Patrick Oancia was born in Hong Kong when his father, David Oancia (award-winning journalist), served as the only North American non-communist correspondent in China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Patrick was raised in Spain and Canada and was based in Tokyo from 1989 to 2020.
Patrick’s background as a singer, songwriter, and guitarist spans back to the 1980s. From 1986 to 1988, he took over Anthony Mark’s role as the lead vocalist of S.C.U.M. In 1989, he moved to Tokyo and became the frontman for the Tokyo-based thrash metal band Ash To Ashs. Later, he formed the progressive-alternative power rock trio Death Comes Spring as co-songwriter, singer, and guitarist.
During the 90s and early 2000s, he DJ’d acid house, techno, downtempo, and electronica during the rise of electronic music in Japan. He founded Para Impacto, launching various projects in Tokyo that focused on subculture, the creative arts, and education.
Patrick’s athletic background includes skateboarding, snowboarding, competitive cycling, and competitive swimming. Since the late 80s, he has been engaged in martial arts, yoga, and meditation, all the while continuously pursuing his passion for practicing different movement disciplines.
In 2003, he established the YogaJaya and JayaDojo multidisciplinary movement studios in Tokyo. Over the span of two decades, the studios’ had an attendance of over half a million students and conducted more than 40,000 teaching hours across various educational offerings.
The studios were renowned for their exceptional teaching standards and groundbreaking programs. With the Tokyo studio projects, Patrick consistently adopted a thought-provoking stance to address the dilution of Eastern practices and philosophy caused by the expansion of the health, wellness, and fitness industries. This vision served as an underlying objective to clarify the goals of these projects.
With over 20 years of experience in the health and fitness industry, teaching movement practices and having had realizations from commitment to developing skills across the domains of athletics, the creative arts, entrepreneurship, and contemplative practice, he focused on improving the efficacy and standardizing the delivery of his movement education method across his entire teaching body. This led to the creation of the Baseworks Method.
As a comprehensive body-conditioning approach, Baseworks facilitates improvements in multiple dimensions of Physical Intelligence and provides accessible benefits analogous to those typically only achievable through years of dedicated practice.
Patrick continuously refines the method’s curriculum, conducts seminars globally, and collaborates with artists, designers, scientists, movement practitioners, and educators to bridge the gap between movement education and cutting-edge research findings, as well as to conceptualize and describe possibilities and cross-relations between physical movement training, creativity, intention, and thinking.
As a part of his life work in Baseworks and beyond, he believes in embracing technological advancements. He envisions a future where education and collaboration transcend boundaries, incorporating the concepts of the cognifying, flowing, screening, accessing, sharing, filtering, and remixing of ideas.
Patrick is currently based in Montreal, Canada.
