About Pose & Pause

What this site is

Pose & Pause covers one narrow thing properly: the gear you need to practice yoga or pilates at home, and the decisions that come before you spend anything. Mats sorted by the problem they solve, blocks and straps, reformers and bars sized for a living room, and what to wear.

It exists because the search results for a beginner's questions are dominated by two kinds of page: brand blogs selling their own product, and enormous technical roundups written for someone who already knows what they want. Neither is much help when the actual question is “I would like to try this at home, what do I buy?”

Who it is for

Someone starting at home, quite possibly slightly self-conscious about being a beginner, who wants to be told what to buy rather than handed a wall of nineteen scored products. The editorial rule that follows from that is simple: lead with the answer, then earn it. Every page here opens with a recommendation and one sentence of reasoning, and only then unfolds the detail.

If you are choosing between the two disciplines, the comparison is the page to read first. If you have already chosen, the beginner kit is a shorter list than you expect.

Who writes it

Janet H. is the hands-on owner behind Janet Media Group, the publisher of Pose & Pause. She runs the site and chooses every product on it herself, using the published criteria on the How We Pick page rather than sponsorship or guesswork.

That is the whole author biography, deliberately. Plenty of gear sites decorate a byline with certifications and hours of hands-on testing. This one does not have those, and rather than invent them, we have written the leaner honest version and put the effort into the method instead.

What this site will not claim

Everything below is a claim we could make, that would help the site look more authoritative, and that would not be true.

• That these products have been through a test lab. There is no lab here and no testing protocol.
• That anyone here has personally used what we recommend. We say where a manufacturer's figure is a manufacturer's figure.
• That Janet holds a teaching, clinical or fitness qualification. She does not.
• That any page has been medically reviewed. None has.
• That readers have rated anything. There are no reviews or testimonials on this site, real or otherwise.
• That the site has won anything, been featured anywhere, or has been going for years. It is new.

What we do instead is publish the criteria, name the trade-off on every single pick, cite the source of every factual claim, and say plainly what we do not know. Whether that is enough is your call to make, and you can only make it if we tell you.

What is on the site

• Start Here — Yoga or pilates, what a first kit actually needs, practicing on carpet, and setting up a corner of a normal room.
• Yoga Mats — Mats ranked for beginners, hot yoga, sweaty hands, sore knees, carpet, travel and pilates, plus thickness, size, material and cleaning guides.
• Blocks, Straps & Props — Blocks, straps, bolsters and wheels ranked, plus cork versus foam, block sizes, and whether props are worth buying at all.
• Pilates at Home — Home reformers, foldable models, pilates bars, reformer boards, rings and grip socks, plus cost and space guides.
• What to Wear — Leggings, shorts, tops and bras for yoga and pilates, what to wear to a first class or a hot room, and the squat test.
• Gifts — Gift guides for yoga and pilates people, including a budget list, written for a gifter who does not know the category.

Everything, in one list, is at the sitemap.

Publisher and funding

Pose & Pause is published by Janet Media Group. It is funded entirely by Amazon Associates commission on qualifying purchases made through links here, at no extra cost to you. Nobody pays for placement and no product has been supplied free in exchange for coverage — the disclosure page is the long version, and How We Pick explains why commission cannot move a ranking.

Getting in touch

Corrections, questions and product suggestions all go to the same place: janet.hoyo@yahoo.com, or the contact form. Reader questions decide what gets written next, and reported errors get fixed with a dated note on the page rather than quietly.