Business Profile - Una Vida

Kristin Dura, owner of Una Vida in Cottonwood Square, described a fascinating journey to founding a business centered on wellness in Niwot.

"I fell in love with Niwot," said Dura, a one time stay-at-home mother of four children, then a "death doula," and now a friendly, exuberant entrepreneur.

"I felt the energy of the Arapaho people here," she said. "My community is Legend Ridge at the top of a hill with views of the mountains. The peaceable chief Niwot settled here in this land. I felt it. I felt this beautiful sense of family and community here."

After coming to Niwot seven years ago from northern New Jersey, "it felt peaceful and quiet here," she continued. "I was used to a ton of traffic and a ton of pedestrians. Here it is beautiful. I felt a sense of dropping into my body."

Ironically, Dura also re-connected here with her high school sweetheart from Michigan, an Olympic bronze medal winner in swimming, married him three years ago, and became an entrepreneur – launching Una Vida – a yoga and meditation studio that Dura wants to build into a community of peace and safety in Niwot.

Her former husband was from South America and she said, before she moved to Niwot to follow one of her daughters who was at CU, she had already built a retreat center in Argentina with the same principles as she is propagating here. "The vision was to build and hold the container for a beautiful community of teachers and healers devoted to wellness."

Una Vida means "one life" and Dura explained how she became a "death doula." "When I was 37," she said, "with three little kids in northern New Jersey, my mother – who was 61 – developed pancreatic cancer."

Dura said the unexpected diagnosis and rapid death of her mom "blew my world up" but she added that being with her mom as she died also "changed my life."

"I was with her at her death and it was the most peaceful, present moment of my life. It changed my life," said Dura. And as a result, when she moved to Colorado, Dura trained for and started a career as a "death doula" in Boulder. She was hired by families to help them cope with the dying experience of loved ones as well as learning how to be with the dying.

"I realized from watching my mother die that every day of our lives is a gift – not a given." The mind/body connection and the necessity of getting out of our heads, off our devices and into the present moment is very real for Dura, her former clients, and now the people drawn for yoga and meditation to Una Vida, which she opened a few years ago at the beginning of Covid.

She explained that after working as a death doula – sitting at the bedsides of dying patients – she decided to "pivot from death to life" and is now working to make Una Vida a vital, living community of people who understand the mind/body connection, and who are determined to live in the moment and to work at making their best lives.

"This is not just about yoga, exercise and fitness," she said. "This is about exploring – in community – fundamental questions like: What is life? What is death?"

"Our goal is to explore the mystery of life in community."