Personal growth through Movement Practice
I am going to tell you about the experience I have lived, which has transformed me and has been the biggest turning point in my life.
It all began in August 2022, when I set out on my journey to Australia with two very clear objectives:
1. To learn English in order to have access to more information and knowledge. Not being able to read, understand and communicate fluently in English was something that had been frustrating me for a long time. I felt that there was a world I could not access if I was only fluent in my mother tongue, Spanish.
2. To be able to meet different movement teachers or perspectives that would help me in my growth process.
I was at a stage in my life where I thought that what I needed to continue to grow or get out of a situation where I didn’t feel completely fulfilled was to make a drastic change. I left everything to go and live in Australia.
It only took me a few weeks to realise that the perspective of personal growth was very different and that I was in for a very hard and difficult few months.
I had idealised what it would be like to live in Australia but it was when I was faced with the harsh reality that I realised that this was just an external change.
I realised that everything I had to change in my life to “be happy” was inside me. I discovered that no matter the place, the time or the situation I was in, no matter how complicated or unsatisfactory it was, the only thing I had to do was to know myself and look deep inside myself to heal my fears, insecurities and break with all the beliefs that were limiting me.
Just after a year in Australia, after overcoming all the difficulties that came with a lot of introspection, reflection and diligence; I started to have a healthy relationship with myself and, in turn, with the environment around me, putting all my attention on the present moment.
9 Intensive weeks guided by a teacher
When the student is ready, the teacher will appear - Zen Proverb
At that precise moment everything aligned around me and the opportunity arose to sign up for the 9-week intensive organised by Juan Rueda in Melbourne. This is where my real transformation begins.
Who is Juan Rueda and how did I come to him?
I was living in Brisbane, on the north east coast of Australia and I was just considering a move to Melbourne. As I always do when I go somewhere, I started researching teachers or movement centres in the city. Then Juan Rueda, appeared, I couldn’t believe that there was a person with so much experience and that he was from Colombia, which meant that we could communicate in Spanish. This was the first sign.
Juan is a person who transmits a very special energy, every time I talk to him I feel serenity and calmness, I experience sensations that I still find difficult to express. Juan has been a lifelong martial artist, a former professional circus performer, gymnast, percussionist and has been teaching movement for more than 25 years. He has also been one of Ido Portal’s most advanced students for more than 9 years and has learned from many teachers around the world. I think you can appreciate the vast experience and knowledge he has, but you have to meet him to feel who Juan Rueda really is.
After meeting Juan in person I realised that he is much more than a movement teacher. I was about to begin a process of transformation that would transcend me to a spiritual state I could never have imagined. A process through which we would seek to cultivate and feel the elements of nature (fire, earth, air, water) in our being in order to find clarity in our life. This would be the main work for nine weeks.
I had just taken a step that was going to require a lot of commitment. All my energy and attention for the next 9 weeks had to be on the intensive. I now understood the connotations of the word “intensive”. 108 practices spread over 63 days. 8 hours of daily practice from Monday to Friday and 6 hours on Sundays. I can be thankful that on Saturdays we had a break, a break that I used to catch up on all the notes I was taking during the week.
Each day we would meet at 6:30am to start the first practice which would last until 10:30am, then we would meet again at 4:30pm, finishing at 8:30pm. The rest hours in between, I had to assimilate and sort out the immense amount of content that Juan was giving us, for me almost everything was new. If I didn’t study and keep up with the learning, I felt lost.
The main practices we were working on were meditation, different martial arts with practices from Taichi, QiGong, NeiGong, Kung-fu, boxing, Kickboxing, grappling, brazilian jiu jitsu; general movement practice (Handstand, acrobatics, organic strength, locomotions, etc.), musical rhythms (basics of music and dance, etc.), and the basics of the body. ), musical rhythms (percussion basics and Carnatic music which is the classical music of South India), body connection, study of anatomy, biomechanics and fascial system, a lot of introspection with a lot of emphasis on writing and in our diary, in short all these practices were oriented to cultivate and balance the 4 elements of nature in our being.
I remember the first day perfectly. Monday 7th August 2023, I woke up at five o’clock in the morning to begin an experience that would mark my life forever.
We were summoned at seven in the morning to Juan´s house, a small house on the outskirts of Melbourne. Just the fact that we were going to his house was a gesture of closeness and a strong bond with him and the whole group. There was a lot of peace and calm mixed with excitement, expectation and surprise. For me it was like dreaming one of the most real dreams of my life, where I was surrounded by a dim light, the smell of incense and eleven other people. Juan, Jakk, Louis, Adriena, Skyler, Guste, Daniel, Jarad, Julian and Jirka, people from different parts of the world who had just met and who I could tell had a lot of things in common. It felt like we had known each other all our lives.
Juan welcomed us with a deep and sincere embrace, then asked us to make ourselves comfortable in a cosy little room next to the entrance of the house. There were pictures of Buddha everywhere and a lot of books and esoteric objects all over the place. What caught my attention was a black crystal circle in the shape of a plate, a little bigger than the size of a hand and about 1cm thick. The peculiarity of this object was that it acted as a “black mirror” and Juan told us that it was where you could look at yourself to discover your shadows.
When we were settled, seated on the floor, cushions and bases of different heights and shapes, Juan welcomed us to his home and we began to have a very pleasant and familiar conversation where he made us feel very comfortable and as if we were in our own home.
I have to admit that before arriving I was a bit nervous because of my language limitation but the energy that was there helped me to relax deeply and I started to flow. Suddenly something unlocked in my mind and I began to understand, express myself and speak English like I had never done before during the previous year I had been living in Australia.
In between our varied and, as expected, very deep and thoughtful conversations, Juan presented us with a small piece of clay with a Buddha engraved on it and told us that we should keep it to feel the energy of the group we had created at that very moment for the rest of our lives. It was a gesture that meant a lot to me and completely changed the expectation I had of what the intensive would be like.
I started the first practices of the intensive with fear and not being sure if I would be able to keep up with the pace and volume of work but as the weeks went by all my beliefs and fears were shattered, I would never have imagined that so much valuable content could be condensed into just 9 weeks.
From the moment I started to get to know Juan I realised the power of attraction that he has as a teacher, I had never before been with a person who transmitted such complex concepts in such a clear way.
The practices we did during those weeks were very demanding and intense, not only on a physical and mental level, but also on a spiritual level.
I had never before been exposed to such a deep level of work, and yet, without knowing where I got the strength and energy I needed to complete almost all the proposed practices.
This experience made me reflect and draw many conclusions about my growth process and the meaning of my life.
I will conclude by sharing the ones I consider most relevant:
The first reflection is about my intention and purpose of attending this intensive. The truth is that I can only say that I came with a very open mind and absolutely without any judgement or pretense. But applying this same reflection to my life, I realised what my purpose in life is. It is nothing more than achieving whatever I set my mind to, becoming the person I really want to be and living my life the way I really want to live it.
The second reflection is that I realised the great influence and importance of our internal and environment in our life. Internal: You can confirm the idea that the human body has incredible potential and is capable of superhuman abilities, but it will depend solely on the power of the mind and how we relate to ourselves. External: The environment and the people we relate to will determine our perception of what we are or are not capable of doing.
The third reflection is about time. We do NOT have time in our lives to develop our full potential and explore the true meaning of “being human”. We are in a race against the clock and we have very limited time. That deadline will come when we will cease to be in this world almost without realising it. We alone are responsible for choosing how we manage our time. We must seek success every day of our lives, every minute, every second. We cannot waste our time.
The fourth and final reflection is on wisdom and honesty. There is such a vast amount of knowledge that we would not be able to know it all in several lifetimes. We must be humble and not believe that we know everything. We have to be honest in recognising and accepting our individual process of growth. In this age of impatience, immediacy and incoherence, it will be essential to cultivate serenity, tranquillity and mental calm. A stable and solid structure that allows us to support the course of our existence.
Cris Luque
