Our yoga products are tested, approved and recommended by these wonderful yoga teachers.

By the way, students of them get special discounts on our Yoga Mat!

Xenia Gallinn

Xenia is the founder of Soha Yoga and lives with her small family right next to the beautiful Swabian Alb. There you will also find the Soha Yoga center.

At Soha Yoga you will experience ease, a good connection with yourself and a feeling of completeness and freedom - far away from rigid poses. Soga Yoga will bring you back to your intuition and your vested well-being. Your health will be supported on all levels.

To experience the power of a community and movement together at ease is the main element of the Soha philosophy and Xenia’s personal mission.

Besides weekly yoga sessions you will also find inspiring workshops, online courses and retreats.

Get more information at www.sohayoga.de or on Xenia's Instagram profil www.instagram.com/xenia.greta.

What Xenia says about us

For my personal yoga practice and the equipment of the Soga Yoga center, high quality mats made in a sustainable manner were always very important.  The Alba Yoga mat is my first yoga mat made of cork and I am positively surprised. The material is comfortable on the skin and provides good grip especially after using it for multiple times. During the yoga flow as well as during the shavansa, the Alba Yoga mat gives me a great feeling all around.

 Filipa Ribeiro

Filipa is a yoga teacher/student and a social solopreneur. Yoga Shala Matosinhos is one of her main projects for the community in Matosinhos and Porto. Filipa studies and practices yoga since 2009 and meditation since 2006. She first started practicing ashtanga with Elena Figarola, in Barcelona and, annually, she studies with Peter Sanson, Petri Räisänen, Hamish Hendry and Sharmila Desai. Currently, she is also an ashtanga student of Tiago Prieto. She’s completed two teacher trainings, one of which with David Swenson and she also studies yoga philosophy and Vedanta since 2010. She practices yoga just as she was taught, following the Vedic tradition by Adi Shankaracharya tradition. She’s deeply grateful to every teacher whom she has learnt with, to everyone who crosses her path of yogi and who she always learns with. She’s deeply inspired by her teachers and students.

Apart from yoga, Filipa is a journalist and a teacher by training. She holds a PhD in Sociology of Science and specialized in Science Education. She loves mountains and being in nature.

Her Yoga Shala Matosinhos was the first shala, in Porto, to offer a daily ashtanga mysore program both in the mornings and in the evenings. This is the house for everyone who wishes to dedicate a bit of their time to themselves, to their health and self-knowledge. This is a shala that shows in each class that yoga is for everyone and for every bodies. It is meant to be a house of silence and support in the heart of a noisy and dispersive town like Matosinhos. 

Find more information on www.yogamatosinhos.com or on Instagram www.instagram.com/yoga_shala_matosinhos.

What Filipa says about us

I love good stories, good ideas and synergies. Recently I met a very nice young couple who decided to be more creative during the pandemics and started their own business. For that they used one of the most traditional Portuguese products: cork. So, if the eco-friendliness of yoga mats is dependent on the material that it’s made of, you could not get anything better than cork.

Nowadays, amidst a huge environmental crisis, the eco friendliness should be the most important aspect one ought to consider when buying anything. And we all know that the yoga industry is responsible for an enormous amount of plastic pollution, through its clothing, mats, and packaging. And it is better that each one of us think about that reality sooner rather than later.

That said, if environment, the support of small, local, and creative businesses that innovate in Portugal with Portuguese products are not reasons enough for you let me tell you a bit more about alba yoga mats. 

I was pleasantly surprised when I made my first samasthithi on a cork mat by alba yoga. The touch and rooting sensations were so smooth and vivid. The same happened in meditation postures (with no need to use extra padding material for feet or knees). Then both in hatha and asthanga yoga practices, it provided an excellent grip. In addition, the touch of the cork seems to always remind us to take it nice and gentle with our movements. In savasana, relaxation pose, it really feels good to allow ourselves to melt a little bit further down into the Earth and letting go feeling the touch of the cork mat as a safe place to rest and reset.

Moreover, all students in our shala agreed that the mat is beautiful and lovely. 

And if you are thinking that biodegradable, recyclable, and environmentally friendly mats do not come cheap, I can assure you, from my experience with student's yoga mats, that what first looks cheap will turn into expensive (and uncomfortable) later. Thus, I totally recommend Alba Yoga mats.