Messages below from Simona, Layah and Alejandro...

Dear Dancing and Extended Community,

It’s an honour for me to be co-creating this fundraiser for my friend and colleague Alejandro Zuluaga, someone who has become a steady presence in my life and in the heart of our dance community.

I’ve been dancing with Alejandro for several years, but it was about a year ago, on a 5Rhythms retreat, when he approached me and said he heard I was considering teacher training. He told me he was feeling the pull too, and wondered if maybe we could do it together.

It was an immediate, full-bodied yes!

Soon after, he began working with me in my online community, teaching meditation and supporting people living with complex trauma and chronic illness. Our friendship deepened, and a few months in, he asked me a question that very few people ever have:

“Simona, what do you really need right now, and how can I help you?”

I told him. And he showed up.

This fundraiser is, in many ways, my chance to show up for him, and to invite our community to do the same.

Alejandro has a relationship with the dance that goes far beyond movement. It is a way of listening, a way of witnessing, a way of letting the body speak. When he steps into a room, something shifts- those who have danced with him know this.

His presence is grounded yet porous, strong and tender, an invitation into authenticity, play, exploration, and joy. He moves toward connection and relationship, understanding that movement is medicine and that healing amplifies in community.

Seeing Alejandro and other men on the dance floor - men who move with tenderness, men who leave their armour at the door, men who let their bodies be soft and powerful at the same time- has changed me. It has changed so many of us. It breaks open all the old conditioned beliefs about what men are allowed to feel, how they are allowed to move, how they are allowed to be in their bodies and with each other. To witness men meet one another in such honesty and connection is something our world needs more of.

5Rhythms needs more teachers who carry this grounded, embodied, emotionally present masculinity.

Alejandro has devoted his life to service. For over fifteen years, he has worked as a community organizer and social arts facilitator, with deep roots in the mental health field and a genuine passion for creating inclusive, meaningful community arts events.

When he is called, he shows up.

He shows up for his work, his projects, his friendships, and the wider networks he is part of. I cannot wait to see how this ripples out once he is holding and facilitating 5Rhythms classes in our growing movement community in Ontario.

5Rhythms is, at its core, a community practice, and part of the heart of community practice is community support.

If we want more diverse teachers, more teachers bringing the richness of their culture, heart, and soul, more emotionally present men holding the dance, then we need to make this pathway accessible.

I’m so grateful to be partnering with Layah Jane, our beloved local 5Rhythms teacher, to help bring this vision to life. Together, we hope to increase the number of trained teachers in our region, improve accessibility, and support the evolution of this practice so it can reach all those who need it.

Our Funding Goals

We have four clear steps we hope to meet:

1. Initial Deposit

4,000 USD is needed by December 26 to secure his place.

2. Travel for Module One

3,000 CAD

3. Tuition Payments

7,000 USD

4. Travel for the Final Module

3,000 CAD

Total Goal: 21,500 CAD

We will keep this page updated as we move through each milestone together.

Why We’re Fundraising

5Rhythms needs more teachers from different cultural backgrounds, different lived experiences, and different stories.

More men who bring emotional presence. More teachers who reflect the full spectrum of humanity that this practice was built for.

Supporting Alejandro is not simply supporting one person’s dream, it is supporting a future lineage of movement, healing, and community care.

For our region - for Toronto, the GTA, and Ontario - supporting Alejandro means:

How You Can Help

-Donate if you can (any amount helps!)

-Share this fundraiser widely on social media, email and directly with your communities

-Write Alejandro a message of encouragement

Every bit truly helps.

Thank you for joining us in this vision of a growing, generous, embodied movement community. Thank you for helping carry this practice into the future in ways that are more inclusive, more accessible, and more rooted in love.

With gratitude,

Simona

A message from Layah:

Dear Community,

It's time for us to come together to blow wind in the sails of Alejandro's ship sailing towards 5Rhythms teacher training!

I am overjoyed that after many years of dedicated practice and devoted presence both on the dance floor and behind the scenes, Alejandro has been invited to join the 2026-2027 5Rhythms Waves teacher training. I have been encouraging him in this direction, and I’m so excited the time has come!

I have had the joy of knowing Alejandro since 2016 when he first attended a workshop I organized. Since then he has become an integral part of my production team, contributing as a team member for three years, before becoming my go-to production assistant and team lead.

In the twenty-five years I have been working in the field of movement and the expressive arts, I have met few people as devoted to the intersection of community, healing, and creativity, as Alejandro is. Whether he is overseeing the physical transformation of a workshop venue into a beautiful and comfortable space for therapeutic processes to unfold, initiating team-building activities for our support crew, or connecting with participants during the course of our workshops, he brings a bright collaborative spirit, open-minded and open-hearted curiosity, and a keen ability to attune with sensitivity to those he is with.

He is a beautifully embodied mover, a generous, grounded, hard-working human, a natural leader, and a loving friend. I’m so grateful for his presence and collaborative support through the years, and I can’t wait to witness and work with the fantastic 5Rhythms teacher I know he will become.

Please join us in helping to send Alejandro to 5Rhythms teacher training!

With big love,

Layah

A message from Alejandro:

It is a very unique position to be in, to ask for help to be funded to go to a training I can not otherwise attend in this moment in my life, even though I have been accepted into it. It feels unique because this dance practice has saved my life. It has allowed me to grow and heal in ways I never imagined. It has given me a tightly knit, supportive community; held me through love and grief, joy and loss; brought me home into my body, and it has brought in close relationships to nature & to land; It continues to shape who I am in relationship with those around me.

At the same time, this training is financially out of reach. The total cost is around $22,000 in a year when I’ve earned less than $15,000—despite this being one of the years I’ve worked the hardest tending relationships, supporting grassroots initiatives I am aligned to, and showing up in full devotion to this community and this practice.

The goal is to become a movement facilitator for deep therapeutic community processes through the 5Rhythms framework. This matters because this body of work has been my community and practice for 13 years. I embody these maps—they are my movement vocabulary.

Alongside Vipassana meditation, this work helped pull me out of addiction and fragile mental health. It helped me move, understand, and release trauma stored in my body. It carried me through diaspora, loss, grief, and burnout. It connected me with community and brought to my life an abundance of joy and love. It has brought many more things not only to me, but I’ve witnessed its impact in the lives of so many friends and community members as well.

And yet, paradoxically, this body of work is not accessible. It is expensive. It has been critiqued for not doing enough to diversify its teachers or make its training more accessible. Like many organizations, it also operates within the limitations and pressures of a for-profit capitalist model.

And still—

I’m deeply grateful that 5Rhythms has survived these difficult economic times, honoured its lineage, and maintained a distinct quality of facilitation grounded in a foundational and transformative methodology. Its maps—through Waves, Heartbeat, and Cycles—have moved me more deeply than any conscious movement practice I’ve explored. I’m thankful that many of the teachers who answered this calling have been able to sustain their livelihoods through this work, and that their devotion has nourished my life for over a decade through weekly practices, monthly workshops, and numerous collaborations.

I’m reaching out now for community support not only to attend this training, but to contribute to a larger vision: strengthening the conscious movement community, and creating pathways for more diverse facilitators—myself and others in the future—to guide communal healing through movement.

This vision is shared with both Layah Jane and Simona Irwin, and it was first given birth by Layah Jane. Layah has been my main mentor, a supportive friend, and a collaborator for many years. Layah holds a beautiful 5 Rhythms community space in Toronto. As a teacher, as a producer and as a community organizer her work is impeccable, moving & inspiring.

A couple of years ago, Layah approached me with her dream of bringing new teachers with diverse cultural backgrounds into Toronto’s conscious dance community to expand, deepen, and evolve the 5Rhythms container. Having noticed my commitment to the practice and the community, she asked me if I would consider going down the teachers path. Since then, I’ve been part of the production crew for nearly every 5Rhythms event in our community, working with full commitment to support and grow this collective practice.

Simona, who is also pursuing teacher training, is someone I deeply admire and hope to collaborate with. Taking this training together would support our shared vision and allow us to co-create meaningful offerings for the community. You can read more about my relationships with these two beautiful dancers on the fundraiser page, and we will offer a podcast with each with our stories and journeys over the next month.

So, yes! as part of my commitment to this fundraising, to make it more accessible to the community of why I am called to making this fundraiser and attempt to bridge the gap for going to this teacher training, I have committed to publish 10 Podcasts over the month of December.

You can listen to beautiful stories of the journeys of individuals in the conscious dance community of how their lives have been deeply impacted by their practice and by this community.

You will be able to find the podcast link for the first podcast at:

www.AlejandrocZuluaga.com the link will appear for December first

Thank you, truly, for your support and for walking this path with me. Feel free to reach out anytime!