Some 3,000 years ago yogis needed little more than a dirt floor on which to practice their asanas. Maybe it’s the influence of yoga’s migration to a more acquisitive, technologically equipped Western culture, or maybe it’s hatha yoga’s own natural evolution that has prompted 21st-century yogis to embrace the help of various tools to enhance their practice. Forty years ago, a Utah yogi named Sara Chambers embarked on a journey to perfect the design and function of the tools of practice. Her vision grew into an international company, Hugger Mugger Yoga Products, that endures to this day.
The development of “props” for yoga is attributed to the late B.K.S. Iyengar, a world-renowned teacher, who began teaching as a teenager and continued teaching until his passing at age 94. Iyengar’s yoga journey began when his parents sent him to practice yoga with T. Krishnamacharya with the hope of bolstering his health. Having suffered serious illness, including malaria, typhoid and tuberculosis, as a child, Iyengar had developed a weak constitution. His family hoped that yoga would help. And they were right.
Yoga Props and Alignment
Iyengar is best known for his focus on alignment. A body that was aligned in yoga poses allowed prana (life force) to move more freely. This focus made his style of practice especially attractive to Western yogis seeking to establish a more practical interpretation of the asanas.
He began experimenting with using yoga props after a scooter accident injured his spine. This exploration bore fruit for his yoga students. Over the years, he invented props to help his students achieve alignment no matter their body type or level of fitness. Using blocks, bolsters, straps and blankets, he taught both general and therapeutic classes at his institute in Pune, India, for decades.
Iyengar’s props spawned a plethora of innovative ideas for their use. Teachers wanting to help less flexible students practice challenging asanas safely provide props for support. Restorative yoga, a branch of hatha yoga meant to relax and restore energy, employs props to create effortless asana practice.
A Pair of Shorts and a Yoga Strap
It was a lack of sufficient props at a 1986 weekend yoga workshop with the late senior Iyengar teacher, Mary Dunn, that inspired Chambers to take action. Chambers was a yoga student of two years when she decided to close her custom furniture-building business after the birth of her first child. During the workshop, Dunn was constantly scrounging for the right props. In particular, she kept needing to borrow a strap—an L.L. Bean belt—from a teacher attending the workshop. (At the time, Salt Lake yogis were using thrift store neckties as yoga straps!)
Chambers was six months postpartum and concerned about the revealing nature of regular gym shorts in some asanas. With these thoughts brewing she went home and began to sew.
The following Monday, she came to her regular yoga class sporting a new pair of maroon velour yoga shorts (pictured above) with thigh-hugging bands in place of a hem, and bearing a new cotton D-ring strap that was the width and weight of the strap Dunn had borrowed during the workshop. Soon Chambers was taking orders for straps and shorts from teachers and fellow students.
Chambers developed a modest, Xeroxed catalog, which she began mailing to teachers outside Salt Lake City. In a few years, she was connected to a worldwide community hungry for the products and service she provided.
The Birth of the Tapas® Mat
In the late ’80s, Salt Lake-based teachers Cita Mason and David Riley had recently introduced the local community to a new kind of yoga mat. Made from under-carpet padding used in Europe, its non-skid surface took the struggle out of performing asanas on slick floors. Through a connection to his father in Germany, Riley was able to import large rolls of these mats inexpensively. When Chambers expressed an interest in selling the mats, Riley helped her import them for her budding business, which she named Hugger-Mugger (which means “to conceal”) Yoga Products after the shorts that started it all.
The European mats ended up not being compatible with human body chemistry. After a few months’ use, their surface began to crumble in the places where practitioners placed their hands and feet. Ever the problem solver, Chambers hired a U.S. company to develop a sturdier, stickier product, which she named Tapas®. Tapas® mats were the first made-for-yoga nonskid mats, and are the model for most of the mats currently on the market. The same U.S.-based company still manufactures Hugger Mugger’s Tapas® mats today.
Hugger Mugger Takes on Blocks, Bolsters and Sandbags
When Chambers began making blocks, bolsters and sandbags, she used the same dimensions in size and weight as the props Iyengar was using at his institute in Pune, India. But she added details them to make them more ergonomically functional. For example, Hugger Mugger was the first to add handles to their bolsters and zippers to their sandbags. Other yoga products companies then followed suit. At almost every turn, Hugger Mugger’s innovations became the industry standard.
Quality Comes First
Chambers’ work philosophy came from a comment she took to heart while in school at University of North Carolina. Back when she was still intimately involved with the company, she told me, “I had a college professor who talked about how different the workplace would be if everyone had to sign everything they did. I feel that since I created Hugger Mugger, whatever product we send out has my signature on it. I believe it’s important that we represent what we say we represent.”
Chambers sold the company in the early 2000s, but the company’s commitment to quality remains. Hugger Mugger produces all its sewn props—bolsters, meditation cushions, eye pillows—at its Salt Lake City-based facility. In February of 2024, Hugger Mugger merged with Yoga Design Lab, an innovator in nature-inspired, eco-friendly yoga mats.
Hugger Mugger’s commitment to quality extends to the design, function and manufacture of all its products. All of Hugger Mugger’s products are built to last. I still use a bolster that Chambers made in her first “trial” batch back in the 1980s. That the company is celebrating 40 years of business is a testament to their staying power, and the staying power of their props.
Here’s to another 40 years!