Tensegrity® practice is the name given to the modern version of the Magical Passes® and the fluid and energetically efficient way of being—the path with heart—that don Juan Matus taught his students: Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar and Carol Tiggs.

Don Juan was a Yaqui Indian from Yuma, Arizona, and Sonora, Mexico, and the heir to a lineage of seers that originates in Mexico of ancient times, and whose goal and purpose was freedom of perception—freedom to perceive what quantum physics now recognizes as the essential nature of the universe: a universe of energy, which according to those Mexican seers, is organized by a force of intelligence called intent.

A vital tool for those seers were their magical passes: positions and movements of body and breath which the early seers of their lineage dreamt and stalked thousands of years ago. Breathing into these dreamt positions and movements allows the practitioner a simple and accessible means to boost his or her well-being by redirecting and restoring the flow of his or her natural energy—bringing the ability to be present to experience, rather than caught in thoughts and emotions—and a breath pattern—of the past. Such a state of presence brings the energy and focus to recapitulate, or review one’s life, and learn from one’s experience, allowing for a new connection with others, oneself, the earth, and the life of the earth (seen and unseen), as well as the planets and stars; and new choices in the way one uses one’s attention and energy in daily life.

Carlos Castaneda borrowed the word tensegrity from the architect, scientist, navigator, innovator and visionary, R. Buckminster Fuller, whose perception of energy led him to observe a principle of fluid interconnectivity in nature which he called “tensegrity,” a combination of tensional integrity, which describes the forces at work in a structure that is formed by a finite network of compression, or rigid elements interconnected through tensile, or elastic elements which give the structure its overall integrity. Due to this elastic property of interconnections, when one element of the tensegrity structure shifts, all the other elements shift as well, or adapt for a new configuration, yielding without breaking.

Fuller pointed to that essential supporter of life on earth, the tree, as a wonderful example of a tensegrity structure in nature. Arising from a seed, water, earth, air and sunlight, a tree grows into an efficient tensegrity structure with water and gases moving inside, allowing it to be both flexible and incredibly resilient, as it sways and adapts to shifting winds and earth, and lifts minerals—bits of stardust—and water from earth to sky.¹

Carlos Castaneda found this process, tensegrity, to be a perfect energetic description of the modern practice of don Juan’s teachings:

In the case of the magical passes, Tensegrity® practice refers to the interplay of tensing and relaxing the tendons and muscles, and their energetic counterparts, in a way that enhances the overall integrity of the body as a physical and an energetic unit, and promotes a conscious awareness of how all the parts of our being—tendon, muscle, bone, nervous systems, organs, etc. work together, integrated by a healthy flow of energy.

In the case of daily life, Carlos Castaneda said, Tensegrity® practice is an art: the art of adapting to the vibration, availability and movement of one's own energy, and that of each other, in a way that contributes to the integrity of the community that we are.

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