Bozeman, Montana
Journalist · Documentary Filmmaker · Retreat Facilitator
Kristin Jordan
Witness to the systems that shape us — and the wildness that refuses to be shaped.
A letter to you
If you found your way here, something brought you.
Maybe it's simply curiosity.
Maybe it's a practice that's gone stale.
Maybe it's a life that photographs beautifully
and looks perfect online —
but feels hollow underneath.
Maybe you're in the middle of something
you don't yet have words for.
Maybe you're simply ready.
There's a reason I changed the name
from Mountain Yoga to Mountain Collective
after the world stopped.
The healing — the alchemy —
always starts from within.
As within, so without.
For years I held a physical space
where I invited the people, the talent,
the wisdom keepers, the innovators —
to share what they knew.
Then I had to turn inward.
Learn the way I've always known how —
by going toward the thing.
Getting quiet. Getting off screens.
Getting into the wilderness
within and without.
Now here I am.
Still wondering what this new form will look like.
And always knowing the essence
of what it will hold.
This space is for the souls I've forever
wanted to gather — in some form, some fashion.
If you're reading this,
you're probably already one of them.
What becomes possible
when we stop pretending?
I built this for people asking that question.
I'm glad you found your way here.
About Kristin
I've always gone toward the thing.
Eighty hours logged in gliders — birds, clouds,
searching for wind above the earth.
Western Australia, studying Murdoch,
swimming with whale sharks
well before it became a social media moment.
Radio journalist in Cape Town —
two features, frequently aired.
One: 4am at the taxi ranks, profiling a soulful man
who drives one of numerous unmarked white vans
through the streets, long before the city wakes,
hoping to feed his family.
The other: several cage dives with great whites,
researching the effects of chumming
on recent local shark attacks.
Solely for the story, of course.
Jumped out of a few airplanes.
Ran with the bulls in Pamplona
after a semester with Hemingway —
The Sun Also Rises, words and nuance —
studying what it means to really
show up for your own life.
My first independent film aired
on local TV in Los Angeles.
Joshua Tree: A Place of Solitude that is Slowly Dying.
Whale sharks and desert solitude,
well before either became something to post about.
A rental car in Durban that came with a gun.
Destination: Hlabisa, KwaZuluNatal —
the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic.
Driving North alone, not once but twice,
on handheld maps and trust,
to a village so stunning
I couldn't conceive of one in three people
there living with HIV or full-blown AIDS.
I came home with my eyes more open
than they'd ever been.
That film became my Master's thesis at USC.
Hlabisa: An Unbroken Spirit.
The Maasai — elders navigating
the edge of a world trying to erase them,
their daughters facing FGM,
a community suspended between
ancient tradition and the 21st century.
Maasai at the Crossroads.
Award-winning. Internationally screened.
Harvard. Stanford. UCLA.
Narrated by the late, great Calestous Juma.
The Cheyenne. Horseback riders
carrying ancestors home across the plains —
across massacre sites
the history books called battlefields.
That webseries, The Ride Home,
brought me to Bozeman in 2012.
And to the life I didn't know
I was looking for.
I came to yoga through a marathon —
chasing performance, finding presence.
Bryant Kest's donation-based studio,
3rd Street, Santa Monica.
Ashley Turner's evening classes,
several times a week —
the discipline that held me together
after coming home from Hlabisa.
That same studio made me realize
I needed to teach.
Certified at YogaWorks in 2004.
Co-leading 200-hour teacher trainings
in Santa Barbara by 2009.
For six years I ran Mountain Yoga
in Bozeman —
a sanctuary, a community,
a marriage in the truest sense of the word.
Then I closed the doors.
The Winter before the world stopped,
I wrote this.
→ Turning Toward the Mystery
What followed was solitude. Nature.
And then: a cancer center.
The honor of walking patients
through the hardest, darkest days
of their lives —
many through their final chapter.
All the while witnessing an institution
slowly revealing the distance
between its mission statement
and its ethics.
I'm a journalist. A filmmaker.
A yoga teacher. A retreat facilitator.
A mother. A daughter. A sister. A wife.
A Witness.
It's by no means been pretty.
But boy oh boy, has it been
heartbreakingly beautiful.
Say yes to what calls you
Spirit of Nature
Solstice Retreat
Four days at the Continental Divide. Yoga, ritual, honest conversation, and the mountain's way of putting things back in order.
June 19–22 · Inquire →
Private
Yoga Session
One-on-one, held in the full presence of where you are right now. Practice shaped entirely around you.
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Semi-Private
Yoga Experience
Gather two or three people ready to practice together with intention. Intimate, unhurried, shaped to the group.
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Ceremonial
& Fire Work
Rites of passage for life's threshold moments — grief, transition, completion, becoming. Fire as witness.
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Documentary
Films
Films bearing witness to lives at the intersection of survival, dignity, and grace.
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Substack
Writing
Essays from a life lived at the intersection of witness and practice. Subscribe to follow the memoir as it unfolds.
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Filmography
Three decades, four continents, and the same project — bearing witness to lives the world would rather look past.
2009 · Documentary
Maasai at the Crossroads
Written, Directed & Produced by Kristin Jordan
Co-directed with Joe Dietsch
Narrated by Dr. Calestous Juma · Harvard Kennedy School
An intimate journey into the heart of East Kenya — a traditional community suspended between ancestral heritage and 21st-century modernization. Education, drought, FGM, and the question of what a people must surrender to survive.
Awards & Recognition
Best of Fest · Best Cinematography
LA International Film Festival
Top 10% of Independent Films Nationally
Screened at
Harvard Kennedy School · Belfer Center
World University Premiere
Stanford Center for African Studies
UCLA African Studies Center
Artivist Film Festival · Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood
Santa Barbara International Film Festival
"The director guides the story with sensitivity and warmth... nothing about the feature is forced. Rather, it is rounded and meditative, as are the Maasai."— Student Film Reviews · Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2010
2012 · Feature Webseries
The Ride Home
Co-Directed
Featuring Alexander Little Coyote & Margaret Behan
Global Grandmother Margaret Behan leads a group of humans and horses on a 1,400 mile journey retracing the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878 — from the Cheyenne & Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma to the 11th gathering of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers in Lame Deer, Montana. Across massacre sites the history books called battlefields. An act of memory, mourning, and reclamation. Featuring the late Alexander Wiyaka Little Coyote. This film brought Kristin to Bozeman — and to the life she didn't know she was looking for.
Graduate Thesis · USC
Hlabisa: An Unbroken Spirit
Director · USC School of Journalism
Filmed in KwaZuluNatal, South Africa, at the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. A document of community, grief, and the particular form of dignity that survives catastrophe. Made after driving North from Durban alone — twice — on handheld maps and trust, in a rental car that came with a gun.
Early Career · Los Angeles
Joshua Tree: A Place of Solitude that is Slowly Dying
Director · Aired on Local LA Television
A meditation on solitude and a disappearing landscape — what the desert makes possible in a person willing to be still long enough to listen. Kristin's first independent film.
Essays & dispatches
The memoir is being written in real time. Subscribe on Substack to follow along — essays on institutional witness, the body's intelligence, and the cost of telling the truth.
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