What is Tantra?
What is TANTRA? What can we learn from Patanjali, the vast yoga texts, and does it really matter the lense we view these teachings? Do we need teachers?
When I began the study of yoga with Professor Douglas Brooks, and then with Sally Kempton, Paul Ortega-Mueller, William Mahoney and many others, my life changed. Notes from my first teacher training in 2006 were reflective...“The essence of consciousness is infinite creative freedom. How do we tap into our creative energies? What is it that makes us happy?”
What happened was I listened, and practiced, and questioned, and began to embody my life as a gift. The auspicious wisdom became a vibrant, creative pulsation of desire within me. The Tantrikas believe that there is literally no particle of reality that isn't capable of revealing ecstacy, and that everything that exists is full of light and awareness. This is radically different from the Classical Yoga dualist view that the spiritual realm is seperate, or even the Vedantist non-dual view that perceives the world as an illusion.
As a trantrika you live with unshakable love to the expansive absolute, knowing that because we are all free we must bind ourselves meaningfully to our own true nature. It is the power we have to exercise our freedom, with the ability to make appropriate and purposeful choices, that is the empowering energy of our divine nature –– the power that takes shape within us as all the ways we experience our freedom.
Tantra has taught me to seek the intrinsic sweetness within each moment, the gift to celebrate life, even in the chaos. Everything seeks the light of loving awareness. This felt awareness can help all of us experience life from a positive perspective, to see through our masks, and to recognise the beauty in everything.
“Whether you know it or not, when you practice yoga, you are practicing techniques from a 5,000 year old tradition called Tantra. Tantra is not only fundamental to hatha yoga, it holds life-changing secrets for exploring the depths of your life. It radically deepens your experience both on and off the mat.” ~ Sally Kempton
Please know that when you come to class at LYFE there's a promise of freedom. Yoga is an invitation, never an obligation. It's a beginning, spontaneous movement, reconnection. The primal energy that is every inhalation and exhalation. There are a wealth of practices –– unique approaches to mantra, mudra, visualizations –– practices that remind us to dance for the joy of the dance, not because of it or for it, but simply to be it.
For me I always have more questions. More to delight in. So I keep listening, and finding revelations, and then expanding with more effort required. And I keep an open heart, that welcomes conversation from many teachers, including YOU.
“Awakenings happen in the presence of the kula.” ~ Douglas Brooks