Ananda River Yoga Retreat Centers

 Founder Bio — Jordan River

I build Ananda River Yoga Retreat Centers because stress kills — slowly, quietly, and often invisibly. 

The human body is a remarkably adaptive system, designed for regeneration, resilience, and repair. With proper movement, nourishment, rest, and awareness, it has an extraordinary capacity to recover. Without those supports, chronic stress, unresolved trauma, anxiety, and grief accumulate in the body over time, eventually manifesting as physical illness, emotional dysregulation, addiction, and burnout. 

I grew up in a family of civil servants. My father was a firefighter, then a nurse, later working in hospice care and the ICU. My mother was a nurse. Many of my family members were firefighters. I witnessed firsthand the toll that repeated exposure to crisis, suffering, and death takes on the human nervous system — especially when there is no space to process it. 

My father never spoke about the trauma he witnessed on the job. Late in his life, I introduced him to yoga as a way to move what he had been carrying in his body for decades. But by then, the damage had already taken hold. At 58, he received a sudden cancer diagnosis and was given six weeks to put his affairs in order. His death profoundly shaped my understanding of what unprocessed stress can do to the body — and how urgently we need better tools for those who serve. 

I chose a path of service myself — first as a soldier, then as a biologist, and later as a teacher. Along the way, I experienced the impact of trauma firsthand. I once lived with PTSD. I once lived with an anxiety disorder. I once lived with substance dependency. I no longer do. 

My healing came through more than two decades of meditation practice, over a decade of dedicated yoga practice, and continuous study of human physiology, nervous system regulation, trauma exposure, and behavioral conditioning. Through this work, I learned how trauma settles in the body, how to identify it safely, how to move it, and how to change one’s relationship to memory — from reliving it to witnessing it. 

Today, I teach trauma-informed yoga and somatic education with a focus on helping people develop the tools to process embodied stress, regulate their nervous systems, and restore a sense of agency and presence. My approach does not seek to suppress symptoms, but to address their root — allowing healing to occur rather than merely managing distress. 

Ananda River Yoga Retreat Centers exists to give emotional conditioning and trauma memory a place to land. A place where sacrifice is acknowledged, memory is integrated, and the body is allowed to release what it has carried for too long.