As you may already know, Lovemore believes in giving back, and doing so is one specific way we choose love more as a business. To that end, a portion of each Lovemore sale is donated to Earth Birth women’s health collective. We’ve written about Earth Birth and our connection to midwife and Earth Birth co-founder Rachel Zaslow previously, and you can catch up on that here. Today we’re excited to share a great video that will take you to the heart of Earth Birth and the important work they are doing in Uganda. We are incredibly appreciative to everyone who has embraced Lovemore and has enabled us spread the Lovemore message farther and wider. Together we are increasing the love quotient in the world, and what’s more important than that? (We can’t think of one thing.)

Random fun fact: the translators who work with Earth Birth have a very hard time understanding the American English accent, so you will hear Rachel and her partner Olivia display a couple different accents in this video.

This sure is a message for this particular time and place, isn’t it? Well, the chorus anyway. Not the whole lovers on the boulevard thing. Anyway, I wanted to share the cutest 5th graders in the world with you and then I started to ponder how believin’, as it were, and Lovemore are related. Angela and I have talked a lot over the past year about how there are simply more challenges for almost everyone these days. And like everyone else, we get all caught up in the panic from time to time when we momentarily do stop believing. Oh do we ever. Usually around midnight, speaking our fears and letting the tears roll on a park bench in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

That said, we’re so thankful that we now have a spiritual home to return to in the mantra “love more.” Our belief that choosing love more is the answer to any and every question invariably grabs us by our shoulders, stops our spinning, and maneuvers us around until we are again pointed in the right direction. And from that perspective we see that there is an amazing gift in these difficult times. In the midst of a stressed out world, we as individuals can choose to grow our hearts big enough to hold this new level of challenge in love. We have the opportunity (perhaps unwelcome, but an opportunity nonetheless) to love*uncertainty*more, love*change*more, and love*vulnerability*more. As we practice bringing love instead of fear to what is tender, everything starts to shift and, well, we are 99.99% sure that is what will change the whole game. And that, we will never stop believin.

Jessica Schroeder is a fashion blogger from Brooklyn who documents her outfits daily on What I Wore. Every day she makes us wish we dressed cuter. Seriously. In addition to sharing her style, she also shares a whole lotta love. She calls herself a modern day hippie and that’s a perfect description. She’s full of light, love, and happiness. We couldn’t be more thrilled that she’s rockin’ the Lovemore and sharing us with her posse of lovers. Thank you Jessica! 

Pssst…you can use the discount code too…we won’t tell.  

Sustainable, organic clothing doesn’t have to have hemp leaf allover print, or look like burlap. There are good-looking clothing options for the fashion-conscious conscientious consumer, even though we acknowledge that we are far behind the curve. The more we know, the more we see, the more we share, the bigger this eco fashion industry can grow – the better we can feel about the clothes on our backs.

Here here Seed & Sew, we couldn’t agree more and are so thankful for the props!

Our friend Marisa over at Kind Green Planet gave a shout out to the Lovemore water bottle in her Weekly Mission post. She just got back from a 2 week trip to Israel and is sharing her list of what she is so glad she brought with her (which includes the 13 oz Lovemore water bottle), as well as what she wishes she brought with her.  It is a great list and you should totally check it out, for your summer travels and beyond. Kind Green Planet is a non-profit dedicated to educating people about healthy, humane, eco-friendly living, and we just couldn’t love that more!

Today when Ang and I went out in our neighborhood to grab lunch I thought it might be fun to share some pics of what life looks like around the Lovemore “office.” I uploaded my snaps from the afternoon to our flickr stream here: Lovemore Brooklyn Headquarters set on flickr.

Both Angela and I love calling Brooklyn home, and couldn’t be more proud to have Lovemore headquartered here. We’re so excited to be a new business in this historic community and look forward to getting connected to all the BK has to offer our mission of love. We also plan on giving back to our new home, so if you have a favorite Brooklyn-based charity that you think embodies the Lovemore mission drop us a line and let us know about it! Send an email to: hello@chooselovemore.com.

Lovemore had an amazing week with the launch of the new site last week, and participation in our first ever Yoga Journal Conference, which was in New York City this past weekend. Yoga is all about love so we knew the conference would be full of amazing people who are excited to take love-inspired wear and gear into yoga class and out on the streets. As we shared our story of embracing the mantra “love more,” and our excitement about being a new Brooklyn-based business, we soaked up the post-yoga class glow and kind words of the yogis and yoginis who stopped by our booth. We look forward to continuing to nurture these connections and hope to see Lovemore in yoga studios and retreat centers around the country to keep the synergy and love flowing. For more information about wholesale opportunities, please connect with us through our wholesale page. We see yoga and Lovemore as soul sisters and couldn’t be more proud of the relation.

A lot of people don’t realize that hatha yoga, the poses or postures of yoga, is just one of 6 branches of yoga, which collectively create a connection (yoga means yoke) to the divine which is both within and all around us. Two of the branches of yoga that Lovemore has made part of our everyday business practices are Bhakti and Karma yoga. Bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion, and its practice is about experiencing the connection and oneness of all that is, and opening the heart to accept and love all things. Sometimes the way this happens, on the mat and off, is to love and accept one’s own limitations. Angela and I participated in a 30-day Bikram yoga challenge a year ago, and wow, did we ever practice Bhakti yoga. As we surrendered in the heated room for an hour and a half, day after day, our hearts grew bigger to better love our limitations, our fears, and our our tiny breakthroughs. Drenched in sweat, going deeper and deeper into stuck places we didn’t even know we had, we felt the power of the phrase love more, and what it meant to call on it second by second. We have much gratitude for the teachers who helped us merge Bhakti and Hatha yoga in each class and think of them often. One way we express gratitude is through Karma yoga, the yoga of service, a core value of Lovemore. 

We like to think of Lovemore as a karma yoga company, in that we make giving an integral part of our business. With each canvas (and thus vegan) belt purchase, two dollars is donated for the care of Faith, a rescued cow now living peacefully at Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York. For all other purchases, we currently gift a portion of our profits to Earth Birth, an organization working in Uganda to empower women to birth peacefully and with support. In honor of the yoga conference we decided to super-charge our Karma and Bhakti yoga practices and increase the amount of our donations from conference sales. As a result, we are gifting 5% of our proceeds from the conference to these wonderful causes that truly embody the Lovemore mission. 

In addition to all of the amazing yoga at the Yoga Journal Conference – Hatha, Bhakti, Karma, and otherwise – we simply adored meeting so many love-filled people. Check out the photos on Lovemore’s flickr and gallery and send yours to ilovemore@chooselovemore.com if you haven’t already. Yesterday Angela talked to a mother and yoga teacher who visited our booth and picked up some Lovemore for her husband and 11-year old. She told Angela that her son wore Lovemore to school on Monday morning. How cool is that? Building this family of friends who commit to choosing love more helps us all in our individual Lovemore yoga practices. We are so thankful to share this journey with you. Namaste!

Friday: 12 – 7

Saturday & Sunday: 10 – 7

Monday: 11:30 – 2:30

Where? New York City Hilton Hotel at Avenue of the Americas and 54th Street

We’ll have every single Lovemore product on hand so you can shop in person and also avoid shipping fees*! Hope to see you there! (If you can’t make it, of course www.chooselovemore.com will be up and running for all of your Lovemore needs.

*When you spend $150 on chooselovemore.com we’ll pick up the shipping then too. Sounds good, right?