Floor puts practice on solid ground

I love a good floor.

My appreciation of good flooring began when I moved away from Maine and into a seemingly endless string of apartments and condos with wall-to-wall beige carpeting. First, I hate beige. Beige is the least interesting of all colors. It is the vanilla of the floor-covering world, the plain baked potato, the shapeless shift dress. It is as though you yawned into the paint machine at Lowe's and it interpreted the color of that yawn.

Then, there is the carpeting itself. For those of us who have cats, carpeting is a nightmare. It holds hairballs well. And no cat on the planet will go to a linoleum area of the house to throw up. It is going to be on that light beige rug, forever leaving a reminder that Rita Was

Here. Every little stain shows up on the beige rug, and I can almost hear my cats giggling as they run off to eat again after coughing up something roughly the size of a garden hose.

And when I get out of bed in the morning, I want to slide my feet into a pair of slippers and shuffle along hardwood or tile to get to the coffeemaker. But there is no shuffling in the wall-to-wall world. Not unless you want to give your cats shocks of static electricity.

But, as usual, I digress. Flooring is actually a crucial part of the enjoyment of a yoga practice. For a few years, a whole lot of us in the Charleston/Mount Pleasant area got spoiled by having the privilege of practicing on The Best Yoga Floor Ever at a studio that, sadly, no longer exists. The building still sits there, taunting me as I drive by, since I know that the floor is in there, waiting to be torn up and made into something else.

The floor was an original wood floor laid out when the building was put together. The building had gone through several metamorphoses from a church to a dance studio to a yoga studio, at least. What remained through the changes was this fantastic floor. It was light hardwood, with some kind of cushioning between it and the concrete that must certainly rest below. The floor was not bouncy like an aerobics room floor, but also was not rigid like many of the floors that are put down now. It was not carpeted, so balancing was easier, and the smell of mildew was less likely to appear and linger.

Now, in a very environmentally friendly trend, there is the appearance of the bamboo floor. Bamboo floors are lovely and very eco, but when laid out directly on top of concrete, it is only a matter of time before your ankles and knees start to rebel. And padding underneath them is nice, but padding them to the degree of an aerobics floor is akin to putting a little trampoline underneath. The control over our bodies in practice goes out the window when we are bouncing around like Tigger on espresso.

And as for putting down a laminate floor or any thin layer of flooring over basketball court-like padding, that's just asking for the floor to self-destruct. It'll bubble, peel and look icky.

And so we grow even more nostalgic for the old-style hardwood floors, the ones that didn't bother our joints and didn't make it harder to balance. The problem is that studios already have put their floors down. What I recommend, if you are having a Bad Floor Experience, is to tell the management at the studio or gym where you are practicing. If enough people say something, it might actually get done. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" is what my ex-boyfriend used to say. Of course, he owned only one book and didn't believe in cardiovascular exercise, but his words were, nonetheless, wise.

When you first begin a yoga practice, the floor probably is not something that even crosses your mind, aside from your burning desire to not fall on it. But as we progress, as our bodies grow more and more accustomed to the practice, the little differences mean a lot.

As I have said before, it is your practice, and you deserve to have it your way. The floor is the thing underneath you that holds you up. It is the only thing, aside from your body, that you really need in a yoga practice.

So make sure you love it, and if you don't, let someone know. Odds are, other people are thinking the same thing. Together, we can make hardwood happen.

Suzanne Gannon is a yoga instructor in the Charleston area. Reach her at suzygannonyoga@yahoo.com.