“You are so slow. You are a very lazy man.”
Not the first thing you want to hear when you start practicing Ashtanga but this isn’t customer service. A good teacher is going to tell you what you need to hear. Not necessarily what you want to.
Then the choice is yours. What do you do next?
I met Lucas this season and talked with him about his first days starting Ashtanga in Mysore and how it has changed to where he is now.
At times we might see someone doing advanced asanas and think their practice has always been that way.
The reality is that once they were a beginner and struggled.
Once they may have had an injury and learned how to handle it.
Once they had no motivation and almost quit
But they didn't and now they have a story to tell…….
Lucas Carvalho:
I didn't like this thing at all. I just practiced like twice a week, once a week. Even this, I didn't understand these practices are physical, only to the body. I thought that practice don't go inside you, your mind. When I met Sharath, I already knew I find my guru. I find my teacher.
There are such practices six days a week. The first month was really painful. Oh, my gosh. Every day, I wake up like, "Ah." This practice is very hard. I have to do it today again. Oh, my gosh. Then I'm so lazy, and my practice was really slow, really. I need extra breath to be able to do some asanas. And so Sharath came to me and said that, "You are so slow. You are a very lazy man."
But I had the support of of a good teacher. I met her here in Mysore, Dany Sá. She's from Brazil. Now she's a private teacher. I start to improve more and more on my practice. The second month, maybe it will start to be better. My knee injury is gone. When I went back to Brazil, I started to practice six days a week. So only two years, I've practiced six days a week.
The amazing thing for me was after my first Mysore class here with Sharath this season, when I finished my practice and on the way to the changing room, he looked at me. He smiled, and he said, "You're fast now."
My life changed with this practice. My mind changed. My body changed. Everything changed. My relationships changed with my friends, with my parents. Everything changed in my life. I am very grateful and grant devotion with this practice.
For me, Ashtanga yoga is about love. When you start to not think more about the sequence, you start to be able to be more focused on your practice, in your breath, in your Drishti. Then you start to see your mind more clearly.
The practice shows you like a mirror. When you start to practice, you can see you're in a mirror, and you can see, "Oh, this is me." What do I have to do with this? What do you see, what this practice show you? This mirror is not beautiful. This practice is about changing ourselves to be better persons.
Part 2 with Lucas coming next week. Til then, you can learn more about him by checking out his Instagram account @lucasclp.
Please "like" this post if you found it useful.
Keep practicing,
Clint