YOGA: Locals bend with this trend

Once a fringe activity popular with hippies and low-impact-sports nuts, yoga has gone mainstream in the Pikes Peak region. And adherents say it’s creating a sense of community in an area known for its transient population.

We have, it seems, collectively embraced yoga. We practice poses under the stars, in our parks and on our peaks. We’re mindful of our breathing in senior centers, on military bases, at community concerts and festivals, and in school gyms.

Sure, yoga has increased in popularity across the country, but there’s something different about this place, yogis say.

Qat Carter has practiced yoga from New York to California, but in Colorado Springs has found a yoga community like nowhere else. “It’s got its own personality out here,” Carter said. “The whole Colorado Springs area is high on yoga.”

It hasn’t always been this way. Kat Tudor, a local yoga instructor, remembers that people would roll their eyes when she mentioned she was a yogi. Amber Richman, a co-founder of Cambio Yoga studio, said that only a few years ago many people considered yoga as something “weird and out there.” But acceptance has snowballed.

“Once people have started to see their neighbors and friends benefit, they’ve gotten curious,” Richman said.

That curiosity has led to an increasing number of classes, and to studios expanding their size and services. CorePower Yoga’s Nevada Avenue studio was remodeled this summer to offer more class space, and all 25 members of a recent yoga-instructor-training class found jobs soon after becoming certified. Cambio Yoga is opening another studio to accommodate its new students. Manitou Yoga is holding six classes a week instead of two. Marmalade at Smokebrush has gone from offering one yoga class per week to one class per day.

“People are beginning to recognize that it’s not this extreme form of exercise,” said Stacie Wyatt, a local yoga instructor. “We need to include balance in our lives, and yoga is a good form of finding balance.”

Steve Myers, an orthopedic surgeon with the Colorado Springs Orthopedic Group, began recommending yoga to his patients after he found that the practice helped relieve back pain. He also touts the lifestyle that yoga promotes: slowing down, focusing the mind and de-stressing. “Part of the whole philosophy of yoga is the focus and being aware of your body position and proper body mechanics,” Myers said.

Athletes turn to yoga for the workout and to gain focus. Brenna Robb played multiple sports in high school and frequented the gym. She says her father was surprised she took up yoga. “He said, ‘Isn’t that easy?’” Robb recalled. “I said, ‘No, It’s one of the most intense workouts I’ve ever had!’”

Robb, a mother with a full-time job, started to integrate yoga into her busy schedule after noticing changes in herself. Yoga clears her mind, Robb said, which has helped her become more mindful of others and less self-centered.

“It’s different than anything I’ve ever done,” she said. “It’s really pushed me to my limits.”

Ellis Conoley, an Air Force veteran who served for 28 years, used to think yoga was for hippies. Then his wife “tricked” him into attending a class. On a recent night, for a group of about 75 people, Conoley demonstrated downward-facing dog, aka Adho Mukha Svanasana, leading students though a plank to upward-facing dog, or Urdhva Mukha Svanasana.

“I was hooked the first time,” Conoley said. “It made me feel good.”

In Colorado Springs, yoga appears to be making lots of people feel good — through classes in schools, on military bases, at the Olympic Training Center, in hospitals. Caregivers say their clients who have suffered brain injuries or stroke report feeling better and sleeping better after they begin practicing yoga. They even sit up straighter in the wheelchairs.

Wyatt began teaching yoga to people with mental and physical disabilities after observing changes in her 17-year-old daughter. During a yoga class, Wyatt watched her daughter’s developmental disability vanish as the students moved together, led by the same voice, going through the same poses.

“I see a sense of belonging in her and a sense of inclusion,” Wyatt said.

Yoga can be an individual practice, but it has fostered a sense of community in yoga studios and classes. Christine Malmborg, an instructor at CorePower, said some students show up to class 30 minutes early to hang out and chat.

“People get more than a workout here,” said Lora Lantz, a regional manager for CorePower. “The community here is really phenomenal.”

Joy Vernon estimates that only about 10 percent of local residents have attended a class at Manitou Springs Yoga, yet more and more people show up to learn, and she’s stopped every few minutes by fellow yogis when she walks across town.

“We’ve created something even closer than community,” Vernon said of yoga practitioners in the Pikes Peak region. “We’ve created family.”