Tantra is a spiritual practice that enables us to embrace all aspects of life. Tantra can be seen as a way of living. You can integrate tantra in your daily life and it is accessible to every human being.

Tantric practices use different elements to support the intention to embrace life in all aspects with the goal of awakening: meditations, knowledge and practices of the energetical body (subtle body and chakra system), rituals, deity devotion, visualizations, breath work, mantra’s, body awareness… At out Tantric Joy Festival we offer you a big range of different practices.

Tantra is an ancient practice that has found the way to our modern times. We find it important to make a distinction between Classical Tantra and Neo-tantra. Classical tantra is a spiritual movement that had its peak in India, around the 9th-12th centuries. In that time the tradition of Shaiva Tantra was wide extended and influenced all existing Asian religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism and other religions that nowadays are called Hinduism. Still in modern times this influence can be identified. As an example, the chakra system common in yoga has its origins in Classical Tantra. Also most of actual practices in Tibetan Buddhism are adopted from Shaiva Tantra.

Tantra was back then a radical path that offered to all people the possibility to awaken trough yogic practices, mantra’s, devotion and rituals. It was not necessary to belong to a certain cast, gender or position to be able to be a Tantrika. That opened the possibility that householders could be also practitioners. A big difference with other spiritual movements was the non-renunciatory part of the spiritual path. Life in this world, with this body was not seen as something that had to be transcended with spiritual practice. Life in this world was actually part of the spiritual practice.

The aim of Classical Tantra was freedom and liberation from ego and conventions and the recognition of our true essence which is Consciousness in different forms. The physical world and our physical body and Expression (Shakti) are the contracted form of Consciousness (Shiva). The practices and philosophy are found in the Sanskrit scriptures: the Tantra’s. The word Tantra has also different connotations:  a system of rituals, spiritual practice, a theory, weave, wisdom that saves, expansion…