About

Hi Gus; student, questioner, mover.

I guide individuals and groups towards a more playful, holistic, grounded relationship with movement, their body and life.

Life is movement. Movement is how we know life is happening! Without movement, would we even be aware of nature? So what better way to tap into your essential nature than through movement?

Movement is so important to me because of the profound impact that consciously moving my body has had on my health, mind and growth.

But it’s not always been that way. When I was young I was far from athletic.

A bit of backstory

I was born with a musculoskeletal condition called pectus excavatum; a whole-body condition that manifests most obviously as a concaved chest. Growing up with this condition made breathing difficult and movement painful. I was racked with injuries as a child, and shied away from sports and physical activity.

To distract me from the pain I developed coping strategies like chronic nail-biting. I had all manner of ticks and other bodily neuroses. As a teenager I discovered drugs and alcohol, and they became my escape.

After a radical decline in health, back in 2010, I walked away from a lifestyle of all-night parties, drugs, booze and general debauchery. And I started turning towards my problems instead of running away. This sparked a journey into movement, health and consciousness.

Decades of escapism left me numb and very disconnected from my body and feelings. Learning to feel again was very uncomfortable in the beginning. But a deep yearning for truth and alignment has kept me committed. That commitment and intent, along with a questioning disposition and an ever-increasing openness has served me in my pursuit for deeper understanding.

A turning point

In 2017 I participated in my first workshop retreat with Peter Ralston at his Chen Hsin Centre in the hill country of Texas. Imagine, 4-5 weeks of intense education, meditation, facilitation and contemplation into the nature self, mind, experience, communication and the human condition. There I had my first (what Ralston calls) “direct consciousness”. It might seem like a strange thing to investigate, but I was contemplating the nature of space. And suddenly I “got” what space is - directly. There are no words that can describe this kind of experience, but its effects still ripple through my life to this day.

I have since returned to train with Peter for a number of retreats, and have continued to have deeper, even more profound insights and breakthroughs into the nature of mind and the human condition. I’ve gone on to discover the true nature of my self, another and a body.

Each experience has opened a door in my life and the potential to free myself from the ways I had previously related to those distinctions; and from the person I formulated to survive this world. It still requires an almost obsessive commitment to not live as my conditioned mind, but the openness such experiences provide enables us to see new possibilities and work to align the body and mind to them.

Along with Ralston’s consciousness work is his martial and body-being work. Having had such success with his contemplation methods and distinctions I threw myself into his movement workshops, courses and books. The principles I learned from there have been very supportive of my investigation into the the workings of life and form the core of my movement teaching. I have found that aligning the body to the principles fosters a state of open possibility, where a spontaneous relationship with my environment can unfold. Things just work out and movement feels like it just happens, without a “me” doing it. There is such a joy and satisfaction when I get out of the way and let the principles have their way with me!

I’m still very much a novice in the Cheng Hsin Body-Being and Consciousness work. But It’s clear to me the value and impact these teachings could have on humanity. And I am honoured to serve them by bringing this work to as many people as I can in my own small way.

My pectus condition hasn’t gone away or anything, but my relationship to it has changed significantly. No longer am I trying to fix or overcome my condition, but I am learning to understand it and free myself from my habitual reactions to pain and discomfort - improving my mobility, breathing mechanics and inner state. Working with what I’ve got, always moving in the direction of alignment with the dynamics of physics. And towards this end there’s no better approach, at least that I’ve found, than aligning with the Cheng Hsin Body-being principles.

Freedom

Cultivating the body-being principles enables me to engage in any physical activity in a satisfying and nourishing way - be it yoga, tai chi, chi gong, calisthenics, mobility, weight training, running or dance. Alignment with the principles is always the best approach to any physical activity.

This kind of principled way of learning and relating enables us to work with any perspective and absorb what works and disregard the rest. Freeing us from the very pervasive human tendency towards dogma and blind belief. A good modality has its value and purpose, but none are whole and complete or work for everyone all the time. Adopting this approach has equipped me with a broad, non-dogmatic, multi-disciplined, practical viewpoint. I encourage the same approach with all my students.

Reframing practice

Movement is about more than just getting fit, being “functional”, longevity or preventing illness. It is also feedback on how our minds work. It has the potential to be the vehicle through which we awaken unrecognised aspects of our mind; revealing emotional dispositions towards self, life and others - landing us square in the centre of being.

As we become more aligned with, and centred in, our essential nature we have more possibility to generate internal states that move us in a satisfying, aligning, competent and graceful direction - the world begins to open up for us and shit just works right!

I’m passionate about movement; not only as a therapeutic tool, but as vehicle for transformation. And it’s my joy to share the potential of movement to awaken the wisdom of the body.

Testimonials