August, 2024
NEW PODCAST EPISODE
DEMYSTIFYING TANTRA- A CONVERSATION WITH DOMAGOJ ORLIĆ-PT2
In this episode, Rosalind and Domagoj have an enlightening discussion demystifying Tantra. They explore how Tantra is a path to freedom that teaches you to fall in love with life. Tantra aims to help one realize everything is infinite and discover naturalness, spontaneity and openness to the mystery of life.
Rituals in Tantra go hand in hand with meditation and realization of the teachings within oneself. The goal is freedom and absolute independence. They talk about transcending duality between matter and spirit, external rituals and internal experiences, embracing life and relationships as they are.
They discuss:
– The importance of modernizing and adapting tantric rituals and practices to suit the practitioners rather than just following fixed external instructions.
– How Tantric philosophy sees matter and spirit as one, both being divine.
– The interplay and correlation between external tantric rituals and internal meditations and realizations.
– How intimacy, relationships and embracing life and others enables easy ascent of energy compared to forced individual practices. Loving presence effortlessly moves energy.
– How Tantra teaches one to fall in love with life just as it is – overwhelming, enormous and mysterious.
– The role of a Tantric guru and how the teacher principal always exists within and guides one’s own direct experience.
Favorite phrases:
“The teachings are like gold jewelry, you receive a lump of gold and you must hammer it into a jewelry for yourself.”
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, then everything would appear to men as it is – infinite.”
You can listen podcast HERE.
July, 2024
NEW PODCAST EPISODE
DEMYSTIFYING TANTRA- A CONVERSATION WITH DOMAGOJ ORLIĆ-PT1
In part one of this two part episode, Rosalind is joined by Domagoj Orlić to demystify tantra, a profoundly misunderstood spiritual tradition.
As both a scholar and practitioner of Tantra, Domagoj sheds light on what Tantra actually is, its key principles and aims, and how it differs from the “Neo-Tantra” appropriated in the West. They explore Tantra’s emphasis on liberation through feeling unity with the divine feminine, why ritual and initiation by a guru matters, and how Tantra can help overcome conditioning to realize inherent power.
Domagoj clarifies Tantra’s nuanced relationship with sexuality and why it has been misportrayed. Far from just exotic techniques, traditional Tantra offers potent tools for those called to dive deep into self-realization and awakening through embodied practice.
They discuss:
– What is Tantra? Defining the principles, aims and practices of traditional Tantra vs Neo-Tantra
– Why guru, lineage and transmission matters in Tantra
– Tantra as a monistic spiritual path emphasizing unity with the divine feminine
– Ritual, puja and worship of deities to receive empowerment
– Tantra’s goal of deconditioning the mind and realizing power
– Clarifying Tantra’s nuanced relationship with sexuality
– Tantra’s influence on Yoga – integrating mantra, yantra, embodied ritual
– Adapting traditional Tantra wisdom for the modern world and individual need
Favorite phrases:
“Tantra teaches us that we actually are very powerful and we have the power of Shakti to change reality, to change whatever we want to change and live our full human potential. That’s the basic premise of Tantra.”
“The idea of the Tantric practice is to viscerally feel that I am one with the divine feminine…this can be called motherly love, which is the same as compassion, which is love generally, our ability to actually love life and love ourselves and love other people and love all creation.”
You can listen podcast HERE.
October, 2020
PODCAST
Croatian yoga teacher Domagoj Orlić joins Mark and Rosalind to speak about his twenty-year friendship with Mark, his evolution from a gymnast to a yogi, the influence of J Krishnamurti, and the confluence of Sri Vidya and yoga in his life.
What a precious conversation with a dear friend and holder of yoga.
“Powerful peace and peaceful power of a life lived straight from the Heart, for the Heart.” – Domagoj Orlić
Domagoj Orlić first met Mark Whitwell in about 2000, following an interest in yoga since his teenage years.
He is a yoga teacher in the traditional mode of “no more than a friend, no less than a friend,” the author of multiple books on yoga and philosophy in Croatian and English, the translator into Croatian of ‘Yoga of Heart’, and ‘The Promise’, an artist of yantra, and an accomplished martial artist.
- Teaching yoga as experienced by yourself and adapting it to individual needs of students
- How Domagoj came to discover the book, The Heart of Yoga, and how it completely changed his yoga experiments
- The development of a beautiful friendship across the world in the early days of Internet
- Why Desikachar was upset when “The Heart of Yoga” book was published
- What does it mean for a student to be “inexpensive” to a teacher
- Can teaching really be without hierarchy, just as friendship?
- How the intervention of yoga into Domagoj’s life lifted off the karmas of Europe and hardships in his life
- Discovering J Krishnamurti and re-discovering freedom
- Why he gave up the idea of pursuing his spiritual life in isolation
- Cleansing the doors of perception…
- The process of yoga really entering into the body and how patience is required
- His release from the fixation on the form and softening of his yoga practice
- The realization of how life supports yoga and vice versa and the role of breath in this
- How Domagoj taught his Catholic mother to embrace and practice yoga
- Why being a yoga teacher is the highest – and possibly the hardest – occupation in the world
You can listen podcast HERE.
March, 2020
A new book in Croatian entitled MANTRA-YOGA: A PHILOSOPHICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO SANSKRIT MANTRA is finally out and can be ordered directly from the author. It is the first monograph ever written on mantra in Croatian, covering all the aspects of this delicate and tricky subject. You can listen to all the mantras presented in the book recited by the author in AUDIOS.
January, 2020
NEW BOOK!
SOON TO BE PUBLISHED BY SILVER SNAKE PRESS…
May, 2019
The new book, Patanjali’s Thread of Yoga, the Croatian translation and commentary of the classic Yoga-sutra attributed to Patanjali.
*For more information about the books, please feel free to contact the author: domagoj.orlic@gmail.com