I am no Yoga expert and probably belong to the category of people who buy athleisure clothing because they are more cooling / moisture wicking fabrics.
I don’t actually exercise in them most of the time and they are more comfortable to be in because of Singapore’s hot and humid weather.
I guess I am also the kind of person who will get suckered into buying exercise related apparel and equipment based on the idealized vision of being more ‘healthy’ and ‘active’ but failing to sustain a disciplined practice and habit in doing so.
We bought these thinking that we will try out yoga and used them once for an intro Yoga session at home with a yoga instructor and never used them for yoga ever again.
We signed up for a basic Nikam Guruji Yoga program before but the use of Yoga blocks was not required for the Yoga Classes we attended and then ceased participating in…(you never have a social life on Saturday night until you decide to exercise on a Sunday Morning).
I initially thought I would end up feeling ‘goblok’ for buying 4 of these and it would end up being yet another piece of clutter lying around in an already cluttered living space.
As it turns out, the Yoga block became something I have been using almost every day when I began a more disciplined practice of meditation.
As any beginner who is new to the practice meditation may tell you, trying to sit right and finding a sweet spot to sit can be hard, especially when you are just starting out at an age where you are no longer limber.
If you are trying to sit in a full lotus position for the very first time, you will most likely discover pains in parts of your body you have rarely experienced.
In any case, with the help of this yoga block, I’ve managed to at least sit in a half lotus position for a long enough period of time as part of my daily meditation practice.
Technically, I only need 1 for my ass to sit on, so I have an extra 3 just lying around being clutter.
After 3 years of using these yoga blocks, they still hold their shape pretty well. A lesser being would have buckled after being sat on for over 3 years.
If you are too cheapskate to buy chairs for your guests at home, just get a few yoga blocks and toss them out as ‘seats’ for your next gathering of no more than 8 people.
Conclusion
For approximately a dollar a piece, I think this is perhaps by far the most value for money item I have gotten from Taobao in terms of ‘cost per use’.
This is one of those things that I will most definitely buy on Taobao instead of shopping for them in Singapore. It simply makes sense to buy these together with everything else you are planning to get as a single consolidated shipment.
Decathlon sells foam yoga blocks for 5.50 a block. We got these bad boys all the way back in 2017 for approximately S$5.50 for 4 before freight forwarding costs.
The same shop now sells them for even cheaper and in even nicer looking colors for approximately $1.10 per block!
For costing 5 times cheaper than what you can find in Singapore and for the number of times I’ve used it, I’m rating this a solid 4.5 Carrots out of 5.
They have way nicer colors now. You can get them HERE