Who is Juan Rueda?
I knew about Juan from Ido’s former mentorship group. To this day, I still remember all the stories that Petr shared with us at teachers’ meetings over the years, about his practices, experience, and discipline. Somewhere in the background, I always wanted to meet him, he was that quiet student and teacher with almost crazy skills gathered through a lifetime of practicing.
Juan is a former professional circus performer, gymnast, capoeirista, drummer for over 30 years, martial artist his whole life, and I’d dare to say a healer. At the same time, he is a husband, a father, a teacher, a student at heart and an incredibly hard worker with a breadth of knowledge, unlike anyone I ever had the honor of meeting. In short, a phenomenon. With the width of his skills and knowledge It feels like he managed to live several lifetimes.
First encounter
I have been in contact with Juan since autumn 2021. After the month-long Intensive in Berlin with Ido and his team, I had a very strong urge to contact him. Since our first conversation my life has not been the same and Juan has become my tour guide in the internal waters of reality and beyond.
I first meet Juan in person in Prague May 2023, where he taught a weekend workshop for students of Pohyb je život. It wasn’t a classic workshop format, given the scope of our community’s knowledge and Peter’s work we took a bit deeper dive focusing mainly on the fascial connection, universal principles and their application in general movement practice, martial arts and everyday life. Outside of the workshop, we had many discussions over the topics of internal practice, teaching, healing, the importance of journaling and self-reflection all spiced up with many “behind the scenes” stories. I shared my observations and notes from the workshop here.
In June I got to spend two more days in Munich and had more clarity into my next steps. I wanted to understand his perspective and his teachings and that won’t happen in 2 days. His upcoming Intensive in Melbourne was clear next step.
9 weeks Intensive, Melbourne
My third trip to Australia, this time to the southeastern coast Melbourne, where the 9 weeks Intensive takes place. As Paulo Coelho writes in his book The Alchemist: “When you want something, the whole Universe comes together to make your dream come true”. In this spirit my trip took place. Flights, organizing work, moving to Italy, everything fell into place and the road was free.
I left on Friday 5/7 at around eight in the morning, arrived in the early evening of 6/7, after a whole day on the plane, flying across time and space (few words about Jet-lag here and here) followed by a transfer to Luis’s house, where we stay together with his family, Dan (a colleague from the Czech Republic) and our Australian friend Jakk. More about these lads another time, but just for context – precious human beings, “normal” mortals who have jobs, wives, children and practice, training a lot and whenever they can – sometimes that means starting at four in the morning, before the family wakes up and work duty calls, or on a Sunday at half past ten in the evening, when a normal mortals go to sleep. The proverb: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” has a different meaning in these circles, but more on that next time.
Fields of study and schedule
Within the next 9 weeks, we have two sessions a day, a total of 8 hours of practice and one full day off. We also join Juan’s movement classes three times a week where we work on acrobatics, linear and organic strength and rhythms.
The morning goes from 6:30 till 10:30 am, then from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm. On Sundays from 7 till 1 pm.
- Standing Practice: Zhang Zhuang Huang style, Wuji / San Ti
- Neigong
Bodywork: Mian Quan, Kuang Biao, Southern and northern Shaolin – Building the unified body-creating the dragon body - Seated Work: …, 4 elements meditation, Foundation of energy work
- Martial Arts: Striking Study (kickboxing), Grappling and Groundwork, Partnering Drills from different styles, General movement practice
In the opening discussion, Juan explained us his intention and indicated the “realms” he would accompany us through in the upcoming weeks. The main theme is work with our WILL – It’s cultivation – the element of Fire, which is also why the choice of the topics above and the intensity of sessions.
We begin
Today morning I had my first 6 hour class – in short: we started at 7 am, first hour sitting practice, then over an hour of standing forms, followed by partner work studying connection, transfer and spine organization, about an hour of strength training on the vertical bar (a lot of isometrics) and finished with 20 minutes of rhythmic work, room for questions, closing the session a little after one o’clock in the afternoon, tomorrow at 6:30 on marks, ready for more.
It is Sunday 13.8. a little after half past eleven in the evening, finishing the article, preparing our gear and food for tomorrow. At this point its a routine of waking up around five’ish, breakfast at 5:30, jump in the car and do it all over again. The first week is over. We survived. I have to say that the intensity is incomparable and in fact indescribable, I am used to practicing a lot, I would even say that I have quite decent discipline and willpower. But the past week has showed me otherwise, well everything is about context.
I have many gaps, we all do. I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to be here and learn first-hand the practical tools to work with these gaps not only on a physical level. In the following articles I will try to share my classic “travel notes” from time to time.
