Movement culture,and where Amsterdam fits in.

Q: Is Crazy Monkey an Ido Portal gym?

No. Crazy Monkey Practice is part of the wider movement culture but runs its own open-source framework, CMP, with no affiliation or certification.

Q: Do I need to be a mover already?

No. Every daily class scales to your level, from complete beginner to experienced mover.

Q: Where do I start in Amsterdam?

Come to any daily class at Crazy Monkey Practice, Westerstraat 158 in the Jordaan. The introduction offer is the easiest way in.

A quiet, global shift: people leaving single disciplines to study movement itself. Crazy Monkey Practice has been Amsterdam's corner of that culture since 2015 — with its own framework, its own floor, and no gurus.

admit one — no experience requiredtry the introduction offer the full model, in ten minutesread the knowledge

fig. 01 — old science, young culture, one floor in the jordaan.

what it isa culture, not a brand

Movement is
the discipline.

Somewhere in the last two decades, dancers, gymnasts, fighters and lifters started asking the same question: what if we studied movement itself, instead of one style of it? Teachers like Ido Portal made that question famous. Thousands of practitioners around the world made it a culture.

Movement culture has no headquarters and no belts — it lives in studios, garages and parks wherever someone treats moving as a practice. Amsterdam's chapter has a floor in the Jordaan.

Object play during a movement culture session at Crazy Monkey in Amsterdam

the lineage — in thomas's words

Every practice comes from somewhere. This one runs through years inside the movement culture — study, mentorship, and a lot of hours on the floor — before it became something Amsterdam could walk into.

My first five years in movement culture were spent in the work of Ido Portal. I won’t pretend otherwise — that work is our genesis. The base of thinking, the kind of movement problems we still pose: much of it traces back there. But I also sat in enough circles where the teacher sat higher, spoke in words that signaled depth without explaining anything, and where the questions I had stayed in my throat. I didn’t forgive myself for being that quiet man. One mind deciding for everyone — that’s the part of the lineage I left behind.

The better model I’d already lived, underwater. Before Amsterdam, I was a support diver with the Woodville Karst Plain Project — the team that holds the world records in cave diving, kilometers into Wakulla Springs. A hundred divers, zero deaths, in a sport that had buried plenty. Their secret wasn’t a genius leader. It was a shared philosophy anyone could challenge: something goes wrong, the whole team dissects it, the procedure changes, everyone knows why. A system held by a group, open to revision — that’s the only kind of lineage I trust.

CMP is built from both lessons: keep the material, drop the guru. Michael has been the grounding mirror to my connecting mind for years — he’s pulled me back more times than I can count, and the framework is better for every time he did. Embodiment came first; dexterity arrived through Bernstein; synergy came last, through partners and tools. Eleven years of practice, questioning and revision — which is why there are no belts here, no secret initiations, and the framework is written down, versioned and free. And why in our room the uncomfortable question is always welcome. I made myself that promise a long time ago.

— thomas, founder

amsterdam's contributionwhat cmp adds to the culture

Taking the culture,
leaving the guru.

Movement culture gave us the question. CMP is our answer: a structured, teachable framework for training perception through movement — written down, versioned, and open source. Where much of the culture stays deliberately vague, we chose the opposite: define the capacities, name the channels, test it weekly on the floor.

01open source

The framework is free to use, adapt and teach. Ask us for the Overview — we hand it to every practitioner. No certification ladder, no franchise.

02defined, not vague

Three capacities, three sensory channels, one goal: a body that reads situations better. You can disagree with the model — it's written down, so you can actually argue with it.

03daily, since 2015

Not a workshop that visits your city once a year. A floor in the Jordaan with classes every day — the culture as a habit, not an event.

faqasked on the floor

Movement culture, demystified.

Is Crazy Monkey an Ido Portal gym?

No. We're part of the wider movement culture his teaching helped make visible, but CMP is our own framework — open source, no affiliation, no certification. Guides, not gurus.

Do I need to be a “mover” already?

No. The culture can look intimidating on Instagram — handstands, muscle-ups, flowing spins. The daily reality is simpler: people of every level solving movement problems together. Every class scales to you.

How is movement culture different from functional fitness?

Functional fitness borrows movements to get you fit. Movement culture treats movement as the study itself — fitness arrives as a side effect. The difference shows in what you keep: not just capacity, but skill.

Where do I start in Amsterdam?

Come to any daily class at Westerstraat 158 — the introduction offer is the easiest door. Or read The Knowledge first if you want the full model before you sweat.

go deeperthe rest of the practice