Simon Thakur is based in New South Wales, Australia. Ancestral Movement is his project, his “big idea” that has come from more than twenty years of practice and research across a wide range of fields. He has studied the natural sciences since he was in high school and through university – covering the basics of physics and mathematics and going deeper into chemistry, biology, physiology and anatomy (including a year of weekly cadaver studies), exercise science, nutrition, biochemistry, molecular cell biology and molecular genetics, immunology, and neuroscience, as well as psychology, anthropology, archaeology, sociology, history and religious studies.
During all of this time he has also been learning and practicing predominantly Eastern traditions of martial arts and mind-body transformation. He was obsessed with Yoga and martial arts as a child and read everything he could find in the public library (back in Dunedin, New Zealand, where he grew up). He did some Judo as a kid, some boxing and kickboxing as a teenager, then went on a year-long student exchange to Thailand when he was 17, knowing only that he wanted to practice Muay Thai and learn about Buddhism and meditation. He ended up living with his Muay Thai teacher, and ordained as a monk during by the end of his time there at the age of 18, staying for a wonderful month at Wat Tong Pai near Chumphon in south Thailand, and a beautiful couple of weeks at Suan Mokh forest retreat centre near Surat Thani. He was introduced to Buddhism through the works of Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, whose incredible 550 page translation and commentary on the Buddha’s Anapanasati Sutta (discourse on mindfulness based in the in- and out-breaths) is still his most treasured meditation manual, which he returns to every year for further study.
Since then he has studied Japanese Jujitsu, Capoeira, Chinese internal martial arts and Qigong, Yoga and Yoga therapy, Feldenkrais, Butoh, Contact Improvisation, Pilates, Kit Laughlin’s Stretch Therapy and Monkey Gym, parkour, smatterings of Russian Systema and Mixed Martial Arts, and more recently Brazilian Jujitsu, freestyle wrestling, and Filipino Eskrima (also called Kali, or Arnis). He has lived for close to ten years in Asia – in Thailand, India, Japan, China and Taiwan – and six months in Brazil, studying and learning from the best people he could find, always trying to get as close as he could to the source of the arts and traditions that he found most interesting.