Eco Friendly Yoga Mat Bags
Meet our Team
Brandi Bovell, Founder
Greetings! My name is Brandi Bovell. I am the founder and owner of Savasana Eco Yoga Mat Bag Company. I founded this company as a solution to keeping the well loved sheets from my massage studio from winding up in landfills. Keeping our planet pristine is important to me because I am the mother of two kind, beautiful little humans that are too amazing for words. I want future generations to be able to enjoy the beauty of nature as I have been able to do. The idea to create these yoga mat bags came during my daily yoga practice. Yoga has taught me about patience, kindness, and gratitude. With each practice I continue to be reminded that yoga is the gift that continues to give without limitations. For the reasons that recycling and yoga are both about recreating and giving, Savasana will donate 20% of proceeds each quarter to a different non profit organization. We hope to continue the cycle of love and giving back to our community.
Among many of my projects, I am the owner of Affordable Spa, a day spa that provides Massage Therapy, Advanced Skincare, and Natural Health Services at an affordable price. We are located in the heart of Scott's Addition Historic District in Richmond, VA. I have a passion for wellness, and have dedicated my life's work to making it accessible to everyone. Affordable Spa donated all of our worn sheets to create these beautiful yoga mat bags! Up cycling at its finest! Our crochet Goddess Diane is a very speedy worker, so we are always accepting cloth donations to keep up with demand. Rest easy knowing your donations are staying out of the landfill and contributing to a great cause!
When I am not working, I enjoy spending time with my amazing husband and our two sweet, beautiful, and more awesome then words could ever describe children. My passion for wellness continues at home, as I spend much of my free time outdoors. I love running, and reconnect each day through my yoga practice. I enjoy eating real food and find nourishment with my paleo diet. I enjoy the simplicity of life. Whether I am barbecuing or throwing the ball for the dog, I simply enjoy being. After all, we are "human beings", not "human doings".
If you find yourself in the Richmond area, please take the time to visit Affordable Spa. We'd love to pamper you with one of our amazing services. Everyone deserves to feel well! Here is a link to our website, we hope to see you soon! www.Affordable.MassageTherapy.com
Abigail Ford,
Model, Fitness Advocate
Hello! I'm Abigail. I'm 15 years old. I like to experience the world with open eyes and an open heart. Living an active lifestyle is important to me. I love kickboxing, lifting weights, and I do cardio at least 5 days a week. I like to challenge myself and run in Spartan Races. This summer I have plans to walk the Grand Canyon with my mom, for the Athena Project, empowering women. I am excited to share this experience with my Mom.
I consider my personality outgoing and fun. I spend a lot of my time writing and listening to music. I dance for The Clover Hill High School show choir, and I enjoy doing makeup art for theatre. I love getting my hands dirty.
With all the activities that I do, yoga is very beneficial for me! Yoga strengthens my muscles and prepares my body and mind for the activities that I do. It helps me unwind and relax. Yoga teaches me how to come to peace with myself, and how to keep my body healthy through stretching.
I decided to model for Savasana Yoga Mat Bag Company, because of my love for yoga, and my love for the environment.
The environment is important to be because there are so many things I want to experience and see in this beautiful world! I’d like my future children to have the same opportunity! I come from a large family, being one of 7 kids. We spend a lot of time outside, and we go on family trips! I hope that by recycling and being eco conscious, we can preserve our parks and natural resources!
Diane Whitbeck, Crochet Goddess
After a highly successful 25-year career as a Logistics Management Executive, Diane retired and turned her talents elsewhere. She has published 6 non-fiction eBooks about self-development topics on Amazon.com and has a 7th book of her poetry, which she regularly performs in Richmond area clubs and cafes, almost ready for publication. She is also working on a novel. But her undying passion is crocheting. She was taught this skill by a friend when she was a teenager, and has been crocheting for 45+ years. But it wasn’t until she inherited 25 boxes of yarn from a great-aunt that she thought of turning her passion into a profitable business, and created DandDDomesticDesigns, which is named after two of her late kitty boys, Domino and Diablo, that loved to curl up in her crochet works. When she and Brandi Bovell got together to learn how to make rugs from re-purposed textiles, it wasn’t long before the idea of using these same re-purposed textiles to crochet yoga mat bags was hatched, and Savasana came into being. Diane is a firm believer in recycling and re-purposing to make our planet a better place. “I have been ecologically-minded and trying to make a minimal impact on the Earth since the early 70's. I rarely throw anything away and I am always looking for ways to re-purpose items around my house. I am currently involved in supporting a Croatian kitty rescue by crocheting beds for 40 kitties using re-purposed plastic shopping bags. They will hold in the body heat of the kitties, as well as being easy to clean and care for. These bags would just go into the landfill, otherwise, where they take between 500-1000 years to break down. That is why I am very happy to be working as the Crochet Goddess at Savasana. Cotton textiles break down in 1-5 months in a landfill, but polyesters can take up to 1000 years to break down. I don’t want to live in a world, or pass one on to future generations, that is covered in trash!”
You can view the crochet work Diane has for sale in her Etsy shop at:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DandDDomesticDesigns
Check back frequently, as her inventory is growing and changes with the seasons. She will have a websites for her products available soon, as well.
Adam Abdulrazaaq
Personal Trainer
I started my fitness journey as a track and field athlete in high school and continued through college. There, I learned the meaning of hard work and a strong heart! After I graduated college I followed that very heart and became a track and field coach. My true passion was realized beyond that point though. I wanted to do more! Not only work with athletes, but with people who didn’t believe in themselves, even though I knew they had the potential for something great. I studied hard and became a Personal Trainer, which I have now been doing for 5+ years. I truly love what I do and am happy to help anyone I can. My motto is “I like to work hard, yet smart, with sweat and a smile!” I like to bring a fun side to hard training during my sessions. Always a positive attitude and a swing in my step.
I decided to work with the Savasana Yoga Mat Bags, because there is nothing better than good people doing good things! I come from a long line of brotherhood. Having each other's backs and helping one another make a positive mark on the community and world. I see these same values in this company. Savasana’s commitment to upcycle and limit waste is important to me because there is only one world of which we know. It is beautiful, vast, and mysterious with boundless potential and grace! Savasanas sisterhood and drive to do good is an amazing and rare thing to see.
Working with Savasana was a wonderful experience and a grand time. I look forward for more to come. You can contact me via email at Bossfit101@gmail.com or look me up on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012682986459
Nitika Achalam,
Yoga Instructor, Environmental Activist
“When I learned about Savasana Yoga Mat Bags I was in love! The line combines two of my biggest passions, yoga and sustainability.”
Nitika Achalam started the journey as a student of Yoga when she was a young child and began leading classes in 2000 after finding her teachers Sri Swami Satchidananda. In her daily work as a Holistic Lifestyle Coach & Professional Eco-Organizer, Nitika is a steward to the Earth continuously. She helps others find ways to minimize consumable goods to only those which will add value to their lives and causes the least amount of harm to ecology. Then she finds ways to reuse or repurpose no longer needed items in order to keep them out of the landfill.
Often you can find Nitika coaxing people to roll out their yoga mats. She brings variety to each class synthesized by an adoration of the natural world and a deep desire to break down the facade and learn to love what remains. Nitika’s students trust her to skillfully guide them through reflective yet exploratory movements that help build courage while finding balance between strength and flexibility.
These days you can find Nitika teaching in Richmond, Virginia and beyond. For more information and to book her for your own personal renewal, please visit NitikaAchalam.com.
