Courses of Training
and Esoteric Methods
Taught by Tao Semko:

Esoteric Methods of Self-Realization (Tantric Yoga)

Practices for expanding the human personality
(Tantra Sadhana & Internal Alchemy)

Practices of Conscious Physical Culture
(Vyayam and Ideokinesis)

Very basically, I teach practical methods of experiencing, training, and expanding all aspects of human awareness and action, including physical movement, emotion, breath, cognition, intuition, subtle energy awareness and control, conscious sexuality, as well as meditative absorption (yoga or samadhi, stilling the mind while completely aware), and transcendent or bliss experiences arising out of that stillness of mind, and resolving back into it.

I teach much of what schools and universities do not teach about human experience and practice -- i teach the esoteric (hidden knowlege) more than the exoteric (openly available knowledge).

I teach how to access and train abilities which are profoundly human, but frequently repressed by society - the intuitive, the feminine, the loving, the sexual, the mystical - without losing sight of the importance of society, of polite interaction, of social convention, of material prosperity and comfort without slavish devotion to that prosperity and comfort.

I teach balance in practice as well as extremism and intensity, rational inquiry and goal setting as well as intuitive trust and wholistic embrace of what is...

I do not seek or teach spiritual escapism. I teach integration of spiritual practice and transcendent experience into mundane life, with full interaction with society. What use is liberation of one human fragment of Consciousness from feeling separate, sorrowful, fearful, angry, anxious, or suffering if the other fragments of the whole are still experiencing those destructive emotions?

The material I teach is the traditional realm of tantra, yoga, qigong, shamanism, internal alchemy, sexual alchemy, and other esoteric disciplines that are only being approached now by western science, and only with great trepidation. I teach both traditionally and syncretically or synergistically, depending on what is appropriate in that time and place.

My training from traditional spiritual lineages and from non-traditional (syncretic and synergistic) teachers and synthesis is extensive (3000+ hours of hatha, kriya, laya, and raja yoga before i even began to teach these disciplines alone) under teachers of metaphysics, meditation, tantra, dzogchen, qigong, and yoga, as well as undertaking enormous amounts of research, experimentation, and synthesis upon myself and with my own students, friends, and teachers.

I have been teaching tantric yoga for nine years, and qigong for seven.

Some of the methods I teach: academic definitions

Tantra: Expansion to liberation... An enormous science of expansion of the human personality into a "divine" or "universal" personality, using the inner world (microcosm) and inwardly-directed awareness to connect to the outer cosmos and more universal states of consciousness and experience, as well as more universal sources of power, both manifest and kinetic, and unmanifest and potential.

In the west, Tantra has been reduced by marketing to a few New Age sexuality practices drawn from the maithuna practices of vamamarga tantra, which are but one splinter of the greater science of tantra. All of tantra observes and uses the energies of creation, sustanance, and destruction, whether in the form of human or universal energies.

In the East, regrettably Tantra is usually associated with the selfish magical practices of a few practitioners, and not with the greater stream of its wisdom and practices.

Tantra is vastly misunderstood or limited in scope by all, including tantric practitioners and scholars of tantrism. I don't pretend to be any different, but i do aim to constantly expand my understanding...

Yoga: The practices which are called yoga are intended to achieve yoga, which is a yoking to, or union with, the Absolute, the Unmanifest, that aspect of consciousness with is primordial and unchanging. Yoga can also be defined as samadhi (union of meditator, meditation, and object of meditation), or as the cessation of fluctuations in the mindstuff... There are many methods used to achieve yoga.

Tantric Yoga:In tantric yoga, the experience of union with the absolute is the central goal, with the peripheral pursuit of an expanded human consciousness, more aware of and more capable of consciously acting on the continuously changing manifestation of fluctuations in consciousness, energy, and matter which we see as relative truth or external reality.

Tantric Hatha Yoga: The system of posture, breath, internal muscle control, and attitude and gesture used to manipulate the meridan and chakra systems so as to unify the solar and lunar flows (Swara) in the central channel (Sushumna) at ajna chakra, achieving sabija samadhi. This system is then followed by a variation of raja yoga to achieve nirbija samadhi.

Tantric Kriya Yoga: Kriya means action, or kinetic energy or movement. Kriya yoga is the process of entraining human awareness and energy through conscious movement of the awareness and breath through the meridians of the body, sometimes without external physical movement (similar to Taoist NeiGung), and sometimes with external physical movements to help circulate the breath, vital energy (prana) and blood.

Laya Yoga: Laya means absorption, or samadhi. Laya yoga is a systematic absorption of awareness into various sounds, symbols, and spaces within the body, achieving a particular resonance through meditation on that sound, symbol, or space... Each resonance sets up a particular brainwave and endocrine/nervous system state, allowing controlled expansion of human awareness into various non-normative states, and allowing a re-wiring of the nervous, endocrine, and meridian systems that is called kundalini awakening. Eventually, absorption is also practiced and established on empty voidness, achieving the same effect as raja yoga.

Mahavidya Yoga: Mahavidya means great wisdom or great knowledge. It is a feminine term, and each of the ten (dasha) mahvidya principles are anthropomorphized as a goddess as well as named with sound (mantra) and represented geometrically in space (in yantra or mandala) The Mahavidya yogas are practices of samadhi (meditative absorptions) in these very specific universal awarenesses and energies

Raja YogaThe "king" (raja) of all yogas, raja yoga is nirbija ("without seed" or "without fluctuation") samadhi itself, as well as all of the meditative practices leading up to samadhi, including the awareness of still suspension of the spine, steadiness of breath and control of vital energy flow, restraints and direction on the mind and action, withdrawal of the external senses, focus, meditation, and meditative absorption....

Jnana Yoga: The yoga of self-knowledge or self-inquiry, including discrimination between temporal and eternal realities, dispassion, tranquility, sensory control, renunciation of that which is not inner duty, endurance, faith, perfect concentration, and intense longing for liberation from temporal limitations

Qigong: Literally, vital or living energy (Qi) practice (Gong)

Vyayam: Literally, "exercise," but specifically, the breath-coordinated calisthenics and yoga kriyas which achieve both physical vitality and mobility, as well as yoking the mind and breath to produce (amongst conscious practitioners) yoga of the mind...

Ideokinesis: "the use of specific images that you see moving in the body to release chronic muscular holding patterns. By using the mind's intention to move in the opposite direction of the habitual contraction, you can effectively release muscle tension" (Definition Source)

Healing: I have been doing and teaching various forms of energy healing and consciousness work for as long as I have taught qigong.