The Tao of Cultivating Sexual Energy (book chapter)

Sexuality is a universal way for people to quickly access their chi flow. The ancient Taoists developed many different methods to tap the enormous power of sexual energy in order to direct it towards creating better physical health, a greater sense of vitaliity and zest for life, and to refine the sexual impulse into a steady state of spiritual bliss. Sexual chi kung can heal sexual dysfunction and impotence, improve sexual relationships, relieve PMS and menstrual difficulty.

At the core of all chi kung is the cosmic yin-yang pulsation of polarized energy around a neutral pole. Think of creation as a continuous cosmic orgasm, and the human orgasm as an exquisite echo of that pulsation. When you get them in rhythm and harmony, your personal “energy gates” open to the cosmic flow of light and love.

There are two major paths: Single Cultivation, in which you harmonize your male-female pulsation as ” internal love-making”, which is possible only because every person has both yin (female) and yang (male) chi within their own body, regardless of their sex. The other is Dual Cultivation, in which you exchange yin & yang chi with a lover/partner.
Taoist Theory:

Sexual chi is said to originate in the kidneys and bone marrow, which includes in the Chinese view the penis and vagina/uterus, prostate & ovary glands, the bladder and kidney organs and their meridians, and in women their mammary glands/breasts. All are part of the “water element” that regulates the body’s “jing”, or sexual body-essence.
How is sexual chi different from other kinds of chi?

Sexual chi is 1) very “sticky”, acting as the stabilizing or bonding energy between opposing male-female or yin-yang forces. Think of it as super-glue; 2) it has the power to amplifiy or multiply whatever it bonds to. It intensifies emotions, it multiplies cell and glandular reproduction rates, either in your body or by birthing children. It can also multiply your creative energy in the world of play or career.
The major ways that sexual chi is lost or exhausted.

Men: by excessive sex and ejaculation. “Excessive” varies by body type, age and climate, but be especially careful during the winter, when chi is normally going in deep, not out. There are methods of slowing down ejaculation during sex so that men can “draw” out the essence from their spern and recycle it around the body and nourish other centers. It is not necessary to become celibate. These practices include “Testicle Breathing” and “Drawing Up the Golden Nectar”.

The goal is to shift from a limited “genital orgasm” to a “whole body orgasm”. Slowing or stopping “ejaculation” doesn’t prevent a man from having “orgasm” or being “multi-orgasmic”. Ejaculation is physical, orgasm is your chi pulsating. But don’t get obsesssed with “stopping” ejaculation, focus rather on opening up your chi channels and recycling sexual/orgasmic chi until you finally ejaculate. Then this physical ejaculation does not cause major loss of chi. It also slows the man down to stay in closer harmony with the woman’s slower cycle of arousal.

Women: Excessive bleeding during the menstrual cycle causes loss of “jing”. By energetically detoxifying the body with sexual chi kung before the cycle begins, the need for bleeding as a means of detoxing is vastly reduced. The menstrual cycle can even be voluntarily stopped at a higher level of practice. This practice is called, “Slaying the Red Dragon”. Women also train to re-direct their orgasmic chi flow up to the higher energy centers in the heart and brain.

Both sexes: poor diet, shallow breathing, and negative emotions or mental attitudes will exhaust your sexual vitality. Improving these plus a regular moving chi kung practice of at least 20 minutes daily are the mainstay of preventing low sexual energy and many associated dysfunctions.

Another key in sexual kung-fu is understanding the relation between the fire element in the heart and the water element in the kidneys. These fire and water essences stimulate each other and keep the other in check. So you need to keep proper exchange between them, so they get into a steady state. This can be done by gently breathing between the middle and lower dan tiens, through visualization, and by guiding chi in the right channels. By simply keeping a very open heart you protect against blind lust, which ultimately injures the kidneys because it can never be satisfied by physical sex alone. The kidney shen (“spirit, or intelligence”) needs touch and sexual stimulation, but it is also always seeking the love of the heart shen.

A word of Caution: Sexual chi is much more powerful than most people realize. Note how long it takes people to recover from broken love or divorce. Thus it is essential that you prepare your energy field properly with chi kung practice for several months before attempting “ovarian or seminal kung-fu”. If sexual chi is mis-directed into the wrong energy channels, the result may range from mild discomfort to severe impairment of physical health. Any method that is powerful can be mis-used.

What is the proper way to prepare for sexual chi kung?

1. Learn the Six Healing Sounds and Five Animals Chi Kung to release trapped negative emotional chi. These are simple, and can be learned from books or tapes. They release the chi trapped in each of the five vital organs. You don’t want to unconsciously amplify these old trapped feelings with supercharged sex chi. So don’t practice while in any extreme emotional state.

2. Practice the Inner Smile. This insures a calm and balanced mind when you do the sexual practice.

3. Learn the Microcosmic Orbit. This gives the sexual chi a safe pathway up the spine and down the front of the body, with automatic “safety overflow” valves into other major meridians. If you don’t learn this, there is a danger of some people getting “kundalini psychosis”, too much chi in the brain leading to delusional states. Any chi practice that opens the lower dantien will also prepare you and ground you.

Once the Microcosmic Orbit is open, it is much easier to balance the chi flow to the endocrine glands along its path: adrenals, pineal and pituitary, thymus, heart and spleen, and gonads. These glands regulate the body metabolism during sexual arousal, and their healthy functioning is essential to get the benefits of the sexual practice.

4. Get a live teacher to help you train. Sexual kung-fu is not an end in itself, it is merely a vital step in the larger process of cultivating and refining your chi. You should simultaneously train in standing/rooting chi kung to ground the volatile sexual chi. The higher level of sexual chi kung practice is known as “inner sexual alchemy”, in which you become aware of the role of “shen”, the vital organ spirits, in regulating your inner yin-yang balance.

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Michael Winn co-authored with Mantak Chia the classic Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy and wrote six other books with Chia.
If you cannot get a teacher, Tao Home Study Audio courses on Taoist Sexual Cultivation are available from Michael Winn on HealingTaoUSA.com/bookstore or email bookstore@michaelwinnv5.qlogictechnologies.com. Note: before ordering the Taoist Sexual Course, the prerequisite course is Chi Kung Fundamentals covering the Inner Smile, Six Healing Sounds, Microcosmic Orbit.