Journal

Terry in His Heartland is a very special and personal yoga mat for me. I’m so grateful to my team for their creative collaboration and thoughtfulness bringing this project to fruition. My dad, Terry, had a fascination and love for gorillas. Any primate really, but gorillas in particular. One of my favorite childhood memories occurred on a family trip to the San Diego Zoo. My dad sat on a bench outside the gorilla habitat with my little brother, Thomas, and me for over an hour. My dad led this observation, and by his example we were content to sit there...

Nostalgia. Webster’s Dictionary defines “nostalgia” as… (Wait, wait, wait. I’m gonna stop you right there. The Urban Dictionary defines “Webster’s Dictionary” as “The first two words of a speech given by a complete tool,” so let’s not start with that. Try again — Ed.) The Nigerian poet Jenim Dibies defines “nostalgia” as “A feeling that lingers long after the taste is gone” (from her second collection of poetry, The Calligraphy of God). Incredibly, she started — and finished — all of the poems in this collection in a single day. (MUCH better — Ed.) The yoga mat that most evokes nostalgia for us is...

Aaaaand we’re back! That’s right, Freebie Friday is BACK, baby, rested and refreshed and better than ever! (Did you even realize we were gone? *sniff*) Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day, so let’s celebrate with a quote from one of OUR favorite feminist icons, Susan B. Anthony. (Not to be confused with Susan A. Anthony or Susan C. Anthony. Why is she always Susan B. Anthony? Were there that many other Susan Anthonys in the suffrage movement that it was causing confusion? These are some of the things we wonder about while running yoga mats through our printers. It’s...

Here We Explain Our Pricing I'd like to explain why our mats cost what they do AND why you still need one even at that price… Our CEO, Joleen, on our Frida Kahlo She Brings It to the Canvas yoga mat and our 112-year-old maple floors… Unlike our competitors, we don’t crank out generic yoga mats by the thousands (or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands). We’re a small, family-run business and we print each mat individually to order — custom made exclusively for you. We simply don’t have the same economies of scale as big- yoga brands or big-box retailers and,...

Hi there. My name is Joleen Emery, and I’m the founder and CEO of Big Raven Yoga. A lot of people have been asking me how Big Raven Yoga came to be — what our "origin story” is, if you will. So here's our story... The first thing to know about me is that I. Am. A Yogi. And I have been for 18 years, both as a practitioner and as a teacher. My life is built around my yoga mat. It’s the foundation of my life. No matter what else is going on — work, travel, family — I eke out time...