| Download Yoga Trends PDF |
 |
Yoga Products and Gear Popularity Trends
Once you have your Yoga clothing, the only remaining things before you can buy your tickets to enlightenment is getting yourself one or more yoga products and accessories.
Yoga Mats
One item that you absolutely have to have is a good looking and yet practical Yoga mat. And since there are dozens of Yoga mat brands available, let's have a look at who leads the space. It's difficult to find a complete list of yoga mat brands. Here are the contenders that entered the competition and which certainly include the most popular Brands and a few less known ones:
Barefoot, Bolder, Breathe, Gaiam, Hugger Mugger, Jade, Kulae, Lululemon, Mandala, Manduka, MindBodyBliss, Prana, Purearth, YogaAccessories, Yogitoes.
Here we search for four different combinations of keywords that are most likely to be used, e.g.:
Manduka Yoga Mat + Manduka Yoga Mats + Manduka Mat + Manduka Mats
(see the section on yoga clothing for the explanation on how this search works)
And the results are as follows:
1. Manduka Yoga mats take the first place as the most popular yoga mat brand over the last 2 years, and their popularity just continues to grow.
2. Jade Yoga mats come very closely behind Manduka.
3+4. Gaiam and Lululemon Yoga mats share the third and fourth places, with a relatively steadily growing popularity over the last few years.
5. And finally Prana Yoga mats take the fifth place with a slight steady decline in popularity in the recent years.
Other Yoga Products and Gear
Now that you have your mat, you might want to make yourself even more comfortable with a range of various products and gear, some of which can be prohibitively expensive.
Let's have a look at resistance bands, straps, ropes, belts and slings:
Resistance bands and various straps have been growing in popularity, whereas ropes, belts and slings hold a steady interest.
Next come the varied Yoga cushions, blankets, pillows, benches, zafus, zabutons and sandbags:
Yoga blankets and yoga pillows go hand-in-hand, though both are in decline. Yoga cushions, benches and zafus are slightly less popular but the interest is quite steady.
Next we look at Yoga balls, blocks, bolsters, Yoga eggs and wedges:
Yoga balls have been very popular over the last 7 years, even though we have a hard time figuring out what Yoga style actually uses yoga balls. Yoga blocks come next, followed by various Yoga bolsters and Yoga eggs (egg-shaped bolsters), and closing with wedges. Other than the recently emerging eye candy Yoga eggs and wedges which are slightly on the raise, the other types of supporting products sport a steady interest.
Next is Yoga bags and totes, Yoga towels and Yoga kits:
As it can be seen from the graph, Yoga bags are in a steady decline in popularity and yoga towels are on the rise. Yoga kits and totes stay steady.
Finally let's look at the accessories that didn't fit into any other group, such as: Yoga swings, clocks and timers and toe spreaders:
Yoga swings have been gradually becoming more and more popular – perhaps yogis get bored being on the floor all the time and need some suspension every so often... That huge peak in search traffic for “Yoga Swing” in March 2007 was due to Rosie O'Donnell appearing on "The View" TV show where she demonstrated "inversion therapy." (Lesson: if you want to promote your yoga prop – get some celebrity to demonstrate it on a popular show). The momentary hype subsided within a few days and everybody has forgotten about the yoga swings and Rosie.
Yoga Kriya-s Accessory Trends
Kriya-s are cleansing techniques (Shatkarma or Shatkriya) used in many traditional Yoga styles. They are designed to help keep one's body clean internally and help remove toxins. These techniques are not exclusive to Yoga, as their source lies in Ayurveda practices, but pretty much any Yoga tradition that goes beyond just gymnastics will teach Yogic cleansing and purification (kriya-s) techniques.
Jala neti, sutra neti and tongue scraping are the most commonly used techniques.
Sutra neti - a length of wet string or thin surgical tubing is carefully and gently inserted through the nose and into the mouth. The end is then pulled out of the mouth and while holding both ends at once the string is alternately pulled in and out of the nose and sinuses. It is used to clear the nose and also to remove nasal polyps.
Jala neti - lukewarm salt water is poured into one nostril, so that it leaves through the other. Most of the time neti post is used to perform that. The procedure is then repeated on the other side. Other liquids like milk, urine and various special mixtures can be used as well.
A tongue scraper (also known as a tongue cleaner or a tongue brush) is used first thing in the morning to clean the bacterial build-up, food debris, fungi, and dead cells from the surface of the tongue. It also prevents the bad breath issues.
Here is the graph charting the popularity of tongue scrapers, jala neti and sutra neti:
That peak in interest about Jala neti and SutrThe popularity of neti in October 2009 was due to the viral message that spread like fire on the net, pasted over and over on various forums and blogs, in a similar to chain mails fashion, which suggested that it was written by Dr. Vinay Goyal and which included advice on how to deal with H1N1/Swine Flu using Ayurvedic Treatment. Nobody seems to know where this message originated from. But it did suggest using jala neti and sutra neti as one of the advices.
Neti pot mentioned earlier is used to wash the nasal cavity to flush out excess mucus and debris from the nose and sinuses. And let's see how popular it is:
As you can see it has been getting much more popular in the last 3-4 years. In May 2007 Neti Pot made it to Oprah Winfrey show where it was presented by Dr. Mehmet Oz – and that corresponds to the first 9-fold increase in interest in searches for neti pot. And then the same segment was re-run at the end of December 2007, which spiked the search interest 10-fold. Some businesses reported an increase in neti-pot sales 25-fold in May 2007 and 50-fold in January 2008 following each airing of the show.
Yoga and Chocolate
Finally let's compare yoga and chocolate:
As you can see, yoga is almost as good as chocolate. The most interesting thing you can see from this graph is that when the interest in chocolate rises sharply (every year around Christmas) the interest in yoga drops, and when in the last week of December the interest in chocolate sharply drops the interest in yoga peaks. You can see how closely related yoga and chocolate are. During winter time the two trends go in opposite directions, whereas during the summer time both are synchronized.
If you're curious about the countries, some countries prefer a lot more chocolate than yoga (red – chocolate, blue – yoga):
And there are a few countries where yoga beats chocolate: India, Switzerland and Netherlands. (red – chocolate, blue – yoga)
For Posterity
If you are reading this study somewhere around 2020 (which means that the doom's day didn't come after all), make sure to follow the links in this article to the more up-to-date data – who knows, maybe yoga will dominate the world by then or maybe it will have been abandoned in favour of biofeedback computer simulations where you can experience nirvana anytime for small change.
If you want to understand more about how Google Trends works you can read about it here.
As of this writing Google Insights for Search is not documented.
And if you have other ideas for great yoga trend information – trivia or otherwise, send it to us at and we’ll be happy to include it in version 2!
| Download Yoga Trends PDF |
 |