BIOS
Different souls, same purpose
Founders
Carlo Runay
Carlo Runay has been organizing and facilitating personal growth retreats for ten years across various projects. His focus is on intimacy and conscious sexuality, healthy relationships, the sacred masculine, and the dance of archetypes.
He believes in awareness through direct experience and the wisdom of the somatic, committing himself to creating a space where everything can happen, but nothing must happen.
He explores all forms of knowledge useful for manifesting fertile contexts in which to nurture the precious essence of humanity and to fuel the vital flame burning in the hearts of those who trust him.
For twenty years, he traveled across half the globe, connecting with hundreds of different cultures, including tribal populations in Africa, Asia, South, and Central America. He has published five books about traveling the world without airplanes and his personal growth journey, distributing about 80,000 copies in ten years.
He lived for six years in intentional communities in Sweden and Italy.
In 2021, he co-founded Meraki, an eco-village with an educational and training project based on permaculture.
He is also the co-founder of Etna Therapy, Estasia, and the Kāma Etna Festival—retreats and workshops focused on personal growth, transformation, and relational awareness.
Through his books and work, he has inspired many souls to reclaim their personal power and realize their Ikigai.
Alessandro di Benedetto
Alessandro Di Benedetto, founder of Embody Essence, an international school offering programs for those interested in facilitating Tantra and embodiment workshops. He is also the creator of his breathwork facilitator training called Essential Motion Breath.
As a dedicated Tantra Teacher and Holistic Trainer, Alessandro guides transformative journeys globally, seamlessly integrating extensive experiences, rigorous studies, and continuous training into his teachings. His diverse background includes Yoga, Tantra, meditations, Muay Thai, embodiment practices, and Indian Classical music.
Alessandro merges spiritual insights with breathwork, cold therapy, and embodiment techniques, advocating for the transformative power of embracing a conscious lifestyle. In his retreats, he creates sacred spaces for constant dynamic meditation, fostering self-exploration and authentic connections, aiming to inspire individuals to shape their reality, unlock higher potentials, and instill strength and faith in humanity.
Jacopo Pennisi
Jacopo Pennisi has dedicated over ten years of his life to traveling the world, embarking on a deep journey of inner exploration. Initially through meditation, and later deepening his self-awareness through Yoga and Tantra, he had the opportunity to immerse himself in ancient traditions that have enriched his path. His search led him to explore India for several years, where he studied these practices intensively with great dedication.
Upon returning to Italy, to his beloved Sicily, Jacopo founded projects like Etna Therapy and Kāma Etna Festival, contributing to transforming his family’s estate, Femminamorta, into a vibrant cultural and holistic center. Since 2019, the villa has hosted hundreds of retreats, workshops, and festivals, becoming a reference point for those seeking a deep connection with nature and themselves.
Through his experiences, Jacopo offers a practical approach to Tantra and Yoga, using techniques of meditation, breath-work, and somatic sexuality. His teaching is based on the idea of seeking psychological and physical lightness, inviting those who follow him not to take themselves too seriously and to rediscover that unconditional joy children naturally express, always staying present in the moment.
Facilitators
Amir Jaan
Amir teaches technics taken from the ancient monastic tradition of yoga, blended & combined with the latest scientific understanding of psychology, physiology and anatomy.
After 30 years of studying, exploring, experimenting & practicing a variety of classical forms of yoga and meditation. Amir has formulated a contemporary fusion of all those tried and tested technics into his own unique method.
After undergoing a traditional and rigorous apprenticeship for more than 10 years, Amir went on to become the principle teacher at a number of London’s top professional yoga studios. Amir has became a teacher of teachers and the senior mentors at one of the world’s most esteemed yoga schools for 12 years.
And now uses yoga therapy as the main therapeutic approach in his private health consultancy in Switzerland.
Tamara Groen
Tamara Groen has spent over 20 plus years exploring and sharing what it truly means to be alive — in theory, through the body, the breath, and raw human experience.
Her mission is to awaken the quiet power that lives inside each person — to bring people home to themselves, so that connection and peace can ripple outward into the world.
She believes that when people feel connected to themselves and each other, peace becomes natural. Her mission is to help make that happen — one breath, one person, one moment at a time.
After a fast-paced career in international business and a life that looked “successful” from the outside, Tamara hit a breaking point. Burnout became her teacher. From there began a long unlearning — of perfection, performance, and pretending — and the birth of a practice rooted in truth and real connection.
Today she creates spaces where people can breathe again, feel safe in their own skin, and meet life with open eyes. Her guidance is both gentle and direct — a mix of depth, humour, and embodied wisdom.
Her work stands at the crossroads of Eastern philosophy and modern embodiment, blending the depth of Tantra, yoga, Indian Anahata teachings, and Transformational Breathwork with a down-to-earth honesty that cuts through spiritual noise.
Afke Reijenga
Afke is an embodied feminine life coach and internationally known Tantra facilitator.
For over 15 years she has guided thousands of people to come home to their bodies, awaken their erotic innocence, and live with an unshakable self-love. Her workshops weave breath, touch, movement, and ritual into a playful and sacred space where sensuality, emotion, and life-force can flow freely.
With a heart for liberation and authentic connection, she invites you to fall in love, with yourself, with others, and with the dance of life.
Bina Taverna
Bina Taverna is a Shibari & Tantra facilitator with experience for more than a decade.
She regularly hosts retreats, workshops, 1:1s & coachings in Switzerland.
She has a diverse background in Tantra, Shibari, coaching, sexological bodywork, kundalini, BDSM, breathwork, polarity integration, dance and movement practices. She creates spaces that invite exquisite presence for transformational work. She dances between the polarities of the light and the dark and the ecstasy of diving into the mysteries.
Her offerings provide space for emotional expression, self-love, personal growth and reconnection to soul, transforming blockages and finding inner power and purpose. Her trauma-sensitive approach creates the safety for vulnerability unfold to explore the depths of our being in a more raw and intimate way.
Virginia & David
Virginia and David, life partners and acrobatic companions, will guide you on a magical journey to discover Acro Yoga, a practice that blends movement, presence, and connection.
Acro Yoga is much more than a physical discipline: it is an experience that nurtures trust, an open heart, and a willingness to embrace life and others.
Through mutual support, we learn to let go, to see the other as an extension of ourselves, dissolving boundaries and discovering new possibilities beyond our limits in a raw and intimate way.
Saara & Jarno
Saara Tsuru is a Finnish artist, performer, and shibari/kinbaku practitioner who lives in the countryside with her family and animals, like a wild Viking woman. Co-owner of the Helsinki-based studio Kakumei Kan, she has made shibari her main profession, offering popular workshops on her farm and across Europe—ranging from self-tying to couple weekends and private sessions. For Saara, the essence of rope lies in connection and emotional exchange rather than complex patterns. She creates open, safe spaces where feelings are welcome and trust builds the bridge to deeper presence.
Jarno Karasu is a tattoo artist with 25 years of experience, specializing in Japanese tattooing and deeply immersed in its culture and mythology. Kinbaku became a natural extension of his artistic path. His rope style is simple and striking, centered on creating emotional resonance and leading his partner through sensations. Jarno brings masculine presence and control to the session, offering safety through groundedness. Together for over 20 years, Saara and Jarno discovered kinbaku in 2018, and it became a shared practice that deepens their intimacy. They continue to explore connection through rope, bodywork, and tantra-inspired methods.
Akash Singh
Akash’s path is one of embodied exploration, guided by a deep curiosity about the body, consciousness, and what it means to feel fully alive.
Rooted in the understanding that true intimacy begins within, he invites people to slow down, listen deeply, and reconnect with the intelligence that lives beneath the noise of the mind. Through movement, breath, presence, and embodied awareness, his work encourages a deeper relationship with oneself and the wisdom of direct experience.
Inspired by yoga and tantra, Akash creates spaces that balance depth with playfulness, where challenge and softness, exploration and stillness can coexist. His intention is to cultivate warm, grounded, and deeply human experiences where people can reconnect with their authentic nature, one another, and life itself.
Natalie Abraham
Natalie Abraham is a certified Somatic Trauma Therapist, co-founder of School of Eros, an erotic educator, intimacy arts expert and heart initiator. She is an artist, a healer, a poet.
She guide’s transformative journeys for singles, couples and groups blending perfectly the fun, juiciness, and creativity with depth, shamanic teachings and sacred divine wisdoms. She is so passionate about cracking people’s hearts open, reminding them of who they truly are behind the walls and masks.
She is named favorite featured expert in the recent VICE Magazine’s viral episode ‘Tantra Island’, author of her provocative published book ‘Fuck It! Take me to Palestine’, and has won awards in the international film festival for her erotic movie ‘Echoes from my Womb’.
Viola Panìk
Anna Rosa Paladino, aka Viola Panìk, is an international artist with over 25 years of experience, specializing in theater, Burlesque, Cabaret, and photography, with a focus on nude, erotic, and sensual modeling. Her exploration of art as a medium to delve into human psychology and behavior has shaped her unique approach to body expression and storytelling.
Her journey into Burlesque began in 2011 as a personal and artistic rebirth, transforming the body into a powerful vehicle for expressing the unseen. Viola describes Burlesque as a fusion of her passions, studies, and creativity, recognizing it as an art that celebrates sacred femininity and empowerment. She has created spaces of beauty and joy through her performances and teaching, helping countless women discover and embrace themselves.
Beyond the stage, Viola addresses conscious and unconventional sexuality, sharing her journey as part of a stable couple on the blog threesomejournal.com. She lives by her motto, “Learn to be naked, so we can dress ourselves,” inspiring transformation and self-acceptance through her art and teachings.
Musicians & Artists
Niko Marinelli
Performer Sacred, Shamanic, Erotic Art.
Ritual Body Art Master.
Venue Alchemist.
Niko Marinelli creates immersive performative experiences that weave together ritual art, experimental theatre, and sensorial exploration. Through ceremonies combining body, music, movement, fire, and symbolism, he invites participants into spaces of connection, transformation, and expanded awareness.
Inspired by ancestral rituals and ritual body painting, Niko transforms the body into a symbolic language where eros, meditation, and contemporary performance converge. His work evokes primordial energies and archetypal dimensions, creating experiences suspended between art, ritual, and sensory perception.
Beyond performance, Niko curates the festival’s ritual spaces and temples, shaping immersive environments through sacred geometry, natural elements, and site-specific installations. His intention is to create atmospheres that foster presence, connection, and collective participation.
Olivia Mancino
Street Theatre: Dances & Juggling with Fire
Olivia, a free spirit and warrior, dedicates her life to exploring the world and art. A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (NYC), Olivia specializes in Dramatic Art, Yoga, 360° Dance (Classical, Modern, Oriental, Tribal Fusion, Contemporary, Somatic, Pre-Acrobatic), and, finally, Juggling with fire and the manipulation of fiery objects. Throughout numerous research and work trips spanning the United States, Central America, Europe, and India, Olivia blends her life experiences with multifaceted artistic disciplines to create a unique style rich in technique and personal narrative. She prefers the street to traditional theater stages and nature to dark dance halls.
As a teacher and performer for approximately 25 years, she practices and teaches with deep respect for the body, combining well-being and harmony with aesthetic form, turning her art into a metaphor for life.
In her show, she embodies the magic of the spiritual warrior, conjuring a cathartic atmosphere achievable only through the mesmerizing presence of fire. For Olivia, dance serves as a metaphor for life—a transformative, “Alchemical” practice aimed at unlocking the full potential of the human being.
Viola Panìk & Mister Punch
Burlesque & Performing Arts
Burlesque performers, actors, dancers, pleasure-seekers, and true lovers are full of energy, love of life and art, audacity, and creativity.
Trained as professional actors and Audiovisual Artists in Caracas, Venezuela, they have built a career of over 25 years of experience in the performing arts, with a main shift into Burlesque and Cabaret starting in 2011 after they moved to Europe.
Throughout their careers, they have filled stages with energy and beauty across Europe, working for wonderful Cabaret Productions and Burlesque Festivals.
Omar
Note d’Amore
Omar is a self-taught musician and composer who, as a transportation design student at the University of Turin, reinvented himself as “the pianist on the Beetle.”
Alongside his friend Lino, he named his 1973 Beetle (Maggiolone in Italian) which he transformed and restored by himself during the pandemic.
They travel across Italy in search of natural landscapes where he performs by playing the piano and many other instruments, gifting his music to nature and the beings that inhabit it.
His life project intertwines family traditions, his academic studies, a passion for music, and a yearning for freedom and love that reaches the highest peaks of the mountains.
Ruggero Mascellino
Ruggero is a multi-instrumentalist, sound and movement explorer. During the last few years, he has been traveling around the world, diving into very diverse music traditions.
His music is a sensorial journey where he explores the power of sound combining his voice with handpan, percussions, and ethnic flutes.
Jacopo Pennisi
Wind Frequencies
Finding passion in Indian classical music, Jacopo immersed himself in the exploration of the Bansuri, Krishna bamboo’s flute and other Oriental flutes. Then traveling to South America, he deepened his curiosity towards wind instruments through Brazilian and Native American flutes. His research is to explore the frequencies of the wind through the wooden flutes, without a real goal to achieve other than harmony. As in sharing yogic and tantric practices, Jacopo’s purpose is to bring together all the senses towards that state of peace that brings us back to the present.
Marco Gemellaro
Marco Gemellaro is a Sicilian guitarist and author who treats sound as a path to presence. Trained in the classical and Spanish repertoire, he tunes his guitar to 432Hz — the frequency of resonance and the body — turning each performance into an intimate journey rather than a concert. His latest release, Echoes of Spain, gathers this search: classical guitar entirely tuned to 432Hz.
Born at the foot of Mount Etna, Marco plays where music truly belongs: in piazzas, under the night sky, in nature — offering his sound to whoever is present. Alongside his music he explores conscious sexuality and intimacy as the author of Intelligenza Sessuale (Sexual Intelligence), convinced that eros, like a vibrating string, awakens only in the here and now.
At Kāma he offers a one-hour solo guitar concert-meditation: his instrument doesn’t perform — it invites you to breathe, to feel, and to come home to the body.
Sarasvati Dasi
Sarasvati Dasi is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and DJ who blends ancient sounds with contemporary beats. Raised in a Vedic culture rich in music, dance, and devotion, she developed a deep love for sound from an early age. Her spiritual journey led her to spend extended periods in India, where singing became a central part of her practice.
In 2009, she co-founded the musical collective KIRTANIYAS, embarking on a decade-long tour, sharing traditional mantra music at festivals, yoga studios, and dance floors worldwide, captivating audiences with her expressive vocals and violin.
Today, Sarasvati merges her experience as a live musician with her DJ skills, integrating vocals, violin, and harmonium into live hybrid electronic performances. Her Ecstatic Dance sets draw from diverse genres—including afro house, bass-driven grooves, and global rhythms—building from introspective, meditative moments to dynamic, high-energy peaks.
She has appeared at renowned festivals such as Boom Festival (Portugal), Envision (Costa Rica), and Ancient Trance (Germany). Sarasvati creates immersive experiences that inspire presence, self-expression, and connection, guiding audiences on energizing journeys that awaken the body, open the heart, and celebrate music as the universal language of the soul.
Alessandro Di Benedetto
Alessandro Di Benedetto is a musician, facilitator, and lifelong student of life. After spending years in India studying Indian classical music, he fell in love with the sitar and the depth of its expressive tradition.
Inspired by the essence of the ragas, Alessandro now composes original music that blends the timeless spirit of Indian classical music with organic electronic textures and contemporary world influences. His performances create immersive sound journeys where ancient melodies meet modern production, inviting listeners into a space of presence, emotion, and deep connection.
