Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast #79 – Ancestral Yoga – Yoga in Guatemala with Chacal Lobos

Welcome to Episode #79 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! This week, I welcome Chacal Lobos onto the show. My conversation with Chacal Lobos, a yoga teacher from Guatemala, was gorgeous. We took a swan dive into the ancestral and spiritual understanding of yoga as a discipline. Not as an art. Not as a science. As a discipline. I hope this conversation made you consider things differently, with Carlos’ sharing of stories, parables, and myths.

If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about yoga as a rebellious act, a revolution, a way to follow your own path INWARDS, then this is the conversation for you.

Tell me more about Chacal Lobos

Chacal Lobos, who goes by Carlos, is the co-founder of Tribu Ashtanga in Guatemala with his partner Elena. Gratitude is at the heart of all that Carlos does. Tribu Ashtanga holds yoga teacher trainings and yoga intensives. He teaches in San Marcos La Laguna.

What to expect in the Yoga In Guatemala episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast

Chacal Lobos is a storyteller. Specifically, he shared two beautiful parables with us, one of the first female monk and another of children rowing a boat during the nighttime. Carlos is a storyteller— and someone who got me to tell a story of my own on the show.

Carlos is passionate about the ancestral practices of yoga, and of Guatemala. He shared with us how immensely beautiful his culture’s ancient practices are — and how the day that we recorded, was actually a special day for such a conversation to take place. Every day has a different energy, according to the Mayan calendars, so he told us about how he lives his life connected with that path and with daily rituals of Mayan Cosmology, connecting with the ancestral and the divine.

Carlos conveyed that, ancestral practices never die. By practicing yourself, you help it to never die. As Carlos says, “Yoga has an essence and we are just translators.”

Carlos views yoga not as a science, not as an art, but as a discipline. While this word may carry certain connotations, Chacal shared with us the root is discs, which means the openness to learn.” Tribu Ashtanga is a community that is both “open and empty” to follow the path of ashtanga yoga.

Favorite Quote From Chacal Lobos

“I feel that every person that is in the yoga practice has a rebel heart. Because mostly society is like teaching us to look outside. For the people who are in this, like you, they made the decision to look inside instead of looking outside as a rebel act. I think we’re in the same line.”

Connect with Chacal Lobos

tribuashtanga.com

https://www.instagram.com/tribuashtanga/

https://www.instagram.com/chacal111/

Support the podcast:

https://www.patreon.com/wildyogatribe

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https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/

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Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast  Episode #79 – Yoga in Guatemala with Chacal Lobos Transcription

[00:00:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Namaste family and welcome back to the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. Today, I am so excited to be joined by Chacal Lobos. He’s a yoga teacher who also does go by Carlos, so if you hear me call him Carlos throughout the show, it’s one of his names: Chacal or Carlos. So he’s the co-founder of the Tribu Ashtanga yoga teacher training center and yoga intensive center, which is in Guatemala.

So, I am so excited to talk more about Carlos because he is not someone who wanted me to read too much of a bio. He did not want me to give too much of a background for you all. He wants to be the one to express himself, who he is, and what his journey with yoga has been like. So, thank you, Chacal, for being with me today.

[00:00:47] Chacal Lobos: Thank you, Lily. Thanks for having this really cool space now to talk about this beautiful discipline. I’m really excited. This is also really new for me. Thanks for the opportunity to talk from here, from Guatemala. Thank you.

What’s in a name?

[00:01:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, I’m so excited! And Chacal just for starters, tell us about your name, why do you go by Carlos and Chacal?

[00:01:07] Chacal Lobos: The name that my parents gave to me is Carlos. No, because the name of my father is Carlos and the name of his father is Carlos. I don’t know why this usually happens cause, I feel like it’s like taking things that they had with their past, so I think that with our past we have enough to carry more than the things [00:01:30] of our parents and the grandparents. So, I like this name. One of my friends referred to me once like that, and then I like that. I feel really more free, and more identified with a wild animal, that with a name that has been for decades with the family. It’s like changing the way I live now with another name.

[00:01:55] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, so Chacal means jackal, and right, that… the wild animal, that’s like a dog and a cat?

[00:02:01] Chacal Lobos: Yeah, dog and, and a wolf, like it’s wild. It’s cool that you call me like that because just in this case, you and my close friends.

[00:02:11] Lily Allen-Duenas: I love it.

[00:02:12] Chacal Lobos: yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:13] Lily Allen-Duenas: Great. And so, Chacal, how did yoga first come into your life? Like how did you even hear about yoga? Do you remember how that came to you?

How did yoga first come into your life?

[00:02:24] Chacal Lobos: I’m gonna explain this with a small story. I love stories. So there’s a story of a woman. She was called Radiksha, and she wanted to turn into a Buddhist monk. But by these times, for the society, it was not allowed that a woman turn into a Buddhist monk.

So she didn’t care. No. So she shaved the hair and she joined a group of monks that they were traveling from South India to North India. Her dream was coming true. She was really excited to make this trip.[00:03:00] So when she arrived to North India to rest for a few days. Before they keep going. The PE nation, the leader of the monks, said, “No, search for a place to sleep. We are gonna rest in this village.”

So, everybody start to knock the doors. And for all the monks was super easy to catch a place to sleep because they were considering saint men. So people opened the door for them, release for all of them. But there was one monk that didn’t get a bed. That one was Radiksha because nobody wanted a woman monk sleeping in their house because for the old beliefs and the wrong beliefs they had.

So Radiksha said, okay, “Somebody want me to sleep in their house. I’m gonna search for a place to sleep.” So she lay down by the side of a tree. She fall asleep. At 6:00 AM in the morning of the next day, the race of the light woke up Radiksha. And when she opened the eyes something really incredible happened. She saw this tree full of fruit and colorful.

It was the most beautiful picture she ever saw. So, she got enlighted, because of this amazing moment. So the first thing that she made after getting Enlighted, she put her knees in the front of the tree and she said, “Thanks to the tree for giving me this moment of enlightenment.” [00:04:30] And then she put her knees in the direction of the town that closed the doors to her to give thanks to them because they closed the doors to her.

She could lay down on the tree and got enlightenment. So, I think that this came from an act of a rebel soul, of doing something against the rules. That’s more or less what happened with me. I born in a really Catholic traditional family; they want me to always go to the church on Sunday. I was not able to look my favorite soccer, him playing on Sundays. I need to go to the church. At some point, I felt that I was angry with God because I was not happy with what I was doing. I start to, to search for other path. I quit college and everything when I start to found the philosophy of yoga. First I found the philosophy and then the practice, and then yeah, and then I made this act of revolution to that I don’t want to do the same thing.

And then my parents, they start to see small changes in my life, in my way of living. So, they accepted, and now they also like the practice. This is how, how it came to me now, some closest doors [00:06:00] in other place. So, I need to find my way. And then I saw light there, and then I could not escape.

No, it catch me. So that’s resume. I hope it answers the question.

[00:06:13] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, that’s a beautiful story. First, the one that you shared with a female monk, Radiksha, I think was her name. And also your story just about how you felt like you had this rebellious heart and you followed exactly what was calling to you. That takes such bravery, you know, to shake off expectations from family, from friends, from community, and to have that willingness to reshape your path and reshape also how you are and who you are and what you’re embodying.

Yoga is a rebellious act

[00:06:44] Chacal Lobos: Yeah. I feel that every person that is in the yoga practice has a rebel heart. Cause mostly the society is like teaching us to look outside. For the people who is in this, like you, is they made the decision to, to look inside instead of looking outside as a rebel act. I think we’re in the same line.

[00:07:07] Lily Allen-Duenas: I think so. I hope so. Yes. And it is, you’re right, revolutionary to not look outside for gratification, for material things, for approval from others. I’m not perfect by any means, but I feel like my journey, my path is inwards. It is trying to understand myself better, to understand my [00:07:30] habits, my formations, my patterns of my mind, and how can I soften and surrender.

What else can I let go of from my ego or from what I’m craving or what I’m facing aversion to? And I’ve had someone ask me before, “Are you done yet? Or, are you ever gonna be done doing this work?’ And I don’t think so. Maybe, but one day, but I’m not done yet. Not close.

[00:07:56] Chacal Lobos: Exactly, right.

[00:07:58] Lily Allen-Duenas: So Carlos, something I would like to talk to you about too though, is the importance of traditional practices in yoga. I know we’re talking about being rebellious, but I know that the traditional practices is something you’re very passionate about.

The importance of traditional practices in yoga

[00:08:13] Chacal Lobos: You see. I feel uh, that in the tradition is where you find freedom, no? I love the word traditional because comes from traditia. That means give without changing, to respect a lot this thing that, that you discover and it came to you and you have so much respect for it that you just want to share it in the same way and with the same devotion that someone shared it to you.

And this ancestral practice, yoga and Ashtanga yoga. I feel they have something really magical. Like everything, but because they never die. The time passes. The time goes, [00:09:00] and they never die. They are still alive. So I think that, When you start to practice a traditional style or an ancestral practice, you are really part of it. Cause you are helping to keep it alive. They have their essence, and we are just like the translators. It’s I feel that the traditional practices, they don’t have like projections of a creator because it’s like the yoga practice. No, we know maybe that it comes from India for sure, but we don’t know who really created it. That is super beautiful because then there are no projections in it and it allows you to discover yourself. So that’s why I believe a lot in them.

[00:09:49] Lily Allen-Duenas: Beautiful. Yeah. I love how you said that there’s this essence to yoga, and we’re just the translators. Wow. 

[00:09:57] Chacal Lobos: It’s a full, big gift or big gift carries is a big responsibility. 

[00:10:03] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. And I know there’s so many yoga teachers, in the last, we’ll say a hundred years, who have come up with their own styles of yoga. They’ve developed their own sequences or own methods and how do you feel about those people who maybe even name that type of yoga after themselves?

How do you feel about yoga teachers who create their own yoga styles? 

[00:10:22] Chacal Lobos: I have a teacher who is one of my guides. And when I always ask him like how it should [00:10:30] be a practice, how not. He always surprise me saying, “It depends.” So I feel that depend [on] what you are searching for is the style that you are gonna go in. So maybe, these people who created their own style, is for a certain group of people that they will find something there.

At least,  I think like, at least a beautiful thing that can give to you is compromise with something, compromise and discipline with something. So I remember another teacher telling to me, who was teaching in the gymnastics in the beginning, no, when there was not too much opening for the yoga studios for me. 

It was hard to talk about philosophy. They were searching for more physical pushing zone, and told me even if you just teach them some asanas, something inside of them is gonna change. Even if they don’t listen about the traditional world and all of this, pure asanas they have their own magic also. So, I feel that everything made with honesty and, like that it, it would make something positive in like a knife, with the knife that maybe someone created.

Will you decide to cook or to kill? No. So yeah. The same with this new style, [00:12:00] this style is created by someone. They can be used for both. 

[00:12:04] Lily Allen-Duenas: You gave me some good food for thought. I like that. That relating these new styles of yoga to knives that can either cook or can kill to these tools. And it depends on what you know, how they’re being used, and also the intention of the teacher. I know that’s. That’s a huge thing we should address and talk about and everyone should think about, is what’s the intention of that yoga teacher to create that?

Where is it coming from and how is it honoring also what’s a certain population needs, responding to serving certain people as you said. But something so interesting about you Chacal and I love it and I love my listeners to hear your thoughts too is, you, I know don’t like to share how long you’ve been practicing yoga or where you got trained in yoga.

You think that is something that isn’t important to you to share with others. So, could I hear your thoughts on that so we could share it with our listeners?

Why do you not like to share how long you’ve been practicing yoga or where you got trained in yoga?

[00:12:59] Chacal Lobos: Of course. It’s okay if I explain it to you with another small story?

[00:13:04] Lily Allen-Duenas: It would make me very happy. Please do.

[00:13:07] Chacal Lobos: Okay. Okay. So this stories really cool because when, if any, listener, anytime you want to visit in this in Guatemala, I live here in the Lake Atitlan. It’s a beautiful lake. Really magic. And this story is about three children that they want to cross the lake [00:13:30] by boat, but they are children, so their parents will not allow them to cross.

 They escape from their houses and like that. And at night they go in the boat and they start to paddle in the darkness. Start to paddle. Paddle. So the first children get tired and gives the paddle to the other one and keeps going, nothing’s working. They are rotating like this to cross the lake during all the night. So where do you think when it was the sunrise, where do you think that, where they arrived?

[00:14:06] Lily Allen-Duenas: They finally arrived there. They got it?

[00:14:08] Chacal Lobos: That, that will be great. But no. They were in the same place because they never unlocked the rope.

[00:14:17] Lily Allen-Duenas: They never untied their boat, so they just were paddling in place.

[00:14:21] Chacal Lobos: Exactly.

[00:14:22] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yep.

[00:14:25] Chacal Lobos: So, I feel that sometimes that can happen with those and the time. Know that maybe you can be with the yoga practice or with everything paddling for one year, two years, three years, 5, 10, 15. But your boat is in the same place. So the most important is to open, not to hold on tight to the rope. So then the boat can naturally works in the lake, even without paddling, just with the nature of the wind.

So I feel the same. sometimes comes [00:15:00] student to the class, see I come to the class Ashtanga and now I’ve been practicing for 10 years. That does not matter for me. The thing that matters in the practice, even if it’s a person that is the first class, is that someone who knows to listen, to wait for the counting to don’t move before the counting. To look to the correct dristis what you say. And they remember. So for me, that’s that they don’t have the rope in their boats. So the boat can fluid finds the yoga, the real yoga. So, that’s more or less what I think about when someone ask me how much time I think I’ve been practicing or teaching, also my way of teaching changed every time.

Oh, I’m sure that, and I think also the same for you, that the way you used to teach like maybe one year ago, it’s really different that the way you teach now. And it’ll be different next year because we change and also the way we teach. So we are not the same persons. So that’s more my focus into that.

 How spending time on the path matters, or doesn’t!

[00:16:16] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, it can be so easy to get lost and caught up, or proud or, drive the numbers first of, I should be good, I’m a good practitioner because I’ve been doing it for 10 years. Now that’s a lot of ego. [00:16:30] And I know there’s a story of these monks, these female monks called nuns and in a Buddhist temple. 

And there was one nun and she was old and she’d been there for years and she thought highly of herself and the other nuns knew this. And so they rang a bell very loudly every morning, very close to where she was meditating on purpose, because she would react so negatively.

Like she would, get out of meditation and start yelling at them. But she still at the same time felt she was so far along the path. And what a beautiful reminder that you can meditate for 10 hours a day. You can be living in a monastery for 20, 30 years, but that doesn’t mean that you have reached anything farther than someone who has just started two months ago.

It’s not about that time spent, it’s about how you spend that time and how much you can let go of the ego and be non-reactive and instead allow everything to be as it is as it arises. Can you be more patient or gentle, compassionate for yourself and others? You know? The list goes on and on.

But I like that story myself. It’s a good reminder.

[00:17:45] Chacal Lobos: Yeah, I love it as well. I really like it.

Tell us about Tribu Ashtanga

[00:17:49] Lily Allen-Duenas: Carlos too. I would love to hear about Tribu Ashtanga. I know that you founded it with your wife, so I know that it’s so special to get to talk to someone whose partner is [00:18:00] a yoga teacher and their partner is on this path as well, of spiritual wholeness and wellness and growth and self-awareness. So could you talk to us about Tribu Ashtanga, what it is, and where it is, and everything about it? And then also I’d love to hear more about your journey with your wife and what that’s like to have a partner on the path.

[00:18:22] Chacal Lobos: Of course. For sure, bueno. So, first of all, um, is inside community where we follow the traditional teachings, and really sacred for us. Like I will say, like one of the basis of the school is like the first sutra in the yoga sutras of Patanjali says: Atha yoganusasanam and it says the discipline of yoga starts now also. Patanjali describes the yoga practice, not as a science, not as a philosophy, not as an art. He describes it as a discipline. And I love the word discipline because I used to thought, I used to thought that it was discipline was like a soldier, not like super like this. But then I found that it comes from the same root of disciple and discipline come from, discis the word, this is that openness to learn. So this is what we follow now in, in Tribu Ashtanga. [00:19:30] We’re a community. We are there completely open and empty to follow the teachings of Ashtanga Yoga. Step by step and trying to every person use this discipline to be able to find themselves, to find a moment of peace, and to tell everyone that everyone can practice this discipline.

Like this famous photo of ashtanga, everybody can practice healthy people, sick people, young people, and old people, but there’s one group that cannot practice: that is lazy people. So we give the welcome to everyone to, to Tribu Ashtanga. We make courses or intensive courses of Ashtanga courses of adjustments, courses of teaching.

We love the adjustments was the main purpose of adjustment is healing, healing the body of the people. So we believe that all the things they have hands, and if we have hands, they should be made for helping the others. So if you come to Tribu Ashtanga, we believe that you can have your own practice and at some moment when you feel responsible to share, also to empower the people to share the practice with others and feel powerful with it. 

The name Tribu is because me and [00:21:00] Elena, my partner, we like a lot of things from the air. We like the fire, know the mascal, the Mayan practices. So all the things from the roots I maybe can describe quote from the guru, the beautiful guru: Amma.

She says that the spiritual path is not going more beyond the spiritual path, the spiritual path is going back to our roots. That’s what we try with Tribu Ashtanga. With the practice, each of themselves find their path, but with our help, try to bring them to the old and ancestral practices that make us one with the mother nature. And to live more happy and more healthy and more simple.

So that’s what we try to share with the school with courses. Why now we don’t have a main, like a center, it’s like in different centers around the lake. We give these courses and for sure we are open to, to always travel to other place and to share this and to share the roots to share the tribe?

No, the Tribu. It’s a bit similar, like the name of your podcast, like this Wild.

Amma’s Ashram and Carlos’ Guru 

[00:22:26] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yes. Yeah. We both have tribe, the Tribu, the tribe. [00:22:30] Beautiful. And also Carlos, it’s, I haven’t mentioned this to you before we started recording, so it’s new for all of our listeners. They get to hear it on the reaction live. I also have been to the South India to Ammas Ashram. I spent a month there in Kerala with her a couple years ago.

[00:22:50] Chacal Lobos: Amazing.

[00:22:51] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. Have you gotten to meet her in person? 

[00:22:54] Chacal Lobos: Yeah. Yeah. I also met her. It was probably the most beautiful experience of my life to meet her.

The yoga classes sometimes I, I bring a frame of her. People ask, “Is she your Ashtanga teacher?” Amma, she don’t practice Ashtanga. She’s the most devotional being I ever met because she’s hugging people from 12 to 12 without complaining. So, I tell if she can do that, you can practice Ashtanga for two hours.

What is it like having a guru?

[00:23:32] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, I like that. That’s beautiful. It’s special too because maybe some of our listeners don’t have a guru or have never met one of these, highly enlightened, realized supposed reincarnations of Vishnu. That’s for Amma. For our listeners who maybe don’t have a connection with the guru themselves, can you tell our listeners, how did you connect with Amma? How did you find Amma? Just a little bit more about your experience with having a [00:24:00] guru.

[00:24:01] Chacal Lobos: Before I answer to you, it’s so beautiful that someone like you ask a lot of questions. It happens maybe just with my close friends or with my partner, that that you are able not to express your experiences. So first, thank you very much to, to make remember these things, and to have a space to, to listen to people is really special.

And I was… I had my teacher here in Guatemala City. Her name is Vicky Mejia, an amazing yoga teacher, and she introduced me to the practice of Ashtanga. She’s like a more… she’s not the kind of teacher that is gonna say, “Oh, beautiful. Oh, George, no.” She will tell you, “What are you doing? Oh, what is that?”

So, she made me switch my mind, and that’s what I needed. So when I started to practice more, I start to get inspired. So I start to save money. Finally, I went to, to India, and everything was cool and beautiful so well, you know that it’s hard to describe, right?

That experience and the food, everything amazing. But I didn’t, I haven’t, at that moment, I was not living anything like close to a miracle.

And like when I was maybe in the month number four or [00:25:30] five India, I received a message. From one of my friends that a really hard situation happened to my sister. The name of my sister is Lucia something really strong happened to her daughter just born two years ago. And they lost the father?

No.

[00:25:51] Lily Allen-Duenas: Oh, I’m sorry.

[00:25:52] Chacal Lobos: So yeah, I said, “I’m coming back to Guatemala tomorrow. No worries. I’m gonna be with you. No worries.” But no, she said, “Carlos, eh, what are you gonna do if you come here? You will not be able to go anything you, nothing will change. But if you can, there is a guru in South India. Her name is Amma.”

Because, this is a small parenthesis, because before I traveled with my family, we saw a movie, a French movie where Amma Pierce, that is called Un Plus Un.

So my sister, before I left to India, she was always telling me, “Go with Amma, go with Amma.” It’s incredible. My teacher never been there, but she was, she’s like a witch. So, she was insisting a lot. So she told me, “If you can do something for me, go with Amma and ask to her, what can I do to go through the situation?” [00:27:00] 

[00:27:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. Wow.

Teaching from the Guru without words

[00:27:02] Chacal Lobos: So I, I was in a really hard moment, no, it was probably really in a really vulnerable moment of my life. So I went to that place with my heart fully open. If they tell me anything, I will do anything with all my belief and faith. Cause the only thing I wanted is an answer for my sister. 

At the end, I received your answer, not with words. No. Like the big, they gave you teachings until you understand. And she gave me the answer for my sister too, so she can travel through this. And now my sister is super good now she got married again. My niece is super happy. But she told me, with the teachings, she told me the answer for my sister is to learn from the kids, learn from the children how happy they live.

If they fight with each other two seconds after they are again friends, right? So at the end, the teaching for my sister was to learn from her daughter; her name is Mia. So that’s how I found her. I think it comes when it’s needed. I remember before I met Amma, I was printing different pictures of gurus, but I never felt connected. But when I was really needed she [00:28:30] appeared. No, I’m really grateful with her.

[00:28:34] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. That’s amazing, Carlos, like it just, it happened and I also feel like I stumbled into it myself. I wasn’t looking to go to her ashram. I didn’t know about it. It was just a friend of mine, she made, she booked that we were in Thailand.

She booked this trip and I said, okay, I’m going. And then, you never know how you’re going to, how it’s going to come to you. You never know how the path will unfold. But I love that it’s so organic, that’s how you know it’s right. That’s how you get the goosebumps. You just feel okay. I’m so happy to hear that. And for our listeners who are, really loving learning more about you and your story, can you share with us too, about yoga in Guatemala? What’s yoga like there, the scene, is it really popular? Is there a lot of yoga studios? Is it mostly locals or ex-pats? Can you just paint that picture for us a little bit?

Yoga in Guatemala

[00:29:29] Chacal Lobos: When I used to live in Guatemala City, this is where I start practicing, this is where I found my teacher Vicky that, if I need to be honest, even if I travel to India or everywhere, I will always go back to her because her adjustments, her teachings and never found it. Somewhere before so sometimes no. We look so far and we have the things by our side. 

And the city, yeah, it’s growing. I feel it’s [00:30:00] growing. I feel the people that they do it because they love it. Because in Guatemala there is not something that is gonna make you rich. They do it because they have faith on it. I feel like some people maybe for their yoga studios, they never even need to put some of their money to keep them up.

We have a studio with my family for 10 years, and these 10 years we never went like rich, sometimes was hard because people comes and goes. So yeah, Guatemala is growing. People is doing just because they really love to share it. Here in Lake Atitlan where I live, there’s a lot of people from different parts of the world, so you must, you maybe will find a lot of teachers from Europe, from the state, from other different parts.

Not too much teachers from Guatemala. Here in the lake, maybe. Yeah, maybe some. But it’s a full mix here in the Lake Atitlan. In San Marcos, you can find people from everywhere. it’s like having the whole world in the same town. 

What is Guatemala like?

[00:31:16] Lily Allen-Duenas: Beautiful. And for our listeners too, who maybe don’t know very much about Guatemala, maybe they can’t quite picture where it is on a map even. Would you mind sharing with us more about [00:31:30] your country, not just like where it is in the world, but also if there’s anything you wanna share about the culture or the landscape or the seasons or the energy there? I would love to hear more.

[00:31:43] Chacal Lobos: Yeah, for sure. I would love to, to share with you and to the listeners, Lily, that here we have a super beautiful gift that is the, all the teachings of the abuelos and abuelas, and the Mayans. The Mayans, grandpas, and grandmothers that they left to us, they left a lot of teaching, ancestral teaching, and a lot of Mayan calendars.

So if you come here, you will find the Mayan ceremonies made with fire. They use the fire to talk with the moon and to talk with the sun to make peace with the world. We have this calendar of 20 days, so instead of having 30 or 31 or 28, like February, you have these 20 days in the Mayan calendar, and each day has a different energy, has a different animal protector has a different intention.

It’s like having a room with 20 different doors and every day, one different door is open. For example, [00:33:00] yesterday no was Ashzma. That is a good day to forgive. No. That’s for forgiveness, so you work with the energy. Today is Nokh for example, is the day to bring knowledge into wisdom, words into poetry, problems into song.

So every day has a different energy. So every day you have an excuse to do a ceremony. So you start to live your life connected with that path. So if you come here, I will recommend to get close to the Mayan cosmology, cause this like the yoga practice: ancestral and divine. Come to the Lake Atitlan.

It’s a sacred lake where the only risky thing about Lake Atlan is that you will not be allowed to leave. It catch you, and then you, and then you say one more week, one more. Then you don’t leave. My, my partner, she worked a lot with land. She’s not from Guatemala.

From Spain, but she loved all these things from here. 

A perfect day for a podcast recording

[00:34:17] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing, and it sounds like we’re having our conversation on a very good day. if it’s the day to take wi knowledge into wisdom and stories to poetry, I think today was the right day.

[00:34:28] Chacal Lobos: You choose the day so you knew [00:34:30] it

[00:34:30] Lily Allen-Duenas: Maybe intuitively, or maybe that’s just one of the gifts of the universe, making things happen in the right day, on the right time. So I have some faith in that.

[00:34:39] Chacal Lobos: Probably both.

[00:34:41] Lily Allen-Duenas: Probably both. Or as your teacher says, it depends. I dunno if it depends.

[00:34:45] Chacal Lobos: it depends. And you say again, it depends

[00:34:48] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. One of my teachers always said, could it be both? I ask a question, is it that? And just could it be both? Yeah. I think it’s nice to have that non-dualistic thinking that it depends, or it could be both or could both be true. It’s good to flex our minds in that direction of allowing for more possibilities.

[00:35:08] Chacal Lobos: Exactly.

[00:35:10] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah. And I always ask every teacher this question, Chacal. I almost got away without asking you it, cuz our conversation has just flowed so beautifully. But I do like to ask, what is your personal definition of yoga? I know we have the sutra to lean on and those ancient teachings, but if there’s something that you know intuitively feels right to you about what is yoga for you, what does yoga mean to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

What is your definition of yoga? 

[00:35:40] Chacal Lobos: I think that mainly if I need to put it in one word, it’s a discipline. Yoga is a discipline. No. Maybe the relaxation would be a secondary effect, but yoga is a discipline to create a transformation.

For me,[00:36:00] the yoga practice makes you do things that your higher self will do. So when you practice, you are going to reach something else, not you are not staying as the same person you are. Otherwise, you will be the same always. But when you go with yoga or when you have a student, you try to treat this student as he can be, then the transformation happens now. 

So for me, it’s a discipline of transformation to reach how they describe the Samadhi and for me, the Samadhi, I will take some words of, one of my favorite teachers, his name John Scott, an amazing Ashtanga yoga teacher.

I have the luck of meeting him, humble man, full of wisdom. And he says that Samari is the self-less. So I think that when we find this discipline, it’s something to discipline ourselves, to live self-less, and there’s a really beautiful exercise. I learned from a woman she visit in South India. She was from the yoga center on Mumbai, the oldest yoga center in India.

And she made us to make an exercise that for me [00:37:30] describes yoga. And I want to make this exercise with you if it’s okay for you, Lilly.

[00:37:35] Lily Allen-Duenas: Sure, let’s do it.

[00:37:37] Chacal Lobos: Okay. So this exercise is about talking for one minute. You can talk about anything you want. No, anything. Doesn’t need to be yoga anything you want, just for one minute. But you will try to avoid the words I, me, my, you, us. Nothing that includes that words for one minute. You want to try?

[00:38:09] Lily Allen-Duenas: Okay. And it’s amazing cuz we do have a timer on the screen so I can really time the full minute. I’ll start here. And as soon as it hits the 30 second mark, so our listeners have five seconds to listen to me. Wait.

[00:38:22] Chacal Lobos: Great.

[00:38:24] Lily Allen-Duenas: One day in a beautiful town, there was a, a grasshopper. And this grasshopper was very lonely and tired and felt that this grasshopper had spent all of the days just staring at the moon. So the grasshopper wanted to stare at something else, wanted to change how the days were spent, how the time was passed.

So the grasshopper decided to build a boat and float down the river to go to a new place he had never been before, so he could travel [00:39:00] and learn and grow and talk to new creatures and animals to learn knowledge from. So that instead of looking at the moon, he could look at new friends and new faces with new experiences each and every night.

Okay, exactly. One minute. I did not use it once.

[00:39:21] Chacal Lobos: Super nice. You are. You are good with this. You also like stories.

A surprise exercise to reflect upon

[00:39:26] Lily Allen-Duenas: I do like stories cuz I figured, okay, if I’m just talking, gonna talk about my life, my day, then I’m going to mess up. I’m gonna say I went to this, this new restaurant, or I walked outside. I just knew… so I had to make it about something that had nothing to do with me or with you. So I, maybe our listeners will think I cheated a little. I just made that story up. It wasn’t fabulous. But 

[00:39:49] Chacal Lobos: No.

[00:39:50] Lily Allen-Duenas: for bearing with us for this exercise. So tell us more about this exercise and the intention of it.

[00:39:55] Chacal Lobos: Yeah. For sure. I’m glad you did it right, because now I ask you, and the listeners know that they are listening. If they, in this minute that you talk, is there any negative words that came through your mouth in this minute? 

[00:40:15] Lily Allen-Duenas: Yeah, I think there was maybe when I said that the grasshopper was really tired, the tired of staring at the moon, he wanted something more perhaps that would be negative, that he was dissatisfied and tired.

[00:40:27] Chacal Lobos: Really, that’s really deep. Okay. But [00:40:30] maybe if I ask you like, the essence of the story, do you feel that was positive or negative?

[00:40:37] Lily Allen-Duenas: I feel like he was positive about new journeys, new friends, new places, and new opportunities to learn.

The Me, I, Mine Disappears

[00:40:44] Chacal Lobos: Exactly. That’s how it’s for me, the practice. No. In this minute that you talked the essence of what you shared with us, everything was beautiful. No, there was not like complaints. So for me when we practice, at least for two hours, an hour, and. The “me, I, mine” disappears. We can see the things as they are with this beautiful discipline.

 When people comes to the practice, “I’m not flexible. I’m not strong.” I say you don’t need that. The only two things that you need for this beautiful discipline is humbleness and patience. If you have humbleness and patience, you’ll be a super yogi.  

[00:41:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: No, I love that. And I’m glad we got to try that together. And it’s, it is deep to think, why did you know, what did I talk about? Why did I talk about that? To all of our listeners, if that’s an exercise you wanna try with a friend, with a teacher, with a partner, I recommend it. It could be a good challenge.

And then also kind of reflecting on why, you know, was there anything [00:42:00] negative? What was the overarching theme of that? And I think I’ll try that with my partner tonight. See what he comes up with…

[00:42:06] Chacal Lobos: that good. That good? Yeah. It always works well. Most 99 of percent of the time.

[00:42:13] Lily Allen-Duenas: Mm. Kind of Reveals the under feeling or the under emotions, or just of revealing the taste or the color of what’s going on in your heart. Is that what you think too?

[00:42:25] Chacal Lobos: Yeah. And I will say, yeah, and also that most of the times that put this exercise to someone, I think 99%. The essence of what they are gonna tell to you is something positive. When I, me, mine disappears, or the negativity disappears as well.

[00:42:45] Lily Allen-Duenas: I like that very much, Carlos. For all of our listeners who want to get in touch with you, want to maybe come join you for a yoga intensive or teacher training or just maybe have a question, I’m going to share your website and your Instagram accounts in the show notes, so they can just click anywhere you’re listening to this podcast.

Just click below and you’ll be linked. Straight Toal, and also it’ll be on my website, wildyogatribe.com/yogainGuatemala, as well as a transcript of this podcast episode. So if you wanna read along or if you wanna go back and find a quote or something great Chacal said, it’ll all be there for you. Chacal, do you want to hear on the podcast, just say the name of your website and your Instagram.

How to get in touch with Chacal?

[00:43:28] Chacal Lobos: Yeah, for sure. [00:43:30] More… More ways we can connect between each other more grateful. That’s a beautiful thing that we have about these platforms like you have and this temple that you made knowing on Instagram. So of course, in, we have a webpage now Tribu Ashtanga.com. Also. It’s called Tribu Ashtanga on Instagram. My Instagram is Chacal111, and you can feel free to send me a message. I don’t have any like secretario or secretaria nothing. We can connect directly. You are interested in this practice, in this traditional practice, or in the other ancestral practices related with the old tribes, you know of America you can reach me. And so that, that’s the way. Also, if you come to San Marcos, Lake Atitlan is a really small village where everyone know each other. So if you walk around the town after two days, you know all the people

You can come to practice, you know, me and my partner and Elena both with each Ashtanga mostly every day in, in the lake. We work with ceremonies, no? And all these things from ancestral lineage. So yeah. That’s the way we can get in contact.[00:45:00] 

[00:45:00] Lily Allen-Duenas: Amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today for the gift of sharing your stories and your knowledge and your energy with us. Thank you.

[00:45:11] Chacal Lobos: Thank you, Lily, for your invitation. Thank you very much for your devotion and love for what you do, because I think that’s the biggest power, the devotion. So thanks for being like you are and for bringing this space to me and to the other people. We feel like important, no to have a space to talk, so thanks for making us feeling like this.

Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Outro

[00:45:39] Lily Allen-Duenas: Thank you so much. 

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast. My conversation, with Chacal Lobos, a yoga teacher from Guatemala, was gorgeous. We took a swan dive into the ancestral and spiritual understanding of yoga as a discipline, not as an art, not as a science– as a discipline.

I hope that this conversation made you consider things a little differently with Carlos’s sharing of stories, parables, and myths. If you’re looking to tune into a podcast episode that’s all about yoga as a rebellious act, a revolution, a way to follow your own path inwards, then this is the conversation for you.

Thank you for listening to the Wild Yoga [00:46:30] Tribe Podcast. Be well.

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