Recitation, Concentration, Meditation – with Lucia Vimercati

Lucia Vimercati found the one-pointed focus she was seeking for her mind when she started practising Veda recitation. She shares how the practice is both recitation and sound but simultaneously a form of silence.

By Sophia Ann French

I started practising āsana in my 20s, and it took another decade to find the more subtle aspects of Indic spirituality. It took an even longer time before I found Veda recitation and a community of like-minded people practising with a teacher from a traditional living lineage. When I talk to yoga and Veda practitioners who have been exposed to these practices from a young age, I’m always enamoured by how these practitioners have the wisdom to understand the depth of these nuanced practices when they are so young. Lucia Vimercati has been practising yoga since she was ten. She grew up in Italy, so her exposure to Indic spiritual practices was purely incidental because she has no roots in India. I was intrigued to find out how she found yoga at age 10 all the way in Italy. “In Italy, we attend elementary school for five years, then middle school before moving on to high school. In middle school, we had three years of physical education, and my physical education teacher was a yoga teacher. He was one of the first yoga teachers in Italy, and he taught us yoga. I had the flexible body of a child, so the āsanas came easily to me back then. I stayed with the practice, which began a lifetime of yoga,” says Lucia. After her education, she didn’t pursue yoga as a career but worked for over 30 years in sales and marketing. But, like most of us who chose the spiritual path, she felt drawn to that lifestyle and wanted to devote her entire time to spiritual practices. She studied to become a yoga teacher, completing a 500-hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training. She specialises in restorative yoga, yoga nidra, and hormone yoga for women. 

Lucia spent 20 years practising yoga at a studio where mantras and meditation were equally important. Her teachers were musicians, so chanting was integral to their practice and offerings. But, when she moved to Belgium in 2015, she couldn’t find a studio that offered this integrated approach to spiritual practices, and that’s when she found Shantala Sriramaiah. Lucia recalls how she started studying Veda: “When my husband and I moved to Belgium in 2015, I couldn’t find a studio where chanting or meditation was offered. It was all very āsana-centric. So I got on Facebook and started looking for places in Belgium where I could find chanting, and I saw this page called Sanskrit Belgium. It was a post about an event about mantras. I felt it was something I could practice, so I signed up, and that’s how I found Shantala. At the time, Veda Studies was called Sanskrit Belgium, and I was one of her first students. At the time, she was teaching small mantras and the Yoga Sutras, and I signed up for all of them. It was also fantastic that she lived across the street from me, so I attended many live events and hosted chanting sessions at home. We became good friends, and she is also my teacher. It’s been eight years, and I’m still learning. This year, I’m attending the Indica Veda Studies Teacher Training Programme.”

Concentration is the Gateway To Meditation

Many of Shantalaji’s students come to Veda from various spiritual backgrounds, such as Yoga, Āyurveda, etc., and I always ask how Veda recitation adds value or enhances those practices. For example, Āyurveda is an Upa Veda, and Yoga is one of the six Darśana-s (philosophies) of Indic knowledge, and all are derived from the Veda, so they are Vedic. In Lucia’s experience, “It’s been interesting to observe how recitation affects my practice and how it affects my yoga students. I live and teach in Italy now, but I am in touch with my students in Belgium. I used to recite Veda before and after my yoga classes, and many of my students write to me about how much they miss that aspect of the teaching. I understand why they miss it. Veda recitation has affected my life completely. I’m a very disciplined person, but I also have a very creative mind. In the past, when I tried to focus my mind during meditation, I struggled because I had 3,000 thoughts per second (laughs). They weren’t negative thoughts, but they were thoughts, so my mind never became quiet. Reciting Veda has helped bring silence to my mind. I know it is a paradox because how can we become silent when reciting? But you will learn from experience. Recitation brings a focus to the mind and trains it to reduce thought. It makes the mind one-pointed because you must concentrate when you recite a mantra to ensure you do it correctly. This makes the mind sharp. Eventually, the silence also comes. I recite to enjoy silence. Another way Veda recitation affects me is that it brings me closer to the source or what we call Īśvara. I connect with Indian spirituality. This connection is also beyond recitation. I feel it in the community as well. When we meet in class and recite together, it creates a strong connection to something higher and bigger than all of us, yet we share that grace. Recitation has given me a sense of community, especially with the people in our Veda Studies community. We study together, and if I struggle with a mantra, my classmates actually write to me, and we all help each other. I love that Shantala has created this community.”

From Student to Teacher

Lucia speaks Italian, French, German, English, and a little Dutch, so she is used to learning languages and clearly has a knack for them. When she started reciting Veda, she struggled with aspirated and retroflex sounds, and the adhyayanaṃ method of Veda transmission was key to her learning. “This method helps a lot because, in addition to reciting after hearing Shantala in class, we hear each other and learn even in our student study groups. That kind of practical learning is very helpful because we are learning sound, so hearing well is imperative. The Teacher Training Programme takes that pedagogy to a detailed level where we learn how to recite and teach in extreme detail. This is helping with my practice and empowers me to be a more confident practitioner and teacher of Veda mantras. But it takes time. My advice to new students would be that if you embark on the journey of Veda recitation, be patient with yourself. It is a discipline that will give you a lot, but you also put in a lot, and it is all worth it,” says Lucia. She also enjoys the theory classes that Shantalaji conducts, as they add a lot of value to her practical knowledge and give it context. “The theory classes inform our practical education. It helps to know the essence behind the mantras’ deities and what the words mean. All of this combined with the recitation (which is most important) are ways to know the mantra so it reveals itself to you.”

For the Love of India

Lucia has been practising yoga since she was 10. That led to discovering various Indic Knowledge Systems; her connection to India developed from that curiosity. All her gurus are Indian, and I asked her when she realised this was what she wanted to pursue for the rest of her life. “I practised yoga for many years, and at one point, during a meditation class, for no reason, I started crying profusely. I had no idea why, but it felt like a release. I have no rational explanation for that. That episode made me realise that yoga works in subtle ways, and I became devoted to exploring that subtlety. I feel that same subtlety in India, even though it is so noisy (laughs). When I visit temples in India, I feel a sense of calmness that helps me move inward. Indian people are so devoted, and that feeling rubs off on me in India. My guru in India says two things are important in life: unconditional love and selfless service. I love that simplicity, and it inspires my understanding and practice of spirituality.”

For further information about Lucia, visit her website.