63 Days 500hr Teacher Training: Tantra Yoga Shamanism in Ecuador

You will stay in Casa Kiliku, a place in the Andes not too far from the city of Quito and just next to the natural reserve of the Ilaló Volcano. During the teacher training, Casa Kiliku will be close to tourists and open as an Ashram where you share meals, spaces, yoga work, and ashram life experience.

The houses are built by materials from the volcano, with bricks or adobe and wood. Every space is unique. You can stay on the big terrace and chat with others. Or just lie in the hammock and read or meditate on treetops dancing in the wind. It is pure luxury to offer a retreat place in a rural environment at the edge of the ecological reserve Ilaló and so close to the center of Quito.

This place is made by ecological local materials and a sustainable way of living is promoted. Accommodation will be in double or triple rooms equipped with kitchen and bathroom with hot shower. You will share meals every day in the communitarian terrace enjoying the view.

Living in the ashram enables students to focus intensively on their training, away from every day tasks and distractions, fully immersing themselves in a process of learning and self-discovery. Students discover the joy of deeply engaging in yogic practice and lifestyle without their usual responsibilities and away from busyness of daily life. A close, and energetic group environment is created to enable students to share their experience and learning process and thus collectively deepen their understanding of the yoga practice.

Durgas Tiger dance

Durgas Tiger dance is a form of movement developed by Iris Disse based on yoga energy work and different dance stiles, is another form through which students deepen creativity and relaxation in body movement. The training also involves voice work through mantra chanting.

Introspection, theoretical, and practical learning

Students are given time for self-study, reflection, and practicing teaching Tantra yoga classes between themselves. During the course of the month, students will also complete a written project.

During theory and practical learning classes, students learn about Tantra yoga philosophy and its application in every day life, yoga methodology, massage, and Ayurvedic medicine. Students learn the Ayurvedic walking massage. During massage classes, students also learn about the body, physiology, and anatomy.

As you are living in Ecuador with a huge American Indian population, students also have the opportunity to learn about Andean culture, its cosmo-vision and its similarities with eastern culture. During the course, shamanistic energy concepts are explored together with the Tibetan tantric tradition, to learn how these two different traditions understand energy, astrology, subtle anatomy, and physiology. This work helps Ecuadorian yoga students to integrate more easily with the eastern wisdom.

Karma yoga

Karma yoga is an important part of the learning process in community life. You help each other to maintain common spaces and materials, you take care of the pachamama (earth). Through Karma yoga, you keep in contact with the earth and its fruits and we contribute to the well being and learning of the group.

Kundalini yoga

Through Kundalini yoga, as taught by Yogi Bajhan, students learn another, different, approach to energy work in yoga. Students explore kryias, pranayama, and chakra theory.

Shamanic clown

Shamanic clown is an energetic training that combines improvisation, clowning, dancing, musical and rhythm work, meditation, and practical shamanism among other things. The work is a fusion of tools and experiences that you can use for art and life, to get more in contact with your inner child and intuition, develop the right side of your brain and your lateral thinking, release patterns and blockings, and open your ears and eyes to the present moment and the others.

It also helps to work in group in more effective and loving ways, to increase your creativity and artistic skills by looking at things in a completely new perspective. The clown is an archetype that repeats its presence throughout a lot of cosmo-visions along human history, from east to west, ancient and contemporary; the fool, the contrary, heyoka, etc.

Clowning involves deep transformation; its a kind of shamanism of ourselves that will reflect positively in the creation of our lives and relations. Acting in a way that is different to the ordinary accepted, sometimes specifically the opposite and making it evident, help to raise the awareness of people through play. You cant play or laugh at the world if you dont start by laughing and playing with yourself.

Tantra yoga

Tantra yoga works with deep relaxation. Students learn the feeling of flowing into the asanas without struggle, developing a deep form of a deep yoga meditation. This technique is completed by the practice of bandhas, pranayama, the mantra chanting, Samadhi, sitting meditation, and Kundalini kriyas.

Together, the group will discover the ways in which to implement the yoga experience into every day life. Students also learn about the energetic exchange between Shiva and Shakti, the two polarities, and how to integrate sexual energy into their yoga exploration. During their training, students will explore Tantra yogic lifestyle, philosophy, and arts.

Yoga

• 65% of the course content is focused on Tantra yoga
• 35% of the course content is focused on Kundalini yoga which energetically supports the Tantra yoga practice
• Techniques of pranayama and principles of methodology are taught in both practices.

Other practices

• Heyoca - the shamanic clown
• Shamanistic practices
• Tantric and shamanistic rituals
• Chakra work
• Shakti dance and Durgas Tiger dance

Daily schedule

• Morning meditation
• Breakfast
• Morning session of theory or practical learning and yoga practice
• Lunch and afternoon break
• Afternoon session of theory or practical learning and yoga practice
• Dinner
• Teachings of Tantra philosophy, mantra chanting, dancing or special arts events related to the course material two to three evenings per week.

The yoga retreat will take place in Casa Kiliku, in the Andes of Ecuador, close to the capital Quito and on the edge of a natural reserve. You will be located three kilometers from the village of Tumbaco surrounded by high trees and mountains. The Kiliku is a little hawk living here on the volcano, the Ilaló. For them, is the symbol of freedom and as he is seeing the reality from high above. It means that this place helps the yoginis to get a distance from their everyday life to fly into the experience of living in a yoga ashram, enjoying the green garden surrounding with flowers and old trees.

Nearby places

• Tumbaco, 3 kilometers
• Quito - 25 minutes

During this training, you will enjoy three daily vegetarian and locally sourced meals. All meals are always prepared with a lot of love mixing the Ecuadorian tradition with healthy and conscious recipes. Fresh fruits and vegetables are also available. If you have some allergy or specific need of special menu, Durga's Tiger School can serve vegan or gluten-free menus for a supplement of 5 USD per day.

• Explore the yoga laboratories where students discover other yoga techniques like Ashtanga, Ashtanga-Vinyasa, Vinyasa flow
• Relax in the hammock and read
• Take a day trips to hot springs, the mountains or to Otavalo Market etc.
• Visit the surroundings to buy organic food and German bread, having a coffee and a chat or enjoy story telling or a concert.
• Work with a shaman and medicinal plants of the jungle or the Andes

The teachers specialize in a variety of healing arts and Durga's Tiger School for Tantra Yoga Shamanism is thus able to offer, at an extra cost, the following:

• Abyanga and Marmas massage
• Personalized Qi Gong practices
• Reflexology
• Relaxing massage
• Tantric counseling about love, couple, sexuality
• Zen shiatsu treatments

• All the teacher training courses
• Daily yoga practice
• Dance, art, and shamanism
• Mantra chanting, meditation, and pranayama
• Physiology, philosophy, yoga methodology lessons
• 3 daily vegetarian meals
• 62 nights accommodation
• Ecuador taxes

• Day trips
• Work with a shaman and medicinal plants
• Yoga exploration laboratories

Driving directions from Quito

• Arriving from Quito, you enter in Tumbaco through the Interocenica, you will see Santa Mara supermarket on your right and you just follow straight on for about one kilometer more.
• You must turn right in the Guayaquil Street on the opposite site of Gasolinera Primax (gas station) by the Semaforo light.
• Drive towards the Colegio Pachamama, crossing a bridge over Ruta Viva Highway, until you get to a big football field in Rumihuaico area (Comuna Leopoldo Chvez).
• You go straight up to the hill, after 100 meters the street makes a Y split.
• Then you keep right (the oposite direction from Pachamama) up hill on the new paved road.
• You follow one and a half kilometers more or less and on the right side you see a blue house. Casa Kiliku is directly behind it. Look for the little sign that says Casa Kiliku lote 169.

• A reservation requires a deposit of 100% of the total price.
• The deposit is fully refundable if the booking is cancelled up to 60 days before the arrival date.