Written by Iris Disse
I have been practicing Tantra for the last 20 years with my partner and alone. Discovering this spiritual path saved our marriage.
Why? When we met we already were more than 30 years old. It was one of those crazy and intense loves. We are artists and we insisted on following our own paths. Neither him nor I wanted to leave our own world for the other or to create a family.
When our son was born, we started fighting. We were already separated when we found this path, a path so spiritual and with so much earth at the same time.
In Tantric vision everything around us is a divine expression, is sacred: the tree, the stone, the sun, the sea, the mosquito, the food, the body, the touch and also sexuality.
Yes, sexuality is sacred. It is the creator energy. It is the strongest power we have to go on and expand our consciousness. It supports our growth in love, laughter and lightness.
What a revolution.
There are techniques that we can experience together, we can play, we can fight and we can explore each other, man and woman in equality, celebrating our different poles when we meet as a representation of the god Shiva and his goddess, Shakti.
There is nothing to believe – Tantra is not a religion. It is a sadhana, a path, in which we can walk by the hand, learning to grow, be free and be loved at the same time.
David and I overcame our prefixed ideas of what a marriage, a perfect mother, a perfect father or a perfect lover has to be. We entered a field of investigation, and the subject of the investigation was us.
TANTRA, the network of our reality
The Tantra world is very complex; it is a complete ancient vision of the cosmos. The principal elements found in Tantra have origins in the religion of Indian territories dating back as far as 5000 years ago.
The Tantras are sacred, written texts whose authors are mostly unknown. It is said that they are derived from divine sources. They speak to us in the form of a dialogue in which Shiva speaks to Shakti and Shakti speaks to Shiva.
There is tantric art, tantric sciences research about atoms, sound, alchemy, astronomy, astrology and texts about the divine principles.
The root of the word Tantra comes from Sanskrit and it means network. It refers to the making of many patches of fabric and then weaving them together. From the Eastern perspective, this entire patchwork would be seen as the entire universe where everything is connected and in communication, where nothing exists independently and where everything is part of the same reality.
With the same meaning as the word fabric, but referring to philosophic knowledge, Buddhists and Hindus recognize the name Tantra as the teachings of the fundamental theories and practices of this path that is Tantra Yoga.
The syllable “Tan” also means to extend, continue and develop, expressing the idea of maintaining a tension or extending something to its limit. The syllable “Tra” means tool.
So Tan-Tra is more than a philosophy; it is a tool for expansion and liberation.
The retreat
Yes, we wanted to expand. Leave our ancient programs behind. In childhood, we saw that neither our parents nor our grandparents had happy lives as couples.
We needed other tools to live our love in freedom and respect.
After some weekend workshops, we decided to attend a Tantra teacher training. It was difficult to organize our time, the care taking of our son, but finally we participated in our first retreat.
What a gift, we gave to ourselves! Days and nights of learning!
We met our inner demons. We shared with other people.
We enjoyed feeling how the energy field increases when you walk with a group in the same direction.
We learnt that much of our problems are not our personal incompetence, they are just a reflection of the society around us.
What a relief.
We really expanded and enjoyed the experience, feeling that we are not alone and that we are part of this beautiful network that is humanity. We realized that cutting off the daily routine with a retreat gave us the freedom to discover ourselves and re-create ourselves.
We came to understand why in India, since thousands of years, they learn in this way, living together in an Ashram.
We learnt that you need nobody else to feel complete and that the responsibility for our happiness falls not to our lover but to ourselves. That ‘lack of love demons’ live inside us and not in the other. That to know myself is a path for all life – and to know my lover is another challenge.
We found the Yoga path.
Durga’s Tiger School®
We decided to share Tantra knowledge when we had time between artistic projects in a few days of workshops. But we always felt that the only way to have a deep experience is to have a longer retreat.
When our son left to study, we decided to create a place for retreat – rooms to receive people and a space for different kinds of meetings concerned with art, yoga and all activities that support consciousness growth.
Practicing yoga, we realized that in Ecuador, there was no internationally recognized yoga teacher certification available. As I am a Master yoga teacher we affiliated with YAI, Yoga Alliance International. And so, Durga´s Tiger School® of Tantra, Yoga and Shamanism was born.
Durga is the goddess who, with only a smile, destroys the demon in all his forms. In our school, in this same way, we crush our inner demons with Tantra, Kundalini Yoga, pranayama, Shakti and Durga’s Tiger Dance, ayurvedic massage and philosophy.
The most important thing is that all students experience the power and magic of a personal growth.
They feel that we are all divine beings in a sacred world. That we are not isolated, that we are part of a network. They feel as they can focus on themselves and that they will disembark from this port and they will leave with their own boat to navigate through the sea of their life. They are not afraid anymore of storms and mysteries. They experienced that there is only one direction – to the light.
This makes us happy!
