Her company is called BuddhiWear. The name comes from the word buddhi, which means "she who is conscious, awake."

Neylan founded the company last year and, earlier this month, BuddhiWear was named the featured business on the GenGreen Network for "efforts in green business practice and for their promotion of sustainable living through their organic apparel line."

GenGreen was founded in 2006 in Colorado with the goal of bringing mainstream living and sustainable practices together by connecting consumers with resources or products locally. Neylan was also recently featured in a Los Angeles Times article on hip, new yoga wear.

'Powered by om'

A year ago, Neylan was laid-up with a broken leg. "I had a lot of time to think," she said. Looking at some yoga apparel catalogs, she noticed the organic clothing was expensive and the designs ho-hum. "Most yoga teachers I know don't have $60 for a yoga shirt," said Neylan, who has an MBA and is a registered certified Hatha yoga instructor.

"I thought, 'I have a lot of creative ideas. I like organic cotton.' I kept wondering would anybody stop me, and nobody did," said Neylan. She developed a business plan and BuddhiWear was born. The logo features a bird with the symbol for om in the center. "I wanted something that initiated flight and freeness," she said. "Om is translated as the universal sound of creation and as a mantra in yoga to bring the mind into a more meditative state."

She started with shirts for women and later in the year launched shirts for men and children, as well as onesies for infants. All the garments are made of soft organic cotton by non-sweatshop labor companies. The softness of the fabric is what most people comment on first, she said.

"Organic cotton has positive benefits," said Neylan. "Conventional cotton is extremely pesticided and fertilized. Only about 3 percent of the arable land is used to grow cotton, but 25 percent of the chemicals are used to grow it. It's the third highest pesticided product grown in the U.S.

"Not only are farmers exposed to (the chemicals) but they pollute water sources and are poisoning the ground," said Neylan. She cites figures from the USDA that says 55 million pounds of pesticides were sprayed on the 12.8 million acres of conventional cotton grown in the U.S. in 2003. "Until I started researching I didn't realize all this," she said, adding that most people are aware of the benefits of eating organic food but not of how what they wear can affect them or the environment.

A unique direct-to-garment printing process leaves the shirt feeling silky soft. The water-based inks soak into the fabric. "It's more expensive, but it's more environmentally sound," she said. A Columbia-based company does the printing. "I like to keep down my carbon stamp," she said.

"If everybody just bought one or two articles of organic clothing, it would help the environment," she said. T-shirts, tank tops and onesies cost $28; long-sleeve T-shirts and thermal shirts cost $34.

She donates 1 percent of sales to Global Releaf, a tree-planting project. BuddhiWear is available online and in yoga studios and eco-friendly boutiques around the country, said Neylan. There are 29 designs in the line, all her ideas but developed by a graphic artist.

"Take a Seat," the design Neylan was wearing this day, depicts a person sitting in the meditation pose and the words following the lines of the body. "Meditation Tree" illustrates a woman sitting under a leafy tree with the om symbol hanging from a few branches. Its design centers around the traditions of Buddha. The story says he sat under a boddhi tree to meditate and that's where he attained enlightenment, said Neylan. "(The design) is a reminder to take a moment and meditate."

"Be a Tease" is a tongue-in-cheek design showing a woman in the Pilates abdominal pose, the tease. Another Pilates-themed shirt features the word contrology -- it's what Joseph Pilates called his method of "complete coordination of body, mind and sprit."

Shirts and onesies for kids feature fun figures in children's yoga poses, such as the lion. "Spread Your Wings" illustrates the butterfly pose where kids put the soles of their feet together, raise their fingers to their head like antennae and flap their legs like wings. "Tree Hugger" shows two kids standing together in the tree pose.

Neylan started practicing yoga as a child. Now her two children, ages 2 and 5, do yoga, too. "They're my little Buddha babies. They're better at it than any of us because they've not been sitting for 20 years and developed tight hips," she said.

She's been teaching yoga for five years to adults, children, pregnant women, in offices and to seniors through Howard County. She's also a proponent of a movement to include yoga in the workplace and schools.

"Between nutrition and behavioral issues, children don't know how to calm themselves down from overstimulation," she said. "With yoga and meditation, you can teach them to calm themselves. No pills. Once they're trained, there's no added cost, no detriment.

"Then there's the flexibility issue. I've seen people at a young age who are so inflexible," she said. "I have some teens who can't touch their toes" or have developed back and hip problems from too much sitting.

"Anything we can do to help head off these neck and back problems and teach them proper body movement" would be an investment in their health. "Stiff and immobile. It's not a pretty picture."

She said people mistakenly think they have to be flexible to do yoga. "No, you do yoga and then you become flexible," said Neylan.

She suggests starting with a basic yoga, like Hatha. "Start with a general mat-based yoga. Learn to do the poses stable, calmly and standing," said Neylan, who is also a reiki master, a healing energy technique.

"I send some out to each shirt before it goes," she said. "It's not 'magic.' It's a good positive practice I try to incorporate in a variety of ways. I feel what I give out comes back."

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Hannah put pen to paper and came up with the slogan: "I'm Just Here For Savasana" - Savasana being the relaxation part at the end of a yoga session.

The LA Times has now run a feature on the T-shirt, calling it "the hottest new trend of work-out gear" in 2008.

Hannah, 34, said: "It was quite funny because I was wearing the T-shirt for months before it was big in LA. It is my friend's number one selling design and I am really chuffed."

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Norma: Why is organic fabric important?

Kelly: Organic fabric is important for several reasons. Organically farmed cotton is beneficial to everyone. It helps the farm workers, the water supply, the land, the air, the food chain and our food supply. A crop the uses 3% of the land uses 25% of the chemicals to produce it using conventional growing methods. What many people do not understand is that the rest of the cotton plant from conventionally chemically sprayed cotton plants are not discarded parts of them are ground up and put in our foods (primarily baked goods and crackers) or feed to live stock (part of our food chain). So every organic garment purchased helps to reduce to amount of chemicals polluting our earth and our food.

Norma: What are your best sellers?

Kelly: Our most popular design is I'm Just Here For Savasana" it refers to the rest and relaxation posture performed at the end of yoga classes. This design is available in both a women's and men's style. Our other popular yoga designs include "Take A Seat" which refers to meditation and shows a woman in sukasana (cross legged) posture meditating. Coordinating family outfits are very hot right now as well. Our Yoga Mom's Rock and Yoga Kids Rock do well for the family crowd. The Tree Hugger shirt is also a very popular shirt for the family; it shows two yogis hugging each other around the waist while performing Vrksasana (Tree Pose) and is popular for it's double meaning.

Norma: Tell me about yourself and how you started your company.

Kelly: I am a mother of two small children, a registered yoga instructor and a Reiki Master. I started this company because I was dissatisfied with the ho hum $60.00 organic yoga garments that I saw on the market for myself and my children. I knew that there had to be a way to bring stylish, hip, and green garments to market to I decided to use my MBA and prior business experience to create BuddhiWear. Buddhi in Sanskrit means she who is conscious, awake.

Norma: What products do you sell?

Kelly: The BuddhiWear garment line includes:

• T-shirts
• Thermal Long Sleeve shirts
• Long Sleeve T-Shirts
• Tank tops
• Bibs
• Hats
• Onesies

Don't you want something pure next to your skin?

• Super soft organic cotton, soft as silk graphics
• Fun and funky designs
• Each organic shirt saves 1/3lb of chemicals from being used
• Made in the U.S.A.
• Looks great on you and good for the planet!

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Kelly Neylan loved the idea of organic clothing, but soon realized the prices set by most manufacturers prevented a lot of families from purchasing it.

"Cotton farming makes up less than 3 percent of the farmland, but it accounts for 25 percent of the insecticide and pesticide use," she said. "The cotton my clothes are made with is chemical free."

The benefits of using chemical free material are endless, she said, and organic clothing is safer for children and adults with skin sensitivities because it's hypoallergenic.

Neylan began designing a line of clothing with a yoga flair and chose the word "buddhi," which means conscious or awake, to create the company's name, Buddhiwear. She liked the idea of working out of her home because it made it easier to adapt her work schedule to her children's school and activity schedules.

Today, Buddhiwear only deals with sweatshop-free manufacturers that use environmentally friendly dyes. In her first year Neylan sold hundreds of items, most priced between $28 and $34, that range from T-shirts and tank tops to bibs, hats and onesies. Her products are available at www.buddhiwear.com as well as in retail stores in 20 states.

"Organic clothing is a growing business," she said. "People have started to make the link to food but not clothing. Movie stars are coming out and talking about organic clothing and companies like Levi Strauss have added lines that are partially organic."

Still working on growing her business, Neylan said she's looking forward to the day when organic clothing is the norm, not the exception.

"I want to see more people wearing organic clothing," she said.

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With fun sayings like, "Yoga Divas do it on the mat", "Little Bodies Big Souls" and "Let me hear your ROAR", BuddhiWear creates organic apparel for the whole family, with a flare for yoga, meditation, pilates, reiki, the environment and all things positive. With 29 designs to choose from, you can get matching mother/child or sibling sets, all silk screen printed on a variety of fashionable shirt style and size options.

You know that you are helping the environment when you buy BuddhiWear because all items are manufactured sweatshop-free in the United States, and are printed with environmentally friendly dyes. BuddhiWear also contributes a portion of its annual profits to environmental organizations and other worthy worldwide causes.

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What makes this line of clothing different are the fresh new designs. All the garments are made from 100 percent organic cotton under sweatshop-free conditions. They are locally created and printed in an eco-friendly manner. The garments use a unique direct printing technology application which makes the garments so soft that you can not tell where the design begins or ends when touching it. It also feels wonderful next to your skin and the design does not hold in moisture. The ink instantly absorbs into the garment rather than lying on top of it like in screen-printing. It will not easily crack and fade like other processes making BuddhiWear garments extremely long lasting as well as environmental and soft.

BuddhiWear's founder Kelly Neylan is a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher (R.Y.T.) who teaches adult, child, pre-natal, office, and senior/gentle yoga throughout Howard County Maryland. She is a Usui & Karuna Ki Reiki Master healing and teaching energy healing techniques. She is the proud mother to two little yogis in training. She wanted to create an affordable line of yoga inspired apparel. The founder says, "As a yoga instructor I was tired of seeing $60.00 yoga shirts that I could not afford and I thought to myself I could do better than that." Kelly Neylan is quoted as saying "I intend my garments to spread positive light energy to all who encounter them". BuddhiWear Organics now includes something for everyone to help that energy spread.

BuddhiWear has partnered with American Forests to plant trees for shirts. One percent of BuddhiWear profits will be donated to American Forests and other important global charities.

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Make a statement

Cast off your "I'm with Stupid" T-shirt and try this one on for size: Buddhiwear's hypoallergenic T=shirt, made from organically grown cotton, is free of chemical bleaches, dioxins and formaldehyde. Available in men's and women's sizes for $28 at selected stores and at www.BuddhiWear.com.

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"Green" wear for baby — as well as the rest of the family — from BuddhiWear

This Columbia, Md.-based line of "hip organic wear with a yoga flair" features garments made from organic cotton and printed with nontoxic, water-based inks. The line offers bibs, hats, onesies, tank tops, thermal tops, and T-shirts for babies, and T-shirts, thermal shirts, and tank tops for women (as well as children and men). The garments come with images and phrases including "Yoga Baby", "Powered By OM", "Let Them Hear You Roar", "Spread Your Wings", "Yoga Moms Rock" and "Tree Hugger", just to name a few. Fifteen designs are available. Items range from $12 to $34. One percent of BuddhiWear profits go toward conserving American forests and to global charities. Go to BuddhiWear.com.

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So she did. During the next few months Neylan scoured the Internet for designers and manufacturers for her idea, a clothing line for yoga enthusiasts that was both affordable and environmentally friendly. The result was BuddhiWear, which offers garments for women, children and infants with products averaging around $20 each.

Since sewing her first tag on her T-shirts three months ago, word of mouth has yielded good sales. Her clothes are offered online at www.buddhiwear .com and at yoga centers like The Well in Ellicott City and Columbia Yoga. Other places have expressed interest. The name for her line uses the Sanskrit word "buddhi," meaning "she who is conscious, awake."

Some people questioned whether Neylan knew what she was getting into as a first-time online business operator.

"My response was, 'What makes you think I can't do it,'" she said.

With BuddhiWear, Neylan is tapping into two giant trends - yoga and organic clothing - and combining them into one promising venture

A Yoga Journal magazine study found Americans spend $2.95 billion annually on yoga classes and products and 25 million people say they intend to try yoga within the next year.

And there seems to be a movement toward "green" clothing. According to the Organic Trade Association, production of organic cotton, the material Neylan uses in BuddhiWear clothing, increased 76 percent between 2005 and 2006 as demand for the alternative fiber doubled. Sales are high, increasing about 35 percent annually worldwide and 55 percent a year in the United States, according to the nonprofit Organic Exchange.

The Oakland, Calif.-based organization found sales of organic cotton products in the United States rose from $86 million in 2001 to $275 million in 2005.

Neylan said that BuddhiWear is fulfilling a need for environmentally conscious consumers.

"I think that people would be horrified to know what they are wearing," said Neylan of traditional cotton garments. "And I think people are just becoming more aware of that."

Pesticides have for years been linked to conventional cotton production. The Organic Consumers Association found that one-third of a pound of agricultural chemicals are typically used in the production of a single cotton T-shirt. Cotton, the group said, is the most pesticide-intensive crop grown on the planet, with $2.6 billion worth of pesticides used on cotton worldwide each year. It is estimated that conventional cotton uses about 3 percent of the world's farmland, but consumes about 25 percent of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

Certified organic cotton is cotton grown in fields where the use of pesticides has been discontinued for at least three years. No synthetically produced pesticides or fertilizers are used in organic cotton farming.

"The biggest thing is also producing awareness," Neylan said. "It's hard changing people's mindset about the products they are used to buying."

By making clothing for both adults and children - her children, Julia, 5, and Ethan, 2, model her wares on the BuddhiWear Web site - Neylan is also tapping into the rise of family yoga classes. Neylan is a proponent of teaching yoga in grade-school classrooms, stressing that yoga helps physical development and calms students who have attention deficit disorder and other afflictions.

"Children naturally fall into yoga postures and it's just an easy way to feel good," she said. "It helps develop physical prowess without being competitive. Yoga is light meditation in an increasingly sedentary culture."

Neylan, now recovered from her ankle injury, splits her time between teaching yoga and her burgeoning business. She finds at least two hours in the morning at home in Columbia to devote to BuddhiWear and squeezes in another hour of work when her son is taking a nap.

Her advice to new business owners is to be positive and have a goal in mind. She suggests knowing a target market and always sticking to your guns.

"I've set a particular goal of selling 100,000 shirts this year," she said. "And with this movement to buy green, 1 million shirts next year."

And why not? No one is telling her she can't do it. And that's all Neylan needs to not hear.

Going Organic

Yoga instructor Kelly Neylan uses organic cotton in her clothing line. Here are some fun facts about organic cotton:

• Turkey and the United States are the leading producers of organic cotton, followed by India, Peru and Uganda. Texas leads the United States in organic cotton production.
• In 2005, American farmers planted 6,577 acres of organic cotton.
• As a result of consumer interest, organic cotton fiber is used in everything from personal care items (sanitary products, cotton puffs and ear swabs), to home furnishings (towels, bathrobes, sheets, blankets, bedding), children's products (toys, diapers) and even stationery and note cards.
• Approximately 25 percent of the world's insecticides and more than 10 percent of the pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides and defoliants) are used to grow conventional cotton.

Source: The Organic Trade Association

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The company has just launched its new line of yoga-inspired apparel that caters to women, children, and babies. Take your pick from T-shirts, thermal shirts and tank tops for women and kids, or check out the adorable infant line, which includes hats, bibs, T-shirts, tank tops, thermal tops and onesies. Everything is made from the softest organic cottons and emblazoned with fun graphics like "Yoga Moms Rock," "Tree Hugger," "Yoga Baby," and "Powered by OM." And that's just scratching the surface. There are at least fifteen designs available so far. And because of a unique printing application, every graphic is soft and silky, not scratchy and irritable, ensuring your complete comfort. And best of all, choosing BuddhiWear means that you will be doing your part to save our planet. Each American-made BuddhiWear shirt saves 1/3 lb. of chemicals normally used to produce a top. BuddhiWear uses only nontoxic, water-based inks in their clothes.
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What makes this line of clothing different is that they are for Yoginis (female version of yogi) by Yoginis - an exciting, hip new organic green clothing line. All the garments are made from 100 percent organic cotton in sweatshop-free conditions. They are locally created and printed with nontoxic, water-based inks. The garments use a unique direct printing technology application, which makes the garments so soft you can tell where the design begins or ends when touching it. It also feels wonderful next to your skin and the design does not hold in moisture. The ink instantly absorbs into the garment rather than lying on top of it. It will not easily crack and fade like other processes, making BuddhiWear garments extremely long-lasting as well as environmental and soft.

BuddhiWear aims to increase the awareness and need for yoga in a fun and playful manner, according to founder Kelly Neylan. "If everyone did yoga, the world would be a better place," she said in a prepared statement. Neylan is also a proponent of the movement to include yoga in schools and workplaces to enhance the mental and physical well being of all. She also says, "Yoga helps people focus and become calm; what teacher, parent, or employer doesn't want that?" Added Neylan: "I intend my garments to spread the energy and positive message of yoga throughout the world. Every garment is energized with Reiki energy before it is sent out, and I see that energy continuing to grow."

BuddhiWear founder Kelly Neylan is a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher (R.Y.T.) who teaches adult, child, pre-natal, office, and senior/gentle yoga throughout Howard County, Maryland. She is a Usui Reiki Master, healing and teaching Japanese energy healing techniques. She is also proud mother to two little yogis in training.

BuddhiWear has partnered with American Forests to plant trees for shirts. One percent of BuddhiWear profits will be donated to American Forests and other important global charities.
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I'm not a yoga expert by any means, but I do know that the Savasana is the best part of the yoga class. It comes at the end and is generally known as the "corpse pose." Basically you lie down and let your entire body sink in the ground. And you breathe and relax (and try not to fall asleep.)

So, it would be funny to walk into a class wearing this.

There are other cute slogans ("Powered by Om" and "Tree Hugger") and all the tees are made of soft organic cotton. (There's also a line of baby and toddler wear.) The company is commited to being entirely eco- and green-friendly.

-- K.V.W.
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