Evolution and History
After a medical career and 20 years of intensive study with Swami Rama, Rudiji began to devote his life to teaching and writing about tantra. In 2003, as he was beginning to make the transition back to the Southeast where he grew up, he and a student launched a series of 4 day intensive tantra workshops, where participants took part in the food preparation, cleaning, setting up spaces. They were all delighted to discover that within the container provided by the principles of tantra almost instantly a loving, sex-positive, intimate, and transformative community emerged. After several iterations of the experience, men began to ask, “Why do we have to leave? Why can’t we live like this all the time?”
We were functioning as a living organism. Why not live this way?? From that inspiration arose the intention to create such a community. There was already a growing network of folks who were supportive. At that point, Rudiji had the opportunity to establish a small neighborhood within an ecovillage near his natal home. A number of those whose lives he had touched pitched in. Some came to live and help for a period, others to organize and help with the programs. Now Dancing Shiva is a small, but well-established and functioning homestead/monastery/retreat center.
Physical Facility and Setting
Dancing Shiva is nestled in a 350 acre forested permaculture-oriented village in the southern Appalachians. DS itself is a ten acre facility, with residential buildings, tenting sites, a meditation temple, gardens, and wooded areas that border on a creek. It is one of twelve “neighborhoods” that make up the village, each being separated from the others by wooded commons. DS is one of the more remote and private neighborhoods which contributes to its serenity and allows being clothing optional to be a non issue.
The center of the village is a short 10 to 15 minute walk away. There a rainbow of permaculture related activities ground the practice of tantra in an intimate connection with the earth. DS considers the principles and practices of permaculture to be “applied tantra,” since they are a tangible way to revere, and to be in service to, the feminine principle as manifest in Gaia.