ista cyprus 2025: what tenderness, darkness and truth opened in me

I came back from ISTA Cyprus 2025 with this strange softness inside me, the kind that only arrives when you’ve spent days surrounded by people who choose to grow. Not to escape. Not to perform. Just to go deeper. Being among hundreds of humans who are alive, curious, vulnerable, trembling, brave… it does something. But the real shock was realizing I am one of them. That I belong to this tribe of people who want more tenderness, more honesty, more love, more space inside their own skin.

You arrive thinking you’re here for workshops, for experiences, for “growth.”

Then at some point you understand you’re not here to add anything.

You’re here to be undone.

I didn’t expect that.

The festival scraped off the varnish.

The roles.

The little stories I use to hold myself together.

The ways I try to look composed.

One morning after our pod circles, I walked toward Nastia and saw her in someone else’s arms. For a split second my chest tightened like a child who doesn’t understand why warmth is being shared elsewhere. Then something opened. Not in the mind—deeper. Warmth spread where the tension had been. I could see the innocence in it, the softness, the human need. I stepped back. I gave space. And I felt clearly that I didn’t want anyone else’s arms. Just hers. Just presence.

That kind of truth hits differently in a tantra festival.

It’s not a thought.

It’s a shift in the spine.

Another moment came during a workshop with Nimay Sunra.

Nothing dramatic.

Just two hours of sitting close, holding hands, breathing, looking at each other without trying to fix anything. Two hours of presence. It’s insane how rare that is in real life. We don’t give time like that. But there, it felt natural. And something quiet and undeniable happened. The bridge between us didn’t need to be imagined anymore. It was already built.

There was also this woman who was deeply unwell. She spoke from a place that was raw and shaking, and her intuition was already screaming beneath her words. Because of what I’ve learned in my practitioner training, and because of my work in shibari and tantra—not the sensual surface, but the somatic reading—I could see immediately that she was crossing her own boundaries, going somewhere her body didn’t want to go.

It hit me like a reflection I never asked for.

I’ve been there.

Thinking I was stronger than I was.

Pushing past what was healthy.

Ignoring the trembling.

When I mirrored that back to her, something broke open.

Her eyes changed.

Her whole body changed.

The realization landed hard, painful, necessary.

And for a moment I felt aligned—

not the performer,

not the rope artist,

not the sensual presence,

the healer.

The one who sees with the body.

But it hurt to step back after. I wished I could have stayed with her, fixed something, offered more. I couldn’t. Sometimes the only thing you can give is a mirror.

I reached my own limit too. One day Nastia and I were exhausted. These workshops open doors but they also shake you to the bone. We left the festival, found a quiet place to eat, then lay down near the sea. Silence. Light. A bit of sleep. We needed that pause to remember how to breathe.

And then there was the Dark Puja with Michal Maayan Don.

A ritual with a strong BDSM flavor, the kind of container that usually asks for intensity, shadow, edge. But what touched me wasn’t the darkness. It was the tenderness that found its way through it. I ended up in connection with someone who brought so much gentleness that it made the entire ritual feel sacred. It showed me something I didn’t expect: that tenderness is not the opposite of depth. It is depth. And it reminded me that sometimes my technique and knowledge make me perform instead of living. That realization went straight into the bone.

That’s what I brought home.

Not clarity.
Not enlightenment.
Not a polished list of insights.

Just this raw truth: tenderness goes deeper than darkness. It’s the force that cuts through everything else. The one that holds you when the rituals strip you open. The one that makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re becoming more human.

ISTA Cyprus didn’t give me answers.
It gave me the parts of myself I usually avoid.
And somehow, looking straight at them made me more alive.
And doing this as a couple… that’s another layer.
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Not something light or casual.

A conscious journey.
A controlled challenge that can deepen the bond if both partners come with openness and the willingness to speak before, during, after. It requires preparation. Boundaries. Fears. Intentions. I’ll probably write about that separately, because it deserves its own space.
I'm grateful for the freedom Nastia gives me to explore, to learn, to meet parts of myself I wouldn’t reach otherwise.That kind of freedom isn’t casual.
It’s trust. And it’s one of the reasons why what happens between us goes so much deeper than any ritual.

For now, what stays is simple:
festivals like ISTA Cyprus don’t only reveal who we are.
They reveal who we can become together.

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