CORK YOGA BLOCKS

A yoga block is a versatile and indispensable tool for enhancing your yoga practice in numerous ways:

1. Support and Stability: Yoga blocks provide support and stability, especially for beginners or individuals with limited flexibility. They help you maintain proper alignment in poses where reaching the floor may be challenging, allowing you to perform the posture safely and effectively.
2. Improved Alignment: Using a yoga block can assist in achieving proper alignment in various poses by bringing the ground closer to you. This helps to prevent overstretching or straining muscles and joints, reducing the risk of injury.
3. Deepen Stretches: Yoga blocks can be utilised to deepen stretches gradually over time. By placing the block under your hand, foot, or seat, you can gradually increase the intensity of the stretch, facilitating greater flexibility and range of motion.
4. Balancing Tool: In standing poses or balance postures, a yoga block can serve as a stabilising tool, providing additional support and confidence as you work on your balance and coordination.
5. Modifications and Adaptations: Yoga blocks offer modifications for poses that may be inaccessible due to physical limitations or injuries. They allow practitioners of all levels to experience the benefits of various yoga postures, regardless of their flexibility or strength.

Cork makes an excellent choice as a yoga block both from a sustainability and performance standpoint. Due to its sturdiness and density, a cork yoga block won't collapse or compress under weight like foam yoga blocks do, making them a more stable [and safer] surface to practice on. Cork has a beautiful natural feel and unlike foam, its grip increases under sweaty conditions, humid environments or during hot yoga. Cork is also biodegradable, renewable and antimicrobial making it the ideal material for an eco-friendly yoga block.

Yoga blocks are an essential prop for yogis at all levels. We recommend you having two yoga blocks to give you the support you need throughout your practice and allow you to perform a wider range of poses to better your flexibility as well as assist with jump throughs and inversions. You can purchase the cork yoga block duo and save!

Our cork yoga mat is super easy to clean. We recommend using our essential oil sprays because they have fantastic anti-bacterial properties and will thoroughly clean your mat leaving it smelling amazingly fresh. To clean, just spray your mat and use a damp cloth to wipe down.

If you're after a deeper clean or if you have stains on your mat, you can fill a bowl with a mixture of water, vinegar and bicarbonate of soda and gentle scrub out the stain in a circular motion. You can then leave it to air dry over a chair or clothes horse.

Cork yoga mats have a beautiful natural feel with enough grip for your practice and enough smoothness to allow for poses like forward and side splits. Other than the fact that cork is a natural and highly sustainable material, it also contains suberin, a waxy, grippy substance that is released when wet which makes it a perfect material for yoga mats as your grip will increase as you sweat!

If you're in colder climates or have dry hands and feet, we recommend spritzing your yoga mat before practice with our essential oils sprays to activate the suberin in the cork.

The great thing about a cork yoga mat is that as you generate heat throughout your practice and your feet and hands start to perspire, your grip will enhance rather than slip. You can also use the rubber side of the mat for an ultra grippy option or in those cold winter months when you want to leave your socks on!

Our cork comes from Portugal - which is the worlds largest cork producer supplying 70% of the world’s cork products. Once the cork bark is removed from the tree, it is stacked to air and season. The planks are then boiled to soften and clean them and ready them for further processing.

From planks, the cork is then ground into granules to form cork agglomerate. These granules are mixed with a food-grade adhesive and then processed into cork leather or compressed cork products like our cork yoga blocks and cork massage balls.

Cork is a 100% renewable and recyclable material. No trees are ever cut down to harvest cork, making it one of the most environmentally friendly harvesting methods in the world. Cork is recyclable, reusable and bio-degradable making it a perfectly sustainable and environmentally friendly product to use for our ZONE yoga range. 

The cork tree or (Quercus suber) is the only type of tree that can have its bark removed without damaging the tree. Amazing!

The cork bark is harvested every 7 to 10 years and by harvesting the bark, it actually makes the cork grow back stronger and thicker so the tree is able to photosynthesise more carbon dioxide. Each year cork oak forests are estimated to retain around 14 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is a huge tick for the environment and is why cork is considered one of the most sustainable forestry production practices in the world. 

Cork trees can also store a large amount of water in their root systems, which helps keep them hardy and prevent soil erosion where they are planted. This storage of water also means that they can absorb nutrients from deep in the earth and sustain themselves without human interaction, even in dry climates. 

Cork by nature is antimicrobial and non-allergenic due to the fact that it contains compounds called phenolics which kill, repel and suppress the growth of bacteria and fungus. This keeps your mat clean and free from allergens and odours. Whilst synthetic yoga mats often absorb and retain bad smells – cork naturally repels odours and emits a very subtle woody fragrance.

This makes cork a great choice for hot yoga or for yoga studios looking to keep their shared equipment hygienic. Cork is also renewal and sustainable and a great choice for the environment.