Michelle’s Favorite Things in Denver (and Beyond)
Finding joy in small ways can be a transformative practice, especially during challenging times.
A way that I’ve always found fun is to imagine that you are curating or directing your own life.
What would make it more cozy? And what would make it more supportive? What would make it more fun? What would make it more you?
I made this list for clients who tell me they’ve lost themselves — and honestly, for myself too, because I need reminders. These are the places and things I actually go back to. Not because they fix anything. Just because they help.
Movement & Mindfulness
The River Yoga weseektheriver.com
Yoga isn’t just exercise for me — it’s always been one of the places I go when words aren’t enough. When my nervous system needs something my mind can’t give it. The River Yoga has three locations across Denver (Golden Triangle, Sunnyside, Five Points), and all three carry the same feeling: this is a place to shed some of what you’re carrying and come home to yourself for a little while. They offer hot yoga, restorative flow, deep stretch, meditation, and children’s yoga.
As a Registered Yoga Teacher myself, I’m pretty particular about studios. The River gets it right. It’s community without any of the pretense. It holds space for people at every stage — including the stage where you just need 60 minutes of not being needed by anyone. That stage counts, too.
For postpartum moms especially, gentle movement can be one of the most powerful things for the nervous system. If you’ve been cleared by your provider and you’re wondering where to start, I’d send you here.
Joy & Community
Moms Feelin’ Themselves momsfeelinthemselves.com
This one I could talk about forever. Moms Feelin’ Themselves is a maternal mental health organization built around something I believe deeply: joy isn’t a luxury. It’s medicine. Their signature Mom Dance Party events have been covered by CNN, People, and TODAY — and if you’ve never been, please go. It was co-founded by a psychoanalyst and a brand strategist who understood that healing doesn’t always look like sitting quietly in a room. Sometimes it looks like dancing your face off with a bunch of women who have been exactly where you are.
I’ve sent so many clients here. Women who are starting to come out of the fog, who are ready to remember that they are a full, living, feeling person and not just a caregiver. You might cry. You might laugh until those feel like the same thing. Both are completely fine.
SpaceDNVR spacednvr.com
I have an upcoming event at Space and I’m genuinely so excited about it. Space is a women-owned mindfulness and wellness studio in Wheat Ridge that creates these really connective experiences for families, parents, and kids — paint on the walls, mindfulness workshops, creative play. It’s the kind of place that reminds you that healing and joy can live in the same room. That you don’t have to choose between being a present parent and being someone who still feeds their own creativity. Keep an eye on my events page — I’d love to see you there.
The Den thedendenver.com
The Den is one of my favorite places to mention to clients because it solves a very specific problem: where do you go when you want connection, but you also have a small human attached to you? It’s a family-friendly social club and coffee shop in LoHi, designed thoughtfully for adults and kids in equal measure. It’s warm and unhurried and the kind of place where you can sit across from another parent and feel — maybe for the first time in a while — a little less alone in all of it.
I talk a lot in my work about isolation being one of the heaviest parts of the postpartum period. The Den is, in its own way, an answer to that.
Nature & Space to Breathe
Cheesman Park
This is where I go when I’ve accumulated too much of a week. Wide open, beautiful old trees, that pavilion at the center. No agenda, just walking or sitting and watching the light change. It’s free, it’s accessible, and it has a kind of quiet that’s hard to find in the city.
I talk to clients all the time about what being in nature does for the nervous system — lowers cortisol, regulates the stress response, gently lifts mood. But honestly, beyond all of that, I just love it here. Bring your baby, bring a friend, or go alone. All of those count as taking care of yourself.
Denver Botanic Gardens botanicgardens.org
If Cheesman is my everyday, the Botanic Gardens is my special occasion. I don’t think there’s a more beautiful place in this city. It changes with every season, and I find that really meaningful — there’s something about watching things bloom and go dormant and come back again that mirrors so much of the work I do. The reminder that nothing is permanent. That hard seasons end. That things return.
If you haven’t been at dusk in the summer, add it to your list. There’s a softness to the light there that does something quiet and good.
Food & Nourishment
Devil’s Food Bakery devilsfoodbakerydenver.com
On South Gaylord in Washington Park. Old-timey, cozy, great coffee, baked goods that taste like someone made them slowly and on purpose. I’m a big believer in the ritual of actually sitting down with something delicious and being present with it — no phone, no mental to-do list, just this.
I talk with a lot of postpartum moms about eating real food, regularly, without guilt or rush. Devil’s Food makes that feel a little easier and a lot more enjoyable. Some healing honestly just looks like a good croissant and nowhere to be.
Hudson Hill hudsonhilldenver.com
Capitol Hill. Starts as one of the best coffee shops in Denver, quietly becomes a cocktail bar in the evening. Intimate, casually beautiful, the kind of place where three hours disappear and you don’t really mind. I love it for a slow solo morning or a long catch-up with a friend. It reminds me — and I need reminding sometimes — that a good space and a real conversation are genuinely enough.
Beacon Denver thebeacon.co
Beacon is an immersive art bar and dance lounge in RiNo — artist-created, intentionally built for human connection. Live DJs, creative cocktails, multi-room art installations. It’s the kind of night out that pulls you back into yourself — not the self who manages the household and tracks the milestones, but the self who used to stay out too late and feel alive because of it.
For the mom who’s starting to reclaim her identity, her friendships, her fun — this one’s for you. Go. Dance. Stay a little later than you planned.
Art & Culture
Clyfford Still Museum clyffordstillmuseum.org
One of Denver’s quieter gems and one of my most-loved places to think. Clyfford Still was one of the major Abstract Expressionist painters of the 20th century, and nearly 95% of his life’s work lives here in a museum he designed himself. His paintings are vast and raw and emotional in a way that just bypasses language. You don’t analyze them — you feel them.
There’s something I work on with clients a lot: learning to sit with what’s arising in you without immediately needing to name it or fix it. An afternoon here is its own kind of practice. Give it some time.
Denver Art Museum denverartmuseum.org
If the Clyfford Still is introspective, the Denver Art Museum is expansive. One of the most significant collections in the American West — Indigenous art, contemporary exhibitions, so much more. I love bringing real curiosity here, the same open, non-judgmental curiosity I invite clients to bring to their own inner lives. Art holds complexity without demanding that you resolve it. I find that genuinely restoring.
Live Music
Mission Ballroom missionballroom.com
There are few things more regulating for the nervous system than live music in a great room full of other people who are also just trying to feel something. Mission Ballroom in RiNo is one of the best mid-size venues in the country — exceptional sound, great sightlines, and an energy that’s hard to replicate anywhere else.
Live music is one of my personal prescriptions for overwhelm. It pulls you entirely into the present in a way almost nothing else does. Your body responds, your mind quiets, and for a couple of hours you’re just here. Check their calendar. Go to something even if you don’t know the artist. Let it move you.
Movement at Home
Peloton onepeloton.com
Honestly — Peloton changed things for me during the postpartum period. When leaving the house felt impossible and I still desperately needed to move my body, it was there. No judgment about when I showed up or what I looked like.
Beyond the bike, the yoga, meditation, and stretching classes have become a consistent part of how I take care of my own nervous system. I recommend it to clients a lot — not because anyone needs to be doing 45-minute rides, but because having gentle movement accessible at home removes the barriers that make self-care feel out of reach in those early weeks and months. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is just make it a little easier.
Joy is for you too!
Joy is not something you earn. It’s not waiting at the end of the to-do list. It’s not available only once the laundry is folded and the baby is sleeping and everything is finally under control.
Joy is part of the healing. It’s part of how we find our way back to ourselves.
If you’re in a season where any of this sounds lovely but also kind of impossible — that’s exactly the kind of thing we work on together. You don’t have to have it figured out to begin. You don’t have to feel ready. You just have to take one small step, and we’ll go from there.
I’m currently accepting new clients and would love to support you. Whether you’re navigating postpartum anxiety, a changed sense of identity, relationship stress, or just that quiet persistent feeling that you’re barely keeping your head above water — there’s a path through. You don’t have to walk it alone.