’t help for sure ;-).
No matter what style of yoga, how often and where you practice your mat needs to be cleaned regularly. I used to buy mat cleaners and we also wanted to provide our students at the SurfnYoga House with a spray to clean their mats and we soon found out that buying it on a regular basis is just too expensive on the long run.
So I started to search for recipes to make my own mat spray, tired (and failed) a bit and finally made one that really works for me.
It saves money and moreover it is a lot of fun to experiment with different combinations of essential oils. (Buying the ingredients - especially the essentials oils - might be a bit pricey but you will go a long way with a small bottle of oil since you will only use a few drops for each bottle of mat spray.)
The Recipe
¾ cup distilled water
¼ cup alcohol witch hazel
5 drops Lavendar oil
3 drops Tea Tree oil
1 pich of love (very important, don't skip that one! ;-) )
1 spray bottle
-> mix everything together and put it into the spray bottle.
You can use other essential oils instead of the lavender oil - i also made one with lemon oil instead of the lavendar and it turned out really good. I recommend keeping the tea tree oil in the mix because of its antibacterial and antifungal properties.
Try it and let me know what you think.
I use the same mix to clean my mat, but without the lavendar. I don't mind the smell of tea tree oil alone but I might mix it up next time.
Hi @danaedwards. I think the lavendar really makes it even more awesome :-) I am a lavendar addict though... ;-)
I can imagine using this on a wide variety of other things too! Great, and simple recipe.
Totally! You can use it as a cleaner for surfaces in your house etc. another option would be to replace the which hazel with apple cider vinegar (it is way cheaper than the which hazel - at least here in austria) but I didn't like the smell of the vinegar on my mat but for cleaning other stuff it would be perfect! Have a great day! :-)
Thanks for the idea! For me right now the best is put it in the bathtub, scrub with a brush and neutral soap, then dry in the sun!
Do you want to review and upvote if you like my last yoga post? I would like hear your opinion :-)
https://steemit.com/yoga/@marceladiomede/why-is-useful-to-increase-physical-strength-doing-yoga
My "problem" is that I leave my mat in the studio I practice most of the time - I sometimes take it home and clean it in my shower but I can't do that all the time so the mat spray works perfect for me. Also for the studio mats in the surfnyoga house it is great because we can't clean them in the shower after every time they are used... I will read your last yoga post today or tomorow. Thank you for reminding me.
Thanks a lot for this recipe! I or my mat needed it badly;)
You are very welcome :-)