Ali Duncan Opens Inclusive Black-Owned Yoga Studio in Denver's Five Points

Urban Sanctuary, the Five Points studio Ali Duncan opened in October 2016 as Denver's first Black woman-run yoga studio, fills its free BIPOC classes to capacity three times every week. Those sessions, called Full Circle, sit alongside a sliding-scale monthly membership that starts at $65 for unlimited classes, a pricing architecture Duncan built deliberately to counter the economics that have historically pushed people of color out of wellness spaces.

Duncan's route to founding the studio is the kind of story Five Points itself tends to attract. She grew up in Fort Collins, where her father was the second Black man in town and she and her siblings were the only Black children in their school. In her twenties she became the first Black woman on Fort Collins Police Services, a career she held for more than a decade before a summer off in the late 1990s sent her to India for a 200-hour yoga teacher certification. She returned, found that yoga and Reiki could benefit her fellow officers, and within six months of pivoting had left the force entirely.

When she moved to Denver in 2016, she expected to find studios that looked like the diverse city around her. They did not. Five Points, Denver's historically Black neighborhood and the cultural anchor of its African American community for generations, gave her the address and the context to build something different.

"I wanted to create a space where everyone felt comfortable and accepted, no matter their background or experience level," Duncan said.

Urban Sanctuary's schedule makes that intention legible. The studio offers Kemetic yoga, which Duncan describes as Africa's original practice predating the traditions of India, alongside aerial yoga, cannabis-supported classes, flow sessions paired with tarot card readings, naked yoga, and a natural hot yoga class held on the back patio each summer. Social justice storytelling events and yoga to R&B fill out the calendar. A 200-hour teacher training program threads astrology and social justice through its curriculum.

The studio serves people of color, LGBTQ+ practitioners, and those with disabilities, and Duncan has been blunt about what motivates the pricing structure. "I don't want to offer yoga that people from this community can't afford," she said. "The BIPOC community is pushed out of these healing spaces."

Full Circle, Urban Sanctuary's free weekly BIPOC offering, is a direct answer to that. Three sessions a week, all at capacity, nearly a decade in: a metric Duncan did not wait for the broader wellness industry to build toward.