10 Surprising Ways to Use Yoga Blankets in Class

Of all the props you’ll use in a yoga studio, yoga blankets might be the most underappreciated. Yes, you already know you can rely on a blanket for cushioning underneath your knees, for support during restorative yoga, and for warmth during Savasana. Yet those uses barely touch yoga blankets’ potential.

And that’s a shame. Because the prop, which many studios have in ample supply, can actually enhance your practice in surprising ways. Whether you’re practicing at a studio or at home, a simple yoga blanket can help sneakily challenge your balance, target tricky-to-reach muscles, strengthen your core, even become aware of your habits. Here’s how to switch things up.

10 Surprising Ways to Use Yoga Blankets

With nothing more than a folded yoga blanket, you can change up your routine to include sliding, weight-bearing, compression, support, and more.

Sliding

If you practice yoga on hard flooring, the slide you can generate with a blanket can transform even the simplest of poses. Without a fixed foundation underneath your feet or hands, you’ll need to recruit additional strength from smaller, easily overlooked stabilizing muscles in order to hold your position.

The more resistance you create by pressing down into the blanket, the more strength you build. Also, the further your blanket moves, the greater the range of motion and stretch you experience. So venture off your mat!

1. Seated Side Reach 

Bring your attention to the easily overlooked muscles in your arm, shoulder, and side body.

How to: Fold your mat in half and sit on the folded edge, resting on your left hip with your knees bent and feet toward your right. Place a folded blanket on the floor by your left hip and place your left hand on top of it.

Slide the blanket away from you, elongating the left side of your body as you lower yourself toward the floor. Then press down into your left hand as you drag the blanket back toward you to sit upright. Repeat for a few rounds on this side. Then switch sides.

2. Sliding Locust Pose (Salabhasana)

Feel your back and side body muscles engage. Then take that awareness into other poses.

How to: Lie face down with only your pelvis and legs on your mat. Stretch your arms overhead on the floor with your hands resting on a folded blanket. Draw your pubic bone toward your navel and press down through your hands as you drag the blanket toward you, lifting your head and chest as much as feels comfortable as you would in Locust Pose. Draw your shoulder blades down your back.

Then slowly slide the blanket back to its starting position and lower yourself to the floor. Take a few rounds before lowering yourself to rest.

3. Sliding Lunge

As you’re balancing, you’ll target the muscles on the back of your front leg and front of your back leg.

How to: Stand on your folded mat with your blanket a foot or two behind you on the floor. Shift your weight into your right foot and step the ball of your left foot behind you and onto your blanket. Slide your left foot back into a High Lunge, bending your right knee as much as you find comfortable, then squeeze your legs toward each other to return to your starting position. Take a few rounds on this side, then swap to your second side. Keeping your hands at your chest rather than alongside your head can help with balance.

4. Hovering Tabletop to Plank Slide

Learn how to challenge—and strengthen—your shoulders, chest, core, and hip flexors all at once. Talk about efficiency.

How to: Start in Tabletop with your hands and knees on your folded mat and the tops of your feet on your blanket. Tuck your toes and hover your knees. Drive your feet away from you so they straighten into Plank Pose, then bend your knees and squeeze your feet toward your hands to return back to your starting position. Take a few rounds.

Weight Bearing

Unless you’ve had to move the stacks of blankets in your yoga studio, you may not have considered how much this humble prop weighs. But hold one away from your body for a few breaths and you’ll quickly become aware of its load—and its potential for building strength. The farther the blanket is from your body, the heavier it will feel.

5. Goddess Arm Circles

You’re used to feeling the burn in your legs while practicing Goddess. Distract yourself by sneaking in some upper body strengthening.

How to: Stand in Goddess Pose (Utkata Konasana) and place one folded blanket over your left forearm. Reach through your left fingertips and try to hug your arm muscles toward the bones. Steady the rest of your body as you trace small circles with your left arm.

Once this feels comfortable, change directions so you’re circling your arm in the other direction. Continue until you feel a slow burn in your left shoulder muscles (not to mention legs), then swap the blanket to your right arm.

6. Side Plank Leg Lifts

Strengthen your outer hip even as you tune into the stability afforded by your arms and side body.

How to: Sit on your right hip with your top left leg extended straight. Drape your folded blanket over your left ankle. Then set up for Side Plank with your bottom knee on the mat and your right hand underneath or slightly in front of your right shoulder. Hug your right shoulder into its socket and lift your hip in supported Side Plank (Vasisthasana). Keep your chest and hips square to the side wall as you slowly lift your left leg and then lower it toward the floor. Repeat the leg lift several times. Then slowly lower back to your mat and repeat on your other side.

7. Tabletop Leg Lifts

You’ll feel this along the back of the hip and thigh of your lifted leg. Not intense enough? Try it in a standing balancing pose.

How to: Set up in Tabletop with a folded blanket draped over the back of your left calf. Lift your left knee to straighten your leg. Without dropping your belly or tilting your hips, lift your left leg, then slowly lower it back down to hover above the floor. Repeat a few times. Then lower your knee to the mat and swap sides.

If this version feels easy for you, up the ante by trying out the same technique in Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III).

Compression or Support

In yoga poses, we often focus on creating space, but compression can be just as therapeutic. Closing off one area of the body can open us elsewhere, not to mention create the potential for a rebound effect once pressure is released and circulation returns. Blankets can also be used tactically to support one area of the body and thereby focus the impact of a pose elsewhere.

8. Abdominal Compression

Here the blanket helps you explore the untapped capacity of your breath as you focus it on your back body.

How to: Lie on your belly with your rolled blanket under your abdomen between your lowest ribs and the top of your pelvis. Look for a tolerable amount of pressure that restricts the movement of your belly without creating discomfort. If the sensation is too intense, unroll your blanket partway and use the flat portion of the blanket to pad your ribs or pelvis. With your belly restricted, feel your low back and back ribs expand with each breath in and release with each breath out. Stay here for a minute or two. Then press back to Tabletop or Child’s Pose. Pause here until you’re ready to move on.

9. Calf and Hamstring Release

Squeeze the tension out of your calves and your hamstrings with this simple trick.

How to: From Tabletop, tuck your rolled blanket behind the backs of your knees. Keep as much weight on your hands as you like while leaning your hips back toward your heels until you find tolerable pressure between your calf and hamstring muscles. Either stay still or sway gently side to side to shift weight from one leg to the other.

After a few breaths here, shift the blanket a couple of inches closer to the backs of your ankles to explore sensation in a new area. If you’re not feeling enough sensation with the pressure, step your right foot forward as if in a one-sided low squat (Malasana) to focus all the sensation on your left lower leg.

When you’re ready, simply retrace your steps to swap sides.

10. Supported Camel (Ustrasana)

If the crunch at the back of your neck takes the shine off the front-body opening you could be experiencing in Camel Pose, a blanket can make all the difference.

How to: Roll your blanket lengthways so that you have at least a couple of feet to work with. Sling your long blanket roll around your neck and over the fronts of your shoulders, tucking the free ends under your arms and by your sides. Kneel with your knees hip-width apart with your toes tucked. Lean your whole body back until your hands or fingertips catch your heels. (If they don’t touch, place a block alongside each foot and reach for it.) Lengthen your sacrum and draw your shoulder blades back to lift your breastbone in Camel Pose. Rest the base of your skull on the blanket roll, allowing it to hold some of the weight of your head so that you can focus on lifting and lengthening your front body from knees to collarbones. Take a few spacious breaths there before retracing your steps to exit the pose.