Sunrise Asana with 2,000 other people at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO was an illuminating experience in every sense of the word. As the sun rose over the acoustically perfect umber monoliths on a 92 degree July morning, bodies moved in unison as we Ujjayi breathed in the thin, dry desert air. It was, in multiple ways, breathtaking.
To enter the amphitheatre one must climb 196 steps to the bleacher area. Huffing in low oxygen and with no sleep, I would have guessed closer to 5,000, but at the top (and lightheaded), the entrance to the venue rewards with an enchanting vision as the sun breaches the horizon.
We placed our mats and took a seat, with plenty of time to soak in the view as more yogis shuffled in against the now glowing red formations. An instructor from Buffalo + Sparrow commanded the class of thousands with physical and verbal cues in Spanish and English (!), offering gratitude for the lessons of the land and native people of the southwest. During one Sun Salutation, facing a luminous sun and cerulean sky in Urdhva Hastasana, sparkly white blood cells floated past my retinas as my entire being felt the light and inspiration from the source of life itself. Perfectly at one and whole.
That moment was one where you use all of your senses to collect the information around you: the weightlessness of the dry air in your nostrils; the wavelengths of color softening your eyes; the smell of rubber mats and coconut sunblock. All subtle fragments of the memory souvenirs you reach for when at your desk back in the real world.
At the time of publication, Yoga on the Rocks is held at 7:00am on Saturdays during the months of June and August. A drop-in class costs $17 but due to popularity, tickets sell out quickly. As we are last minute planners, I purchased tickets through Stubhub and paid three times the price, but would have paid even more for that experience.
The Courtyard Marriott Denver/Golden is only a short drive from Red Rocks and with no traffic, we arrived at the parking lot shortly after 6:00 am with only a few early birds ahead of us. Red Rocks is a thirty minute drive from the outskirts of Golden, Colorado, and isn’t busy at this early part of the day. Parking is free and there is a steep (but worth it) incline to enter the awe-inspiring venue.
Hi, this is a comment.
To get started with moderating, editing, and deleting comments, please visit the Comments screen in the dashboard.
Commenter avatars come from Gravatar.
Everything is very open with a really clear description of the challenges. It was definitely informative. Your site is very helpful. Many thanks for sharing!
I was pretty pleased to find this great site. I want to to thank you for ones time just for this fantastic read!! I definitely really liked every little bit of it and I have you book-marked to see new stuff in your blog.
I learned about this site from the book “Let’s Eat Grandma’s Pills”. I thought he was making it up, but here it is. And I thought there were 386 steps at Red Rock, so clearly someone miscounted.
Holly is cuter than I imagined, though. I imagined a brunette with a permanent furrow in her brow, but Holly isn’t a brunette.
I’m waiting with great anticipation to read about yoga in West Virginia. Having been to West Virginia before, I can only imagine that when you ask them about yoga, they’ll think that you mean “yogurt” and won’t understand why you want to stand on one foot to eat it. This should be interesting.
I do yoga almost exclusively for my furrowed brow.
West VA is nearby so I’ll keep you posted on how it works out with the one-legged yogurt. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
Wait….does this website existing mean everything David writes in his books is true?!?!?
Ps come to the UK and do yoga and I’d even give it a go 👍
Everything David writes is 100% true
Cheers!
In fairness, grandma’s pills ARE delicious. Looking forward to David’s next book chronicling his descent into delirium as the yoga sessions in increasingly difficult to reach places blend together into one long sweaty, stretchy, planks nightmare.
Need. More. States.
More states added!
Unlike David, my experience with yoga thankfully began and ended with a single YouTube video and before I ever found out about the planks. After attempting to hold a pushup with one arm and wobbling for about a second half, I fell over, turned off the video and grabbed a bag of chips to comfort myself.
There’s a bit of the US where a bunch of states converge at a single point. If you go there, you could knock several off at once – your left arm doing yoga in Utah while your right arm does yoga in Colorado, your left arse does yoga in Arizona and your right arse does yoga in New Mexico.
I am a big fan of efficiency so having arms and arses in four states at once is perfect for the list. Thank you. 👏
Good luck.
When I initially left a comment I appear to have clicked on the -Notify me when new comments are
added- checkbox and from now on each time a comment is added I recieve
4 emails with the exact same comment. Perhaps there is a means you
can remove me from that service? Thanks a lot!