A little history of Tao’s practice and instruction in these topics:
Tao’s first teacher of various forms of Indian tantric yoga was Santiago Dobles, who taught yogas including Tantric Hatha Yoga, Tantric Kriya Yoga, Tantric Raja Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Laya Yoga (the yoga of absorption in form and resonance), Mantra Japa, Mantra and Yantra Laya, Mahavidya Yoga, Maithuna/Sambhoga Yoga, and more in the late 1990s in South Florida. Santiago taught classes at Prana Yoga at its inception (he actually helped to lay the flooring during the construction of the facility), and further south, outdoors on the grounds of Kendall Indian Hammocks Park and Miami-Dade College, after being given teaching credentials by Dinu Roman and Camelia Chepetan in his teens as a prodigy of tremendous capacity and focus.
In 1999 Santiago Dobles began teaching those same esoteric yogas at Unified Martial Art Academy, a martial arts studio whose acronym UMAA matched the name of Parvati as the holy mountain. He called the program UMAA Tantra due to the coincidence of place and name. Tao Semko, who was then a senior student of Santiago, founded and HTML-scripted the website UmaaTantra.com in late 2000/early 2001, and the publishing company Smashan Press shortly thereafter, to publish e-books, CDs, DVDs, and video (DVD at the time, later converted to streaming video), correspondence courses that he and Santiago authored.
Tao released one of the first video programs on Nauli Kriya on VHS in 2003. Santiago published three editions of Secrets the Gurus will Never Show You in 3-ring binder and spiral-bound formats and then as .PDF downloads, Tao published two editions of Visual Stepping Stones to the Absolute, they released Dinu Roman’s Secrets of Tantra video program first on VHS and then DVD, and together they released The Tantric Inner Circle Practice Sessions and Gold Discs on DVD and CD, with email support.
Santiago and Tao studied with numerous other teachers, lineages, and cultural wisdom traditions in this time, including Tibetan Khempos and Rinpoches, masters of Qigong, Vyayam, and Tenaga Dalam, masters of internal and internal-external martial arts, and numerous healing modalities. Santiago and Tao collaborated with Dr. Glenn J. Morris, benefitting from Glenn’s knowledge of Qigong and Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, while sharing their working knowledge of Trika yoga and tantra practices. Santiago and Tao helped Glenn refine the Improved Kundalini Awakening Process program (KAP) that he distilled into a stand-alone set of workshops in 2000-2001 from his broader Hoshinjutsu and Hoshin Tao Chi Kung curriculae, the kundalini/ KAn & Li portion of which began in 1985).
By 2008, internet streaming video was fast enough to teach live online, and Tao began taking client calls on Skype and broadcasting on Ustream.tv and archiving the classes to his website and private social media groups. He began teaching via ProgressiveSadhana.com, FreedomPractices.org, and the College of Tantric Yogas at UmaaTantra.com, with older publications available at SmashanPress.com.
Meanwhile, Santiago continued to teach Dr. Morris’s KAP online, but increasingly withdrew from teaching esoteric yoga and tantra as his interests in Indonesian internal martial art and spirituality continued to deepen.
The platforms have since changed, but the Tantric/Esoteric Yoga materials are mostly still preserved at TaoSemko.com, and Tao still teaches qualified applicants of exceptional drive, character, and altruism.
More on the history of UMAA Tantra here, while archives of the historical presentations are discussed below:
Tantric Yoga and Alchemical Qigong programs on this site (all require application and membership) include:
- Secrets the Gurus Will Never Show You (e-book)
- Visual Stepping Stones to the Absolute: Secrets of Visual Samadhi (e-book)
- Secrets of Abdominal Isolation: Uddiyana Bandha and Nauli Kriya (including the original Abs like Maxick video from 2001) (multiple instructional videos and progressive sadhanas)
- Mastering your mind, body, and the elements through Tantric Hatha Yoga and Sukshma Vyayam (Tantric Inner Circle Practice Sessions 1-12) (streaming video and audio of the original DVD and CD materials)
- Laya Yoga & Kriya Yoga: Secrets of the Chakras – Miracles of Esoteric Anatomy (Tantric Inner Circle Gold Sessions 1-12) (streaming video of the original DVD materials)
- Foundation Practices of Tantric Yoga, Trimesters 1 – 3 (each Trimester is a 3-month video course)
- Intermediate Practices of Tantric Yoga, Trimester 1 (3-month video course)
- Progressive Sadhanas from the former ProgressiveSadhana.com and Tao’s Tantric Yoga Practitioner Group
- Lectures on Theory, Praxis, and Sociological/Historical Context
- and much more in the full Library