Since my blog’s been kind of a downer lately, today let’s talk about clothes!
I’ve gotten kind of picky about what I want to wear to yoga class. I hate doing yoga in loose-fitting clothes; I feel like a baggy t-shirt is always hanging in my face during down dog and riding up somewhere I don’t want it to. Same thing with pants, if they’re too baggy, they get in my way when I’m practicing. And I don’t like long pants, because then my legs get too warm in a vigorous practice, but I also can’t stand shorts (ever). So here’s what I like to wear for yoga. (FYI, gentlemen, you might want to stop reading here.)
Pants:
Capri/cropped pants, close fitting but not too tight (to avoid the dreaded “camel toe” look), preferably with some flare at the bottom so I can easily fold them up over my knee during practice if needed. Elastic waist – no tie, no zipper, and none of that fold-over fabric thing that’s so popular with the kids these days, since that’s just more fabric to get in my way when I’m bending.
Right now I have four pairs of yoga pants that meet all these requirements. Two of them came from Target a year and a half ago; I looked at Target more recently but everything I tried on was of really thin material and resulted in camel toe. I got one new pair two weeks ago at Old Navy that I love (they even have pockets!). The ON website is down right now so I can’t link ’em but they were in their new GoGA collection (Go Go Active or something like that). I also got a pretty solid pair at Marshalls this past weekend. First I went to REI, felt ill at the thought of spending $55 on yoga pants, and then went to Marshalls, where I found a pair for $14.99 that seem like they’ll be quite serviceable. They also have a cute pattern on the waistband (which does not fold over).
Tops:
Spaghetti strap tank top with a built-in bra. Because, okay, I hate sports bras. I find them really constricting and uncomfortable, and I honestly do not have enough bulk up front to really need one. When I’m jogging, a sports bra is a necessary evil (although there’s enough room in mine to store my iPod in there (and I even have a big old-school video iPod), and because that thing is way supportive the iPod doesn’t bounce at all!), but when I’m doing yoga, it’s just another layer of fabric. Which is important, actually, because if the room is chilly I don’t want my girls pointing at everyone. I actually feel a little conflicted about this. It’s yoga and I want to wear clothes that are comfortable, which would mean no bra, but I feel like it’s discourteous to be braless and potentially make my fellow yogis feel uncomfortable about the view. Considering my future as a yoga teacher, I feel like it’s possibly not professional to be braless in my workplace? I’ve only had one yoga teacher ever who went noticeably braless, which I was mostly cool with at the time (several years ago), but she was wearing a white tank which I thought was not too classy and was kind of distracting.Thoughts?
So it seems like the best solution for me will be tanks with built-in bras. I’ve been shopping for these a lot lately, and it’s surprisingly difficult to find one that is thick enough to be serviceable in a cold room and that also has spaghetti straps (because one of the other things I dislike about sports bras is the racer back). I have two really good tank tops right now that totally do the job, and are stretchy and comfy and also long enough to overlap the top of my pants and thus avoid getting a draft on my back while in a bendy pose. One of them I inherited from my friend Patty, and one of them is this PrAna top (the pink pattern is really cute in person), which is currently on clearance at REI for way cheaper than you can typically purchase a PrAna top. I know the usual price of PrAna tops because I did some top-shopping at REI this weekend too and didn’t buy anything because while yeah, they make nice stuff, I refuse to spend $48 on a freakin’ tank top. (Marshalls was a bust, no pun intended, in the tank department.) So right now I have two excellent tanks and a bunch of Old Navy basic cotton tanks that I have to wear with a sports bra. Hoping to find more of the built-in kind and phase out the ON tanks eventually. Or maybe look for a sports bra with spaghetti straps instead of a racer back, although I kind of want to stop purchasing sports bras altogether until my running bra falls apart, which shouldn’t be for a while as that thing has structural integrity like you wouldn’t believe.
So, dear readers, what do you find comfortable to wear for yoga? And where do you buy it?
Rox Does Yoga 