Juan, a Taurus (with ascendant Leo), was born in 1970 in a small city in the Andes mountains of Colombia, South America. Most of his childhood and young life was spent on a farm surrounded by nature and love; it was a beautiful, natural, spoiled, and happy time.

At age 18, in a big change, he moved to the capital to study business and economics at its most elite, prestigious university. He was kicked out of this university nearly at the end of his studies, he thinks due to great fortune, because at this juncture a friend introduced him to the transcendental meditation technique of Ramana Maharshi, which opened the first spiritual window in his life.

Juan next ended up in London for seven years, where he completed his university studies, plus a Masters in international commerce. He became a “successful” businessman but felt himself becoming old, stressed, and unhappy too quickly. When he was 30, his father died and soon after the business in London also went down. It was one big and difficult hiatus.

He continued to travel all over the world until, while working on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea, he met up with one of his good friends with whom he use to meditate. This friend advised him to go to India and, without a second thought, he disembarked the ship in Brazil and went there directly. After one month in India, he had the good luck to lose the rest of his money to the laundry service. It was a time of burning negative karma….

But despite the difficulties, he was happy in India, the homeland of nirvana, and had no desire to go anywhere else. At the same time, he had no options but to keep doing Vipassana meditation retreats all over the country with the legendary Goenka. After some hard and painful self work with Vipassana, this technique gave him inner happiness and certain understandings and realizations. Most important, however, all this gave him the merit and Grace to meet Swami Vivekananda, his unique Tantra, Yoga, and meditation master teacher. When he began his first month of Yoga, he had kidney and lower back pain from all the stress and poor living of previous years, but with more practice these conditions disappeared, helping him to realize the great health benefits of Yoga.

After the First Month Intensive Course, he visited Japan, where he learned the basis of other disciplines that synchronize very well with Yoga, like the Japanese tea ceremony, Zen, and shiatsu. While there he met another good friend, one of his Spanish and salsa dancing students who suffered from an incurable disease. They both changed each other’s lives a lot, helping each other in different ways, thanks again to the Grace of God. After Japan, he was on his way back to India with the firm decision to become a Vipassana meditation teacher. There was no other option in his mind at that time, but along the way he had to stop in Bangkok, Thailand, and saw that Swami Vivekananda was on Koh Phangan island, giving complete teachings. Juan went to visit him for just a week, but God and karma had other plans for him; he stayed with Swamiji, receiving teachings for almost three years. What a great fortune…. He now feels tremendous happiness and gratitude to have received these teachings and techniques from Swami, to have practiced and verified their efficiency, especially within his studies of such topics as the yamas and niyamas, Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, the Great Comic Powers, Kundalini Yoga, Kashmir Shaivism, Shambhala, the life of Jesus, and others. He also feels now a responsibility to pass these teachings on to others, slowly, more and more widely, and he hopes that the Grace will keep manifesting to allow him to do so.  

Juan is now translating all the Agama course materials of the first cycle from English into Spanish, as well as some traditional texts. He is giving Spanish-language weekend workshops of introduction to Yoga in Colombia and he hopes later to bring these teachings to other Spanish-speaking areas and communities. He feels it’s a great honor to be one more link in this lineage of unique teachings, and he hopes to be able to guide and help others to help themselves discover where real happiness, knowledge, and freedom lies. Most of all, he hopes that Grace will always stay with him to maintain a steady practice with a high aspiration for the Divine.

During the last year, for short period of time Juan visited esoteric communities in South America, such as Doctrine of the Santo Daime in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon jungle, shamans near the frontier with Peru, Doctrine of the Taos in the Andes mountains of Colombia, among others, sharing experiences with his brothers in spirit, learning new techniques that synchronize very well with Yoga, practicing with them and teaching something new and beneficial to those who had had the humbleness to learn something from Yoga. He has also visited esoteric communities of Christians, Catholics, and Mormons, among others, to discover more truly what they do. He also practiced with them, because he feels sincerely that there is always something new to learn from everything and everyone. Juan believes that the satisfaction to walk the path of the Truth is not at the end, but is in the middle of the process of walking it, with all its ups and downs. He thinks that one never stops learning, because the Truth is infinite.

Juan has now returned to the farm where he spent his childhood. He is teaching there and preparing to teach in other cities, on the path to serve God, men, and women.