“When Plank’s Founder, former shoe designer and full time fashionista, Doreen Hing, discovered the incredible benefits of yoga and how it positively affected other aspects of her life, she knew she had to share this fantastic sense of awareness and well-being with others the only way she knew how – through design.
While exploring the technology to imprint high-quality photo imagery onto the yoga mats, Doreen and the lab discovered the surface coating developed to protect the artwork had increased grip potential when body heat and pressure were applied.
Whereas most of the better grade yoga mats hold students securely in place, Plank mats are specifically designed to teach yoga’s grounding principles, what we affectionately call BADTechTM, Broad And Deeper Technology. Working the complete opposite way than all yoga mats, our heat activated grip technology, requires students to be more engaged in what does Broad And Deep physically and mentally, look and feel like. Slipping is celebrated, instead of feared on a Plank mat, as it is a warning sign of inefficient grounding. As the pioneer for several years, wondering why yoga mats are not visually more interesting, and now, more importantly, why a yoga mat can’t go beyond being the grippiest. Well we stopped wondering and trust you can imagine the power of what refined and maximized grounding will do for your poses, your learning curve and ultimately your experience of yoga on and off the mat…”
My mom is friends with Doreen and we have two of these mats at home (the cobra one and the pills one). They have a grippy bottom so they don’t slide on the floor, and the top, as described in the description, leads to slipping sometimes which helps you become more aware of your body. The designs are also different and organic and have definitely started conversations when I use them at other studios. I think this company is a great example of taking an idea of a more fun yoga mat, embracing the curve balls that the technology throws, and then creating an entirely new and innovative design.
