Some studios are opened; Lado B was built as a refuge. Lucrecia Laurel came to yoga through Aikido and photography, carried her practice through several cities, and eventually gave Madrid one of the things it was missing: a proper Mysore room, where ashtanga is practised the way the method intends, each person moving at the pace of their own breath.
Who is behind it
We know Lucrecia's story well because she told it on this blog, in our interview with Lucrecia Laurel: the camera that came before the mat, the cities that shaped her practice, and the decision to build her own shala in Madrid.
Lucre found in Ashtanga a moving meditation, and in the Mysore practice an intimate dialogue with herself.
What is practised there
Ashtanga yoga, with the Mysore format at the centre: no led choreography, but a small, quiet room where each practitioner works through the series under the teacher's individual guidance, morning and evening, six days a week. Madrid has very few rooms like it, and the shala insists on something worth repeating: beginners are welcome. Mysore sounds intimidating from the outside and is actually the gentlest door into ashtanga, because the room moves at your pace, not the other way round.
Why it is a special stop
Because of what its practitioners say when nobody asks them to. Read the reviews and the same words keep surfacing: dedication, closeness, attention to each person, adjustments described as delicate and respectful, and more than one student calling the shala their centre of reference in Madrid. That is what a Mysore room becomes when it is held well: not a class you attend but a community you belong to, six mornings a week. Lado B is one of the studios in our yogi's travel guide to Madrid, and of all of them it is the one that answers the most specific question: where the ashtanga tradition lives in this city.
If you go
The shala is at Calle Santa Clara 3, a few steps from Ópera metro and from the Royal Palace, whose granite esplanade hosts the city's mass open-air classes: you can walk from Madrid's biggest yoga postcard to its quietest room in two minutes. Schedules and a trial class are at ladobyoga.com. A daily practice, done in company but at your own rhythm, on a floor that stays silent while everyone breathes at a different count.
