DENVER — At a meeting in the country’s oldest Veterans of Foreign Wars post, a Marine began by asking members to close their eyes and inhale.

“Bring your hands to your heart center,” he said. “Notice all the air that is moving around you.”

It was a Tuesday at V.F.W. Post 1: yoga night. Wednesday is meditation. Friday is photography class — unless it is open gallery night, when hundreds of civilians peruse veteran artwork while a D.J. spins records. The post hosts a monthly film series. And meetings often have as many backward ball caps as V.F.W. hats.

Do not come expecting a bar. There is none.

“We didn’t want a dark dive bar,” said the senior vice commander of the post, Brittany Bartges, a 29-year-old veteran of the Iraq war. “We wanted a healing place where veterans could come together and bring their families.”

By abandoning the traditional model of a dim, members-only tavern in favor of a bright gallery space, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in Denver have transformed the V.F.W.’s oldest post into one of its youngest.