Influencer Gregory ‘Gregg’ Martes
Interview September 2022
Gregg, could you share with us some information about your family life?
I was born in Curaçao in Santa Helena. I have 2 brothers and one sister. My parents were always helpful in letting me become the person I am at the moment. I am not married, but I am the father of 6 children, with 2 different mothers. My mother came from Bonaire and my father was from Curaçao. The consequence of this is that I grew up during my infant years partially in Curaçao and partially in Bonaire. At Bonaire, I stayed with my grandmother, great aunt, and aunts.
Could you share something about any other aspect of your educational background and your experiences?
After primary school, I went to the Lower Vocational Technical School (LTS), as I deliberately didn’t pay much attention to the classes at the primary school level and I was fooling around during the classes, as I didn’t want to go the High School (MAVO). At the LTS I would collect all sorts of articles from the newspapers and magazines related to health, as this became my passion later on. I was offered the opportunity to continue my education at the Intermediate Technical School (MTS) but decline this opportunity. After I graduated from the LTS, I followed numerous courses related to Health and I ended up following a course in sports massage and became a body therapist. After that, I followed courses and workshops to gain knowledge to help my fellow human being, based on a holistic approach to the human body.
We know you to be a physical therapist, but you are also very much into the energy work of clients. How did this become your vocation?
When I was 7 years old my interest in Health started as I once saw a picture inside of the ear of a human being. My father used to have a subscription to Readers Digest and this picture triggered my curiosity to continue to explore everything possible related to the human body. I also had a strong interest to talk to elderly people, as I appreciated their stories and wisdom. This made me even more curious in wanting to know more about the health of the body, the harmony between the soul, the connection with the spiritual body based on their tacit knowledge and experiences, and their philosophy. This was not only their wisdom but also the wisdom of our ancestors. In the past, the narrative between the inhabitants of Bonaire and Curaçao were the same more or less. Nowadays lots of topics have become a sort of “Taboo” or people have doubts about the working and effects of certain practices. They have doubts if this works, or they believe that these practices might be connected to doubtful practices.
Your company name is “Prevenshon Real, Balansá Origen”. Could you expand on this, why did you choose this title, what is your focus, is it life skills or do you combine it with mastery of emotions and energy work
My company’s original name “Queens & Kings, Royal Physic,” is how it is registered at the Chamber of Commerce. At the beginning of the business, we were focused on bodybuilding, fitness, and aesthetics. I was a professional personal trainer for some years and helped out in different other gyms for 18 years. Over the years I started to realize that most of us focus on the physical and esthetical parts of the body while the most important part is all we have inside of us. As time passed by, I transformed and evolved into working on people as a total holistic human being. From this vision, I want to help our people to become more conscious. For this originated the following other activities: “Fundashon Prevenshon Real”, a radio program called “Prevenshon Real”, different projects, presentations, courses, workshops, different programs, a newspaper, and magazines.
Prevenshon Real
I choose this name as most people wait till something happens with their health and then go out to see what they can do about it and try to heal it. But if we were more in a prevention mode and acted on time and with, we could have prevented a lot of pain, energy loss, frustration, money, and most of all our health. The programs, tasks, and activities that we offer are aimed to advocate real prevention to guarantee that in the future we will have Health for a generation of more educated and holistic people in every aspect of their lives. The focus is on the evaluation of the human being in the totality of its being. This vision brought me to support the country by giving all that have the time, desire, and interest to learn, how to live more healthily. Based on the 4 pillars of life. How can we achieve or attain a positive balance in our health from a more holistic viewpoint? By doing is we can combine Life skills (abilities), mastery of emotions, and our energies directed towards creating a country with healthy citizens that are balanced in every aspect of their lives. Based on these 4 pillars of life, I have created programs to teach and educate people on the Physical, Mental, Emotional and spiritual connections of the 4 pillars: We have our bodies and certain spiritual functions. Spiritual, as we don’t see them with our human eyes. We can perceive them though, to be able to do this we need to surpass our 5 senses.
Program Prevenshon Real with the theme ‘Balansá punto di orígen‘
This program is now being presented on Radio New Song every Friday from 11.30 am till 1.00 p.m. We empathize with the physical pillar and at times we combine it with the mental, and emotional pillars. Here we teach people about their health. We explain that all diseases have a root cause and we have to find the root cause, and what caused it in the first place before we suggest any therapy, medicines, or operation. We also discuss how emotions affect our health. As we emphasize this I try to emphasize to all that our health is our responsibility. That we need to be very conscious about what we eat, drink, and what we do or don’t do. Even to things we listen to and how we deliberately use our bodies.
Programa Union Sibernétiko
This program we air via Gregg Martes Facebook and YouTube channel. In this program, we focus on mental and emotional parts of relationships between women and men, sexuality but not in depth.
Programa Sensia Spiritual Real
This program airs via Gregg Martes’s Facebook and YouTube channel, and we focus on the spiritual part of us as Human Beings. The mechanism, technology, and fusion between our body and the spiritual parts of our being. Most of us are unaware of this aspect. Or we mixed it up with the maligned parts of its use (witchcraft (bruheria), santeria, sekte, etc).
I deeply regret this, as this is not part of our culture. Our spirituality is not related to religion or culture. It is part of who we are as humans and our existence, that can be of help to help create balance, stability, and evolution in the 4 pillars of our life.
Making use of all the abilities that the Supreme Being has created in our bodies, giving us the freedom of choice. We can be great human beings with all their greatness so that we can experience the greatness we are as human beings.
Programa Lenguahe di intimidat Seksual (to be launched soon).
To be launched soon, we will also start with this new program on Gregg Martes Facebook and YouTube. In this program, we will let all four pillars meet each other. And based on this we will go deeper into every pillar itself related to other human beings, partners, family, and the whole of society. How do we relate and live together in society and what actions do we take that are related to sexuality?
The intention is to help by focusing on information, recommendations, guidance, advice, suggestions, and interactions on sexuality. Also to help re-educate parents and give them guidelines about their adolescent children. All this is because of the big need in our society for more information, the existing ignorance, and how our lives relate to our sexuality is leading to a further deterioration of our country.
Programa Enkuentro real virtual (to be launched soon).
This program will also be launched soon via Gregg Martes’s Facebook and YouTube. In this program, we will talk about adolescents, adults, parents and married couples, families, and the whole society in general.
- Every one of the themes will be dealt with more in-depth.
- The root cause of an action, situation, condition of life, and our health.
- To share and interact with the great public.
- To look for more information and analyze this information. (this will be done on an individual basis and jointly
- This program originates from weekly presentations that I use to give every Thursday some years back at my office and were titled “ Enkuentro Real ”. Now we are going to use social media as an outlet for these presentations its name is adjusted to “ Enkuentro Real Virtual “.
Magazine
The magazine will be “Revista prevenshon Real“. We have published editions 1, 2 and 3 since 2014. Because of some setbacks, I stopped for a while. But soon we will start again with some new editions.
The magazine is small, sizes half of A4, this way we can carry it with us easily. Its main goal is that information on our health reaches every establishment and bario and it will be fully in Papiamentu. I noticed after a while that there was interest from the outside of Curaçao. And we started also to offer this magazine in a digital format.
“Informashon pa prevenshon”
This is another project underway to help inform people and society at large with relevant topics on the health of their lives. We will also address relevant topics that are of interest to our society.
Do you give workshops?
Yes, I give workshops. I have given presentations, courses, and workshops for quite some time now. For most of these courses and workshops, I offer the participants the opportunity to choose the time slots that suit them best. There is a possibility to attend a course or presentation either at 10.00 a.m or 7.00 PM. This facilitates those that work in the morning to attend in the evening and those who work in the evening to attend in the morning. These are the courses that I offer to everybody interested:
A course on metaphysics, detoxification of the body, Discover your self, and many more that I offer in the year. Considering the changes that have taken place in the past years we now also offer some of them online.
It seems that you are often giving interviews to explain your goals to the greater public, what is your BIG WHY or driving motivation to be who you are right now and do what you are doing now?
To be able to live on this planet, we need to learn every aspect of the existence of our lives. This also includes understanding sufficiently the functions and dimensions of our mind. Only those who know how to use their body and mind properly, will survive and live on this planet in a sufficient, acceptable way. With peace of mind, and emotional balance, and as a result of this peace of mind means, sustainable joy. Becoming aware of this and practicing this for quite some years, I feel it to be my responsibility and duty to transfer this knowledge to the people. I want to inspire and grow every human being with my own experiences and evolution. The moment this becomes this human being its own experience, this will become his truth, reality, and experience of his existence.
What are your plans for the coming years, let us say 5 years from now?
- Giving presentations, and information and doing projects in the bario, intending to make our society more conscious of health is our own responsibility. And also to make sure that everyone has access to this information, without taking into account whether they have money or don’t have money;
- Continue to help our people with educational programs and more to support them;
- Give massage courses to participants in the course, sharing the techniques and methods that I have learned to help give instant and permanent relief;
- Further develop my office as a physical therapist, so that we in Curaçao can offer the best service to the whole of our society, tourists, and the whole world.
- Visit India to continue to grow and evolve on a higher spiritual level. This path that when a person chooses to follow is called Seniasi or Brahmacharya.
- This makes it possible to reach the highest level of transformation of a human being. Very few people on earth choose to reach this level. It is not an easy route the follow if you are fighting with yourself, but it does offer the possibility, to gain the highest spiritual knowledge of what life is all about and to end the cycle of suffering as a human being. A lot of people are unaware that this is possible.
- Many are not aware of this and others are convinced that this is not possible. Going to India is because some rituals can only happen in the right environment so that the spiritual can evolve to a higher level. And of all the countries in the world, India is a nation that still follows the process where every human being can overcome their limitations and elevate their consciousness.
What are the challenges that you are dealing with? And how are you dealing with these different challenges you confront?
I have chosen a challenge that I meet every single day when I have a professional session with a client. So many people get the wrong diagnosis, which brings them on a long, painful path with a lot of suffering. The clients use a lot of medicines for a very long time. While, if one can examine and look at the root cause of the disease, this could help lessen or even heal the person in a much faster way. I am not saying that any doctor or anyone else that is involved in healing patients, their work is of no value. I am simply discovering, experiencing this, and being confronted with this very often, as I listen to my clients and patients for years now.
The human body functions in an integral way and our focus can’t simply be on one specific aspect of the physical body. I work mostly with Chinese Medicine which has gained wisdom over 3000 years when there was no access to sophisticated techniques that nowadays are available, but they were still able to do an excellent diagnosis of the patient’s illness and general health.
This was necessary to be able to balance the body and its functions to heal the body.
What I do is I listen to the patient, and I try to gain as much information as possible, to discern its overall condition. This is to be able to recommend nutritional diets, needed supplements, and also therapeutic massages if necessary.
Do you use your inner voice to evaluate when dilemmas show up? How does that work for you?
You know, the more conscious a person becomes of his actions, the more control the person will have over what happens within and outside this person. If this person knows how to deal with and manage his thoughts and emotions, this person will not have a dilemma to deal with in his life. If this person chooses to become more silent and go inside himself, we will discover solutions for everything that happens in our lives. Even more, nothing will be perceived as a dilemma, everything will be perceived as part of life and an opportunity to know more about life and its development in general. It will be able to explore other dimensions and aspects that are related to our lives on this planet. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
How are you trying also to keep up with your knowledge and skill levels?
I keep up with every new development that is related to the 4 pillars of life. On top of this, I have traveled a couple of times and I have visited different countries intending to get to know how they cure and heal the human body, working more with the mind, emotions, and spiritual body. If these three aspects are balanced, the physical body automatically will be in perfect health and balance. I am a follower of Sadhguru. He is a guru that lives in India but he has a center in Tenessee, called Mahima. I have visited this center a couple of times for spiritual retreats, and education on spiritual techniques and rituals. I had the distinct opportunity to attend events and practice what they teach together with Sadhguru.
I am constantly reading and I watch a lot of videos also. On top of that, the greatest lesson that comes to me are during my moments of silence and my daily meditations. This is when I am the most receptive to guidance, assistance, and support from Nature, the Universe, and the Divine. This is what can and connects us all as human beings with Universal knowledge. It can be considered a Celestial internet. Our Divine Internal Consciousness.
What are your strengths?
Peacemaker, joyful, playful, free spirit, idealist, uplifting, inspiring, lively, and compassionate.
Do you have hobbies or interests that you are also passionate about?
I love biking and the roller “boogy”, I love to paint, read, meditate and retreat in Nature and Ashrams. I love making videos and radio programs, writing quotes in “Papiamentu” and I love writing books and articles in magazines.
How would you describe Gregg in one word or one sentence?
To be one with everything, to be in unity, to be in Yoga. The word yoga means being one with everything that exists.
Who are the persons that have inspired you the most in your career?
Every single person that I have met in my life, has inspired me one way or the other. If you pay attention to our interactions with other human beings, boils down to knowledge and wisdom. That is as long as we pay close attention the to way life unfolds. But the one person that has impacted me the most is Sadhguru. A Guru is not considered a human being anymore, as it is a person that has reached such a level of knowledge, and universal wisdom and transmits this to everyone that wishes to receive and accept this knowledge. This is the way to accelerate our evolution and elevate it, to be better able to help “life” and fellow human beings. Some think that I consider Sadhguru to be the Supreme Being, but that is not the case. But he is a real Guru that has reached the highest state of enlightenment. And anyone of us can reach this level as long as we are willing to go through and complete this internal transformative process.
What is a trait that is still a work in progress? I am always joyful.
I am always joyful. This is a trait that we all have as a child, but over time it changes in a lot of us. This is an internal trait, that can manifest itself every moment during the day. We often believe that we human beings need to be serious, with a serious face otherwise this person will not succeed in life. My thoughts and experience are that we don’t need to be “dead” serious about life, life is a game we play. This doesn’t mean that life is unimportant. But it means that we can get engaged in life, without it hurting us and without it creating a disbalance in our being. If we would have the ability to understand that we don’t need to fix everything life throws at us, but instead fix ourselves, being capable of whatever life throws at us we remain calm, happy, and balanced. It is only if we perceive life as being good or bad, creating duality we will suffer and feel anxious. Why do I consider this my trait that is a work in progress? It is not because I assume that one day this will change in me, it is because of my wish that this will change in most of humanity. When we have pain, anger, sadness, etc…and we don’t accept life as it is, it becomes time to look inside instead of looking outside of us.
What was a defining moment in your life?
This was the moment that I came into contact with a very deep Meditation and Yoga. In 2015 a followed the first basic program online on Inner Engineering. This was a course that helps a person at the beginning of their personal growth.
After that, I followed different programs of classical Hata Yoga at USA-Mahima, Isha Institute of Inner Sciences.
I followed:
Upa Yoga. This is an initial program, that doesn’t have a deep connection with the spiritual process. This can be considered sub Yoga.
Bhava Spandana. This is a program that one can attend only once, it connects you make your experience and reason with Life Energy (the drop of water is part of the sea and the sea is also part of the drop of water)
Bhuta Shuddhi. All elements of our existence consist of 5 elements (earth, water, wind, fire, and ether) which include our human body. This is a daily purification of all body elements and practices.
Surya Kriya. This practice activates and balances the solar plexus area of the body. This connects us with our internal sun cycle. This can generate solar energy from within our own. At the same time, it calibrates the physical, physiological, mental, and well-being.
Yogasana. This is a practice that connects and harmonizes our body system with the celestial cycle of our existence. The cosmic cycle and the internal cycle then start to function in total harmony.
Shambhavi Mahamudra Kriya. This is a practice that aligns the 5 elements, maintaining emotional stability. It regulates the heart and breathing rhythm. It also regenerates the brain with scientific proof with 241 % or much more.
Shoonya. This is a meditation that will be used for only 15 minutes, aimed at lowering the metabolism to 16 to 24 % only. This fools the body that it is at sleep and gives you an experience equivalent to 2 to 3 hours of sleep.
Samyama.This is a phenomenon that can be used daily, this is to meditate with the eyes open, all day long during any action one takes
These are the basic explanations of the different practices, they all do much more than that what our logical thinking brain can comprehend. One example is that a person can sit for hours in a meditation where there exists synchronization between existence, without movement, without eating, or feeling thirsty.
The only practice that I still need to go through and that I will go through soon, as my body is reaching an evolutionary state, signaling to me that this needs to be done, is called:
Angamardhana. This is a process for health and well-being. The body becomes more accessible to transmit spiritual energy via our spinal cord, which is the root of our existence. This prepares the human body to receive a dimension and possibility of more elevated energies in our existence.
Getting to know yoga brought about an immense change in my life, because of the discipline this requires that one needs to have to practice them. This is not simply a matter of following the discipline and practice but there is a sequence required related to how the human body functions. All the practices influence, change, adjust and balance out the internal functioning of our body and our deep connection with our existence. There is a difference between what we would call studio yoga and the classical yoga that exists for thousands of years. Most of us are not aware, but the original yoga was practiced for physical and mental benefits for our bodies. It creates a connection between us and the Supreme Being/the Creator. As the Creator is part of us and we are part of the Creator. Every posture (asanas) is used as a keyboard, as a technique and fusion between our body and our spiritual connection. This requires a person to do about 5 hours of daily practice.
Someone might say or think, but Gregg do you have nothing else to do? My day routinely starts at 3:30 AM, at this time there are a lot of people that only now go to bed to sleep. The reason for this is also because, at this hour of the day, there is planetary change taking place, that be helpful for all of us. Like a lot of the elements in Nature and the Cosmos. Starting to do the practices at this hour helps us in our spiritual processes and growth.
My philosophy on this is, that a person needs time to invest in their personal development, transformation, and evolution otherwise their days need some changes very fast. If we are not stable and balanced we can’t be of help and assist our fellow human beings or life sufficiently deep.
What would you want your Loved Ones, family, friends, and others to say about you let’s say 20 years from now?
Gregg made us aware that the whole of existence consists of energy that is manifesting itself in millions of forms and that is constantly evolving in multiple and different ways. I hope that they will say that I have helped every one of them in their mental health, emotional balance, and overall well-being.
What makes you stay optimistic about the future of Curaçao as we are in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, and recession, and in the middle of growing environmental challenges because of the global warming consequences?
I am personally convinced that a human being unconsciously no matter what the circumstances will always look for a change and look to adapt to improve its well-being.
These times of change are a lesson for all those that pay attention so that they can strive to have a better future. Meaning to change and adjust their way of living.
Is there anything else that you would like to add?
It is a pity that a lot of Yu di Kòrsou don’t like reading. Not to generalize but of course not everybody is the same, right?
For this reason, I have developed different information outlets. For example, different videos, so that I can reach certain people from walks of life that don’t have the habit of reading a lot. In this way, they can still have access to valuable information and knowledge that becomes easier access to for them.
More information
Facebook Gregg Martes.
YouTube Channel of Gregg Martes.
One of the 250 Influencers of Curaçao
Gregg Martes, is a sports massage therapist, body therapist, former personal trainer, mentor, coach, and self-educated multi-faceted holistic health practitioner based on the 4 pillars of life important for our health. He is also a writer, and presenter of multiple topics, via different outlets. Gregg during his career migrated from focusing on the body and esthetics to discovering the most important thing in life and that is “to live from the inside out”. As a lifelong learner and someone who continues to aspire to reach higher levels of growth, Gregg has made some remarkable transformations. Gregg’s diversity of initiatives is aimed at educating our people on health and other relevant topics. While at the same time Gregg makes long hours. As he also prioritizes 5 hours of daily spiritual practice as a requirement if he wants to continue his growth via personal development, transformation, and evolution. He believes that this is best served by living like that. He says: “If we are not stable and balanced, we can’t be of help and assist our fellow human beings or life sufficiently deeply”.
For all these reasons, we consider Gregg to stand out and we consider him one of the 250 influencers of the island, representing the “Integral Health”-sector. Look at the list of the Influencers we have interviewed or reported on, up to now.
The goal of the core group of Share2Uplift for 2022
The goal of the Share2Uplift movement is to: “Identify 250 leaders from all walks of life to connect, align and create impactful changes in all walks of life, which includes intergenerational collaboration by the end of 2022.” We will use interviewing Influencers, meet-and-greet events, “train-the-trainers”-programs on “Emotional Mastery” and “Intentionality “as national intervention strategies, to reach this goal on top of our goal to scale up the possibilities to connect, align and create impact via a virtual platform. We believe that by collaborating with Miguel Goede on the virtual Vision 2030 platform, we will accelerate the possibilities to connect the diaspora and others elsewhere in the world and on the island willing to constructively create impactful changes in Curaçao, to join.
As Share2Uplift, we are fully trying to align with this thinking of Center for Curriculum Redesign to promote this agenda in our educational systems and workplace. So, in that sense, we fully support any initiative to make our educational system 21st-century proof.
Share2Uplift aligners are those that:
– Create an inspiring vision of the future;
– Motivate and inspire people to engage with that vision;
– Manage the delivery of the vision;
– Coach and build a team, so that it is more effective at achieving the vision. These criteria are now being polished.
We also consider these 5 values the most important ones for Share2Uplift aligners. They are:
• Peace from within;
• Compassion;
• Respectfulness;
• Integrity;
• Responsibility.
As we will progress towards this goal, we will update you on the progress.
In this week’s personal tips, we will share some short videos on “Spiritual teachings of Abraham Hicks and Sadhguru”. We will upload one of these videos every day on our facebook.com/share2uplift page.
For the parents, teachers and mentors out there ❤️💗 #abrahamhicks #spiritualteaching #spiritualtiktok #beyourself #loveinyourheart #fypシ
Abraham Hicks 2022🎇 The short bersion of matching your vibrational abundance🎇 – YouTube
Don’t Ever Work Hard! | Sadhguru #shorts – YouTube
Say YES to Life! | Sadhguru #shorts #sadhguru – YouTube
How to Remove Negative Thoughts? Sadhguru Answers – YouTube
Worried or Anxious? Remember These 4 Things | Sadhguru – YouTube