Yoga Mat Helps Doctor Maintain Extensive Regimen — Possessed

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Dr. Frederic Brandt has embraced his extensive yoga regimen thanks to his mat.

TODAY, when you hear the words “poker face,” you don’t think of Senate subcommittee hearings. You think of Lady Gaga. But when it comes to doling out credit, one would have to hand out a goodly share of responsibility for our real-world poker-face pandemic to Dr. Fredric Brandt, a dermatologist. Some 15-odd years ago, Dr. Brandt burst onto the scene as a leading practitioner of (and proselytizer for) an alarming-sounding method of easing wrinkles by paralyzing subcutaneous muscles with injections of botulism toxin.

Back then, Botox sounded completely insane, if not lethal. Now, there are precious few people willing, or able, to arch an eyebrow at its use.

Dr. Brandt, who started his practice in Coral Gables, Fla., but has long had an office in New York as well, is plenty aware of the impact. While smoothing away wrinkles, Botox has also helped sand down some of its users’ character traits, or at least the ones that show up in the face. “Botox has helped hide many a mean expression,” he said. “It has definitely changed the way people look. It takes a lot of the visual person away. But our skin is just one expression of who we are. The eyes are another expression, and so are speech and tonal expression. You know, some people are just mean.”

Dr. Brandt doesn’t hide behind a poker face himself. An art collector and unabashed fashion hound, with a bent for avant-garde designers like Gareth Pugh and Riccardo Tisci, he injects quite a shot of personality into the old white coat and the doctor demeanor that goes with it. “I really wear what makes me feel like who I am,” he said. “I think at this point in my life, I don’t care what anyone else thinks about how I dress.”

But seven or eight years ago, he discovered the virtue of shedding a couple of layers. “I started seeing people who were doing yoga and looking quite good,” he said. “So, I thought maybe I should try it.”

Having helped jump-start one mechanism of modern culture, he hopped onto another. Six months later, he had given up the gym completely and switched to a six-days-a-week yoga routine, working with private teachers.

But he never felt fully grounded in his practice until his teacher in New York, Carl Sheusi, told him to get a mat from Manduka, a yoga products maker in El Segundo, Calif. Specifically, Mr. Sheusi recommended its top-of-the-line Black Mat PRO in the extra-long 85-inch length.

Thick, heavy and graphite-gray , the Manduka mat ($120) is a status symbol in itself. Described on Manduka’s Web site as “luxuriously dense,” the mat does not roll up into a neat, on-the-go tube, so toting it to classes is not really an option. It’s for those who (a) are proficient enough to do yoga by themselves at home; or (b) can afford to have a teacher come to them.

“There are a lot of different types of yoga mats, most of them are very flimsy,” Dr. Brandt said. “This is a really firm cushion, and it’s really good quality. I think it will last forever. I’ll have to leave it to someone in my will. And it forms a nice bond with your skin. Even if it gets wet, it does not get slippery. You do not want to slip on your mat. In order to do yoga, you have to be stable. The more firmly you can ground yourself, the more freedom you have to expand, because it is all about that energy going into the earth that lets you open up your body. So it gives you a sense of strength in your core and allows you to be a little freer both in your physical and in your mental processes.”

If the mat helps him to be more stable during yoga, the yoga helps him to be more stable in life. “I think maybe it has had a calming influence on my personality,” he said. “It helps even out my temper a little bit more. Believe me, I still can lose it sometimes, but I think, on a whole, I am a little more balanced.”

Does that make yoga kind of like Botox for the soul? After all, both aim to counter the tensions that bring you down, whether your inner spirit or your outer facade. No?

Dr. Brandt was skeptical. “That’s probably a stretch,” he said.

But then again, so is yoga.