GOOD TO MEET YOU!
The highest calling for me personally is to facilitate self-discovery, wellness, and self-actualization. I've had the pleasure of practicing this work for over 40 years and teaching for over 20 years. Watch this short video and you can see a small sample of classes, stunts, teaching actors, athletes, and people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. People who seek and practice wellness are a special group of people who take responsibility for their choices and habits. Thanks for being here.
HI, I'M MATT
I knew from a young age that I wanted to be strong and capable because, by age five, that was not how life was working out. I was a weak and unfocused bundle of chaos, rage, emergency room visits, and knee and back pain. So my ex-special forces father put me in Judo class because I really needed to learn to fall properly. I was hooked when my master said, "Show up, trust, and be patient. You will be strong when you're older." (He was right)
He barely spoke English, so that was the most he had ever said to me. Most of the time, it was "Don't be lazy, don't be crazy."
FAST FORWARD
LET'S JOURNEY TO THE "LATE 80S" PLEASE
I found the three things that I loved the most. Movement, music, and food. I became a devoted yoga and martial arts practitioner, a chef, and then, to the music business, writing songs and performing.
Touring as a musician had me all over the country playing at night, and training after shows and in parks and college campuses. People started showing up and I ended up with a great martial arts community spread out all over the country.
WHY DO I TEACH?
Selfish reasons, actually. I get to teach people that I would, in many ways, consider personal heroes. I'm forever grateful for that. From working with members of the Jackie Chan team and being the wellness teacher for the cast of The Matrix: Resurrections to working with thought leaders and regenerative farmers and seeing many of the children I taught grow up to become unique and powerful adults. I'm grateful and humbled daily. Sharing these practices that connect you to the natural skills and wisdom you already possess that can unlock your most enlightened self is my greatest joy and my small part in creating the world I want to live in.
MY VALUES
As a teacher, and lifelong artist, I value fundamental training, devoted practice, and time and space for play, integration, and finding your own authentic voice. That phrase is thrown around too much these days, though, "authenticity" is not just a keyword to me; it's an actual process.
To build your creative authenticity, you usually need experience, a positive mindset toward uncertainty, pressure, and manageable stress. Otherwise, you may be doomed to just parroting quotes and being trapped by unoriginality.
For example: Jimi Hendrix and Mozart are using the same fundamental theory. They both practiced, a lot, but they expressed as themselves.
In movement, we also use the same fundamentals. My friends in special forces are using the same principles of breathing, relaxation, structure, and movement, as dancers, and the same as a farmer.
So I value experimentation and being creative, but first there must be training. Then there is mindset and mindfulness. None of this work is integrated without contemplation and reflection.
I'm a fan of the Yama system. I've trained and dipped into all kinds of somatic disciplines and I can vouch that Yama develops the body in a complete way. Matt's approach is gonna set you up for functional success.
Matt Lucas is a one-of-a-kind teacher. I rarely step outside high-intensity sports and martial arts, but somehow, Matt captured my interest... I never knew the relationship between Yoga and martial arts, but now I understand that they go hand-in-hand...
I would say that what Matt told me, ‘sometimes you have to go slow to be fast,’ has changed my views on Yoga, and I will continue to use it throughout my martial arts journey.
All of Matt’s teaching is about process and whole systems as it is about proper alignment, form, real nuts and bolts, practical ways we can give ourselves the medicine we need every day- through physical movement, introspection (journaling anybody?)
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