Best Yoga Bags and Accessories for Travel
Travelling with a yoga practice is mostly a logistics problem, and the accessories worth carrying are fewer than this post suggested.
Be honest about the mat first. A full mat is two to three kilos and the size of a bolster. A travel mat, 1 to 2mm of folding rubber or cork, is about a kilo and provides grip rather than cushioning: fine over carpet or a studio mat, hard on a tiled floor. Many people who travel regularly carry no mat at all and use whatever the studio has, with their own towel on top.
What actually earns space:
- A grip towel. The single most useful item. It turns any borrowed mat into a usable one, doubles as a hand towel, packs to nothing and dries overnight.
- A strap, or rather nothing, since a scarf, a belt or a hotel dressing-gown tie does the same job.
- A travel mat only if you practise somewhere with no studio and a hard floor.
What to leave behind: blocks, which are bulky and are replaced by books or a folded towel; a bolster; and the dedicated mat bag, since a strap round a rolled mat and a hand is lighter and the bag is another thing to carry.
A note on bags: if you want one, a simple sling with a shoulder strap beats a zipped holdall, because the mat goes in wet and needs to dry, and the sling lets it.
And the change since this was written: practising from a screen became normal, so a phone with a few sessions downloaded before you fly now replaces the need to find a studio at all.