meet guayusa, the latest gift from the amazon
“It gives me that extra mile. As in, literally adds an extra mile to my runs, my rides or my hikes.”
Jasmine Pina Anderson, our ambassador and indoor-cycling coach extraordinaire, is talking about Runa, the ‘clean’ energy drink made from the Amazonian guayusa leaf (pronounced gwhy-you-sa) that’s becoming a go-to for many performance athletes.
Jasmine’s also a member of the Runa Tribe, a collective of athletes, artists and musicians who embody what it means to be “fully alive” (the translation of Runa from the native Kichwa, the language spoken by the Ecuadorian tribes who produce the guayusa leaf). She’s in good company—Hollywood actor Channing Tatum is also part of the Tribe.
“He’s a health nut and used to drink mate,” explains Runa founder Tyler Gage. “But after he and his business partner discovered Runa they were able to write Magic Mike in a couple weeks, working night and day.” And Channing felt so passionately about his new discovery that “he even came down to the Amazon with us to connect to the source and see how we’re supporting farmers kind down there.”
Hollywood heavyweight Channing Tatum, fan of guayusa and investor in Runa, in the Ecuadorian Amazon earlier this year
Tyler’s Runa journey began at Brown University. Having been accepted on a soccer scholarship, “I wandered into a course in my freshman year called Religion Gone Wild: Spirituality and the Environment,” he says. Soon he was taking some time out from school to study the languages of the Amazon. It was there he discovered guayusa, “which has great health benefits, is very energizing and plays an incredibly important in the native communities.”
An Amazonian ‘super-leaf,’ guayusa gets its kick from naturally-occurring caffeine and polyphenol antioxidants—twice the amount found in green tea. Grown on trees, indigenous hunters even call it the ‘Night Watchman’, as it helps them stay focused and alert from sundown to sunrise.
The idea to market it in the West, says Tyler, came from a place of pure compassion. “Every morning I would wake up and hear chainsaws cutting the down trees, because for these families the only way to get money was through logging and deforestation. That really hit me hard and made me think about ways to find sustainable income sources for these communities.”
On his return to Brown, Tyler and his business partner Dan MacCombie wrote the plan for Runa, and the rest is conscious entrepreneurship history.
“Screw wings, Runa has balls,” our ambassador Jasmine Pina Anderson says with a sly smile
Today, Tyler likens the clear focus he gets from Runa to the high he gets from his yoga practice—and it’s no wonder the drink has also been embraced by the yoga community at large. A resident of Cobble Hill in Brooklyn (also home to lululemon’s first Brooklyn outpost), he discovered his practice as a way to balance the competitive sports he grew up playing. These days, he says, “I work anywhere from 12-18 hours a day, and yoga is a way for me to anchor my mind, anchor my focus and anchor my spirit.”
How fitting that back in Ecuador, guayusa is grown in biodiverse agroforestry plots known as chakras—providing pure energy from the root up.
Whether it’s interviewing Lady Gaga, unveiling the latest trends in fashion, or getting under the skin of our most neurotic social trends, Ruby Warrington is at the forefront of it all. She’s a British lifestyle writer, the celebrated creator of the blog The Numinous, and a regular contributor to the lululemon blog.
