This entry was published on August 13, 2025 by Charlotte Bell.
One of the great yoga practices gifts is the accent on balancing. The poses such as vrksasana (pose of trees) are an integral part of almost all forms of practice. The ability to balance is a crucial part of healthy aging, and it may be useful to develop balancing skills as soon as possible. Conventional wisdom wants a thinner yoga carpet (⅛ inch or less, 1.5 mm at 3.5 mm) is the most conducive to staying on our feet for a leg balancing poses. The more the diluting carpet, the less your standing foot will have to make adjustments. But is it optimal? After almost 40 years of yoga teaching, my unequivocal response is: it depends. So what is the best yoga carpet to balance?
The best yoga carpet to be balanced depends on your intention
As counter -intuitive as it may seem, the carpet that I usually use to teach yoga – even in the classes where we practice a lot of standing balancing – is the yoga of ultimate cushion yoga. At ⅜ inches, it is the Mat Hugger Magger that the Mat Hugger offers are the thickest. (I alternate between this carpet and the paired rubber yoga carpet (3/16 ″)).
Why would I like to make things more difficult for me? I practice balancing poses to cultivate and maintain my balancing skills. Of course, I can more easily perform The balancing poses on a thinner carpet, but I want to challenge my balance. This is how we speed up balancing skills – by balancing difficult situations. So, to achieve my goal by practicing balancing poses, the best yoga carpets for balancing are those thicker and more difficult.
Because I have a long -standing relationship with Hugger Mugger yoga products, I bought many carpets over the years. I find that balancing different types of surfaces – and carpets of different thicknesses – is important to develop balancing skills. So, sometimes I practice on thick carpets, and sometimes I practice on thin carpets. I also place my carpets on different surfaces. Although wood and surfaces such as concrete are the most reliable, I think it is useful to practice balancing on soft and Squishhy surfaces, such as carpet, also.
It is important to respect where you are. If your balance is generally unstable, practicing a thinner yoga carpet is a good starting point. Once you feel stable in the balance of poses on a thin carpet, you can start to challenge your balance on a thicker carpet.
Balance out and out of the yoga carpet
Practicing yoga on various types of carpets and soil types is not the only way to perfect your balance. Here are some suggestions for removing your carpet balancing practice:
- Train to balance different types of shoes – wives, soft soles, thin soles, etc. Unless you do heels regularly, I would not recommend practicing yoga. (Besides, I would recommend to avoid or minimize port heels in general, due to the ravages that they do on the integrity of your musculoskeletal system.)
- Practice outside. Hiking trails are rarely completely level. Walk and practice balancing poses, on unequal surfaces, challenge your feet to balance in a different way. The next time you hike, stop for about a minute and you practice a tab balancing – the laying of the trace seems appropriate when you are in the woods – on an uneven surface.
If you want to know more about the elements of the development of stable balance, here is a recent blog.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell discovered yoga in 1982 and started teaching in 1986. Charlotte is the author of Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyding Practice and Yoga for Meditators, both published by Rodmell Press. His third book is entitled Hip-Healthy Asana: The Yoga Pratitioner’s Guide to Protect of the Hips and Avoid Si Joint Pain (Shambhala Publications). She writes a monthly chronicle for Catalyst Magazine and is online Yoga U publisher. Charlotte is a founding member of the board of directors of Greentree Yoga, a non -profit organization that brings yoga to poorly served populations. Musician for life, Charlotte plays an oboe and an English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony and the Sextuant Folk Red rock Rondo, whose DVD won two Emmy Awards.