So your friends are a bunch of yogaphiles, and the obvious gifts for the holiday season are "all things yoga." You, however, are the kind of person that puts a little extra love into her gifts, and your friends are the type of people who appreciate the uniqueness of a personal creation from the heart. Here are a few ideas for the yogi who has everything:
- Workout Gear
Visit Cafepress.com or Customizedgirl.com to create personalized yoga clothes, "herbal tea" mugs, towels, or whatever your yogi friend could use.
- Inspirational Messages
Create a mantra or japa book. Buy a beautiful handmade journal (or make one) and fill the pages with handwritten messages for your friend to carry with them throughout the day. Mix classical Sanskrit mantras with your own personal messages and with English-language affirmations common in our western yoga traditions.
- Customized Music
Make mixed CDs for her practice. Yoga is just more fun, and often more relaxing, when the background is filled with beautiful sounds. Good yoga tunes can be anything from kirtan chants to inspiring pop songs.
A good idea for a yogi friend is to create a "box set" of mixed CDs for different yoga moods and classes. You could make mixes for high-energy power yoga, relaxing restorative sessions, and heart opening joyful classes and wrap them up together.
- Handmade Art
Create mandalas. If your friends are regular meditators or have dedicated spaces in their homes for their practice, the artfully inclined gift giver can paint or draw mandalas for that sacred space of contemplation. Mandalas are geometric designs usually depicting universal energies and concepts, including the specific energies of the chakras. Do a little research, create mandalas of your favorite chakra (or with any intention you'd like) and offer it to friends to enrich the environments in which they practice.
- Mat Bags
Knit a yoga mat bag. If you are blessed with the skill of knitting (or for some, the compulsion) spend your time by the fire creating a homemade bag for that special yogi's special mat. What yogi wouldn't love that? (Click link for pattern.)
Create a personalized mat. Buy a plain, light colored, yoga mat and adorn it with inspirational messages and designs. Permanent marker is your best bet for a user-friendly and durable design.
- Self Massagers
Build a back massager: a project for the engineering type. This is a makeshift kind of project. Results will vary, but it feels great.
Materials needed:
- Six metal dowels or rods about 2 feet long each
- 25-36 tennis balls
- Two 2"x2"s of wood about 2 feet long each
- Rubber bands
- A drill
- Depending on the height and width desired, you will create a 5x5, 6x6, 5x6, or 6x5 "grid" of tennis balls. Drill a whole through each ball and string them along the metal dowels. Once assembled, measure the distance between each dowel, allowing enough space so that the balls roll freely.
Drill complimentary holes through both pieces of wood. Wrap rubber bands around both ends of each metal dowel close enough to the balls to keep them from sliding out of place without restricting their movement, and then place the pieces of wood on each end of the assembly, joining the dowels. Fix the wood pieces in place with another series of rubber bands.
Test drive your creation by laying it on a flat surface, then rest your back on it with your knees bent and feet a few feet from your buttocks. By extending and bending your legs, you will roll across the tennis balls and say "aaah!"
Have better ideas for materials for a project of this nature? Let Suite101's writer Laura Susan Henry know.
