By: Jean Johnson for Back1You go to yoga to stretch your back, but what about your feet? Indeed, how does the saying go? When the New York Times sneezes, the rest of the country gets a cold?
Clearly that’s the case when it comes to the topic of picking up athlete’s foot from shared yoga mats. Indeed, a brief Google search will show that even the Yoga Journal has put a quick piece on the subject up on its Web site, and that bloggers across the country are getting into the fray. All this, despite that people outside of New York City and Los Angeles seem to be clueless and are shrugging their shoulders some.
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Two yoga postures to help your back:
Half Bridge Pose: Lying on your back, bend your knees and then lift the pelvis up into an arch as high as it will comfortably go. Stay there breathing, face and arms relaxed. Then once the muscles fatigue, slowly lower the hips and stretch the legs and arms out into the corpse position.
Rest Pose: Bend the knees and grasp the shins with your arms, drawing your legs as close to the chest as they will go. Try rocking from side to side to massage the muscles in the back. |
Still, since the NYT is so often the end-all-be-all and since it did quote experts in the field, we’d be remiss if we didn’t let you know what was up. Far be it from Back1 to let its readers go barefooted where no man or woman wants to go. New York City Report
What you need to look for is flaky, reddened skin that itches, says podiatrist Greg E. Cohen, M.D. He’s seen so many of these cases in recent years that he now responds without missing a beat. “The first thing I ask is, ‘Do you do yoga?’” Not only is the answer generally ‘yes,’ according to Cohen, he has seen the instance of yoga-related foot fungus rise a good 50 percent in the last two years. Plantar warts are also related to funky yoga mats and are plaguing the unaware.
As far as the West coast’s answer to Big Apple woes, the NYT found the chairwoman of podiatric surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Noreen Oswell, M.D. to agree that, in the NYT’s words, “there has been an uptick of fungal infections among her patients who use mats that aren’t properly cleaned.”
Huh? Say Yogis and Yoginis in Portland, Oregon
“I’ve done yoga for years and never heard of anyone having any problems,” said Ted Strider of Portland. “I’ve even done the hot yoga – Bikram. That’s where you sweat buckets. I could see it in those rooms maybe, but most everyone brings their own mats. I don’t even use a sticky mat anymore when I do Bikram. There are cotton ones that work better to absorb the sweat. And they go into the laundry a lot easier than the sticky mats do. But that’s just me and my little world.”
It’s true, the Pacific Northwest has long been considered a hinterland by the rest of the nation. A gray, rainy outpost where the best folks can do is keep depression from bowling them over. A place that is almost as much a backwater as Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon when it comes to culture and being in the know.
Hold the phone, though. Portland has put itself on the map lately for books, bikes and good food. Also, it’s got a ton of yoga studios that help many in the city maintain flexible bodies and keep stress down to reasonable levels. We called a couple studio owners and found Strider’s comments echoed by the owner/teachers.
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Concerned about yoga mat fungus?
Research has not confirmed links between unclean yoga mats and fungal disease.
Don’t be afraid to ask your yoga studio about their mat cleaning techniques.
If you don’t want to worry about fungus or the cleaning process your studio uses, bring your own mat and enjoy a stress and fungus-free class.
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According to Barbara Fergusson, co-owner of the well-established Portland Yoga Arts, a full-service studio that provides mats to its clients, “We have never had anyone come to us saying they picked up anything from our mats,” Fergusson said. “We do, however, encourage our students to buy their own mats if they are concerned.” Fergusson added that, “We clean our mats during the breaks between each yoga session, each teacher taking a few home to wash and hang dry. We also have a product from our mat supplier to spray on the mats if necessary during the term.”
We tried a yoga class at Portland Yoga Arts and found it far from the sweaty confines of a gym with which athlete’s foot is so often associated. Indeed, between the impeccably clean wood flooring and the slow, stately progression of gentle stretches, it was our breathing (mostly) that our minds were on – not fungal disease.
Ditto for Bikram yoga – although if any situation could be a breeding ground for germs it would be these rooms that are maintained at 105 degrees Fahrenheit during the 90-minute classes. Clearly, walking into a Bikram studio – even if toting your own mat – brings you up short. It’s like taking a trip to Georgia during the peak of the peach harvest – and that’s being generous as far as heat and humidity go.
Bob Bielefeld who owns one of several Bikram Yoga College of India studios in Portland said he wasn’t aware of the news coverage, but noted that they hadn’t had any problems either. He appreciated the heads-up, though.
“It’s good to be aware of the potential,” he said. “That way we can nip it in the bud. I think they have a good point on picking up fungus. It’s a perfect environment for it – the warmth and the dampness. But I believe the tea oil we clean our mats with is a fungicide.”
Bielefeld explains that his staff sprays the mats that are loaned to students after each use with a tea oil cleaner. “Then they are hung up overnight to dry. Also, periodically we run them through a washer with laundry soap. We can’t wash a lot at once – only around three at a time. That’s why it’s nice that most of our students bring their own mats.
“We also clean our carpets once a month like clockwork. We have them professionally shampooed – and we vacuum daily.”
Indeed, Bielefeld doesn’t want anything to tarnish the image of Bikram yoga, a practice he says has brought many health benefits to him including significant, sustained weight loss over a decade or more.
“It’s good for everybody, it really is. Like Bikram’s famous quote goes: ‘never too old, never too sick, never too late.’ It works every organ in the body from head to toe.”
Barbara Fergusson is equally committed to the Iyengar yoga she teaches at Portland Yoga Arts. And most likely, her long term committed clientele will not let hearsay clear from New York City dampen their enthusiasm for their work.
As longtime student Laura Berg said, “My lower back would be in terrible shape if it weren’t for my study with Barbara, so I’m not about to discontinue my yoga. If there is a serious concern I guess I could start bringing my own mat, but then I’d have to remember to bring home, which I always forget. Maybe there’s something in the water here in Portland – or our wonderful Columbia River salmon – that is keeping us from getting too fungal here.”
Fergusson appreciates Berg’s pluck – and her humor, but adds that, “I imagine that with the article in the NYT we will have to look at this more closely.”
