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I believe this is day 60 of my current retention cycle. I am not sure how far I am going to push it this time. I am thinking maybe, if all goes well, six months. So far, this cycle has been relatively uneventful compared to the previous cycle which I ended at 90 days on April 22, 2010 — a personal record. In my last post with regard to that retention cycle I stated that “bleeding” the chi out of the semen before ejaculating alleviates the letdown, etc.
Everything I stated in that post was true as far as the immediate moment after the ejaculation, and pretty much for the rest of that day. During the ensuing days, however, I distinctly noticed the drop in chi levels and sorely missed my chi. Probably if I practiced some fundamentals on a daily basis I could minimize this deficit or, at least, turn it around faster. Why, you ask, don’t I have a daily practice? Just hardheaded, I guess. Or lazy, take your pick.
Absent a daily practice, I have to wait until the chi builds up from retention and cool draw. That takes about 3 or 4 weeks to get back to an intense level. Once I get there, the ching levels are so strong that my body starts doing cool draw on its own, practically. All it takes is the slightest little thing to stir that ching up — a picture of a girl (dressed but showing cleavage), a thought of a girl I am interested in or a thought about ching or flexing the pc muscle, which I usually do hundreds of times every day.
I don’t like hard-core porn, but soft-core stuff, like gawking through a peephole at nude Erin Andrews (ESPN) styling her hair or scantily clad cheerleaders jumping around or slow mo’ing a Victoria Secret fashion show really gets me multi-orgasmic in cool draw. I am a little bit aroused, albeit my penis is still completely soft, so I am cultivating chi without overheating.
As more than one person stated in some of the testimonials in the Chia/Winn book, I think that half the battle with retention is just mental. One has to thoroughly change his mind about the goal of sex.
This requires mental discipline, and yet it is ridiculous to try and force yourself to change your mind. Trying not to think about something makes you think about it that much more. As soon as I start thinking (especially if aroused) how nice it would be to ejaculate, I am half way there. One has to stay focused on the joy and the bliss of retaining the chi. As they say, accentuate the positive.
All it took for me was to build up the chi for 32 days and experience for the first time the multitude of benefits that comes with such intense chi cultivation. And then to ejaculate and lose that amazing, wonderful edge. Since then it has become much easier to retain because I focus on the benefits of having the chi. I don’t try not to ejaculate or try not to think about ejaculating. I just focus on the positive — maintaining the chi.
The other thing we have to bear in mind is that there are billions of sperm cells (live entities) which have an intense singular goal — to connect with a female’s egg. The immense power of that collective and very positive (creating a life) force is not something that you want to oppose (butt heads with). Rather, one should admire and acknowledge that collective intention. I have found that giving genuine admiration to that beautiful dynamic goal of the sperm cells tends to quiet them down quite nicely. I thank them — wow, what an amazing intense purpose that you guys have!
Anyways, enough philosophizing. I hope everyone is enjoying their practices at least half as much as I am enjoying the hell out of my retention practice.
wery inspiring. Thanks for your post.
I come to think about my own retention and health problem.
I have an unballance in the hormones, measured by samples of saliva.
To low cortisol levels and much to high DHEA which is like a sex hormone.The thing is that my health has gone better but my libido or Jing seems to be lower. Could it be that there has been a new ballance between cortisol and DHEA?
It is wery strange to have high DHEA but low cortisol beacase normally they are following each other, THe cortisol is built from DHEA, which also is the corner stone for several other hormones in the body.
The comments on my lab test done several years ago, was that the pattern is seen amoung people with adrenal fatigue and who have taken DHEA as hormone suplement in tablet form or in another way. I have not done that myself. I have thought that my pattern comes from having adranal fatigue, which I am shore of that I have, and my retention practises.
I have tried to do retention to help my energy level, but I havent seen any improvement on chi level, but amasingly higher sex drive, but not increased mental or physical stamina. Not either has it done anything to my cold sensitivity, as far as I have noticed.
This winter when not doing retention, but alot of other health practise my energy level and chi has increased, but my sex drive and erection has been quite low. This is kind of a paradox and I can´t realy understund it.
Of course I haven´t been using the retention and I have been using some porn, not good sexual practise, and not the way I realy want to cultivate at all.
What I wonder is if the lower jing level is part of the healing I have noticed or if it is just part of the bad habits this winter.
Anyway what I want to do is to continue with my health plan and also start doing the sexual cultivation in a good way, perhaps and I hope with one or more girls/woman.
My guess is that the low Jing has nothing to do with the healing. But anyway my intuition tells me this: First the theory, in what is written about adrenal fatigue there you can read that erection problems and other sexual problems are part of the symtoms. I have never had such problems during my ten year of illness, but the last winter. Instead my sexual abilitie has been wery high at general and edxtremely high during retention. What I feel has happened is that the qigong practises has created a connection between my kidneys and my general health problem and my sexuality. The thing that comes out of this is that my sexuality has become weaker and my kidneys and general health has become stronger, the two has connected and ballanced eachoter out, which means that I could feel my general weakness in my sexuality know, which I couldnt before and that my genral health has got some of the streanght from my sexuality. And know is time to make both of them connected with my heart, which comes from my heart kidney connection practises, which I have done alot lately, and both of them should hand in hand in the future connected be stronger and healtier.
All of this is just speculation and I have no idea if it is rigth or wrong, it is my intuitive feeling. Comments are welcome.
SD
hi SD,my name is gigi and im new on this forum.if u have emotional trouble,too much ching is drwan up into the breast,as energy for ur emotions.therefore u can have weak erections.this was/is my own experience.rooting and relaxing can help.better u visit a good teacher.
godd gigiHello Welcome to this forum Gigi.
Interesting coment. Especially since I had a relationship with a married woman, and that is ower now, but not completely on a emotional level.
Still I think that the erectional problem is quite small and that I am able to handle it, with some retention practise. If not I know a good teacher, not far from where I live.
I will soon start to practise both my usual qigong and more sexual dicipline, after a period of quite hard work. I will also start a health program I did create before spring and that I have seen helpes me.
So, ho are you and what are your interest on this forum. Perhaps you like to introduce yourself on another thread.
SD
I’ve been meaning to get back to a post that Steven made on my earlier thread, called “Semen Retention”. I have a question. Perhaps Steven or someone can shed some light on this.
In Steven’s very helpful post, he made the following statement:
>>>I realize intuitively that I could balance myself out and
>>>capitalize on the increased energy if I increased my personal
>>>practice level to around a 5-6 hour per day commitment which
>>>I do do easily during hermit retreats; but when I’m in school,
>>>I’m not in a position where I can do that right now. So for
>>>me, long-term retention is an “extremist” practice.My question for Steven is, if, hypothetically, you had the 5-6 hours a day available, what practice(s) would you expect to be extending. In other words, would you expect to do more cool draw or would you arouse yourself more often and do big draw or would you do more fusion, iron shirt or what?
Just curious, thanks.
Hi ChiFiend,
Glad to see you are still having fun . . .
To answer your question, in my hermit retreats I practice as much qigong and
meditation during each day as I possibly can, some days I practice even more
than 5-6 hours per day.During that time, I pretty much do everything I can.
A major player tends to be grounding practices. As for specific qigong exercises and actions, I do at least 2 hours a day of I-Chuan and Tao Yin. I NEVER deviate from this. Additionally, I like to throw in some Iron Shirt and Deep Earth Pulsing randomly, to name a few, to add on another hour of practice.
I also go walking daily for at least an hour (maybe more!). I don’t deviate from this either. Walking, in and by itself, is a very grounding exercise, and helps exercise my liver . . . which is one of the organs I feel gets too hot if I am retaining.
All-in-all, we are talking about 3-4 hours a day of just grounding practices (not
counting the walking), which directly would affect the retention issue.I also do a lengthy daily orbit practice and healing sounds, which are also vital
in my opinion. This is probably another 1.5 hours.This major focus on grounding and connecting with mother Earth cools the sexual
energy greatly and moderates it to more of a feel good feeling rather than a horny
feeling. The orbit then circulates it, and the healing sounds release anything
still bottled.As such I use this continued energy to do other practices each day.
Namely, on these retreats, I also make sure to do Primordial, Big Dipper, and Deep Healing Qigong each day, as well as some alchemical meditations such as Fusion, KL, etc. This amounts to another 1-3 hours (or more) of practice, depending on the day.Moreover, as such, I don’t do any Cool Draw, Big Draw, Testicle Breathing, or any other sexual practice whatsoever. I honestly don’t feel much need to (nor do have
any extra stamina to do so!).Best,
SHello Steven
I hope this not is all to owerheling, your practise during those periods I mean!
I have a question, I guess you already have told us somewhere else. How long time does your hermit periods last, and how many are you able to do each year?
Are you interested to do it on full time in some part of your life?
SD
Hi SD,
>>>I hope this not is all to owerheling, your practise during those periods I mean!
No, not really.
I get up in the morning and do the I-Chuan and Tao Yin immediately, then take
a relaxing shower. Eat breakfast and do morning practices for a couple hours.
Then make and eat lunch. Then spend a couple hours leisurely reading–typically
Daoist materials. Mid-late afternoon, I go for my walk. Come back and do some
additional practice. Make supper, and eat it. Listen to some instructional CDs
for an hour or so. Then do some nighttime practices and then go to bed. Get up
and repeat basic idea the next day. It’s not a bad program actually. One thing
you need to realize is that you are away from the world–isolated–so literally when you get up (assuming a nice long relaxing unrushed sleep), you have 15-16 hours of the day at your complete disposal. It’s quite easy to do 6+ hours of pure practice daily without even trying. I mean if you do 8 hours per day of practices, you are really only spending half the day practicing . . .>>>I have a question, I guess you already have told us somewhere else.
>>>How long time does your hermit periods last, and how many are you
>>>able to do each year?The past couple of years I did 3 weeks (i.e. 21 days).
I’m currently planning on spending a month this winter.In general, anything less than 2 weeks is a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.
I would not recommend a shorter stay to anyone that’s really serious
about doing the hermit living. Most of the benefit does not start
to occur until after you’ve passed the tenth day.>>>Are you interested to do it on full time in some part of your life?
Maybe. But there are several important things to consider:
One, is that food and hermitage rental cost money, so while you can
save up for the retreat, an indefinite stay is not sustainable, unless
you happen to be wealthy and not need a job to put money into an account!Now, if I came into a large sum of money, then the discussion would change.
Two, the longer the stay you make, the more susceptible you are to
sabotaging it, i.e. unless you have the proper guidance and structure,
you could end up just turning your extended stay into “your old life” but
relocated, i.e. you are just living somewhere else but doing the same stuff,
not a real hermit experience. There are ways to prevent this, but it
requires active planning and continual diligence.One advantage of having a stay of a “fixed” length of time, is that it gives
you a mental “marker” as to when it all ends. Thus you are more likely
to see your time through as an actual hermit experience and not sabotage it.
In this way, you realize you only have a limited amount of time, so you
are not inclined to waste it. Moreover, the “light at the end of the tunnel”
of a departure time helps to keep your motivation up so that you keep
doing practices and not start altering your program to just be a “relocated life”.Three, returning to the world gives you the opportunity to see how you’ve changed.
It also re-exposes you to stressors of ordinary living and gives you a fresh
opportunity to engage and deal with them. Such things can also help you to learn
ways in which you still need to grow. Spending a good deal of time dealing with these things in real time in the world can give you new food for growth, and
in regard to troublesome spots, another area of exploration during the *next* retreat.A serious practitioner could benefit highly from a properly engineered
hermit retreat. Organized and done properly, they can be highly transformative . . . more transformative than any other time. They can also be very very tough, so
they are not for everyone; some may not be able to handle it.Best,
StevenHello Steven!
Thanks for your detailed answer.
Sometimes I express my self wery unclear. The words “I hope this not is all to owerheling, your practise during those periods I mean! “, was actualy meant for how ChiFiend would take your answer!
Basically you two have quite a different idea of how much you have to practise other stuff when doing retention 🙂 🙂
I do not realy think that your programe is owerhealming, but as you wrote I believe there might be problems following it. To me it sounds realy nice to go into the practises so much during a three week long program.
As your speak about the money issue. I do not believe you! To be living as a hermit doesn´t need to be organaised by somebody else. And you are earning money and live in a economy by US dollars. Well there are alot of places around the world where you can live quite well for just a few US dollars spending each day or weak.
I give you two examples:
I have a friend that has hes own company. He work with the threes in the woods has a litle movable saw that cuts timber… During the other half of the year he lives with hes cuban wife at her place at Cuba. Actually he rent hes place to another worker and has no costs when he is abrode. Well he also has some other income so basically he doesn´t have to work as hard as he did when he was younger, still he has money left for good investments.
Another example is a welll known swedish writer, that I not know, he lives in Kenya basically all the year and writes books, has realy no costs at all, but earns alot of money.
So if you want to create a possible place to live as a hermit I think there are alot of opurtunities. The difficult thing is only to find a place where there are not alot of people that continually will disturbe you. So what I want to say is not that it is easy to find this places, but I realy not belive you when you say it has so much to do about being rich as you say yourself.
I myself has ended the period working as a teacher with the class, but still have some work at home to do. For me right know there is many choises, I think doing some relaxing yoga for a couple of days would do me good, and more in harmony of finding the right answers. Your post did inspire me to that, even not for the moment to live as a hermit.
I have more a loning of being at a place in the nature where I can dedicate my time to alot of yoga practise, even though for me I not need to go to a extreme hermit isolation, at least not for the moment! 🙂
Bye for now
SD
Hi Steven,
Well, as usual, you have given much food for thought. Some of the practices you are doing, I have not even heard of. 🙂
>>>This major focus on grounding and connecting with mother Earth cools the sexual
>>>energy greatly and moderates it to more of a feel good feeling rather than a horny
>>>feeling. The orbit then circulates it, and the healing sounds release anything
>>>still bottled.I know what you mean about this. I too am getting the circulation and the “feel good” feeling rather than the horny feeling from doing the cool draw.
What you stated here reminded me of the importance of connecting with mother earth. I always made it a point to do that when I was doing Big Draw because if I didn’t I got noticeably overheated and out of balance. So, anyways, today I worked on exchanging energy with the earth and that was quite nice. I’ll continue to do that.
I have so many follow-up questions I would like to ask, but I won’t hit you with them all at once. 🙂
Here are a few:
I don’t think you explicitly stated whether you have been practicing retention in your retreats? I sensed that you do practice retention during your retreats but I wasn’t totally sure.
By definition, hermit means one person alone, but if you had a girl friend or wife, would you still do these solo retreats? I am also wondering if, again hypothetically, you had a serious relationship and you decided at some point in the future that you wanted to do long term retention and you had plenty of time available for practices. Wouldn’t you need to do the big draw during sex in order to keep from spilling?
For that matter, when you have sex with a girl now, given that you do practice short-term retention, do you use the big draw to accomplish retention? If not, how do you do it?
Obviously you don’t have to answer any of this if I am getting too personal. I am just fascinated with your viewpoint, since you have all of that experience as an instructor and because you seem to be so extremely methodical in your approach to everything.
Thanks again, Steven.
>>>Basically you two have quite a different idea
>>>of how much you have to practise other stuff
>>>when doing retention 🙂 🙂No two individuals are identical.
Each person has a different constitution.
As I mentioned in a previous post, without a LOT of supportive qigong,
I DO NOT feel good at all retaining. I feel too unbalanced and it does
not feel good to me . . . but I don’t do the opposite thing either and
release daily (too draining). I follow more a path of moderation and
doing what I feel is natural to me. If someone else truly feels good
and happy with some other approach, then good for them.>>As your speak about the money issue. I do not believe you!
The actual living part is cheap. The hermitage rental is not . . .
unless you go to a foreign country, but then you have to pay for
airfare which ends up being more expensive than if you just stayed
and rented a hermitage. Another option is to do work-in-trade
for the rental, but I am not interested in that option as I want
to be alone doing my own thing.If you went to say China and wandered off into the mountains and built your
own hermitage, then there is no cost to you. You can’t really do
that in the US; it’s called trespassing.If you own a piece of property, then of course, there is no cost (other
than maybe property tax), but I do not.>>>To be living as a hermit doesn´t need to be organaised by somebody else.
No one else organizes it for me. I do it myself.
And you are earning money and live in a economy by US dollars. Well there are alot of places around the world where you can live quite well for just a few US dollars spending each day or weak.
>>>I give you two examples:
>>>I have a friend that has hes own company. [some snipped]
>>>still he has money left for good investments.OK, but I do not. I am a grad student, and don’t really have an income.
>>>Another example is a welll known swedish writer [some snipped]
>>>has realy no costs at all, but earns alot of money.Again, I do not earn a lot of money.
If I had an actual job, it would be a different story, but I do not.
Therefore, what most people consider “not a lot of money” is a lot of money to me.S
>>>What you stated here reminded me of the importance
>>>of connecting with mother earth. I always made it a
>>>point to do that when I was doing Big Draw because
>>>if I didn’t I got noticeably overheated and out of balance.
>>>So, anyways, today I worked on exchanging energy with the
>>>earth and that was quite nice. I’ll continue to do that.Moderating sexual impulse/energy flow can be summed up
in just two words: Earth EnergySome reasons:
Wood (erection/sexual acts/etc.) disrupts Earth.
Earth contains/controls Water (sexual reservoir).
Earth is the mediator or lubricant between the 5 phases.Understand the basic concept of wanting to increase
Earth energy flow into the body and then circulating it
through the body via orbit-style variants is really the
linchpin to the whole deal. The rest is just details.In fact, this holds true for a variety of different things
not having to do with sex also, which I won’t go into here.
I’ll let you in on a little secret though: Reaching for heaven is
hard; it’s always appears out of your grasp; the more you
try to reach for it, the further away it seems. The earth is
right here, ever present, and eager to nourish and support you.
Get into a deeper relationship with the earth, and heaven
will come to you. Earth is what heaven loves. As the
sages say, heaven and earth birth humanity.Steven
P.S. I may answer some of your other questions later, being
personal notwithstanding; but right now I have some other things
I have to attend to (lunch, errands, and more) . . .hello steve,
i would like to ask u waht qualification u have in mantak chias healing tao system.do u have healing love certification and are u an tao yoga instructor?
im only curiuos coz i would like to ask some things about semen retention,cultivation of ching and grounding.
thx and goodbye gi.I am a certified Healing Tao instructor, but have not yet
acquired much in the way of advanced certifications.Note: I do NOT consider myself an expert.
I just share what I know and defer to others what I do not.
I consider myself just another traveler on the path.
Friends sharing with friends.If you want to know my background, I have nothing to hide.
I’ll attach my “Training Resume” and you can see exactly my
“formal” background.S
Yes people are different. True and interesting in it´s own right.
Well what I want to tell you about the money issue, is that your situation might change, you also need to be acceptable to crative solutions, if money issues are issues that stops you in any way, which I not know if they do 🙂
Peace
SD
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