Today we’d like to introduce you to Simon Alcantara.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My journey started after a knee injury and a subsequent surgery for a meniscus repair. According to the surgeon, my athletic life was over. No more playing soccer, no more squatting, or any other endeavors that required lower body stress. That left me with a very weak lower body, which starting affecting my lower back; condition that worsen with the years of working in stock rooms for retail and medical companies. In 2010, my wife suggested that I try Yoga. I laughed at her! After having to take a week off from work due to back spasms and pain, I decided to try Yoga. Five minutes into the class my legs were shaking, and I was hyperventilating as if we were running, and I quit. Through the years, I managed my pain with alcohol, cannabis and tried prescription drugs a few times. Although I never stopped working out, all my focus was on upper body. The heavier I was the more pain I had to deal with. It was in 2015, after the birth of my first daughter and thanks to my wife, that I began a daily stretching routine, and soon became an in the closet Yogi. I would do asanas while my wife breastfed and put our baby to sleep.
Two months into my daily practice, I realized my back pain was gone, and my knee didn’t bother anymore either. I started running, squatting, and playing soccer again.
In October of that same year, I enrolled in my RYT-200 teacher trainer course and became an official Yogi in March of 2016. Just two weeks after I was already teaching at iCON Fitness Studio in Murrieta, and I’ve been teaching ever since in different gyms, studios, and also doing private sessions. Soon, I was a bit bored of teaching the same sequences and same classes over and over, so I decided I needed to twitch some things. Fortunately for me, I got hired as a substitute instructor at Dan Henderson’s Gym, where I have the chance to work with elite fighters (MMA & Jiu-jitsu) as well as regular members. It was the fighters who inspired the new direction to my teaching in creating Badassana Yoga.
I took the elements from Power Yoga, Mobility Flows, and Calisthenics and fused them into a more dynamic and athletic Yoga. While I was sharpening that new modality, I was hired at two different Pain Management Clinics to work on patients with Chronic Pain, which opened my eyes to the part of Yoga I had ignored the most, the breath.
It was quite a dichotomy going from one place, where I worked with top-of-the-food-chain athletes, to another place where patients’ mobility was so compromised. But I discovered the healing power of the breath. Sadly, when we started making progress, the clinics were shut down for reasons unbeknownst to me.
Fast forward to 2018, I kept adding tools to my belt by becoming a Certified Reflexologist through a company called StretchLab, where we provided assisted stretching in the modality of PNF (Propioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation), and a few months later, Covid-19 brought the world to a hault, and I entered a financial crisis due to the loss of all my income sources. Soon after my best friend recommended, I did a Breathwork session with Witalij Martynow, which sounded like a silly idea to me, but I did and I can’t help to sound so cliche but it totally changed my life. Since then, I started a daily practice through Witalij’s website and kept attending his group sessions once a month. During the next two years, I also participated in plant medicine ceremonies in which I always resorted to doing breathwork when the going got tough. Very soon Witalij suggested that I started leading my own breathwork sessions, and now I’ve become a breathwork facilitator, conducting group and private sessions.
So Badassana became more than just Yoga and is now a full wellness program that includes Strength and Conditioning, Mobility, Meditation, Assisted Stretching, and Breathwork
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It hasn’t been easy by any means, Before I started my path in Yoga, I was working odd jobs just to pay bills while trying to have a musical career. Once I got my RYT-200 Certification, I jumped into teaching immediately, and before that as soon as I moved into a new town, I started hitting open mics to get music gigs and network. It was the same with Breathwork, and I jumped right into it. I started hosting Breathwork Sessions at my house for a couple of friends, and now I get to lead groups of fifty people.
I think in life growth comes mostly from struggle. If we don’t get uncomfortable, we won’t push ourselves, so from where I stand now, I’m nothing but extremely grateful for the bumps in the road.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My three biggest passions are Fitness, Music, and Food, and I’m fortunate enough that I’ve been able to merge all three of them with the Badassana Yoga and Fitness Program. Having the ability to create personal and group programs that include all three subjects drives me more creatively each time I sit down and write these programs which include Yoga flows, Calisthenics, Plyometrics, Circuit Training, Custom Playlists, and Nutritional Guidelines.
I think that what I’m proud of the most is that I’ve embraced the freedom to create and run my program without any of the cookie-cutters, one size fits all corporate approach, so I can serve my clients’ personal needs.
My approach is based on all the dimensions of Wellness and having my clients do a one on one with themselves so they can recognize what they could be lacking, and making the proper adjustments to begin a new path with as much balance as possible from every aspect in life
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up.
Waking up on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons while my mom was doing weekly meal prep. The intense aroma from all the herbs she used to season was paired with the music selection from my dad, which went from Mozart to Hendrix, Merengue to The Doors, Venezuelan folk to Kenny Rodgers. It was a perfect combination, turned into a tradition I’m passing to my daughters, and we’re creating our own memories with it
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @badassanayoga
