I was looking at yoga mats online recently, which probably isn't a huge surprise considering what I do for a living, and after a while I noticed something.
They all started looking the same.
Black, gray, navy, beige. A lot of sage green. There might be a little line drawing in the corner or a subtle pattern if somebody was feeling particularly adventurous, but for the most part, yoga mats seem to be designed to quietly disappear.
And it took me right back to one of the reasons we started Big Raven Yoga in the first place.
Frustration.
I was frustrated by a sea of generic yoga mats. I was frustrated by cheap mats that started falling apart after weeks or months. Mats that were too thin and hurt your joints. Towels that bunched around your feet. Slippery surfaces that could turn a perfectly normal pose into a rather embarrassing, and sometimes dangerous, experience.
And on top of all that, most of them weren't even interesting to look at.
It just didn't make sense to me that we were supposed to accept that. There had to be a better option.
I Never Understood Why We Had to Choose
When we started Big Raven Yoga, the idea wasn't simply, “Let's make prettier yoga mats.”
That wouldn't have been enough.
I wanted a mat that could be ridiculously beautiful and ridiculously good. Something with enough cushion to keep your knees happy. Something stable. Something with a surface that performed during an actual practice. Something that wasn't going to look tired after a few months.
And yes, I wanted something that didn't look like every other yoga mat in the room.
Why were those things treated as separate choices?
You could buy the serious performance mat, which often looked like gym equipment. Or you could find something pretty, but maybe it wasn't made particularly well. Or you could buy the cheap mat and accept that you'd probably be replacing it.
None of those choices felt especially satisfying.
What we wanted was actually pretty simple:
We wanted it to be beautiful. We wanted it to perform. And we wanted it to last.
It took us more than two years of development to get there.
We weren't looking for a blank yoga mat that we could simply put pretty artwork on and call it ours. We spent those years working toward the balance we wanted between size, weight, cushion, grip and durability. There were a surprising number of decisions involved in something that looks deceptively simple when it's rolled up in the corner of a room.
Because the artwork was only ever part of the answer.
If I was frustrated by mats that hurt my knees, slipped underneath me or needed a towel thrown over them once things got sweaty, making a prettier version of the same problem wasn't going to cut it.
Somewhere Along the Way, Yoga Got an Aesthetic
Yoga mats didn't start out boring. They started out practical.
They were equipment. You needed something between your body and the floor that provided grip and cushioning, and that was pretty much the assignment.
But as yoga became more mainstream, it developed a very specific visual language around it. Pale wood floors. Natural light. White walls. Perfectly placed plants. Neutral clothing. Neutral mats.
It's lovely.
It just isn't everybody.
My life certainly doesn't look like that all the time, and I suspect yours doesn't either.
Sometimes yoga happens after you've pushed the coffee table out of the way. There's laundry nearby. The dog has decided that the exact spot you need is obviously the best place in the house to lie down. You have 20 minutes before you need to move on to whatever comes next.
That's still yoga.
Earlier this year, we wrote about “Yoga for People Who Don't Feel Flexible, Calm or ‘Yoga Enough,’” because I think we've accidentally created an image of who belongs in yoga. You should be flexible. Calm. Thin. Peaceful. Wearing the right clothes in the right room.
I don't believe any of that.
And I don't think your yoga mat needs to fit that image either.
Peaceful doesn't have to mean plain.
We Care About How Almost Everything Else Looks
Think about your favorite coffee mug.
Technically, its job is pretty simple. Hold coffee without leaking.
Yet I have mugs I reach for before other mugs, and I'm willing to bet you do too.
We buy notebooks because we like the covers. We choose phone cases because we like the color. We spend entirely too much time deciding between two nearly identical paint colors because one somehow feels right and the other doesn't.
We hang artwork on walls that would function perfectly well without it.
We're surrounded by choices that are both functional and beautiful because the things we live with affect how our spaces feel.
So why should a yoga mat be different?
It's six feet long. You unroll it right in the middle of the room, and then you spend the next 20, 40 or 60 minutes with your hands, feet and sometimes your face inches away from it.
I think you're allowed to care about what it looks like.
Actually, I think it would be strange if you didn't.
Designing Artwork for a Yoga Mat Is Actually Pretty Strange
This is one of the things I don't think people necessarily realize about what we do at Big Raven.
A yoga mat is a very unusual canvas.
You're creating artwork for something six feet long, but the person using it rarely experiences the entire design from six feet away.
One minute you're standing at the top of it. A few minutes later you're looking down between your hands. Then your face is inches away from another section. Eventually you're lying on top of most of it.
That changes how we think about artwork.
A design has to work as one complete piece, but the individual areas also have to be interesting. Scale matters. Placement matters. Color matters. Something that looks beautiful as a small image on a computer screen can feel completely different when it's stretched out six feet long in front of you.
And then we print it.
We're a print house, so that part matters enormously to us. We care about what happens when a design moves from the screen onto an actual mat. We look at color. We look at detail. We look at whether the finished piece still has the feeling we wanted it to have.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes we look at it and say, “Nope.”
And then we work on it again.
The surface of the mat matters here too because it isn't only there for performance. It's also our canvas. We needed a material that could handle an actual yoga practice while allowing us to reproduce the color and detail we wanted in the artwork.
Again, I didn't want to choose between the two.
That's part of making something rather than simply putting a pattern on a product.
A Beautiful Yoga Mat Still Has to Do Its Job
This is probably the most important part of the Big Raven story.
I didn't want to solve the boring-mat problem by creating a different problem.
A beautiful yoga mat that doesn't perform is still a bad yoga mat.
After all that development, we landed on a brushed microfiber surface made from recycled polyester and nylon over a 100% natural tree rubber base. There were reasons for both choices.
The natural rubber gives us the cushion and stability I wanted. The microfiber surface behaves differently than many people expect: it actually gets grippier as it gets wetter. For a sweatier practice, that's a pretty wonderful thing. If you have a dry practice, a light mist of water helps activate that grip.
That mattered to me because one of my original frustrations was watching towels bunch up around people's feet during sweaty practices. I didn't want to make a yoga mat that required you to put something else on top of it just to use it.
I also wanted enough cushion that you're not thinking about your knees every time they hit the floor. At the same time, a yoga mat needs stability. More cushion isn't automatically better if you end up feeling like you're standing on a mattress.
That's what those two years of development were really about.
Finding the balance.
And then making that functional mat beautiful.
A Pretty Yoga Mat Isn't Frivolous
Earlier this year, we asked this question directly in another blog: “Is a Pretty Yoga Mat Worth It?”
My answer is still yes.
Not because a beautiful yoga mat will make you better at yoga. It won't. I'd love to tell you that a giant flower under your feet will improve your balance, but I'm afraid you're still responsible for that part.
What I do believe is that we use things differently when we enjoy them.
I have my favorite mugs. Favorite notebooks. Favorite places to sit. There are things in my house I've owned for years simply because I still love them.
We're human. We form attachments to objects.
And if you genuinely love your yoga mat, I think you're a little more likely to unroll it.
That doesn't sound revolutionary, but consistency usually isn't built from revolutionary things. It's built from tiny decisions that make something easier or more enjoyable to do again.
Your mat can be one of those things.
Eventually, It Becomes Your Mat
This is the part that interests me even more than the initial design choice.
You choose a yoga mat because you love the way it looks, but then you start living with it.
Maybe it's the mat you practiced on when you were trying to get stronger. Maybe you took it outside all summer. Maybe your dog has walked across it approximately 400 times.
Maybe you finally held a pose on it that you'd been working toward for months.
Maybe you've had awful practices on it. Great ones too. Maybe there have been days when you mostly lay there and decided that counted.
It does, by the way.
Over time, the mat starts collecting your experiences.
That's when it stops being a yoga mat.
It's your mat.
And that's another reason I don't think yoga mats should feel disposable.
We wrote about that earlier this year in “Why Most Yoga Mats Feel Replaceable and Why Yours Shouldn't.” The more I think about it, the more I believe these two ideas are connected.
If something is generic, inexpensive and designed to be replaced, we tend to treat it that way.
But when you deliberately choose something you love, use it regularly and have experiences attached to it, replacing it isn't quite so casual.
I like that.
I Don't Want You to Like Every Big Raven Mat
This probably isn't something I'm supposed to say as a person who sells yoga mats, but I don't want you to like every design we make.
I'd be worried if you did.
Some Big Raven mats are dark and moody. Some are romantic. Some are colorful. Some are botanical. Some are whimsical. Some are a little strange.
That's intentional.
If we tried to make every mat appeal to everybody, we'd end up right back where this story started: with a whole lot of safe designs that nobody feels particularly strongly about.
I'd much rather have you scroll past ten mats and stop dead at number eleven.
Oh. That one.
That's what I'm looking for.
Maybe you know exactly why you love it. Maybe it reminds you of a place or a person. Maybe you're a gardener or a reader or somebody who has always loved ravens.
Or maybe you can't explain it at all.
You don't have to.
You just know it's yours.
Maybe We've Been Choosing the Safe Mat
I understand why neutral yoga mats sell.
They're safe.
When you're buying something you hope to use for a long time, there's a temptation to choose the thing you think you'll never get tired of.
But I've always found that logic a little funny.
Sometimes we become so afraid of eventually getting tired of something we love that we choose something we're already indifferent to.
That's a strange bargain when you think about it.
If I love the flowers, I'll take the flowers.
If you love the dark, strange, slightly witchy one, I think you should have that one.
If you're still thinking about a particular mat two days after you first saw it, that's probably worth noticing.
You don't have to choose the yoga mat that looks like the yoga mat you're supposed to own.
Choose yours.
You Don't Need More. You Need Better.
And no, I don't think the solution is owning twelve yoga mats.
I sell yoga mats and I'm telling you that.
I'd much rather you buy one really good mat you love and use the heck out of it.
That was part of our frustration from the beginning. I didn't want to make another product that was exciting when you first bought it and headed for replacement once the novelty wore off or the materials started breaking down.
I know a Big Raven mat isn't an inexpensive yoga mat.
We spent more than two years developing the mat itself. We chose premium materials because of how they perform, and we print our artwork here because the finished product matters to us.
Our mats are made for regular, real-world use.
Roll them up. Drag them along with you. Sweat on them. Practice outside. Let the dog walk across them. Unroll them again tomorrow.
That's always been the goal.
Make something beautiful, make it really well, and make it worth keeping.
So, Why Are So Many Yoga Mats Boring?
I think it's partly because we've spent a long time treating yoga mats as equipment first and everything else second.
And somewhere along the way, yoga developed an aesthetic that reinforced the idea that calm should look neutral.
I think there's room for something else.
Your yoga practice can be quiet while your mat is covered in flowers. You can meditate on something colorful. You can practice on ravens, books, tangled gardens, moons and whatever else makes you happy.
You can choose something beautiful simply because looking at beautiful things brings you joy.
And none of that makes your practice less serious.
The mat isn't going to make you practice. It won't make you more flexible. It won't magically improve your balance.
But if you're going to spend hundreds of hours with something beneath your hands and feet, I don't think it's frivolous to care about how it looks, how it feels or how well it's made.
Actually, that's exactly why Big Raven exists.
We were frustrated by the choices too.
So we decided to make another one.
Your Yoga Mat Doesn't Have to Look Like Everyone Else's
Big Raven Yoga started with frustration, but what came out of it was actually pretty simple.
We wanted it to be beautiful. We wanted it to perform. And we wanted it to last.
We still do.
Our mats aren't designed to disappear quietly into the background. They're designed for regular, real-world use. To be sweated on, rolled up, dragged around, practiced on again tomorrow and, hopefully, loved more because of all of it.
Your yoga mat doesn't have to look like everyone else's.
It doesn't have to feel disposable either.
You don't need to love every mat we make.
You just need to find yours.