In August of 2000, I moved to Denver.  I did not know anybody and nobody knew me. It was a fresh start and I began to create my new identity. I joined an improv troupe, taught at a charter school and researched the best yoga teacher training in Denver. The search for the perfect YTT adapted into a couple of weekly classes with teachers I felt resonate with.

Within a few months my Denver life was in full swing, the improv troupe gelled, I found my would be life partner. And experienced a proper snowy-white-winter for the first time in my life. Still, I had yet to find my coveted teacher training.  

In the spring of 2001 I resumed the search for the best yoga teacher training in Denver in earnest. No such training existed.  The city’s yoga scene was still quite young. Creative varieties of vinyasa had yet to be born, incense still burned in classes. And everyone still said “www.” as part of the prelude to the name of a website.

Empty handed, I returned to my naitive California for the summer.

Empty handed, I returned to my naitive California for the summer to take my fist ever formal yoga teacher training at the Mount Madonna Center. Like a deprived sapling that receives its first proper rays of sunlight and a healthy dose of water to drink, my soul blossomed.  I met people from all over the country, took yoga classes for 12 hours a day and slept in the redwoods.  The experience initiated me to become a full time yoga instructor.

That fall, I returned to Denver with new found enthusiasm, intent to share the practice that so enriched my own life.  Meanwhile, the tide of yoga began to swell in the city, Core Power Yoga® was about to open its flagship studio of Grant and 13th. The Estes Park Yoga Journal Conference was in its prime. I found many opportunities to teach in newly opening studios, gyms and corporate environments.

I reflected on my own search to find the best yoga teacher training in Denver, and the seeming void of YTT in the city. In 2003, I gathered a few of Denver’s hardest hitting teachers and pieced together a delightful Frankenstein of a program.  This landmark offering signaled the very beginning of Denver Yoga Underground.

Pieced together a delightful Frankenstein of a program.

Gradually, the training became more refined.  Within a year or two, other studios began to offer their own version of yoga teacher training. This marked the beginning of a golden-age of asana in Denver, a trend that continued to grow over the next two decades.