We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joshua Estrada. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joshua below.

Joshua, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Thank you for the opportunity to share! Let’s begin with this…

I began break dancing in 6th grade, I was always a rambunctious kid jumping off the walls and climbing trees so learning this high intensity style of dance fit right into my evolving persona. As I became 20 years of age, I decided that I wanted to take this dance more seriously and trained relentlessly with my first dance crew, Ruckus. At 24 I started to see results from all my training and began to win competitions in my home state of California. Being 35 now I’m honored to be a part of the world-famous break-dancing crew, Style Elements Crew.

In tandem to my dance journey, I was simultaneously expanding into meditativeness and diving into understanding my mental and emotional structure as a human being. In my early 20’s I began meditating for hours a day for many months. Reading material and diving into videos that was shining light on how our early years in life carve out your “programs” and patterns of how you function as an adult. All of your nasty sides of your personality and all the amazing things and quirks that make each person who they are.

At 32 years old I finally got a grip on my mental and emotional structure and am now proud to say I have lived 3 years without any single thought of fear, anxiety, or any mental turbulence. My emotions are healthy, happy and pure consistently. For this, I am very thankful to my meditative journey.

Speeding up to now as a 35-year-old I am happy to embark on a new journey being business partners with my wife, Melissa Adao! Melissa has been teaching for over 20 years at community colleges as a dance professor in Southern California. With the extensive knowledge and understanding she has gained as a dance professional we have joined forces and created our online dance program, The Confident Dancers!

In our 6-week program we are offering all the dance training necessary to become confident, but also combining elements of healing mental perceptions to improve how we see ourselves. Dance is just an extension of how we feel inside about ourselves, so part of the curriculum is focused on elements of identifying outdated belief systems. Then giving you tools and insight to exchange them more uplifting and powerful ones.

Our goal for our business to is help people feel confident ON and OFF the dance floor!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I would love to focus on how proud Melissa, and I are for creating a vehicle for people to feel like a more expanded self. So often Melissa has heard in her classes at the colleges how her students would continuously come back to her classes. Feelings of gratitude for helping them out of a depressed state, learning how to be confident on the dance floor which then translated into them feeling confident off the dance floor. Being able to be a part of a community and making new friends within her classrooms and students pursuing dance further and even becoming dance professionals as Melissa has hired some of her students to work at the San Diego Safari Park as Melissa was the dance entertainment director.

Combining all these elements in an online platform makes these experiences more accessible to people not just in Southern California, but the world!

I am appreciative to my meditative journey as it has helped me heal and create a positive and healthy life every day I live. I am proud to have incorporated the tools and insights that helped me heal as “mindset lessons” within our program. We want to focus on the root cause of why people feel “shy” on the dance floor or if someone feels “anxiety” as well as anyone who may have “fears” of looking awkward.

We want to empower people to feel themselves as much as possible and dance is just the platform for people to experience themselves in this expanded way.

Melissa and I often talk about sharing how we get to experience life every day and only wish the highest possible outcome for everyone we encounter! As life isn’t dictated by how many things you own or have but how you feel at this very moment.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I love this question! I know just the experience.

I used to own a wire wrapped handmade crystal jewelry business before I transitioned into The Confident Dancers. As a street vendor I would encounter all types of people who would come and check out what I had to offer.

One day I had a group of teenagers who came up to my booth and very rudely looked at my crystals and looked at me and said “this ain’t real” to which I began to try and defend my position by explaining about frequency and how all things emit a frequency and the human body can sense and feel these vibrations. Halfway through my explaining the look on one of the kids face was that of total BS and disinterest.

I remember when I got home, I told my wife about my encounter and as I was explaining it to her. I realized I let those kids pull me out of my own emotions and thoughts. I fell victim to their comments and allowed it to control my mental and emotional state, which was me trying to defend my position. This brought me the awareness that I was still letting people outside of me dictate how I feel inside, and I wasn’t in control of my own thoughts and emotions.

I vowed that day that I would never let anyone control how I feel inside and I would always be in charge of how I feel and think. To this day I have had experiences where people have said “disturbing” things to me but because I know in my truth that I am not what ever the person is saying I do not take “ownership” to what ever was being said. Leaving me untouched. 3 years of this practice has given me the power to take on seemingly hard “challenges” with ease because I continue to choose how I feel and think at every moment and I am not at the whim of what life may throw at me.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Another excellent question!

Of the countless lessons I had to unlearn, this is the one I’ll choose.

The idea that life is suffering and that you need to suffer in order to learn and grow.

I’ve always heard that “life is hard” but does it have to be?

One quote that always stuck with me, I wish I remember who said it but it goes..

“Life doesn’t suck, your thinking does”.

It was this moment that I realized we don’t suffer, we create “suffering” in our mind and suffer our own mental projection.

The example I like to use is the spider. For one person a spider could crawl by and go, oh! look a spider, let’s take it outside”. And for another person someone could scream in fear by the sight of a spider. It’s the same spider but two absolutely different experiences. This illustrates that choosing a healthy perception will directly determine how your experience of life will be. By upgrading my through processes and awareness I relearned how to choose a perception that keeps me in a healthy state of being, which in turned improved all areas of my life almost overnight.

Contact Info:

• Website: the-confident-dancers.passion.io
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theconfidentdancers/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theconfidentdancers
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-adao-19b9552aa/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiJ2UMtf2Z7Ro0L6UtoB2OQ

Image Credits
@n.yuzon