by Celia Clausen
 
 Today, for the seventh year in a row Natha Yogacenter holds the tantric festival in Bhoga ashram.  The festival has become a wonderful tradition, each year dedicated to deepen a certain aspect of the tantric approach to life. This year the topic of the camp is to understand the game of polarity – and ultimately to transcend the two opposite poles of manifestation by understanding them through direct experience.

 This is the 6th tantric festival I participate in and I have been looking forward to this one with curiosity and excitement since my experiences the previous years have been very beautiful and have taught me in a direct way some very valuable aspects of yoga and tantra. Being a yoga student for nearly 10 years now doesn’t at all mean that I have learned all there is to know about these aspects, on the contrary. It seems that the more knowledge I get, the more I realize how many things I still need to learn. Nathas leading teacher, Mihai Stoian,  and his wife Adina Stoian, kept the opening conference in the afternoon explaining why polarity is such an important issue on the tantric path. All the yoga practices and advanced tantric techniques are based on the game of polarity between the two fundamental energies in the universe, the feminine creative energy and the masculine energy of consciousness. Without a basic understanding of the interaction between these energies the different techniques will be of little efficiency and you are unable to truly practice tantra. Therefore it’s of great importance for beginners as well as advanced yoga practitioners to gain a deeper insight into the fascinating game between Shiva and Sakti. To support and intensify this process of becoming aware of the game of polarity during the festival certain rules will be applied. Men and women will live separately during the first days of the festival and follow different spiritual programs. It’s a very common misunderstanding in our society today that men and woman are the same and must be treated completely equally, since in reality men and woman are as different as the sun and the moon. It’s a source of unhappiness and frustration when we lose touch with the specific characteristics of our respective natures and become incapable to understand our self as well as the opposite sex. In this festival all participants are invited to join the game of re-discovering the polarity which has as its ultimate goal the transcendence of duality by obtaining the state of androgyny.
 
After the opening conference some re-arrangements were necessary to make in order to separate men and women, but this unexpected change in the living conditions were received with openness due to a great willingness to gain deeper self-insight by direct experience. The last “common meal” was eaten together before the separation of men and woman took place. After a delicious dinner there was a short introduction of the program of the following days and a meditation on the state of unconditional happiness. The male participants in the festival had to get up 4.30 next morning in order to start a long program of intensive yoga practice for amplifying the masculine energies and were quick to head off to bed. Being a woman I had the (in my eyes at least) privilege of sleeping until 9 the following day, so I stayed with the other woman enjoying a cup of tea and some chocolate cake. It felt really good being a woman and the same sensation appeared when I was woken up at 4 in the morning by the bell announcing that the men’s program started. I snuggled up in my sleeping bag with a feeling of admiration for the men who would spend the next two hours in meditation outside in the cold morning air. I felt how the process of polarization already started to appear.

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