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Longmont Yoga in Nature

Go to Rough and Ready Park or Loomiller Park at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning and you will see people practicing yoga.
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Yoga at Rough & Ready park (Christi Yoder/Longmont Observer)

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Go to Rough and Ready Park or Loomiller Park at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning and you will see people practicing yoga. What’s going on you ask? George Zarnowski of the Elevated Yoga Studio in Longmont is providing free yoga classes to the community. George started doing the free yoga classes in the summer of 2015 as a way to bring communities together to do something healthy and to meet new people. He is also trying to bring back a more traditional style of yoga that doesn’t only focus on exercise. The concept is to change the body and the mind will follow. George believes that by removing the influence of the body, people can experience a deeper spirituality. He includes meditation in his practice.

Yoga means “union,” and having yoga in the parks can create a union with nature. George told the Longmont Observer that he believes that it can be helpful to practice yoga in nature, and may lead to greater flexibility. Practicing in this way allows you to be in the moment and free yourself from all the worries of your mind.

George’s studio is located at 324 Main Street which he describes it as a yoga sanctuary. Classes include meditation, fusions of various types of yoga, yoga with massage, acupuncture, and qigong. The studio believes in making yoga accessible to all people, and therefore, some of their programs are donation based. They accept people of all abilities. Their website states that “…yoga is what the practitioner experiences, and not what the observer sees.”

Currently, there are 97 people that attend one of the free weekly classes in the area parks. If you want to join, the classes meet at Rough and Ready Park and Collyer Park at 8 a.m. on Saturdays, Kanemoto and Loomiller Parks at 8 a.m. on Sundays, Thompson Park at 8 a.m. on Tuesdays, and Loomiller Park at 7 p.m. on Thursdays. The studio is also offering a community appreciation special on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. which is half price. Even if you can’t afford it, you are still welcome to attend. For more information, you can check out Elevated Studio’s website.