Mon 17 Jan 2022 • Christina Hunt
Bringing Everybody & Every Body Together Through Yoga | Yogi Bare
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Summer 2020 | Community
Yogi Bare Community Spirit
The truth is, Yogi Bare wouldn’t exist without our community. Being transparent and down to earth is what we believe sets us apart from other yoga brands - our Founder Kat has a huge part to play in connecting with the Yogi Bare community and often features personal messages and writes a lot of our content. We really like that. It allows our customers to feel connected, and part of our brand on a personal level - we are all in this together!
Our community is at the forefront of what we do from product decisions we make to collaborations and partnerships we choose. We love to hear back from Yogi Barecustomers, whether it be their favourite style of mat, a top tip on how to master a new pose or a recommendation for a new product. Our brand is designed by yogis, for yogis.
Kat discovered yoga when trying to navigate a very scary, out of control period of her life. It was yoga that really helped Kat manage anxiety, emotions, fear and frustrations in that time. “I hope our mats help people now in a similar way to how yoga helped me back then.” - Kat, our founder.
At its core yoga is about connection, whichever type of discipline you follow. Connecting your mind and body with yoga is extremely life enhancing. Yoga allows you to build a healthier body and a healthier mindset in unison. Who wouldn’t want to share such an experience with others? Yogi Bare is for everybody and every body, we encourage others to start their journey and let Yogi Bare be their friend to lean on.
Yogi Bare Community Projects
Giving back to our wider community has also been something we are passionate about since we began. Yogi Bare has been built by word of mouth and friendship. It has been Kat's personal mission to support those who have supported her – the yoga teachers and studios along the way as well as other individuals and brands on the same path to supporting the environment or community.
We have helped support Gemma Samarra’s inspiring My Name Is Human Project, at their pop up shop in Covent Garden. We collected old yoga mats and donated them to the foundation to support homeless people on the ground. It was also a way of recycling and repurposing old TPE & PVC mats so they didn’t go to landfill.
One of our most popular mats has been the Wild Paws - for this mat we partnered with the incredible Hometree foundation, whose motto is more trees please! With each mat sold we plant a tree. Together we want to build forests through commerce and move mountains in healing our beautiful planet.
As well as our Lunar Paws mat; our love letter to the Ocean, the moon and all that we are. Just as the moon moves through cycles and the ocean moves through waves, we created Lunar Paws to be there to support you; whatever your cycle, whatever your wave, however you move. Ocean inspired design meets positive action as proceeds from sales of our Lunar Paws mat go towards helping marine conservation society, Sea Shepherd, in directly cleaning up our oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.
Throughout the current global pandemic we have been supporting low or no income yoga teachers by creating discount codes for their students for home practice and any sales attributed to the code, we share the profits with the yoga teachers. We need them more than ever right now.
We are also running zoom yoga sessions to help connect people dealing with loneliness in isolation.
We have seen a profound sense of community coming together over the recent global events and we hope when we are out the other side there is going to be an even greater understanding, respect and need for the wellness industry for both physical and mental health.
About Yogi Bare
From humble beginnings, Kat, the founder of Yogi Bare envisioned a way of channeling her creativity to find her own way of managing acute anxiety and PTSD through yoga and wellbeing, eventually going onto become a 500 hour certified yoga teacher. However after all of the training, Kat found that ‘yoga land’ could sometimes be alien and hard to connect with so set out to create a brand that could inspire all. From this vision Kat has gone on to create an accessible range of innovative, eco-centric yoga products that are designed to galvanize creativity, movement and play.
Yogi Bare was born out of a sense of not belonging - we wanted to create a brandwhere everybody and every body was welcome, a community to call our own, and itturns out a lot of people resonate with this. The yoga world can sometimes seemdaunting and a little overwhelming, and when the fear of the unknown strikes, you may feel like you want to run in the other direction. But at Yogi Bare we encourage you to ‘come as you are’ and with no judgement we can all enjoy yoga together. We are all about being earth friendly too - our rubber mats are sustainably sourced and biodegradable, all products are 100% vegan and our packaging is 100% recyclable.
“I wanted to develop a range of eco sensitive products that are accessible and to bring some fun and personality to a world that can sometimes seem difficult to access.” - Kat, Founder of Yogi Bare.
