Vastra's yoga mat: Earth- and people-friendly! (image via kickstarter.com)
Somewhere along the line, yogis realized that practicing asana on an artificially-coloured PVC rectangle wasn’t really good for the planet or our bodies. In the past few years, the yoga mat market has seen an influx of biodegradable, non-toxic, recycled, recyclable and otherwise Earth-friendly yoga mats, which is awesome.
However, the new Vastra yoga mat kicks it up a notch, and in its Kickstarter campaign it makes the bold claim of being the most Earth-friendly yoga mat on the planet. Not only is the mat gentle on the Earth, but it’s based on Ayurveda, the 5000 year-old Indian system for health and wellness. According to the press release:
Vastra’s yoga mat is fully handmade out of 100% organic cotton yarn that is dyed with plants and herbs like Turmeric and Tulsi (Holy Basil) along with many others. “We went back and forth many times on the design of the mat, based on feedback from active yoga practitioners, to come up with a design that provides grip on surface as well as on the floor to keep the mat from sliding,” said [Vastra founder] Sri Narayan. The company’s larger intention is to bring Ayurveda into the modern yoga practice and sees its yoga mat as a solid step in this direction.
The Kickstarter campaign aims to raise $100,000 to cover production expenses, including investment in yarn, fabric and the plants and herbs used for dyeing.
Washington, D.C.-based Vastra already has a proven track record of making Ayurveda-infused clothing and bedding, which has caught the attention of major media sources like Time and the BBC. The company has a mission to “transform how people perceive clothing through the use of clothing and clothing-based products that aren’t just for style, comfort, and protection but also for wellness.”
Support Vastra’s Kickstarter campaign and you can pre-order this revolutionary yoga mat. The Earth and its inhabitants thank you.
It’s Mother’s Day! And what better way to honour the mamas in our lives than by celebrating the creative divine feminine force. Listen to Where Am I, singer, songwriter and yogini Tara MacLean’s loving tribute to motherhood and read “The Four Powers of Divine Mother” by Swami Radhananda. Then call your mother and tell her why you’re grateful for her.
Divine Mother is sometimes thought of as a being outside of ourselves or as an image to worship. But she is really the power within us. Her many aspects, that are given 108 names in India, represent different powers. Four of her main powers are wisdom, strength, harmony and perfection. What would it mean to manifest those four powers in our own lives? Continue Reading
I recently received an email with the subject, “How to Live Your Yoga.” It was an e-newsletter for a weekend yoga conference at a retreat centre. While I applaud the effort to present the promise of a yoga practice, I also know that one can’t expect to learn how to live their yoga in three days of retreat from life.
It takes daily practice to really live your yoga, as Swami Radhananda suggests in Living the Practice: Collected Writings on the Transformative Potential of Yoga (Timeless Books, 2012). The book is a collection of short essays Swami Radhananda wrote over a period of 10 years for Ascent, a magazine about yoga and engaged living which folded in 2009.
“The Western challenge is to bring yoga into our daily lives,” Swami Radhananda writes in an essay titled, ‘From Earth to Heaven.’ “We can’t easily do what Eastern tradition prescribes: sit in a cave, or wander India leading the ascetic life. We have to go inward, and that knowledge has to be brought out again. We need to transplant the seeds of yoga into our lives.”
While not a guide or self-help book, Living the Practice provides an example of how once can transplant the seeds and watch them flourish. For Swami Radhananda, this happens through reflection, self-inquiry and paying attention to the symbols in her life. Continue Reading
Today marks the sixth anniversary of my arrival in my adopted home, Montreal, and what an auspicious day to learn that IAYB has been voted one of the top local blogs! Montreal Mirror, an arts and entertainment weekly, runs an annual Best of Montreal poll, and this year I actually ran a campaign to get readers to vote (by shamelessly bribing y’all with Passport to Prana Montreal cards). It worked!
Thank you to everyone who took the time to vote! Bisous!
So ma ville, Montreal, loves festivals. This town is just one non-stop festival from mid-June to mid-October. Film, dance, music, jazz, burlesque, dragon boating, food – there is a festival for just about everything in Montreal. In fact, Montrealers love festivals so much that there is a dedicated public space in the downtown core known as Place des Festivals (which is French for “Place of Festivals,” oui oui) and it’s hopping all year round!
However, despite all this festival craziness, there has never been a bilingual, community-organized yoga festival in Montreal. Not even a yoga conference, convergence or gathering. While urban centres around North America host large-scale yoga events of all flavours, nothing of the sort has happened in Montreal.
Until now. The first ever Yoga Festival Montreal will take place on June 8, 9 and 10! Organized by a crew of yoga and community lovers known as Yocomo (Yoga Community Montreal / Yoga Communauté Montréal),* this inaugural event aims to shine a light on the amazing Montreal yoga teachers and practitioners who are steadily doing their work, and to bring together the whole community of yoga lovers in Montreal.
The three days of festivities include asana, meditation, music, deep relaxation, philosophy and politics, with over 30 lineages and 50 hours of workshops, classes, performances, discussions and panels. All of the faculty, sponsors and exhibitors are sourced locally and there will be on-site composting, as part of the festival’s commitment to environmental sustainability.
And I am super excited to give one full Yoga Festival Montreal pass** to a lucky IAYB reader! To enter, here’s what you have to do:
1. Leave a comment below telling us why you love yoga festivals!
2. Bonus entry: become a fan of Yocomo on Facebook.
3. Bonus entry: follow @yogafestivalMTL on Twitter.
4. Bonus entry: tweet about this giveaway using the hashtag #yogafestmtl (and you can do this as many times as you want! each time counts as an entry!).
The giveway closes at 5pm on Friday, May 11, 2012. The winner will be notified by email. This contest is open to anyone from anywhere in the world, but please only enter if you can actually get yourself to Montreal for this event. The festival pass is non-transferable to any other yoga festival event.
* Full disclosure: I am one of the founders of Yocomo and co-organizers of this event. Eeeek!
** Estimated value, $230. Does not include lunch, transportation to Montreal, accommodation or anything else.
