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One of these misconceptions is that Tantra is only about 1000 years old and that it has very little to do with the much older yogic tradition. From the emic perspective presented here, however, we have learned that Tantra may be the root source of all the yogic paths and philosophies that evolved from a rich oral tradition within Shaivism and outside Vedic society at the dawn of Indian civilization.

Creative healing methods, including ritual therapy, offer us ways to address all kinds of grief: subtle to catastrophic, known and unknown, recent and historical.

The Oxford Dictionary defines passion as a strong and barely controllable emotion. Many so-called positive emotions fit that bill. So what happens if we experiment with touching sorrow in times when we feel the most euphoric of highs? Cultivating the opposite in all situations, even in times of elation, prepares us for the inevitability that we will at some point feel the lowest of lows. 

Turning fifty, with its sea waves of hormonal change, brings much new information to the mind. You can feel some brittleness emerge and the pliancy of the joints realign. You are (or, I am) less interested in the farthest and deepest reaches of a pose, for example, but rather in the intricacies of the steps of the subtler body on the way there—on the way anywhere. 

Courage always begins as an inner movement, an inner revolution to resist, transform, or transcend. Courage may take the form of a resounding “NO” that challenges what is unhealthy, oppressive, or harmful. Courage may also be a motivating “YES” to create, to shift, to evolve.

Dynamic Embodiment Practitioners trained in yoga/tantra do this through touch, as well as by using sound vibration, such as the chanted bija mantra. Tantric practices can facilitate change in the chakra system when we set clear intentions and direct our energy towards releasing and/or receiving. Similarly, one can arouse the lymphatic fluid with strong or bound direct vocal choices or movements to support our boundary-setting capacity in our own defense. Bringing awareness to the lesser trochanters and the hidden six inches through touch and movement releases tension and brings attention to this center of weight and power, thus a robust healing channel for trauma survivors and health for all.

I started attending classes because I had reached a place in my studies where I needed personal feedback about the experiences I was having. I took group classes for about one year before being approached to teach. I was completely ignorant of the culture of yoga building in the West and its historical context in the East. I was only interested in the practice as a psychology… as a way of spotting and shifting patterns of thought and behavior.

Yet materialism, which has dominated our intellectual culture since the Victorian age, covers fewer and fewer bases of life in the twenty-first century. The natural sciences are increasingly defined by quantum data, interdimensional formulas, and fields like neuroplasticity, which uses brain scans to demonstrate the capacity of thought to alter neural matter. Our ordinary reference points of life are in greater flux today than at any time since Darwinism upended what it meant to be human in the Victorian era.