This post is dedicated to Meagan, one of my readers. Sweet girl, you are not alone in your sweaty life.
Are you one of those people who think you can’t do certain types of physical activity/exercise because there aren’t products that are sweat friendly to help you cope with your hyperhidrosis? Think again! Let’s talk about yoga.
Yoga Mat for Sweaty Hands and Feet
I spent hours searching online for a yoga mat that would prevent me from slipping and sliding all over the place. Here’s the one I bought:
Gaiam Sol Soft Grip Yoga Mat
I’ve used this mat while doing yoga in the rainforest where it’s extra humid. Okay, that makes me sound like a jet-setter. I did yoga at a butterfly pavilion, which is kinda the same thing. This mat gave me good traction so I could actually focus on the yoga and not my sweating.
Yoga Towel for Sweat
For days when I’m having a really hard time controlling my sweating, I like to use a yoga towel on top of my mat. This one also works as a travel mat and folds up nice and neat so you can throw it in a suitcase. The microfiber provides extra grip and absorbs the sweat really well so you can practice your asanas with confidence. It’s also machine washable so you can get the nasty off.
Gaiam No-Slip Yoga Towel
Hand and Foot Covers for Sweat
For extra sweat protection, you can try these grippy gloves and socks. I personally feel like I do better when my feet are bare and exposed to the air, but you can start out with socks if they help you to feel more confident (like when you’re in mountain pose with your feet firmly planted). They come in cute Mary Jane styles (both open-toe and full-toe) and also more manly versions for the sweaty guys out there – hey, dudes!
ToeSox Grippy Half-Toe Bella Socks
Gaiam No-Slip Yoga Socks
These grippy gloves are perfect for poses like downward dog when your hands are supporting a lot of your weight and are more likely to slip and slide.
Gaiam Grippy Yoga Gloves
More good news: in addition to the Gaiam website, you can now find select Gaiam yoga items in Kohl’s department stores.
Yoga on Gaiam TV
Still not ready to venture outside of your sweat box and expand your horizons by taking a yoga class in a studio or gym? That’s okay. You can do yoga any time, anywhere with My Yoga on Gaiam TV. A subscription to this online streaming service is only 99 cents for the first month, and then $9.95 month thereafter. I’ve done many of these yoga videos in my living room when no one else is around. There’s a great beginner series on their website, too, if you’re just starting out with yoga. And, it’s not just yoga that you can watch. They have a ton of inspirational films, documentaries, and original shows that you can’t find anywhere else. It’s like Netflix, only way cooler. Plus, they have free content like articles and yoga poses.
The other neat thing about Gaiam TV is that you can download your favorite content to your device and then take it with you. This is great for yoga because as you get comfortable doing it in your living room first, you can then experiment with it in the park, your hotel when you’re traveling, indoors in a high school gym, etc. This is perfect for those with hyperhidrosis since we like to test and adapt to our environments. The more control we have over our surroundings, the better we can manage our sweating, right?
Yoga to Retrain Your Nervous System
Yoga actually restores and resets your nervous system. It calms you down. So when our sympathetic nervous system is constantly in overdrive and behaving in the fight-or-flight mode, we sweat, and way more than others because our eccrine glands are constantly in the “on” mode. The sympathetic nervous system acts like a thermostat, and it’s hard to turn it down in those with hyperhidrosis.
This is where the parasympathetic nervous system comes into play. This is the system we want to tap into to produce calm in our bodies. When we open the energy channel of the parasympathetic nervous system, we can tune into ourselves and stop worrying about our excessive sweating problem because we’re becoming one with the moment. Sounds lofty, I know, but I have done yoga classes where I am completely dry by the time I arrive at shavasana (corpse pose). I’ve left the class wanting to cry tears of joy for experiencing an activity dry like “normal” people do all the time.
So, stop making those BS excuses as to why you think you can’t try yoga and be sweaty at the same time. If you’re extra worried, do a hot yoga class where everyone is sweating right alongside you and you can better blend in. After all, you’ve got the products now to help you.
(Note: I was not paid for this post nor did I receive any products for free. I simply took the time to find what I needed to make my life as a puddle a bit easier. It’s all about asking – and looking – for what you need in order to live a drier life.)
