There was a time when yogis in America practiced on bare floors and bath towels. If you were lucky, your yoga class took place on a hardwood floor, one with a finish that had at least a modicum of friction. Reality was, most of us ended up sliding around on linoleum, wood, concrete or carpet.

Standing poses and Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward Facing Dog Pose) were an exercise in frustration. No matter how much we might have wanted to open our hearts, expand into the light, etc., we were always holding back, trying to keep from ending up in a heap on the floor.

Hugger Mugger to the Rescue

The first nonskid mats were introduced to the Iyengar Yoga world by Angela Farmer in the mid to late ‘80s. These mats were cut from European carpet underlay. They were a godsend to those of us who’d been struggling against slick floors. Before long these unattractive but functional institutional-green mats were in every class and workshop I attended around the country. But because these mats were not made to withstand human body chemistry and lots of movement, their surface began peeling under our hands and feet within a few months.

That’s when Sara Chambers, founder of Hugger Mugger Yoga Products, decided to develop a sturdier, stickier yoga mat. In 1990, she worked with a U.S.-based company to develop the Tapas® Mat, the first-ever nonskid mat designed specifically for yoga. The same U.S. company still makes our Tapas® Original and Tapas® Ultra yoga mats. All the other mats on the market today are based on Sara’s original design for a yoga mat that could provide a stable, sticky surface.

Most yoga mats on the market are made from PVC. On the upside, PVC is incredibly durable. I still have a few Tapas® Original Mats from the first batch Hugger Mugger sold in 1990, and they haven’t peeled or worn through. On the downside, most PVC is a petroleum-based product. Some PVC mats on the market contain toxic heavy metals and phthalates. Hugger Mugger’s Tapas® Mats have never contained these substances.

Eco-friendliness is not simple. The balance for each yogi is to decide whether buying biodegradable, sustainable mats is more or less eco-friendly than buying a mat that you may never have to replace. This, of course, is a question that each of us answers for ourselves. It is why Hugger Mugger continues to offer many options. Sustainable options include mats made from PER (Polymer Environmental Resin), TPE (Thermoplastic Elastomer), natural rubber, jute and PER, and a combination of vegetable oil- and petroleum-based PVC.

Any mat will last longer if it is cared for. Depending on what mats are made from, the care can be quite different. Here’s a list of all our mats:

PVC-based mats: Tapas® Original Yoga Mat, Tapas® Ultra Yoga Mat

PER-based mats: Tapas® Travel, Nature Collection, Nature Collection Ultra, Gallery Collection Ultra

Natural rubber mats:  Para Rubber, Para Rubber XL

TPE mats:  Earth Elements 5 mm Mat

Natural fiber mat:  Sattva Jute Yoga Mat

Fabric mats: The Yoga Towel and Cotton Yoga Rug

Here’s a post that details how to choose the best yoga mat for your practice.

In order to build that community, Sara knew she had to get the word out. Back then, the flagship for any mail-order business was their catalog. But how to begin?

Sara and I knew each other from public classes she attended and I assisted. At the time, my day job was as a darkroom technician for a photographer, Butch Adams. Sara enlisted me to help her shoot the photos needed to illustrate her growing list of products.

A Page from the Original Catalog

Hugger Mugger’s budget was very limited at the time. So Butch, generous soul that he is, set up a backdrop and lights so that Sara could hook her own SLR into his system and shoot the photos herself. Then I developed the film and printed the photos to fit into a layout she’d created. She Xeroxed the pages, put them together, and the first HM catalog went out to her growing mailing list in the spring of 1987. HM distributed that first catalog for several years, updating the cover as needed.

I also modeled in all the catalogs in the early years (note the ’80s hairstyle!). Back then there weren’t all that many people practicing asana, and since I was, at the time, just barely starting to teach yoga, Sara enlisted me to demo the poses. I became a “cover girl” by default. Between the two of us, those catalogs were truly a homespun operation!

How to Order Your HM Shorts (in 1987)

Included in every catalog in those early years were instructions on special ordering Sara’s custom Hugger Mugger shorts. Each pair of shorts was made to order back then. As the business grew, it became impractical to custom cut and sew each pair of shorts. By the early 1990s, she began to sell the shorts in standard sizes and multiple colors. Hugger Mugger shorts are still popular among Iyengar yogis.

Hugger Mugger Catalog Takes a Step Up

From 1991: Introducing the Tapas Mat!

By the early 1990s, HM had become well-known in the U.S. yoga community. So Sara decided to upscale the catalogs. Butch began shooting the photos. Color photos were still out of reach financially, but Butch’s expertise added drama to the black-and-white photos. It would take another 10 years before a full-color catalog became a possibility. The full-color cover pictured above still used the tried-and-true black-and-white images inside.

Now, in an effort to stem the environmental impacts of sending out printed catalogs, Hugger Mugger’s website has become our catalog. We still enjoy setting up occasional photo shoots to highlight new products, and occasionally the silver-haired version of me still appears in those photos. But the days of developing film and printing photos are gone. Everything changes.

Do you remember any of these old catalogs? Write to us and tell us about your yoga history!

HM Bolsters Back in the Day

In early 1986, Iyengar teacher Mary Dunn taught a weekend workshop in Salt Lake City. Mary was the daughter of Mary Palmer, one of Iyengar’s very early American students. Iyengar was Dunn’s only yoga teacher throughout her life.

As an Iyengar teacher, Mary needed to have props on site at the workshop. The workshop sponsors Cita Mason Riley and David Riley cobbled together what passed for props in those days—straps (neckties from a secondhand store) and “blankets” (samples of outdated carpet from a local carpet store). There were no yoga mats, blocks or bolsters.

Still, Mary made do with the existing props (or lack thereof) with grace. One student who had traveled to Salt Lake City from Idaho brought with her a belt she’d bought from L.L. Bean—a 1.5-inch wide cotton strap from L.L. Bean. Time and again, throughout the workshop, Mary asked to use this belt for demonstrations. She liked the fact that it was wider than traditional 1-inch yoga straps. She felt that a wider strap had less potential to “cut” into someone’s skin in certain uses.

The Original Hugger Mugger Shorts

The following Monday, one of the workshop participants, Sara Chambers, showed up at her evening yoga class with a replica of the Idaho student’s “strap”, and an innovatively designed pair of gym shorts. These shorts had bands around the thighs to keep them in place no matter what pose she practiced. The shorts and the strap were immediate hits in the class. Soon she was taking orders for both from classmates and teachers.

Soon after, the Salt Lake Iyengar community became aware of the latest innovation in yoga mats—nonskid carpet underlay from Europe that Angela Farmer had been importing. Sara found out how to obtain these and they, too, became an instant hit.

A woodworker by trade, Sara began manufacturing beautifully finished solid wood blocks, to the specifications of those used at the Iyengar Institute in Pune.

By now, Sara’s business was so brisk that the basement of her small bungalow could no longer contain it. She moved to a house with a larger basement and began to extend her tentacles out into the larger yoga community. Again, the care and craftsmanship of her products caught on, and soon she moved the business out of her house altogether.

After a few years of selling imported carpet underlay as nonskid yoga mats, Sara heard from yogis that the surface of the mats tended to crumble after a while. She began to seek alternatives—mats that would perform the same nonskid function, but would be more durable. After much research, she found a U.S.-based company that was willing to explore branching out into yoga mats. In 1990, Sara began selling Tapas mats through her catalogs. As the very first made-for-yoga nonskid mats, they took the yoga world by storm. Hugger Mugger’s Tapas and Tapas Ultra mats are still made by the same domestic manufacturer.

Why Hugger Mugger?

The Original Pair of Hugger-Mugger Shorts

People sometimes ask where the name “Hugger Mugger Yoga Products” comes from. Because of the popularity of her shorts with the thigh-hugging bands, Sara decided to name the company for them. The term “hugger mugger” is a colloquial word meaning “to conceal,” which is what her Hugger Mugger shorts were designed to do. Nearly everyone in the national Iyengar community wore those shorts for decades—many still do.

Now 30 years later, Hugger Mugger continues to expand and innovate. The company now sells ten different types of mats in many different colors, four different sizes and shapes of handmade yoga bolsters, straps of three lengths and two different materials, yoga blocks and wedges, eye pillows, meditation cushions, blankets, towels, practice rugs, and more.

Hugger Mugger has always been at the forefront of innovation. In the past 20 years, we’ve committed not only to adding more sustainable options, but also to making our tried-and-true products even more eco-friendly. We’re committed to continuing to find sustainable solutions for the tools we create for practice.

We hope to continue to ride the yoga wave with all of you, and to provide the tools that enhance and deepen your practice for years to come.

A few items have lived in storage for much, much longer than two years, but they are not going anywhere, despite the fact that I don’t plan to wear them again. One such item is a pair of maroon-colored velour gym shorts I first saw more than 25 years ago.

I remember it like it was yesterday:  A golden-haired, blue-eyed Yoga student of several years walked into a Monday night intermediate class wearing the maroon shorts. These were not just any old gym shorts, however. These shorts were designed for Yoga practice. Each leg was finished with a thigh-hugging band that kept the shorts from riding up in headstand and shoulderstand, and kept privates private in wide-legged poses.

The enterprising Yoga student was Sara Chambers. A student in classes taught by Iyengar teachers Cita Mason and David Riley—also a physical therapist and physician respectively—Sara built custom furniture for a living. Her new shorts were as carefully crafted as her sturdy furniture. I still use the oak stereo cabinet and coffee table Sara built for me 25 years ago.

That very evening Sara began taking orders for the shorts from local students and teachers. At the time I was Cita and David’s teaching assistant. I attended several classes a week with them, practiced with them and assisted in their beginning classes. So I ordered two pairs in two different colors, thinking I’d surely need more than one.

Sara’s shorts were not simply sized as small, medium or large. At that time they were custom made for each person’s measurements. Sara would bring a tape measure to classes, and later, when she began selling her shorts nationally, she provided an illustration in the catalog of how each person could take their own measurements. This was hardly a model for mass production, but the shorts fit perfectly.

Hugger Mugger is Born

Within a year or two Sara had expanded the products she manufactured and sold to include mats (the Tapas Mat that Sara developed was the first made-for-Yoga nonskid mat), straps, blocks (made in her own wood shop), sandbags and her custom yoga shorts. She named her company Hugger Mugger Yoga Products after the shorts that started it all. (Hugger Mugger is an archaic word that means “to conceal.”) By then she was selling her products nationwide.

This was, of course, well before Yoga hit the mainstream. The original maroon shorts, which Sara gave me a year or so after she made them, remind me of a time when the Yoga community was much smaller and more cohesive. Local teachers—there were about half-dozen of us—all knew and supported each other. We all showed up at one another’s classes and when a workshop came to town once or twice a year, it was a chance for us all to reconnect with each other and learn together. We practiced together in each other’s homes. There were no studios in Salt Lake City back then, just rented social halls, dance studios and the YWCA, which was perfect for workshops because you could fit 30 people—a huge class back in those days.

Hugger Mugger shorts were pretty much the sole expression of Yoga fashion, along with any old t-shirt. When I went to India to study at the Iyengar Institute in 1989, everyone—35 students from all over the US—wore them. The special Yoga shorts were functional because they allowed teachers to demonstrate alignment points clearly and to evaluate their students’ alignment for safety. The Iyengars wore their own version of them, made in India by a seamstress called “Needle Woman.”

Even now, when I attend workshops with Iyengar-certified teachers, I sometimes see Hugger Mugger shorts on teachers or students. Hugger Mugger still makes them. I stopped wearing them years ago, preferring Capri-length pants to short shorts. Still, unlike so much of my vintage clothing I can so easily part with, I’ve kept my velour Hugger Mugger prototypes. They remind me of my early years as a student and budding teacher and of the tight-knit community that sprouted the bursting-at-the-seams array of studios in Salt Lake today. Those memories anchor me to the roots of my lifelong Yoga journey.