What Is Tantrik Yoga and Why It Changes How You Teach

A Mandala, Similar to That Used in Tantrik Vizualization practices

Most yoga teachers learn a great deal about the body before they teach.

Almost none of them are asked what the body is.

This is not a trivial omission. Your answer to that question, whether you have examined it or not, shapes every cue you give, every adjustment you make. It fundamentally changes the very orientation of your own practice and therefore the way you guide future students. A teacher who believes the body is a biological mechanism that benefits from stretching will teach differently from one who understands the body as consciousness temporarily appearing in form. Not superficially differently. Differently at the root.

Tantrik yoga begins with the second understanding. And once you have worked with it seriously, teaching flexibility alone starts to feel like teaching someone to play an instrument without telling them what music is.

What Tantra Actually Is

The word Tantra carries a lot of confusion, most of it borrowed from popular culture and from the genuinely strange corner of the wellness industry that decided it was primarily about sex.

It is not primarily about sex.

Tantra is one of the great philosophical and practice traditions of the Indian subcontinent, a body of texts and practices, broadly spanning primarily from around 500 CE to the early second millennium and onward, that took a radical position in relation to the mainstream renunciate traditions: rather than transcending the world, the body, and experience, the Tantrik practitioner works directly through them. The body is not an obstacle to awakening. It is the medium of it. Uniquely, a fully embodied awakening is the goal of the Tantrik path.

The philosophical core of the tradition we work with at Hridaya Family is Non-Dual Shaiva Tantra, sometimes called Kashmir Shaivism. Its central claim is that consciousness is not something the brain produces. It is what everything, including the brain, including the body, including the student in front of you, essentially is. The forms of yoga practice are not techniques for managing a biological organism. They are exotic and profound ways experiments into the nature of body, mind and world. They lead to the experiential recognition of this radically different view of the body and of yourself, in your own experience, right now.

That is a different foundation. It produces a different kind of teacher.

It is important to note that the tradition called Hatha Yoga, from which all forms of modern postural practice are derived, is not really a Tantrik tradition. Although it did draw heavily on classical Tantra, both Shaivite and Buddhist, for its formation. As such, historically, there is not really any such thing as Tantrik Hatha Yoga.

However the attitudes, especially towards the body, that define classical Tantra can absolutely be applied in the context of the modern postural practice. Also, the practices of Tantrik Yoga, although very different from what is taught in modern yoga studios, make an excellent accompaniment to the physical practice, in some instances they can even be combined with the postural practice.

Tantrik Yoga and the Subtle Body

Tantrik yoga, as a distinct practice, is primarily meditative, performed in a seated posture, and has very little to do with asana sequences or physical flexibility. Its primary object of engagement is the subtle body. The overarching direction of the practice is the transmutation of the moment to moment experience of the body, dissolving solidity and separation, revealing the immediacy of boundless awareness as the nature of body, mind and world.

The subtle body, in the Tantrik understanding, is not a metaphor. It is a working map of how consciousness moves through embodied experience. It describes the same reality as the physical body, but at a finer level of resolution, the way a topographical map and a satellite photograph describe the same landscape differently. Both are accurate. One shows you things the other cannot.

The map has several layers.

The subtle body is not a separate energetic layer floating above or around the physical body. It is the rest of the spectrum between what we call mind and what we call body.

Another word for it is the subconscious. Not in the Freudian sense of a hidden chamber full of repressed content, though that is part of it. In the broader sense: everything that is happening in your experience that you are not consciously directing. The holding patterns in the jaw and the throat. The way the belly tightens before certain conversations. The chronic collapse through the chest that no amount of thoracic stretching fully resolves. The subconscious does not live in the head. It lives in the body. And the subtle body is its map.

The ancient masters of this tradition noticed that there is a subtle landscape to this intimate "inner" domain. For example, you never fell in love and told someone that your knees were bursting upon in love. The somatic experience of love is ubiquitously felt in a very specific location in your body.

Contrary to popular modern belief there are actually dozens of different maps of this subtle body. Meaning there are many different chakra systems and ways of describing the flow of life force through the body-mind. We won't break them all down in detail here.

Tantrik yoga practices work directly with the subtle body through combinations of attention, breath, visualisation, mantra, and mudra. Sometimes the practices are simple. Sometimes they are elaborate. All of them share the same basic orientation: the body is not something you discipline. It is something you listen to. And underneath the noise of habitual pattern and physical tension, it has a great deal to say.

What Changes When You Teach from a Tantrik Understanding

The short answer is everything.

You are no longer aiming primarily at complicated postures, increasing flexibility or looking great on Instagram, although none of the above are strictly prohibited either. Instead, the practice now aims at developing the most subtle and refined contact with the body possible. Dropping attention down from the head and learning to fuse attention, breath and the experience of sensation in the body in such a way that there is no longer a separation between "me" and the life that flows through me.

In this way, the physical practice itself becomes a meditation. It also serves as a wonderful preparation for the more subtle forms of yogic practice encompassed under the term "Tantrik Yoga".

If this resonates, check out the Embodied Awakening: 200HR Yoga and Embodiment Teacher Training.

What Our Yoga Teacher Training Actually Includes

In our 200-hour yoga teacher training in Chiapas, the Tantrik philosophical framework is not a module you complete alongside anatomy. It runs through everything.

Asana practice is explored as a vehicle for self-inquiry, not physical conditioning. The subtle body model, including the prana vayus, the chakra system is taught as a practical working map for understanding what happens in a student's practice, not as religious decoration. Pranayama and breathwork are engaged as direct methods for working with the nervous system and with the movement of prana rather than as supplementary exercises.

We teach the texts. The Spanda Karikas, the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, the Shiva Sutras. Not as academic study but as living pointers, read alongside practice so that what the text describes becomes something you can recognise in your own experience rather than something you memorise about.

And we teach the understanding that a yoga class is an invitation beneath the surface of the conscious mind, into the subtle dimension of embodied experience. A student comes with a history, a pattern of holding, a relationship with their own body that may be decades old. What you do in that meeting, how present you are, how honest, how patient, matters in ways that no amount of sequencing skill can replace.

For a concrete picture of what a day in the training looks like, that post goes through the schedule in detail.

Who This Training Is For

This is not a training for someone who wants to deliver a physically excellent fitness class, though the physical teaching is rigorous and thorough.

It is for someone who suspects that yoga is pointing toward something deeper than they have yet found, and who wants the teaching skills to match that understanding. It is for someone who has been practicing for years and feels that something is still missing, not in the practice itself but in the framework around it.

It is also, honestly, for someone willing to be changed by the training. Not improved. Changed. The two are different.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need prior experience with Tantra to apply for this yoga teacher training?

No. The training is designed to introduce the Tantrik framework from the ground up. Prior meditation or yoga practice is helpful. Prior knowledge of Tantrik philosophy is not required.

Is this a certified 200-hour yoga teacher training?

Yes. Our program is a 200-hour yoga teacher training that meets the standard requirements for certification. Details of the program structure and curriculum are on the teacher training page. For any questions about certification recognition or curriculum content, reach out via WhatsApp.

How is this different from other yoga teacher trainings in Mexico?

Most yoga teacher training programs in Mexico, and elsewhere, are primarily anatomy, alignment, sequencing, and teaching methodology. Those are real skills and we teach them. What distinguishes this training is the philosophical foundation. The Tantrik and Advaita framework is not an add-on. It is the ground everything else is built on. For more on why this matters, see Why Most Yoga Teacher Trainings Don't Actually Teach Yoga.

Where is the training held?

In San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, at the Hridaya Family retreat centre. The setting, the altitude, the land itself, contributes to the depth of the training in ways that are difficult to describe before you arrive and difficult to forget after you leave.

The question of what the body is will not feel urgent until you are standing in front of a room of students and something arises that your anatomy training did not prepare you for.

That moment comes for every teacher eventually.

What you have to meet it with is what the training is for.