Crested Butte Yoga

Crested Butte Yoga in Colorado at Yoga For The Peaceful

If you’ve been following me since our last visit to Crested Butte, you know that I enjoy some mountain yoga.  I went to four different classes the last time I was here, and wrote about every single one of them. (See yoga archives.)

When we first arrived, I went to check the schedules at the studio I went to last time and sadly, it had been transformed into an art studio with a pottery painting venue underneath.  No more wheat grass juice bar.  No more bikram yoga.

So it took me a day or two to make it over to the new (to me) place in town.  Yoga for the Peaceful.

 

When I picked up a schedule, I recognized the main instructor, Monica Mesa, from my last visit.  She taught one of the classes I went to in 2007.  I remember it as being very challenging, so I opted for an “open levels” class to start.

I walked the trail into town with Simon, meeting Taido and the kids at the park after they had returned their bikes.  By the time I got to the studio I was a little late (and a little winded), but I tiptoed in and rolled my mat out on the dark wooden floor in the back and joined in.

Catching up, I was several poses in before I even began to take in my surroundings.  The studio has a beautiful organic feel, with Japanese silk screens separating the yoga space from the entrance and boutique on one side and windows that open to the street on the other.  The yoga props at the back of the space are all made of wood in deep colors, as are the lockers for your belongings.

Everything seems made to feel as nurturing and simple as the practice of yoga.  In other words, I could curl up in a little corner of the room and stay there forever.

The instructor, Tiffany, gracefully led us through a series of poses mostly based around lunges, which was heaven for my aching and unaccustomed-to-so-much-time-on-a-mountain-bike thighs.  We did poses that were very familiar and ones that I’d never seen before.  I love learning new ways to use a familiar yoga posture.  I later tried to draw/write them out so that I could remember them.  (I never remember them.)  There were lots of twists and an undulating version of  downward dog that I found to be absolutely poetic.

Right this minute I’m thinking I’m going to put all my living room furniture out on the street and turn the better part of my house into a yoga studio when I get home so I can teach all my friends this whole waving dog thing.  (You’ll love it, I promise!)

I felt so happy that I’d come and so refreshed that I decided to walk the trail back home instead of taking the shuttle.  I was sorry about halfway up the hill when my legs felt like they could not go any further and a storm was blowing in.  But the breeze before the rain was so lovely, and the sun over one mountain facing off the clouds on another just amazed me.  And already I felt like God was showing off his mighty power and beauty as I was walking the mountain path, but then behold.  A rainbow.  A huge arch of rainbow all the way over the mountain.  So big that I couldn’t even get it all in one picture.  Plus I was getting rained on and blown away so I could hardly see to take a picture.

Still, I took a couple that don’t even do it justice.  Such glorious, majestic beauty.  And it may sound crazy but practicing yoga (and all the praying and meditating and even sometimes, crying, that goes along with it) opens my heart up to see these kinds of miracles.  I experience God’s glory disproportionately often around the times I go to yoga.

And also around the times I am in the mountains.  That’s why I love them so.

I can’t wait to come back and enjoy more Crested Butte yoga!