Jo’s Journal - September

September was another exciting month at Mantra, with our appearance at Wanderlust 108 in Battersea Park. A beautiful sunny day, with over 3000 participants taking part in a 5k run, yoga, and meditation, in the park.

It was a heart-warming experience, looking out across the hundreds of yoga mats spread out across the grass, and feeling the sense of community and shared experience. The meditation session, run by Michael James Wong, was magical, with eyes closed in the sunshine, as we sat in shared silence, or listened to the enchanting music.

I listened to Jasmine Hemsley give a great overview of Ayurvedic eating; and watched our Mantra collaborator, Julie Montagu, up on stage hosting an energetic yoga session, with Goldie on the decks. The vibe was a mixture of high energy and chilled out bliss.

We met thousands of lovely people, as we launched our ‘Find your True North’ Wanderlust x Mantra collaborative necklace, and gave out uplifting mantras all day long.

September also saw us launch several new pieces of Mantra, with the ‘Evil Eye’ and ‘Moon and Sun’ quickly establishing themselves as favourites amongst our customers. ‘May I always feel safe and strong’ and ‘May I always find light in the darkness and sunshine in the shadows’ are both great mantras for life.

We held some Focus Groups in the middle of the month, to gain feedback about gaps in our range in terms of topics they would like to see mantras for; or feelings they would like us to address. It was really valuable and insightful, in terms of the learnings.

Anxiety amongst young people came up a lot as a theme that mantras can really help to address; and loneliness amongst older people, as a challenge to overcome. Our ‘Strength’necklace for MIND is already one of our bestselling pieces – often as a gift for a teenage daughter – and it seems like we need to create more mantras around this theme.

One young participant also flagged up the need for she and her friends to be able to say, ‘enough!’ – that they are happy as they are, without feeling the need to do more, be more, achieve more, share more. We hope our new ‘I am enough’ necklace will act as a reassurance to everyone that we have all that we need inside ourselves.

I finished the month with a few days away for my 50th birthday. My lovely husband took me to France, for a few days in Reims and Paris. We had a glorious sunny day for a visit to Monet’s garden and studio at Giverny, where his beautiful waterlily ponds inspired some of his greatest works.

I can see why Monet spent so much time outside in his later years, amongst the flowers, trees and water, as it brings a sense of peacefulness and calm that can often be missing in our lives. ‘Seek the sweet moments in every day’ seems like the perfect mantra for what he created at Giverny. 

I look forward to catching up in October.

Jo xx