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January 4th, 2012

Featured Retailer: Varsana Yoga Studio

Welcome to Varsana, a small Indian village not far from Delhi where everything breathes yoga; it’s an eternal part of its inhabitants’ daily life. Ourselves practitioners of Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, we like to visit Varsana at least once a year to recharge our body, mind, and soul.

Three years ago, after one such pilgrimage, we decided to follow our hearts, give up our regular jobs, and start a gift shop selling Indian devotional items, cloths, and vegetarian snacks. What better name to choose then ‘Varsana’? Situated on the Prinsengracht canal between the Anne Frankhuis and the Westerstraat, where the famous organic Noordermarkt is held every Saturday, we soon built a circle of clients consisting of tourists as well as yoga enthusiasts.

Since our start in 2009, our cozy little shop in the old Amsterdam Jordaan district underwent many transformations. Since more and more of our clients started to ask for yoga mats and clothing, our collection gradually shifted more towards the yoga side, so that we may now boast the largest retail collection of yoga mats in the country. Extra long, extra light, or extra green? You name it; we have it on display. We are able to offer our clients careful advice on which mat suits them best, as well as more general support in their yoga lives based on our experience in India.

Next to the real life Varsana Yoga Store, we are active on Facebook and run a webshop at varsana.nl which offers a large collection of yoga products. Each article features an elaborate description of the type of product and its materials, enabling our customers to make the right choice. We strive to have all articles in stock and are usually able to mail out the next day. Combining ample choice with low mailing costs, our ambition is to become the most successful yoga web-shop in the Netherlands.
In order to serve our customers in the best possible way, our purchases are especially tailored to their needs. Searching for suppliers of high quality yoga items, we came across Manduka. We were overjoyed to hear that they were situated in Antwerp and immediately went for a meet & greet. It was a pleasure to get to know Lieve and Bruno and to see how they spent all their available time on Manduka Europe. Manduka stands for high quality yoga products that are friendly to the environment.
We therefore recommend Manduka for the more serious yoga practitioners among our customers.
You are warmly invited to visit Varsana and experience yoga, whether you are a beginner exploring the market of yoga articles or an advanced yogi looking for the right product to cater to your needs. But why listen to us if you can hear what our customers say about our shop? Read it and judge for yourself! Varsana Yoga Store: for your body, mind, and soul.

The Varsana Yoga store is open 7 days a week. Check out www.varsana.nl for contact details and directions. (our website is in dutch)

Photos are taken by Lulu Lightning

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December 1st, 2011

Featured Retailer: Urbanyoga

urbanyoga is Europe’s newest, coolest, funkiest online yoga store. Set up by long term partners Greg Watson & Rachael Myers less than 12 months ago, it has already established itself as a major player in supplying premium yoga products and brands to customers across the UK & Europe with its fresh modern contemporary take on yoga retailing.

Greg says, "As yogis ourselves, Rachael and I were just getting a bit frustrated and tired with the 'traditional' style yoga websites here in the UK, selling us all sorts of 'stuff' and presenting it in a way that just wasn't very appealing! Yoga is one of the fastest growing forms of exercise in the UK & across Europe and it's practiced by lots of cool, funky, open-minded individuals that in a lot of cases, are used to buying products from, and shopping in, like-minded places. To us there wasn't anywhere like this in the UK yoga market, so we decided to fill the gap and launch urbanyoga! Thankfully our approach has been very well received!"

Apart from its design, urbanyoga was set up with one simple goal in mind: 'find the very best yoga products available from around the world and bring them together in one place'. "We wanted to work with manufacturers that produced outstanding yoga products that performed well, were built to last, looked good, and of course did their bit for the environment too. Was this too much to ask? For some it was! There's lot of poor products out there that just didn't 'cut the mustard'. We tried them! Not only that, but as the yoga market expands there been a whole plethora of copycat / imitation / replica products coming onto the market and compared to the original products they copy, most just fail to deliver.

Manduka however is a company that ticks every one of our boxes. It personifies everything we want in a yoga brand and produces gorgeous yoga products that appeals to every yogi out there. In our view, Manduka is the finest yoga brand in the world right now and their range of products fit perfectly in our funky urbanyoga store!

Looking to the future Greg says "for all of us at urbanyoga, we know this is only the beginning. We’ve had a great start, especially considering the challenging trading conditions we all currently find ourselves in and very positive feedback from our customers which is great, but we know we've got lots more to give and bring to the table. As our unofficial motto says: constantly evolving, never standing still"

urbanyoga has a very active social network of cool yogi's from across Europe, so why not join us on our urbanyoga Facebook page (www.facebook.com/urbanyogalondon) for access to all the top news, first looks at new products and exclusive promotions and discount codes!

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October 31st, 2011

Featured Retailer: Yoga Form

Yoga Form is an integrative Mind, Body and Spirit studio located in Wilrijk, near Antwerp, Belgium. We offer a variety of mindbody classes 7 days a week and various workshops with local and international teachers. Yoga Form boasts a beautiful studio, set in a tranquil, green, residential area of Wilrijk. Set against the backdrop of a zen garden and housing a reception area, shop, kitchen, a shala, change rooms, a shower, toilet and a fully equipped treatment room, Yoga Form offers you excellence in teaching in a perfect setting that whispers as you enter the promise of peace and tranquillity.

Nicki Forman-Levitan founded Yoga Form to integrate different styles of yoga and mindbody practices from e.g. traditional Hatha Yoga, dynamic Vinyasa Yoga, Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga as well as Yin Yoga, hatha flow and Chakra Dance Meditation. Yoga Form was the first yoga school in Antwerp to offer Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan and has in a relatively short period offered through Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa the first Kundalini Yoga and Meditation Teacher Training offered in the city.

At Yoga Form adherence to all schools and respect for all lineages and teachers is encouraged. In offering these varied teachings, technologies and teacher trainings, Yoga Form students are able to take classes and workshops with different local teachers and incoming international senior teachers, each enriched by their interpretations and styles of teaching as well as having exposure to the many lineages that stem from yogic principle. Offering this variety in teachings and classes enables students to listen to their bodies and to what their varying ebbs and flows in energy might demand.

Together with a team of 15 teachers and staff, Nicki Forman-Levitan is privileged to open the door for aspirants on the path of yoga and is actively engaged in building and supporting the local and international yoga community. Through the establishment of YogAspire, Yoga Form is actively engaged in local and international community service.

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August 31st, 2011

Featured Retailer: Yoga Shop

Yogashop.nl is onderdeel van De Yoga Studio, een lichte en warme studio met twee ruime yogazalen vlakbij het centrum van Eindhoven. Janneke Verburg richtte de Yoga Studio op in 2003. Bij de studio werden in het begin een paar matjes aangeboden, gewoon voor studenten die hun eigen matje wilden. Maar al snel werd dit een online winkel met een ruim assortiment yogamatten, -boeken, -props en -kleding. Er werken inmiddels drie gepassioneerde ashtanga yogini's ; Janneke zelf, Barbara en Deborah. De missie van deze meiden is yoga en meditatie zo leuk en toegankelijk mogelijk te maken voor zoveel mogelijk mensen in Nederland, België en Luxemburg. Dit doen ze niet alleen door het aanbieden van yogaproducten van alleen de allerbeste merken - zoals Manduka - maar ook door het organiseren van Ashtanga Yoga workshops en -opleidingen met bekende docenten uit binnen- en buitenland. Zo zijn er de afgelopen tijd workshops geweest met David Swenson, Nancy Gilgoff en David Williams, en in maart 2012 gaat opnieuw de Ashtanga Yoga Intensive training van start. Een jaarlijkse opleiding voor docenten, waarvoor De Yoga Studio speciaal gecertificeerd is als RYS200 door Yoga Alliance. Ondertussen reist Janneke regelmatig naar India en ander plaatsen op de wereld om zich te laten bijscholen in Ashtanga yoga, en volgen ook Deborah en Barbara regelmatig workshops in (ashtanga) yoga en mindfullness.

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July 12th, 2011

Featured Retailer: Sukha Yoga In The Uk

Whilst trying and failing to find a new yoga mat Nicky Samuel decided to launch Sukha Yoga, a UK based ecommerce site selling the best yoga products she could find. Nicky searched at length for the ideal range of yoga mats; a search which finally lead her to Manduka. Nicky has been committed to Manduka ever since.

Sukha Yoga is currently celebrating its second birthday with a loyal customer base who value Nicky’s knowledge of Manduka’s products.

As Nicky says ‘my customers are the reason I do what I do! I get such fantastic feedback from my customers who love their Manduka products.’

‘ Taking Manduka mats to the Yoga Show in 2010 was the highlight of a very busy year for us. We met so many happy customers who took the time to stop and say hi. Selling a product that I believe in is of the utmost importance to me.’

‘I will not stock a product that I have not tried personally. I took the Manduka Superlite on a yoga holiday to Turkey last year and have just returned from Marrakech where I put the Manduka eKO yoga mat through its paces in hot and dusty conditions.’

Image Dory Walker, yoga teacher, and Nicky Samuel on the roof of Tigmi, at the foot of the Atlas Mountains.

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