Bliss, Beauty & Prosperity
A Tantric Path of Self Realization
Cycle of 5 Years of Teaching
Residential Retreats with Michail Mourtzis
(Swami Chandrashekarnanda)
Second Year
Arachova, Greece March, 25st - 30th 2026
This series of teachings is an in depth approach to the wonders of the tantric traditions of India. The tantric traditions are among the most profound and transformative spiritual paths in the world. Rooted in ancient wisdom, Tantra is not merely about rituals or esoteric practices—it is a holistic system designed to awaken our full potential as human beings.
Tantra teaches that everything in life is sacred and that spiritual realization is possible through embracing, rather than denying, the world around us. Its practices include meditation, mantra, breathwork, visualization, and energy work, all aimed at expanding consciousness and dissolving inner limitations.
Today, these teachings are more relevant than ever. In a world of stress, disconnection, and constant distraction, Tantra offers a way back to wholeness. By learning to integrate body, mind, and spirit, we can experience deeper intimacy, creativity, and presence in our daily lives. Tantra invites us to live fully—awake, empowered, and connected to the sacredness of existence
*These retreats are designed so that everyone can participate, regardless of their level in meditation and is addressed to those who want to connect more deeply with themselves and evolve consciously
*The teaching will be offered in English and Greek Language
Michalis Mourtzis (Swami Chandrashekar)
Presents the teaching of Tantra:
In this 2nd year, we will discover:
The Practices of the Mahāvidyās
Baglāmukhī
Her name and iconography are associated with the power to arrest, immobilize, or bring movement to a halt. She is traditionally depicted dressed in yellow and seated within a luminous, intensely concentrated field of energy.
Her central Tantric principle is stambhana—the power of stopping or restraining movement. In ritual traditions, this may be understood as the silencing of hostile speech, the interruption of harmful forces, or the immobilization of an adversarial situation.
However, at a deeper level of practice, stambhana can be understood inwardly: the practitioner learns to interrupt the habitual movements of thought, emotional reaction, compulsive speech, and unconscious action.
1. Mastery over speech — Vāk-śakti
Bagalāmukhī is particularly connected with the tongue and speech. Her practice is traditionally believed to help the practitioner restrain unnecessary, reactive, or harmful speech and develop greater precision and authority in communication.
2. Stillness and control of the mind
Her principal power, stambhana, can be understood inwardly as stopping the habitual movement of thought
3. Protection from hostile or disruptive influences
Traditional Bagalāmukhī worship is strongly associated with protection from hostility, negative influences, and forces perceived as obstructive.
4. Greater concentration and one-pointedness
Because her essential symbolism is the arrest of movement, Bagalāmukhī is traditionally associated with ekāgratā—the gathering of consciousness into one-pointed attention.
5. Freedom from fear and reactive patterns
Her fierce iconography represents the ability to remain unmoved in the presence of opposition and associate her with courage, inner strength, and the capacity to face difficult circumstances without immediately reacting to them.
6. Neutralizing obstacles and conflict
Traditionally, Bagalāmukhī is invoked in situations involving opposition, disputes, competition, and obstacles. Her power involves bringing the momentum of a difficult situation to a halt, creating space for a different outcome.
7. Transformation of the “inner enemy”
Her practice becomes a discipline of transforming reaction into stillness—and stillness into awareness. Transforming compulsive speech, uncontrolled desire, anger, fear, confusion, and the restless mind.
Dhūmāvatī
Her name derives from dhūma, meaning “smoke,” and her imagery is associated with what remains after something has been consumed by fire. She is traditionally depicted as an elderly, widowed woman, often dressed in worn clothing and accompanied by a crow. Her unusual appearance deliberately challenges conventional ideas of beauty, prosperity, youth, and social status.
Her central Tantric principle is the encounter with emptiness, dissolution, and the absence of familiar supports. In traditional symbolism, Dhūmāvatī represents those aspects of existence that are often rejected or feared: loss, aging, loneliness, hunger, disappointment, death, and separation. Yet Tantra does not necessarily regard these experiences simply as negative. Instead, they can become gateways through which attachment and illusion are brought into awareness.
1. Cultivation of detachment — Vairāgya
Dhūmāvatī is strongly associated with renunciation, deprivation, and the disappearance of worldly attractions. Her practice traditionally helps the sādhaka recognize attachment and gradually loosen the psychological need to possess, control, or depend upon external circumstances.
2. Freedom from fear of loss and impermanence
Dhūmāvatī confronts the practitioner with precisely those aspects of existence that are normally avoided: aging, loneliness, failure, death, poverty, and dissolution. Working contemplatively with her can transform avoidance into direct awareness of impermanence. Her deeper teaching is that consciousness does not disappear simply because the forms upon which we depend disappear.
3. Protection during periods of crisis
Traditional Tantric sources describe Dhūmāvatī as a protector during periods of severe difficulty, calamity, opposition, and adversity. She is invoked when circumstances have already entered a state of dissolution and the practitioner seeks protection and passage through the difficulty.
4. Withdrawal from compulsive worldly activity
One distinctive traditional effect of Dhūmāvatī worship is the movement toward solitude and withdrawal. Classical accounts even caution that her practice may intensify the desire for a renunciant life, which is one reason her worship has traditionally been approached differently from that of more auspicious household deities.
5. Confrontation with the “shadow” of existence
Dhūmāvatī represents what society labels undesirable, impure, unsuccessful, or inauspicious. Her practice provides a Tantric means of confronting what consciousness normally rejects
6. Deepening of inner silence
Her association with the void, smoke, hunger, solitude, and dissolution makes Dhūmāvatī particularly relevant to practices in which the practitioner stops feeding the continuous movement of thought and desire.
7. Spiritual knowledge and liberation — Jñāna and Mokṣa
The highest traditional benefit attributed to Dhūmāvatī is not material gain but knowledge of reality and liberation. Several traditional accounts describe her as a giver of ultimate knowledge
Rudra
The Fierce Power of Transformation
Rudra is one of the most ancient and powerful deities identified with Śhiva. His name evokes the one who roars, cries out, or unleashes the force of the storm. He is wild, fierce, unpredictable, and closely connected with mountains, forests, animals, storms, disease, death, and the untamed forces of nature.
His paradoxical nature is central to his identity: the same force that can wound can also heal; the power that brings disease can also remove it. He is therefore invoked both with fear and with reverence, as a protector, healer, and master of transformative forces.
In Śhaiva traditions, Rudra becomes one of the great names and manifestations of Śhiva, representing the fierce dimension of consciousness that destroys ignorance, limitation, and stagnation.
Rudra can thus be understood symbolically as the force of radical transformation—the power that breaks through what has become rigid or unconscious, clearing the way for renewal, freedom, and deeper awareness.
He represents the mysterious unity of destruction and healing, terror and protection, death and liberation.
We will explore:
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The first 4 practices of the 11 Rudras.These practices are presented as a system to support and expand the energy of the 10 Mahāvidyās.
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The main practice of Rudra for dispelling heavy internal obstacles
We will also deepen into the:
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Main practice of Shiva
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Main practice of shakti
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Select practices from Shiva Sutras and Spanda Karikas.
*There might be additional practices each year, depending on the dynamic of the group