I've been blessed that my passion for storytelling allowed me to explore our planet from the icy Himalayas to the deserts of Afghanistan. I've wandered ancient mosques that Rumi prayed in, searched for possibly extinct woodpeckers, berthed with Great White Shark taggers off of South Africa, been shot at in Iraq and gotten violently seasick on the Bering sea. Somewhere along the way I won an emmy but it was the people I met—and the staggering beauty of this Earth—that continue to inspire.

How does all this circle back to yoga? Everytime I packed my lunchbox to head off on a new adventure, I brought my yoga mat. When gyms were nonexistent and studios were thousands of miles away, there was always a small, rectangle of space—a boat deck, a tent floor, a quiet corner—where I could unroll my mat and move. Over time, that mat stopped being gear and became a companion. And eventually sparked a series of why's:

Why was my mat made with harmful PVC material?

Why are most yoga straps nylon or polyester?

Why was my yoga towel made from a blend of plastic microfibers and silicon nubs so synthetic that I could feel the oily petro-chemicals against my skin?

I kept asking myself:If yoga is about connection, why are the tools so disconnected from the Earth?

In 2020, Covid hit, the world stopped and we were all pulled out of our "normal" lives and into the unknown of our own human potential. Like many, I faced a choice: sink into isolation and despair; or build something meaningful from the pause.

Kinshē began with a hand-dyed yoga strap made from 100% hemp. Naturally antimicrobial. Pliant but strong. A perfect balance between tautness and stretch. Next up were yoga mats. Those took more than a year of mind-numbing sourcing -but eventually we tracked down the advanced grip, recyclable yoga mats we offer today. At a glance, we offer only blue and green, but we spent more than a month color testing and comparing swatches until we found the deep, rich hues we were looking for. Did you know that each color has 100's of RGB variations to choose from? Neither did we, and we hope the manufacturer forgives us for being the customer at an ice cream shop who needs to try every flavor before ordering. My Kinshē partner, Ashley, took on mat sprays. Working with a little factory at the foot of the Canadian escarpment we custom blended pure essential oils from forest and flowers to create two subtle scents: "Yin" to calm and "Kindle" to energize. From Istanbul, we sourced premium Turkish cotton yoga towels in nature-inspired colors. Now we’re launching The Ridgemat—the world’s first yoga mat with three-dimensional stabilization and acupressure ridges, designed to activate the endorphines before your very first pose.

My travels revealed that the earth isn't flat -why should your yoga mat be?

Yoga Different,

Ethan