A personal welcome from Iris Disse

Watch before you scrollthis is for you if you are ready to go deep — alone or together.

Durga's Tiger School®

Beyond the
Myths of Tantra

A Path to Wholeness

Alone or as Couples

A Living Immersion for Seekers

Yoga Teacher Training

200 · 300 · 500 hrs  ·  Yoga Alliance Certified

Most people think tantra is only about physical pleasure.

It is about life.

Life force flows through everything — your creativity, your relationships, your courage, your capacity to love. In this school, we learn to move that energy consciously, so it feeds every dimension of who you are.

Tantra is the ancient art of becoming fully alive. It offers a holistic path to wholeness — learning to inhabit your body, your relationships, and your existence with presence and intention.

This is what Iris has been teaching for over 30 years. Not theory. Not performance. A lived path.

Woman dancing freely — tantra as aliveness

For the solo seeker

You feel the call.Something in you is ready.

For couples

You love each other.Something is ready to deepen.

Tiger Riders

Truth seekers from around the world, here to learn to embrace a tantric lifestyle.

Women in practice
In stillness, you meet yourself
Man in practice
Every seeker walks their own path
Group in savasana
Rest is also practice

Joshua & Madlin — Tiger Riders

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Couple embracing at Durga's Tiger School

A word from our founder · Iris Disse

Our techniques move life energy — so that couples begin to rediscover themselves as individuals within the relationship. It rejuvenates love. You learn heartful communication, how to recreate the feeling of love — becoming master of your own energy movement.

Blockages can melt. Patterns can be identified with love, so that you can let them go. Freedom and love become two poles, dancing with each other.

Iris Disse · Founder, Durga's Tiger School®

Couple playing in the yoga room

Laughter is alsopart of the practice.

The tantric path at Durga's Tiger School is deep — but it is not heavy. Alongside the inner work, the ritual, and the transformation, there is something equally important: joy. Playfulness. The freedom to be ridiculous, surprising, and fully alive.

You will find yourself laughing in postures you never expected to try. Discovering new sides of yourself — and of each other. Seeing your partner, or your fellow seekers, with completely fresh eyes.

This is what the tantric path does. It does not just deepen love — it lightens it. It makes room for the child inside you to come out and play again.

Not a retreat you attend.A life you inhabit.

Every day is woven from practice, ritual, community, and reflection. You will not just learn about tantra — you will live it, in your body, in community, in the land.

Practice at Durga's Tiger School
01

Kaula Tantra Yoga — daily

A slow, flowing, meditative practice rooted in ancient lineage. Each session is a moving meditation — 2 to 3 hours — that reunites body, mind, and energy. No pressure. No performance. Your body finds its own truth.

Kaula Tantra Yoga
02

Heartful communication

Through the Talking Stick circle and applied tantric philosophy, you learn to speak and listen from the heart — not the ego. For couples and solo seekers alike, this practice can change everything.

Heartful communication
03

Massage & partner work

You learn to give and receive — consciously, lovingly, without pressure. Partner yoga and the Yogic Walking Massage teach you to hold sacred space for another's body and energy.

Partner work
04

Shamanic ritual & ceremony

Temazcal sweat lodge, cacao ceremonies, ritual and nature connection practices drawn from Andean and Tibetan traditions. These are doorways into altered states and expanded awareness — practical shamanism you carry into your art and your life.

Shamanic ceremony
05

Art, dance & expression

Durga's Tiger Dance, mantra chanting, shamanic clown, voice liberation. Through movement and sound you deepen creativity and intuition — and learn to see life from a completely new perspective. Your inner child, your wildness, your joy.

Dance and expression
06

Community living

You share meals, practice, and life with an international group of up to 30 people. In this sangha you are not alone in your growth — you are held, witnessed, and celebrated.

Durgas Tiger School community

Tomás and Amelie met during their 500-hour Tantra Yoga Teacher Training at Durga’s Tiger School. Along the way, they discovered not only each other, but new ways of relating, communicating, and growing together. Here, they share their experience in their own words.

Francisca and Javier
🐯

To come here is a great experience for us as a couple. I take so many powerful moments and fun moments… There is a lot of great energy and beauty in the place, in the other students, in the teachers — it is very inspirational.

Javier

🐯

It is a very safe space. I dive deep into my heart and the heart of my partner. I take the ability to express how I am and how I feel with my partner. And that I am ok as I am.

Franciska

Craig in prayer pose
★★★★★

I was simply looking for a yoga retreat — a place to decompress and meet like-minded people. When I spotted a Kaula Tantra, Art and Shamanism path at Durga's Tiger School, I jumped at the chance.

There's such great energy here — you can feel it in the air, across the landscape, in the yoga shala, and between the group. The teachers build and maintain a safe space and sense of trust needed to heal, to peel back some layers, let go, let loose, and allow our seeds to grow.

I loved the heady mix of classes — the majority of learning done in an experiential, hands-on, caring and sharing way. Exactly what my yoga and spiritual awakening journey desperately needed.

I'll definitely be coming back to complete the 500 YTT.

Craig · Solo seeker · Latin America travels

Real voices. Real transformation.

Words can only go so far. Watch what our Tiger Riders have to say in their own voices.

Solo seeker Tingting shares her experience

European family — couple with child

All seekers welcome

Love does not comein one shape.

At Durga's Tiger School, the tantric path belongs to every person who feels called to it — regardless of who you love, how you identify, or what your relationship looks like.

What matters is the intention you arrive with: the willingness to be honest, to grow, to open. Every seeker who walks through these doors is received with the same warmth, the same depth, and the same freedom to be exactly who they are.

Come as you are. You are welcome here.

The Tiger Rider community

Durga's Tiger School celebration day group photo

So much more than justa yoga teacher training.

Most trainings give you techniques and send you home. Here you live the practice — every day, in community, in nature, in ritual — until it becomes part of who you are.

  • You become your own authority

    The tantric path teaches you to evaluate theory from your own experience. You become less easily manipulated, more deeply yourself.

  • Tantra is grounded and embodied

    No abstraction. No performance. The tantra here is lived through breath, movement, sound, and conscious touch — in a safe, respectful, boundary-clear environment.

  • You are held by community

    You grow alongside others — not in isolation. The sangha of international Tiger Riders creates a field of trust and shared transformation that amplifies everything.

  • The land is part of the teaching

    Durga's Tiger School sits at the edge of the Ilaló natural reserve. The mountain, the river valley, the forest — they hold the space for inner work in a way no urban retreat can replicate.

  • You leave as a certified yoga teacher

    Internationally recognized by Yoga Alliance. You don't just transform personally — you gain the tools and certification to guide others on this path too.

2026–2027 Immersion Programs

Open to solo seekers and couples. Choose based on how deep you are ready to go — you can always return for more.

Group sharing circle at Durga's Tiger School

Internationally recognized

Your certificate opens doors —
everywhere in the world.

Durga's Tiger School is registered with Yoga Alliance International — the world's largest nonprofit association for yoga. This means your 200, 300, or 500-hour certificate is recognized globally, allowing you to teach professionally anywhere in the world and join the international registry of certified yoga teachers.

Yoga Alliance RYS 200 300 500 certified
FoundationBook Now
200 hrs

28 days · Ecuador

  • Oct 11 – Nov 7 2026
  • Nov 15 – Dec 12 2026
  • Jan 10 – Feb 6 2027
  • Feb 14 – Mar 13 2027
  • Mar 28 – Apr 24 2027
  • Jun 13 – Jul 10 2027
  • Jul 18 – Aug 14 2027
  • Oct 10 – Nov 6 2027
  • Nov 14 – Dec 11 2027
Full ImmersionBook Now
500 hrs

63 days · Ecuador

  • Oct 11 – Dec 13 2026
  • Jan 10 – Mar 13 2027
  • Jun 13 – Aug 14 2027
  • Oct 10 – Dec 12 2027
Andes mountains near Durga's Tiger School

Durga's Tiger School · Ilaló · Andes

The Andes have been holding people like you for a very long time.

Durga’s Tiger School rests on the slopes of Ilaló, an extinct volcano rising above the Tumbaco Valley near Quito. Set within the indigenous community of Leopoldo Chávez and beside the protected landscape of Ilaló, this is wild land close enough to reach — and far enough from ordinary life to let something in you finally exhale.

Built over years by artists, from adobe, brick, wood and stone drawn from this volcanic earth, every corner of the school carries intention. Gardens, open terraces, mature trees and sweeping views across the Andes hold the practice without ever performing it. On clear days, the great volcanoes of the region rise on the horizon — a reminder of how small, and how vast, a single life can be.

Ilaló is not a backdrop. It is ancient, alive, and deeply significant — home to communities whose relationship with this mountain reaches back through generations. Here, the land becomes part of the work itself: an invitation to step outside familiar roles, meet your own edges, and remember a way of being that modern life rarely makes room for.

  • Edge of the Ilaló natural reserve, Ecuador
  • Tumbaco — 30 minutes from Quito
  • Safe, peaceful, community neighborhood
  • 3 vegetarian meals per day, shared together
  • Temazcal sweat lodge on site
  • Weekend excursions to Ecuador highlights
  • Maximum 30 students per group
  • Power plant ceremonies available (optional)
Iris Disse — Founder

Iris in her own words

MeetIris Disse

Founder · Energetic Choreographer · Director

Iris is a composer, writer, radio producer, and filmmaker — and the living creative force behind everything Durga's Tiger School does. She has been on the tantric path for over 30 years, and in a tantric relationship with her partner David for 34 of them.

She did not found this school from theory. She founded it from lived experience — from the transformations tantra, shamanism, yoga, and art brought into her own life, her love, and her creative work. She teaches what she lives.

In each training you have the opportunity to work directly with Iris — to be guided, witnessed, and challenged by someone who has walked every step of this path herself.

How tofind us.

Getting to Durga's Tiger School is easier than you might think. Ecuador is well connected internationally, and our location just outside Quito makes arrival straightforward and stress-free.

  • ✈️The training location is approximately 30 minutes from Quito International Airport — easily accessible by taxi or arranged transport.
  • 📍We are located in Tumbaco, a calm and peaceful area just outside Quito, in the lush Andean valley.
  • 📋You will receive detailed arrival instructions after booking — including transport options and what to bring.
  • 🤝The team at Durga's Tiger School is always happy to assist with travel coordination. Just reach out — we are here to make your arrival as smooth as possible.

You may have heard things about Ecuador.Here is what our students actually felt.

Ecuador has had challenging press coverage in recent years. We understand this may give you pause. But we want you to hear it directly from people who came — who moved through Quito, lived in Tumbaco, and experienced the country with open eyes. Durga's Tiger School is a safe, peaceful sanctuary. Ecuador, approached with awareness, is a deeply beautiful country to be in.

Salome shares her experience of safety in Ecuador

Ready toride the tiger?

Reach out and tell us about yourself — alone or as a couple. No pressure, no sales process — just a real conversation about whether this path is right for you, right now.

Or speak to us directly

Some people prefer to write. Others prefer to talk. Either way, we are here — and we respond personally.

📱 WhatsApp / Telegram: +39 349 78 13 230
📱 Phone: +593 99-280-5875

Want to discover more about our school, philosophy, and community?

Visit the Durga’s Tiger School website →