Downward Dog Style: Over the Bar Scene?

Picture this: it’s Friday night. You’re headed out. Could be to Don’s Mixed Drinks, could be Beta. Maybe Beauty Bar or Euclid Hall or Four Seasons or Linger or The Irish Rover or Green Russell or City Hall. Whatever your flavor, the night is young, the potential is there…but…what do you do when you’re bored with the bar scene?

What DO you do when you’re over the crap? Plain and simple over it. When the conversations you have with strangers in a bar are not holding your attention one bit. When the conversations are not interesting in the way that you’re used to, not at your particular brand of normal daily-life level of interesting.

There’s a bunch of options, both active and passive. Joining some sort of group is a great way to meet people. Taking up some new hobby. Joining a running club. Constantly being on the lookout for the Hollywood-like grocery store encounter. Or you can go the direct route. Get straight to the point. Go to a place where people want what you want…a “place” like YogaDates, where people connect through yoga.

YogaDates offers Denver yogis the opportunity to meet other yogis. In a safe environment. In a familiar environment. In a comfortable environment. Yogis, you spend an awful lot of time in a yoga studio, often thinking to yourself, it’d be real cool to meet someone here in this space that I love, that I learn so much about myself in, that I respect and deepen my commitment to being the best me in…it’d be real cool to date someone who cares about yoga as much as I do. Even if you’re a weekend warrior yogi, so to speak, YogaDates offers an event that fits your needs. You don’t have to practice every day or study every branch of yoga to try YogaDates. You don’t have to know which of your charkras is blocked, or even what that mumbo jumbo means to enjoy a YogaDates event.

It can be hard to decide to use a dating “service.” There are tons of options, some free, some not so free. At least one offers to match you with your Christian soul mate—BOOM, that’s powerful. And there’re tons of feelings you can have about pursuing this course. You can feel some sort of social stigma, though I’d argue that’s just in your head. I mean, since the grocery store encounter daydream or the bumping-into-your-knight-in-shining-armor-while-shakin’-yo-ass-to-Mos-Def-at-Cervantes’ vision is just not kicking out the desired results, where’s the harm in going the unconventional totally-conventional dating service method?

Deciding to do this sort of thing, this I’ve-just-made-myself-pretty-vulnerable-to-a-bunch-of-strangers-because-each-and-every-one-of-them-knows-my-ultimate-goal-for-the-evening type of openness can be fairly nerve wracking, or exhilarating, depending on your personality. Though, two things strike me about this openness:

1. Everyone else in the room is after the same thing. Everyone else who attends a YogaDates event has a similar goal, or else they wouldn’t have signed up.

2. Isn’t that what the bar scene is all about??? Maybe the like-minded part isn’t the leading factor in a bar hookup, but everybody is out to meet someone, aren’t they (well, once they’ve built up the Cojones)?

Surely you can feel excited and nervous about the whole idea; you may even feel uncomfortable and nervous about the prospect of putting yourself out there in this way. But the thing that’s so great about YogaDates is that it is natural. You’re in a space that you know and understand—a yoga studio—though, not all YogaDates events take place in a yoga studio. There are hiking events and the Couples Urban Escape event coming up on Friday, October 19 is scheduled at the Denver Integrative Massage School, where participants will learn basic Thai massage techniques after practicing partner yoga.

Wherever the event is held, you do something that you know and understand—yoga. Whether it’s a sort of speed dating event or a yoga for athletes event, these classes are not contrived. There’s only good to be gained in this situation. Especially if you want to meet a person, romantically speaking, who is just as interested in meeting their partner as you are. Shoot, maybe that potential partner is a massage therapist and body healer. With demographics like that, what’ve you got to lose?

At YogaDates, you have the potential to meet these types of people:
• Someone who is really into yoga and is an artist
• Someone who is really into yoga and is a fourth grade teacher
• Someone who is a physical therapist and who is ready for something serious
• Someone who does yoga every day and who has traveled to Thailand and India once a year for the last ten
• Someone who is really into yoga and on a quest for spirituality…in a normal way, that is
• Someone who is a yoga instructor and teaches BUTI yoga a couple times a week—egh hem, BUTI=booty
• A yogi who manages a yoga clothing store—gifts of Lulu Lemon to add to the yog-yog wardrobe???
• A yogi who is a city planner and rides their bike to work to avoid city parking and downtown traffic
• A yogi who owns two yoga studios who used to be a tv producer
• A yogi who is a Reiki practitioner after having left the financial world after years of success (and a general sense of unfulfillment)
• A yogi who is a cyclist, a snowboarder, a writer, a wine connoisseur, a foodie, a musician, a music fiend, a person who makes jokes about whips and chains and BDSM but who has never actually used them

What are you looking for is the question you should ask yourself: what do you want in your relationship? Compatibility and sharing interests is likely in the top five “requirements” right alongside a deep commitment to one another. A deep commitment to the present, to the future, to helping and supporting each other in being the best person/people/partnership possible. We all know that what you’re doing with your partner is not the most important thing; it is who you’re doing whatever it is that you’re doing that is important. Yet, having similar interests and hobbies and pastimes can make the time you spend together all the more enjoyable for both of you. Someone who values things similar to you. Someone who is healthy, fit, strong. Not only physically, no, no, no. Strong emotionally, mentally, spiritually. A person who is balanced. A person who lives with purpose. Who can be present in life and not worry about what’s to come. Someone who is eager about future opportunity, yet who can revel in what’s immediately in front of them. These qualities are many of those that yoga brings to daily living.

Check out http://yoga-dates.com to see if your match likes to spend as much time in a yoga studio as you do.

And take your yogi hotness to the 303 Magazine Sixth Annual Hair Show, Saturday, October 13, starting at 8 p.m.—where you’ll surely meet fabulously dressed people with similar artistically focused interests.

Aubrey Brobst is a writer and editor who is mildly obsessed with yoga. When she’s not practicing it, she’s thinking about the next time she will. And whether or not she has enough time before the start of class to ride her Jaguar Shark cruiser to the studio.