Tantra Yoga Teacher Training

About the Team

An international Tantra Yoga Training Team

We are an international team composed of about 20 passionate and motivated people with amazing backgrounds specialized in various fields and aspects of yoga.

Each teacher comes with their unique design of class that is perfectly integrated in the main teacher training choreography that is the base of our program. The schedule of teachers is not a fixed plan, as the school is confident that each teacher will deliver what is best for each course.

We are a rotating team to keep the energy high and fresh in the trainings during the whole year.

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Iris Disse

Founder of Durga's Tiger School

Iris is a German artist and internationally renowned filmmaker based in Latin America and Europe. Her documentaries and movies reflect the social reality of the indigenous people in Latin America and Indonesia.

Until 1995 she was a well-known actress for German TV and theatre. She subsequently worked as a theatre director in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna. She is a prize-winning sound artist and maintains some involvement in these fields.

From 1988-1993 she became interested in meditation, breathing, singing and dancing as spiritual techniques with the Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Kahn. Every year she participated in monthly retreats in the Alps.

From 1993-1995 she trained in Tantra Yoga with a range of teachers including Margo Anand, Doris Christinger and Peter Schröter from Sky Dancing Tantra, Diana Richardson, Kutira and Allan Lowen.
She has been practicing Tantra for the last 20 years with her partner, David Höner.

Iris and David have been teaching Tantra in different parts of the world since 1996 and Iris currently presents at the University of Quito (Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar) and Durga’s Tiger School ®. Since 1994 she had worked with indigenous people in Latin America, and has become involved with Shamanistic Energy work.

In February, 2013 Iris completed a advanced Tantra Yoga Certification with the traditional tantrica Bhagavan Shanmukha Anantha Natha in India. She is certified as a Master Yoga teacher by Yoga Alliance International and a 500 hrs E-RYT of Yoga Alliance. The Mistress Kapad Dini Ambar iniciated her into Shri Vidya Tantra.

Since 2000 Iris has developed Durga’s Tiger Teachings, incorporating Tantra Yoga, tantric Philosophy and Shamanism. Her Durga’s Tiger Dance Meditation is a powerful fusion of yoga energy work implemented in different dance styles. The training involves voice work including chanting and “liberation of the voice.”

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Iris Disse is the catalyser of Durga´s Tiger School®, choreographer of this transforming energy composition of Yoga, Tantra, Arts and Shamanism. Iris is Master Yoga teacher in the school teaching Kaula Tantra Yoga classes, Durga´s Tiger Dance and “Applied Tantra Philosophy.”

Malin Wind Disse

Wind Malin Disse was born in Berlin, Germany. From the age of 3 years old he has been living in Ecuador with exception of a few years in Switzerland. He graduated in Anthropology in Ecuador, and went to Germany for advanced studies as a Migration Manager. Besides Wind loves extreme sports and to play music as a DJ on festivals.

Wind´s path as an anthropologist, artist and yoga teacher leads him to be seen as a cultural mediator, a bridge between worlds. He has been teaching the traditional Kaula Tantra Yoga in many workshops. In 2020 he joined a teacher training in the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center in the south India. He is a certified Yoga Alliance and Yoga Alliance International Yoga Teacher (E-RYT 500) and one of the lead teachers of the Durga’s Tiger School ® Yoga Teacher Training. In Durga’s Tiger School ® he teaches Applied Tantra Wisdom, Meditation and Psychology of Chakras beside Kaula Tantra Yoga and Shamanism. 

Due to his deep interest in shamanism, he has contacted many shamans of the Amazon and Andean region of Ecuador, and worked with them to understand their traditions.

From 2009 Wind has been invited to learn more about the shamanic tradition of the Cofán- A’i socio-culture and ended up being accepted as apprentice by the shaman Don Avelino Quenama.

Wind´s thesis as Anthropologist was about the theme: Orality, practices and symbols of the A´i shamanism, including the relation with visionary plants. Don Avelino gave him the authorization to do his own ceremonies with the yage medicine and share his knowledge.
Since then, Wind Malin Disse has attended and guided many shamanic ceremonies in order to keep on learning and help others to enter into a shamanic state of consciousness that allows shamanic healing.

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Ecuador Team

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Jhoselyn Escobar

Jhoselyn returned to Ecuador after a decade abroad where she worked with non-profit organizations living in New York, Paris, Lima and New Zealand. Her work with rural and indigenous communities was what brought Jhoselyn back to Ecuador. Always inclined to rural living, mountains, forest, farms feels like home.

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Catherine-Ayer Gresham

C.A. has studied under Iris Disse since 2017 where she first discovered the magical mix of Tantra, Art and Ancestral Knowledge. She completed the 500-hr training at Durga’s Tiger School ® and has continued to put energy into the school ever since as a foundational member of the team.

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Daniela de Girolamo

Daniela was born and raised in Italy. After some years traveling as a tour guide, she decided to change her life and dive into the arts of well being and ancestral knowledge.

In 2006 she was certified as ayurveda massage therapist. In the same year she began to study shiatsu and traditional chinese medicine.

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Carolina Cruz

Carolina is a mom and researcher of life, mind and body through movement.
From an early age she began her career with ethnic dances and somatic techniques.

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Cristoph Baumann

Christoph is a German actor, theatre director and teacher based since 1984 in Ecuador. His theatre works made him travel through almost all countries of Latinamerica as well as Mexico, attending festivals and directing plays. His works as an actor in film and internet opened his career to a vast audience in the Spanish speaking world.

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Marcelino Peralta

Marcelino is a musician, composer, instrument builder, multidisciplinary artist, Yoga teacher.
He has integrated various musical and theatrical projects throughout his career. He has also been a participant in various processes of musical creation and production, as well as creative processes in general.

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Merve Biçer

Merve is an aeronautical engineer and although she decided to dedicate her time fully on her self-realization journey leaving her career in civil aviation in 2022, she is greatly benefiting from her practical, planning, and solution oriented mind skills in her journey. She loves to find the simple, practical, and experience based techniques from every teaching she has encountered with. She loves using her mind as an ally, her body as a temple and a messenger, her feelings and thoughts as her practice field, her heart as her guide, and her spirit to remember the Oneness. 

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Javier Wermuth

Javier Wermuth is an Advanced Instructor of Kaula Tantra Yoga and a multi-instrumentalist Musician.

He is currently co-leader in the YTT / 500 hs of Durga’s Tiger School – Ecuador. He also teaches classes and courses in different parts of Argentina and South America.

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Europe Team

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Joanna Heike Herrmann

Since 2016, Heike has accompanied the yoga teacher trainings in Germany at ZEGG with cocoa ceremonies and as a Kaula Tantra yoga teacher. She has been a psytrance and techno DJ for over 20 years, so you can expect dance sessions when she’s around. What else? Heike is a qualified pedagogue and the mom of 2 (still quite young) kids.

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Barbara Stützel

Psychological psychotherapist, yoga teacher, singer and community coach, born 1966 in Saarbrücken, Germany.

In 1997, her longing for a self-determined, sustainable and intimate life led her to the ZEGG community. www.zegg.de

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Bettina Steinle -Vossbeck

Bettina spent her childhood between the city and countryside, close to nature and the heartbeat of

Mother Earth. Growing up on horseback, she is an accomplished rider, trained in numerous horsemanship courses with Birger Gieseke and taught therapeutic riding on her farm.

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Christian Marti

Christian creates experiences that connect people to their inner wisdom, their magic, and their personal power – based on his own journey in Tantra, Yoga, breathwork, music, dance, bodywork, and writing. He received his YA RYT-500 certification from Durga’s Tiger School® in Ecuador in 2019 and 2020 and is part of the school faculty in Europe.

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Lili Steinle

Lilli is a Yoga teacher, Reiki Master, Horsemanship trainer, Medicine woman and teaches at Durga’s Tiger School. Born and raised on the countryside in Germany, she grew up intimately with nature, horses, horsemanship, Yoga and Reiki.

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Massimo Mariotti

Massimo is an Actor and Theater Director, Clown, Producer of
Documentaries, Photographer and Cameraman, Sound Engineer, Director
audiovisual with experience in pre and post production, preparation,
scripts and Editing.

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Carolina Cruz

She completed her certifications in Pilates Mat with a specialization in post-rehabilitation,
later she was certified in Myofascial Training, Functional Rehabilitation for Athletes, Pelvic Floor Training and Cupping, sports massage and Ayurveda massage.

She is also a certified teacher in Barre Method, Yoga, Kaula Tantra Yoga, Pilates and Suspension Yoga & Pilates, Hatha Yoga, with YACEP (continuous learning) in Pranayama, Kundalini, and the emotions behind the symptoms.
At the moment, she is finishing her studies of Sound therapy in the art of Gong.
She is a certified Doula and Ayurveda Coach.

She is in favor of not systematizing the body and looks at each person as a universe, providing the tools for each body, each biology and biography.

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Jhoselyn Escobar

It was the Tsáchilas who introduced her to the first cacao plant in all its stages, since then she has worked with  agricultural projects, being able to learn the importance of connection of earth to cosmos.. 

Feeling the call of the Ilaló back in 2020, she was accredited with 500 hours RYT at Durga’s Tiger School; since then she works as a Kaula Tantra Yoga teacher, supporting meditations,  and other diverse  classes in addition to managing the space in Ecuador.

Durgas Tiger School was the seed that opened the tantric path, ¨ Tantra says do anything you want with consciousness and love. This has become her life philosophy.   ¨ Tantra helps me to walk  the path of the heart¨  

Jhoselyn has taken  an intensive Tantra course with the Sky Dancing Tantra Institute exploring the meaning of Love and Ecstasy, she is a  Reiki practitioner and holds a bachelor in Business and French, a Master in Agribusiness and Rural Development. 

 

She now acts as a bridge between two worlds, helping to establish the Durga’s Tiger Land project where a sustainable community is being born withDurga’s Tiger School seeds.

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Catherine-Ayer Gresham

The first Kaula Tantra Practice was a home-coming, a moment where mind, body and soul were truly ONE, and since then she has dedicated her life to living the principles of the practice. 

C.A. has turned her focus towards social work and will be pursuing a Masters degree to become a trauma therapist. C.A. is passionate about teaching people how to be comfortable in their bodies and through concrete techniques there are ways to regulate the nervous system, allowing persons to act from a place of a grounded center. These ways are not new, they have been embedded in human body-knowledge since the beginning of time — discovered over and over again across religion, region, culture, time and space. 

“The beauty about the Kaula practice and expressive arts is that; if you have a body, you can do it!”

-Catherine-Ayer Gresham

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Daniela De Girolamo

Thanks to this beautiful 4 year path, in which Daniela gained an understanding of natural elements and their relationship with the body, she can integrate the knowledge of these two ancient arts of healing and utilize the many similarities between Ayurvedic and Chinese Medicine. 

In 2010 she was certified as a shiatsu therapist and the same year she participated in the intensive course “Diagnostic and work with chakras” with Diego Sanchez of Uruguay. In 2011 she attended the postgraduate course “Shiatsu and Menstruation” with Marina De Franceschi of Italy.

Between 2010 and 2012 she trained to become a Qi Gong teacher.

Daniela taught qi gong and worked with shiatsu in different centers in Granada. Between centers she participated in Artes Sanas en Movimiento, a creative project where she met professionals of many other disciplines and exchanged methodologies in yoga practices, qi gong techniques, and classical indian dance.

Between 2011 and 2012 she travelled in India where she practiced hatha yoga in Sivananda Ashram in Neyyr Dam.

Since arriving in Ecuador in 2013, Daniela has been training in Kaula Tantra Yoga with Iris Disse and assisting with the creation of Durga’s Tiger School. 

She goes on exploring different techniques of yoga and energetic work such as ovaries breath, meditation, yogabeats, hatha yoga, kundalini yoga, qi gong and teaching with passion and inspiration, having accumulated around 2000 hours giving classes.

In 2018, during her pregnancy, she did the teacher training of yoga for pregnancy and after birth. She’s grateful for the experience of mothering and re-discover the world through the eyes of her son.

She is an experienced yoga teacher in the school as well as general manager of Ecuador and Europe, and she gives classes in active meditation, kaula tantra yoga, partner tantra yoga, Intuitive Anatomy, Applied Tantric Wisdom.

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Barbara Stützel

She has lived there since 2001 and for many years was in charge of directing festivals, seminars and public relations. Barbara Stützel’s work centers on the intersection of community, creativity and healing – where people come together to expand their potential and live a life of greater connectedness.

Today, she facilitates groups on how a conscious and healing We emerges from many I’s. This includes Forum Workshops and Forum Facilitation Trainings (in Germany, France, Brazil and Spain), annual Tantra Yoga Teacher Trainings (Durgas Tiger School), singing workshops and community counseling. In her work her talent as a psychologist, yogini and artist join more than 20 years of community experience. She facilitates a space of presence and contact in which obstructive structures are perceived and new inner movements emerge. The integration of mind, body, feelings and creativity allows a holistic approach to the human being and an opening for future possibilities.

 

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Bettina Steinle-Vossbeck

She completed her bachelor and master degree in agricultural sciences and became an engineer. Her employment took her to Africa and Asia. It enabled her to become self employed as a scientist and later publicist, where she co-founded a company and directed it as a CEO.

Bettina’s passion for life guided her into yoga, where she has become a yogi master. She has 20 years of experience, is BDY/EYU and KHYF certified under T. Krishnamacharya, T.K.V. Desikachar, R. Sriram and adds to more than 3000 certified hours through YA/YAI Durga’s Tiger School and other qualified trainings. Furthermore, she completed the Craniosacral Therapy training, Matrix Rhythm Therapy course, became an AEP/EdxTM practitioner and certified Reiki teacher.

As a healer Bettina’s spirit called her to Native American culture and shamanic healing. She began to study in 2015 through the sweet medicine Sundance path under the elders of the Deer Tribe Metis

Medicine Society in Arizona. It is the heartbeat of the drum, one of the powerful healing instruments, that speaks to her, calls her powerful healing voice and let not only her heart space grow.

Bettina attributes her love of life and free spirit to the teachings she has received. At Durga’s Tiger School, her yoga and shamanic paths unite to create a precious path of healing. As the director of Durga’s Tiger International, her goal is to make Kaula Tantra Yoga and Durga’s Tiger School available worldwide and to connect people internationally. She enjoys teaching in a team where heart space and knowledge is used to hold space for others allowing them to experience and heal themselves.

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Christian Marti

Christian is also a co-organizer of the Wild Love Festival in Switzerland, a bodyworker and a breathwork facilitator (Biodynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release System BBTRS). Until 2018, he worked as a researcher in public transport, and he holds a PhD in that field from ETH Zurich.

Walking the Tantrik Path since 2017, he keeps exploring it with various teachers and schools, such as Estera Saraswati and Zenon D. Dorje (House of Tantra), Lorenzo Stiernquist, Kristina Marlen, Elana Andermatt, the International School of Temple Arts (ISTA), Pema Gitama (Wild Tantra) – and he found deep inspiration and mentorship in Iris Disse at Durga’s Tiger School.

Together with Carmen, Christian offers retreats in Switzerland that are inspired by what he experienced, learned and taught at Durga’s Tiger School. You can find them at fullyalive.ch.

Merve Biçer

In 2017, she decided to dive into the question of “Who am I?” which took her on a journey through psychotherapy, breath work, meditation, Buddhism, yoga, energy work, and Tantra. After leaving her home and career, she went to Nepal to learn traditional Tantra yoga and since then she’s been living a nomadic life. 
 
Her journey took her from Asia to Ecuador, where she completed 500 hr training at Durga’s Tiger Yoga School® in 2023. Feeling very connected with the vision of the school, as well as admiring the teaching methods, the decision to be part of the Durga’s Tiger Riders Team came to her naturally. 
 
She has completed 900 hours of yoga teacher training. (Hatha and Tantra yoga) She is also a breath work facilitator, meditation guide, Usui Reiki and Cosmic Energy practitioner.
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Christoph Baumann

After workshops in the Theatre Lab of Jerzy Grotowski en Wroclaw/Polonia he studied in the Jacques Lecóq School for mime, movement and theatre in Paris and attended during 3 years workshops with teachers of the Lee Strasberg School of Acting in different cities in Europe. He studied Tai Chi (Yang style) with Ana Triebel in Berlin/Germany.

Up to 1984 he worked in Berlin in different independent theatre groups. In “Voice and Movement”, a group directed by the Russian composer Vladimir Rodzianko, he worked on a combination of extended range vocal expression, based on the training of south African actor and vocalist Roy Hart, and selected dance and mime movements. Another group was the today still existing “Berliner Companie”, a very successful touring political theatre network. Since then Christoph has a special emphasis in the political impact of theatre art works.

From 1988 to 1992 he was Director of the german-ecuadorian cultural centre “Asociación Humboldt”, now Goethe Institute, in Quito. He organized more than 800 national and international cultural events.

From 1986 to nowadays he directed and acted in more than 40 stage plays. From 1981 to 2017 he acted in a big variety of films for cinema, television and internet, produced in Italy, Germany, Hungria, Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia.

In 2011 he carried out together with his wife, the ecuadorian actress Tamara Navas, the project ¨Theatre on Wheels”, meetings with imagination – creative journeys with a theatre truck, named “The eternal invisible”, visiting 50 cities and towns of Ecuador.

Christoph is a researcher of creative processes in individuals and groups and of different paths of non-directive (self-taught) learning. In Durgas Tiger School ® his teachings put emphasis on theatre as a playground to act out the deeper emotional sources of our creative being, using a great variety of techniques from improvisational theatre, dynamics from Gestalt therapy, clowning, working with masks, scene work, and others.

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Lili Steinle

Since 2016 she is dedicatedly walking a shamanic spiritual path on which she trains inner as well as outer leadership, rituals, ceremonies, knowledge and its application. After a traffic accident in 2018, she has intensively pursued, studied and applied knowledge and tools for self-healing. With her big heart space, enthusiasm and joy she enjoys to accompany and support others in their development.

During the trainings she shares Kaula Tantra Yoga, Heart Songs and Nature Spirit Connection classes.

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Marcelino Peralta

He toured more than 15 countries traveling, teaching and learning music and world cultures.
Sound & Senses facilitator, a space for self-knowledge that involves elements of physical, musical and sound communication, translated into everyday human experience.

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Massimo Mariotti

Graduated from the Centro Experimental di
Successful cinematography in Bologna, and participated in the
professional school of scenic art at the Academy of Cinema in
Rome, Italy. Participated in workshops and acting seminar
professional in Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Colombia on the Clown,
acting technique, hospitable clown, neutral mask, expresive of
lecoq, comedy of art in its artistic journey.
He toured Latin America for 3 years with the work “que onda
with the mother”. He teaches workshops in areas inherent to the realization
audiovisual, communication and theater.

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Javier Wermuth

In the last 15 years he has traveled through South America studying, researching and experiencing his music and culture with the Alimishky group.

His proposal is to spread tools for human transformation through spirituality, yoga and art.