Tantra Dance ~ About Us/About Tantra


	home dance entertainment workshops and retreats private sessions articles/links calendar about us/about tantra		Greetings from Christina Sophia and William Florian Namaste! The place where god/goddess resides in me greets the place where this beloved~divine resides in you. This word expresses some of the essence of Tantra. As in other Yogas, Tantra teaches us, amoung other things how to bring our spirit and body together, honoring both (Yoga means "to Yoke"). We practice to live this through our direct experience; to know and realize the divine presence through our earthly life. Tantra is an inclusive spiritual path which honors the divine spirit in everything, similar to the way of Tao. We wish to embody this principle and offer it through the art of sacred-erotic dance/ritual, in the private sessions we offer including coaching for couples, and the workshops and retreats. All are intended to support healing, to nurture and transform our relationship with our bodies, the earth and each other. On this page we want to share with you a little more about where we are coming from, who we are and some perspectives on tantra as an approach to life and spirituality. We hope this will help illuminate the idea of "tantra-dance", a phrase which manages to capture a very basic and simple practice in tantra: sitting and attuning to the tiniest, subtlest movement inside. We have been drawn to, and choose this spiritual path as we find it to be the most life affirming, loving way to embrace our current evolutionary task as embodied spirits here on Earth. As we understand it, this involves working ever so consciously with our energies so that we may know and experience our co-creatorship with Great Spirit, the divine masculine and feminine (consciousness and energy). If you could create any way of being and having life on this planet, what would it be? Why not Heaven here on Earth? What would your Heaven on Earth be like? We invite you to spend time inquiring into this, imagining it and the possibility of creating it within yourself. We invite you to contemplate the ways you might make this a reality in your day to day living. Tantra is the portal and the way of this journey. We let it begin with the breath we are inspiring right now! Is it possible to live a "Tantric life" in the modern, hectic western world, and what would that look like, be like? What is a "Tantric lifestyle" anyway? Through doing spiritual "work" in ones life ~ cultivating awareness via paying attention /mindfulness in the present, in solo meditation, in our relationship interactions, and using "processes" such as breathing, moving, dancing, learning to communicate more honestly, allowing ourselves to feel, tune in to subtle energies inside, feeling into our bodies and emotions and allowing ourselves to come face to face with every aspect of ourselves, learning to love what is in any moment, we encounter ourselves every moment, and learn to see in the mirror of others our reflection ~ we connect with the inner teacher and our knowing. Any or all of these "practices" will help to loosen the stranglehold of our identity or identities which hold us in a sense of feeling separate from divine consciousness, (which is beyond duality) the earth and all that is. Tantra is the path of non-duality. It espouses no particular beliefs or systems of belief. One of the main ways of getting to this experience of non-duality as taught by western teachers of tantra is through the bliss of sexual union. It is a way on the path but not as central as we have made it in western neo-tantra. Yet, focusing on sexuality in tantra is beneficial for many people because many are in the process of healing from our body-negative and therefore sex-negative programming. (In this process we may find ourselves going to extremes for a while to root out everything that is under the surface). We have not only come from a sex negative culture but all of our beliefs and religious dogma reinforces ideas that the body, and being embodied is not spiritual but the antithesis of spirit. Even worse ~ we were taught - we have fallen from grace, we are lesser and we will suffer for it, and we are separate from the divine, from god, spirit, source ~ whatever you choose to call it. This however is not the view of tantra. Though we are still in the age of "Kali Yuga" a long dark age, and it is not hard to look around and see that we are still standing very much in our shadow, in need of integrating these dark aspects, tantra offers us a way through. In living tantra we know otherwise: we know that we are connected, not separate. Even when we experience parts of ourselves that frighten us or that we don't like. We know that we are connected to everything. We know that our body and the earth and everything here is part of this divine, the source of all. To practice tantra is to embody this, to surrender to this experience in every way, through every aspect of living not only the sexual. (And it is true that our sexuality expressed with a partner is an especially potent ground for the practice of shifting into non-dual experience.) We feel that to actually live a tantric life (style) we must slow down so that we can fully feel, breathe, smell the roses, to feel our connection with everything and learn to live consciously on the earth once again in a way which honors the cycles of nature, the cosmos and our bodies. We must choose to learn to live differently on the planet while at the same time accepting the perfection of the way everything is right now. The "Yoga of Everything", tantra embraces everything as the path. There is no way, other than the "way through"! So, in a way there is nothing specific for you to do to live tantrically except fully embrace your life with awareness. But, you may have noticed that Western life isn't particularly geared to cultivating awareness, "the examined life" (which isn't to say that you just sit back and analyze everything either!), nor living harmoniously with the natural world. I mean the examined life more in the sense of fully being with oneself, in the body, engaged with oneself and what is bigger than oneself ~ considering it all at the deepest levels, such as the way that people like Carl Jung modeled for us. So to live tantrically in this time is actually to go against the tide of modern life in many ways. And this is what we must do while at the same time living in the midst of it all! In Tantra all of life is a meditation to open our awareness and experience our oneness with source. We create ritual and do the yoga of ritual to remember and celebrate who we are. We recognize everything is part of our spiritual path. Everyone and everything reflects us. We learn to accept and love it all. We walk the path of Tantra as a beautiful and loving way to affirm and know the Divine in ourselves, everyone, and everything. We honor the body as our Temple and all experiences of self including sexuality. From this space it is possible to expand into greater states of awareness, love, aliveness, creative and compassionate living. My/Our Mission is to contribute to and support the shift in consciousness toward aware co-creatorship, and living sustainably to spread the teaching and experience of body/earth based spirituality so that we may recover our natural, "indigenous selves" and earth-friendly way of life, helping ourselves to undo the deeply imbedded beliefs that our source is distant from us, that to be born (have a body) is to be sinful, or lesser, and to be human is to suffer. To follow the tantric path, to weave the 64 arts of one's life is a creation which involves honoring one's own uniqueness and truths and living accordingly. With this understanding we offer ourselves as teacher/guide/coach for your tantric path however you wish to focus on it, whether that is through dance, movement, and breath, or specific sexual knowledge and technique (which also incorporates use of breath, and more). we bring a lot of experience from our own relationship and our personal spiritual process to our private sessions and workshops. We have learned about tantra through books, western teachings and spiritual teachers. We are students of Daniel Odier who was initiated in the Kashmiri lineage of India and wrote the books Tantric Quest and Desire. We've also studied and work with the tantric relationship teachings of David Deida. For more detailed information on our backgrounds, training etc. please click on the bios below. We would be most honored to work with you and invite you to call or write to us soon! E-mail Us: dancingdeva@tantradance.com or williamflorian@aol.com (707) 524-7898 Sebastopol, California