Doing Yoga While Traveling – What to Bring!
For a traveling yogi, packing the best travel mat is just the beginning. Here are the *TOP 8* products I bring with me when traveling, plus extra travel tips to do yoga in the plane.
Watch this video on Youtube here.
Video Transcript
Hey guys, it’s Brett. I am still in India, and I thought I’d share with you how I pack for a trip and what yoga things I bring along. Of course, I always want to bring all my yoga toys and I have so many of them, so I thought I’d share with you what I brought on this trip so you can see how I pack yoga style.
Obviously, first thing I bring always is my yoga mat. So this is my travel mat. This is this mat’s third trip to India, wow. And it’s still great and it’s still sticky and I still love it. This mat is a Wai Lana mat; I have a link to it on my website where I link all the products that I like. And it’s cheap, so if you’re new to yoga or you just need a really thin, know it’s a thin travel mat, I highly recommend this. It’s also purple which is my favorite color.
Number two essential thing that I brought is my eye pillow. Now it’s questionable whether this fits into the realm of yoga or not, but I sleep with this and fall asleep with this on my face every single night. And I love this one because it is an oversized eye pillow. Most eye pillows are much smaller than this.They’re about maybe half the size in terms of volume and I really love the big one. At night, my eyes are very fluttery. My eyelids don’t close all the way and my eyes, because of that, are moving around all the time, so I don’t get as restful as asleep as normal people who don’t have restless eyes syndrome which I basically have.
And my massage therapist back in San Francisco told me about this because she noticed how my eyes fluttered when my eyes were closed when she’s working on me. Life-changing. The first time I used this, I felt like I had slept well for the first time in my entire life. And so now I don’t go anywhere without it, even if I’m camping, even if I’m hiking to the top of the mountain. This is in my pack. I love it, and I’m desperate to find another one. So if you guys have ideas of where I can, let me know. This one was given to me as a gift by a dear friend that she got at an outdoor market. And so I have not been able to find one that’s this substantial in terms of size. I’ve only been able to find those lame, little eye pillows which are way to narrow and fall off way too easily. So definitely let me know if you know where I can get more and get one for yourself.
THINK POSITIVE & ALWAYS GET ON YOUR MAT.
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Bonus tip, if you’re flying a long distance, you can actually take the strap and make it about as wide as your hips, maybe a little wider, and loop the strap around your thighs so that when you’re sitting in the airplane seat and you fall asleep or whatever, the strap is holding your thighs together. So your left and right thigh are like this on the chair and the strap is around them like this. It protects your low back because otherwise your legs flare out or they’re just whatever which way, and that can torque your low back. So having the strap to stretch with when you get to your destination but also on the plane if you want to use that tip is really great.
Item number four that I brought is this little ball. It’s a myofascial release ball that you can lie on, also given to me by my amazing massage therapist. And what you do is you just put the ball behind your shoulders or up by your neck where you’re often tense, and you just roll around on it in bed and move your arms around. You can roll up and down on the ball. And once it sinks in, it really helps to work out knots and I just absolutely love this. I also sometimes put it under my tailbone to traction my low back when I’m lying in bed. Super great.
Product number five is the CranioCradle. This is something I love so much, also available on the product section of my website. If you’ve ever heard of craniosacral therapy or craniosacral massage, this little device is basically doing that for you. There’s a variety of ways you can place it behind your neck like this or like this. Or you can be on it like this and rock your head from side to side and traction and lengthen the back of your neck, your cervical spine. Love this product to the extent that I literally don’t go anywhere without it. Every night when I’m either reading in bed or just winding down for the day, I find a way to throw this under my neck, lifesaver.
Okay, next are my essential oils. I do not know as much about essential oils as I would like to, but I do know that they smell really great and they help me relax. I have lavender here which I love to put on my wrists and on my neck, especially on a long plane ride or between plane flights. Same with peppermint which I love, wakes me up and makes me feel refreshed, especially if you’re starting the day on a time zone that is completely the opposite from your time zone which I’m doing right now in India. This helps make the morning a little bit easier. And then, of course, I have my other favorite, lemon, just because lemon smells great, always puts you in a good mood. And these last two, I actually bought here in India because essential oils here are cheaper than essential oils in the US.
Number seven, I think this is seven, is this Elizabeth Arden eight-hour cream. So very, very briefly, when I was 18 years old I lived in Italy and I did some modelling, very briefly. It was a moment. And I lived with another model and she was really beautiful, super beautiful, and she was amazing at makeup. And this was something she introduced me to that she uses on her lips. So this, I’ll take some out, it’s like a lip gloss. You can use it on your lips to just create more shine and you can also use it under your eyes at night to — if you’re travelling, you’re probably tired and maybe getting bags around your eyes. I really, really, really love this product and I keep it by my bedside, and I brought it with me here to India as well.
The last travel essential on my list is a toner. Something you can spritz to your face with to keep your face hydrated when on you’re on the plane and just keep your space — your immediate space smelling nice and hydrated because planes can be very dry and smell really bad. Don’t be fooled by this bottle; this bottle I don’t even know where it’s from. I actually made this myself. And you can make your own toner with witch-hazel and in my case, flowers and essential oil. There’s a bunch of recipes online. I can try to find the one that I used, but basically it was inspired getting a bunch of flowers for Valentine’s day a long time ago from my now fiancĂ©. These roses were so beautiful that I was really upset about watching them die, and [laughs] flowers make me sad.
Anyway, I decided to boil the roses and make rose water, and then use it to make my own tonic with witch-hazel and the essential oils. And I actually made so much of it that I’ve been able to use it for almost over a year now. So I threw some in this little bottle as my travel sized one and I take it with me everywhere, and it reminds me of roses and happiness, and keeps my skin hydrated and, hopefully, looking good.
So those are the yoga things that helped me on this trip to India that I brought things. I wished I had brought are my yoga jellies. I don’t know if you’ve seen my video on them, they’re amazing. I regret that I don’t have them with me pretty much every single day because I’ve been doing a lot of yoga here in India and if you heard about my crazy, almost torturous class that I went to in India, you know that I was holding plank repeatedly for a really long amount of time and my wrists really hurt. And anytime you’re just going on a yoga retreat, you often don’t think of how much pressure you’re going to put on your wrists and your joints. I wish I had the jellies so badly because my left wrist has been flaring up and now I’m never going to travel anywhere for doing yoga extensively without them.
Also wish I brought my yoga block. I know a block is kind of pushing it with what you can fit in your suitcase but that’s why I love the foam blocks, and you can read my review about blocks right here if you haven’t read it already. But I wish I had brought the block because I’ve just been doing again so much yoga and a lot of yoga at home in my hotel room. And I just love practicing with the block.It’s my favorite, favorite thing. Everything is better with the block, just like everything is better with yoga jellies. Anything that can make you more comfortable in a pose, especially when you’re travelling and you maybe don’t feel up to doing a big practice, is life-changing.
So I think I did a good job, those are the two things I also would have brought. Remember you can check out all these products on my website. I don’t sell them myself but I linked to the places that do. So please check that out and give this video a thumbs up if you liked hearing about what I use when I’m on the road, if you want to see more videos like this, and I will see you guys when I’m back in the United States. Okay. Bye.
