Freshen up your yoga mat after your practice with this easy to make DIY Calming Yoga Mat Spray with tea tree and lavender essential oils.
Hey friends! I’m back with another essential oils post (my first one is all about essential oil safety tips), and this time I’m sharing something I’m really excited about: homemade yoga mat spray! I have been needing a good yoga mat spray but that’s hard to find around here, unless it’s full of artificial fragrance and things that I don’t really want on my mat. Since I teach PiYo several times a week with my favorite mat, I want to keep it fresh and I want it to last a long time.
This DIY Calming Yoga Mat Spray recipe is made to fill a 3 ounce spray bottle like the one I have in the photos, but you can double this or even triple it if you want a bigger batch or if you want to fill more than one small bottle. Hint: this would make a super fun DIY gift for your fitness pals!
Here are the details on this spray:
- Tea tree oil: stimulating, invigorating
- Lavender oil: calming, relaxing (I used the Earthly Elements lavender oil from Nature’s Bounty®)
- Vodka: dispersant
- Distilled water: dilutes the dispersant and essential oils for safe use without the minerals and chemicals found in tap water
I did a little research on how to get essential oils to disperse in water since as we all know, oil and water don’t mix. Mixing essential oils with a carrier oil poses no problem, but of course you don’t want to spray oil all over your yoga mat. If you try to just mix essential oils and water together, the oils will gather at the top of your water (far away from the spray tube at the bottom) and you will be left with a spray that doesn’t work.
Alcohol (in this case vodka) acts as a dispersant for essential oils in water, so you can easily mix up a yoga mat spray that actually works. Glycerin works as a dispersant, too, but I decided not to use that since it would make your mat sticky over time.
Vodka works perfectly here since it is typically 40% alcohol (which is enough for this purpose) and it has virtually no smell. Plus, it’s cheap: you can get enough to make several bottles of mat spray for less than $2.
If you are averse to buying or using vodka, you can use rubbing alcohol, it just smells pretty bad and might mask the scent of your essential oils. The alcohol will dissipate after you spray it on your mat so your mat won’t smell like alcohol – just calming lavender!
The tea tree oil has such a potent smell you really want to make sure you don’t over-do the tea tree oil in this mix or that is all you will smell.
DIY Calming Yoga Mat Spray
Equipment and materials
- 1 ½ ounces unflavored vodka
- 1 ½ ounces distilled water
- 1 drop tea tree essential oil
- 2 drops lavender essential oil
Instructions
- Measure out the vodka into a small 3 ounce spray bottle
- Carefully add the tea tree oil and lavender oil to the bottle, close the lid and shake to mix
- Open the bottle and add the distilled water to the bottle and shake well to mix again
- Keep your bottle in a dark place or store in a dark bottle
- Shake to mix well each time before spraying your mat
- Don’t forget to label your bottle!
Notes
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and allergy friendly food blogger of 12 years based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
I love this DIY spray!
I will try to do this at home.
SUCH a cool idea.
Although now Im thinking I need that on me, too.
head to toe 🙂
Haha, thanks Carla! 😉
That looks like such a great idea! I have not tried a yoga mat spray, but this sounds like a great idea. I use a vodka spray to get rid of persistant smells in textiles (something I learned from some theater people) and agree the alcohol smell goes a way. I had purchased a vintage beaded dress that the former owner frequently wore in a smoky restaurant. I would carefully handwash it, but a weird musty cigar smell would come back as the dress heated from my bodyheat. Three handwashings didn’t fix that until I used a vodka and water spray. I was skeptical at first, but it works. I bet your spray would fix the rather stinky mats at my former gym!
That’s such a great idea! I never heard of using vodka and water to get stinky smells out of clothing. I wonder if it would work with some of my workout clothes? The artificial fabrics of some of my workout clothing holds funky smells, so I should definitely try that!