Top Ten Gift Ideas for Your Favorite Yoga Instructor

Your yoga instructor helps you to relax, stretch, meditate, and maintain overall well-being. Perhaps you take yoga once a week, or three times a week. No matter how often you take yoga, your yoga instructor is probably someone you'd like to thank during the holiday season. Here are the top 10 gifts for yoga instructors.

1. Basket of Wellness Teas

Find a wicker or wire basket and line it with a pretty cloth placemat. Visit the tea section of your local grocery store or health food store. Select from any decaffeinated selection of the teas. Ideal choices include a box of Celestial Seasoning's Tension Tamer.

A flavored and caffeine-free green tea is also a must for the yoga teacher's basket of wellness teas. Also find one white tea selection, which is an exquisite tea. The other type of tea that should find its way into this top gift for a yoga teacher is any tea by Yogi Teas.

Pick about 5-10 varieties of boxes of teas, depending on the size of the basket. Add a honey bear, honey sticks, or a box of Sugar in the Raw. Find a pretty tea cup or mug at any dollar or discount store.

Use cellophane to wrap the basket and tie a bow at the top. Your yoga teacher will enjoy many relaxing and warming cups of tea with a basket of wellness teas. This top gift for the yoga instructor also has a nice personal touch, as it takes time and effort to make the tea selections and arrange the basket.

2. Book About Movement

Yoga instructors teach seamless flow from one movement into another. The yoga instructor can benefit from the book Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain and published by Eastland Press. This top gift for the yoga instructor covers the musculoskeletal system and how the human body moves. There are more than 1,000 illustrations to accompany the text.

3. Yoga Deck

Another useful learning tool for the yoga instructor, and a top gift is the Yoga: The Poetry of the Body: A 50-Card Practice Deck by Rodney Yee. Rodney Yee is himself one of the top yoga instructors, and describes even the simplest movements with visual imagery. His yoga deck instructors can practicedifferent combinations of yoga poses to create unique yoga classes.

4. Toe Sox or Nonslip Hand Mits

This specialty clothing item is a top gift for yoga instructors who spend so much time practicing and teaching different yoga poses. On the occasions when the yoga instructor gives up their yoga mat for mat-less student, the toe socks and nonslip hand mits are ideal for working on any surface.

5. Eye Pillow or Eye Bag

An eye pillow or silk eye bag is a top gift for yoga instructors because even they need some relaxation time. For the busy yoga teacher, it may be difficult to find time to actually enjoy their own practice, and find time to relax and meditate, because they are so focused on helping others with their yoga practice. A scented eye pillow is a welcome gift for a yoga instructor, who can use it at the end of a long day, or for meditation.

The eye bag or silk eye bag may be filled with dried lavender. Or this top gift for yoga instructors could be filled with seed beads or flax seeds, which keep the eye area cool during pillow use.

Try to find an eye pillow or silk eye bag that comes with a washable covering and its own material carrying sack for easy storing and portability for the yoga instructor.

6. Bath Basket

A top gift for the yoga instructor is a gift basket which you have assembled yourself, and includes natural heath and beauty items, earth-friendly items or cruelty-free products. Try products by Burt's Bees or Healing Garden, or Kiss My Face.

7. Chanting CD

Another top gift for yoga instructors is a CD of yoga chanting, including Yoga Chant: Opening the Heart Center Through Chanting & Flow Yoga by Shiva Rea, Jai Uttal and published by Sounds True.

8. CD of Mediation

Even the yoga instructor needs some new yoga music or some fresh mediation ideas, for themselves and for class. One interesting meditation CD is the
Yoga Nidra Meditation CD: Extreme Relaxation of Conscious Deep Sleep CD by Swamin Jnaseshvara Bharati and published by Tranquility Productions. Another meditation CD is Guided Meditations for Stress Reduction CD by Bodhipaksa and published by Wildmind Meditation Services.

9. Mediation Candle Basket

Another top gift for the yoga instructor is to assemble a gift basket or gift bag of candles which may be used for meditation. For relaxing aromas stick with the following candle selections for your mediation candle basket for a yoga teacher, including lavender, patchouli, sage, cedarwood and sandalwood. Or else choose some scented candles which will energize the yoga instructor, including citrus, bergamot, cucumber or melon.

10. A New Yoga Mat, Mat Strap or Mat Bag

Another top gift for yoga instructors is a new yoga mat. Yes, the yoga instructor already has one or more mats, but for the yoga instructor who travels from gym to gym and may need an extra mat for students, another yoga mat is a great gift. Also consider buying a simple mat strap, or a decorative and handled mat bag.

The yoga instructor has given you so much throughout the year, and the holidays are an ideal time to give a little something back.