Attune
Natalie Schmidt
ECU Health Design Award for Innovation — Honourable Mention
A collection for enhancement of yoga practices
Attune is a collection of handmade yoga props designed to support and enhance the everyday ritual of yoga. Crafted from ceramic with copper accents, each piece invites care, intention, and groundedness – bringing depth and presence to every movement.
Intentions and Introduction
Movement and breath offer me a sense of calm; a way to return to myself. My love for this practice shapes how I design, guiding me to create with presence and intention. Through each stage, designing, making, and simply being, I aimed to deepen that connection and embody the grounded awareness that yoga offers.
Yoga props are tools designed to support the body in safely exploring asanas and accessing the full benefits of the practice. While many current props are functional, they often feel impersonal, creating a sense of disconnection between the user and the object. My research revealed a desire for props that offer more: comfort, beauty, and a deeper sense of connection. This insight shaped my design direction, with a focus on yoga blocks and wheels, foundational tools that bridge the body to the earth. I explored how form, through curves, surfaces, and flow, can invite presence, support, and a sense of belonging.
My ceramic vessels are designed as ritual objects, functional art pieces that invite movement, reflection, and connection within the home.
The meditation stool invites stillness and presence, offering a grounded place to begin the practice with mindfulness. A gently curved base creates a subtle rocking motion, inviting movement and balance. When placed into the copper stand, the form is grounded in stability, anchored by the chime, which secures the connection point and completes the ritual.
In Movement
The wheel forms encourage interaction, inviting the body to roll, bridge, drape, and balance. They can support active movement, like in Pilates, building strength, warmth, and trust.
The wheel forms also invite stillness, guiding the body into softness, slowness, and sensory awareness.
Each form offers a choice:
To move, to rest, to reconnect.
In the home
Attune centers on care and aesthetic harmony, for the body, the space, and the objects we choose to invite into our lives. Each piece is crafted slowly and with intention, holding beauty in both motion and stillness.
With softened forms, an organic connection to nature, and a focus on presence, Attune becomes more than a tool, it is a quiet companion and an artful presence in the room.
It holds purpose in its existence, supporting the body in practice, and existing beautifully beyond it, as a vessel for books, flowers, or simply as an object of contemplation.
As I moved into the second semester, I refined the forms with thicker slab walls, enhanced usability, and thoughtful material additions. Inspired by the strength and protection of shells, these vessels embody a sense of home. The wheel forms echo the curves of the spine, designed to move with the body and offer support, best experienced on the yoga mat.
A Reflection on Semester 1
Beginning with form and material exploration, I grounded my process in user research and feedback. Working in ceramics, I developed a theme of trust and empathy, exploring how the relationship between prop and user can shape one’s yoga practice.
I was drawn to clay for its natural grounding qualities, for both maker and user. Though fragile, it is flexible in the hands and strong once fired, reflecting the balance of softness and strength in the body.
In parallel, my foam explorations focused on creating props that offer comfort, cushion, and ergonomic curves, addressing the discomfort often felt with traditional blocks that lack body-conscious shaping. By carving recycled foam, I designed forms that support proper hand alignment and even weight distribution.
Final Materiality
Attune awakens the senses. The cool touch of ceramic against the skin, the grounding weight in the hand, the textured layers of glaze beneath the fingers. The gentle ring of a copper chime signals the beginning of practice.
Ceramic is a material of quiet strength and transformation. It begins soft and malleable, responsive to the touch, shaped by hand and purpose. Through fire, it becomes durable, grounded, and permanent.
This journey mirrors the process of inner work and embodiment: from fluidity and vulnerability to structure and resilience.
Attune is crafted from slab-rolled clay, a slow, intentional method that centers patience and presence. Each piece is built by hand, with 8mm-thick walls sculpted and smoothed along pipe forms to hold their shape. This process demanded care and trust: in the material, in timing, and in the hands doing the work. The nature of clay called for stillness and attention, where rushing was never an option.
The ceramic props offer a tangible sense of presence and weight.
Its natural grounding qualities encourage slowness and awareness, anchoring the user in the moment. The cool, smooth surface invites touch, while its earth-based origin creates a subtle but powerful connection to the elements
Clay asks for care, mindfulness, and trust. It holds memory: of the maker’s hands, of transformation, and of the space it inhabits.
Copper is a metal found in plenty in the lands of British Columbia.
A material of energy and warmth, copper is historically valued for its healing properties. It is naturally antimicrobial and self-sanitizing, making it ideal for objects that touch the body or are used in shared, sacred spaces.
The warm tone of copper evokes vitality and contrasts beautifully with the grounded clay, adding a subtle sense of movement and transformation. When paired with ceramic, it brings a dynamic balance; earth and fire, stillness and flow.
Copper also holds memory. Over time, it develops a patina, marking touch and presence, reminding us that objects are not static, they evolve with us. In both design and practice, copper offers more than function; it carries symbolism, supports well being, and invites this shared connection.
Working with copper introduced a new set of challenges and discoveries. Sheets and tubes were cut, hammered, bent, and shaped, each one tested for tone, resonance, and harmony. Exploring metal forming techniques became a process of trial, error, and listening, tuning not only the chimes, but also my own pace and rhythm as a maker.
Together, these materials asked for slowness, sensitivity, and respect, shaping not only the final forms, but the way I moved through making processes.
Closing
Attune is more than a series of yoga props, it’s a reflection of how we relate to our bodies, our spaces, and the objects we invite into our daily rituals. Through intentional materials, slow making, and sensory awareness, this work seeks to cultivate presence, care, and connection.
The process challenged me to move at the pace of the material, to listen, to adapt, and to trust. It reminded me that design can be a form of mindfulness, and that beauty and function are not separate, but deeply intertwined.
Attune has become a meditation in itself, a practice in the quiet beauty of making.
This project has been an invitation to slow down and to design from a place rooted in presence, guided by patience, and sustained by care.
