Shambhavi gives an overview of the origins, View and practices of Indian Tantra. A podcast from Satsang with Shambhavi
First Words from Podcast
When I was in my mid-twenties, I was a skeptical, snarky, atheist, punk-rock-loving person, and I thought that I had absolutely no interest in spirituality. I was living in New York City, and there was a kind of new-agey center in Soho called the Open Center.
That’s not the kind of place I would’ve gravitated toward at the time, but one day I found out about a workshop there called something like Discover Your Intuition. I really don’t remember why I did this because it was completely out of character for me to go to something like that, but I went. I don’t know why I went, but I went.
And unbeknownst to me the teacher was teaching what I now know were traditional forms of kriya yoga, working internally with your internal subtle channels. You’d call them meridians in the Chinese tradition. In this tradition we call them nadis, which means river. She was teaching these very traditional kriyas from the Tantrik tradition.
I had no idea of anything about tantra. I didn’t even know that what she was teaching me was from India. I mean I really was a complete know nothing. And at that time in the mid 1980’s, yoga and things Eastern just really weren’t on too many people’s radar. It wasn’t like it is now where there’s a yoga studio on every corner, and you can go into Walgreens and buy a yoga mat. It really wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t know anything about it. I’d never taken a yoga class. But what happened was that I simply fell madly, deeply in love with what she was teaching. Having no name for it, not knowing where it came from, I just loved it.
