markern

Good to hear yu have found a practce that is working for you. I have long thought that Kunlun would be a very suitable suport practice for Vipassana and similar styles of meditations. I would like to later do KAP and Vipassana aong side each other as I belive KAP can add speed to Vipassana and also give more control over energetic procesess and my body and give more health, which is usefull. I also belive it can help me stay balanced and grounded and smooth out the insight cycles which aparaently can be a bit rough. If I were not planning on doing this I probably would go learn "Kunlun" from Jenny Lamb. Can you say a bit about why you thought Vipassana was so effective compared to the other stuff? As for concentration states I have thought for some time that many methods migh be more effective than breath watching to get you into Jhana territory but once there the Vipassana tradition has so much detailed techniques for jumping from one Jhana to the next by manipulating the Jhana factors etc. that I think it has a big advantaged in moving from Jhana one upwards. But when talkingabou effectiveness I guess you probably were talking about insight meditation?

Lov your garden Eric! Exactly why is the nose gazing technique so important?

Yes that book is also one of my favorites

I think you would realy enjoy the style of lovemaking on the karezz site reuniting.info. THey have a lot of tips for "bondnig based lovemaking styles" and bonding behaviours/techniques. What this does is work with the body in that create more feelings of love hence balancing love and sexual energy (dopamine and xytocin amongst otehr things). Both the man and the woman change from explosiv orgasms (for he man including ejaculation) to the real tantric valey orgasm instead of multiple explosive ones like one can have with the male multiple orgasm techniques. THe net result is more energy and health then with just celibacy, which a lot of the men on the site has tried, and a remarkable change in the relationship were love is kept much stronger and conflict seems to reduce to very low levels. You can read about how they conect this to oxytocin and dopamin (sexual and love energy roughly). THeir scientific theory probably is not perfect but they are certainly getting at something.

I am going to try for 30 days now myself as I need it for health reasons. Otherwise I would not bother. I to love the effects. Realy wonderfull. DOne right you will get a good deal more beneficial energy having sex without ejaculations. But, there are a lot of pitfals in that aproach. It is much easier to get it balanced when having sex with a women than just wanking. Reuniting.info has some valuable information. alchemicaltaoism also. These two threads also have information that is important for managing non ejaculatory sex well: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?showtopic=9421&st=0 http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/13922-making-love-with-the-earth/ The most important thing seems to be balancing heart energy and sexual energy.

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book, by Daniel M. Ingram and A Path With Heart by Jack Kornfield are my two favourites I guess. I also like demelos awareness book a lot. Path Notes by GLen Morris also ranges high. Ingrams book can be read for free: http://web.mac.com/danielmingram/iWeb/Daniel%20Ingram%27s%20Dharma%20Blog/The%20Blook/The%20Blook.html

THanks RyanO! This practice is working wonders for me it seems.

http://www.umaatantra.com/tantra_articles/male_deer_exercise.html THis exercise should help quite a bit. But if stress and anxiety etc. are predominant in your life working on turning that arround might be more helpful long term. Do you practice any meditation, qigong, yoga etc? I would seek out a TCM doctor if I were you. Your kidneys are probably weak. Weak kidneys correlate with both low sex drive and anxiety. But it is better to get things diagnosed and work from that. In addtion you can get herbs and acupuncture to help in slowly building up your energy. A good kidney exercise is this: Put the right leg on top of the left thigh so that the side of the calf is resting on the leg close to the knee. Hold your right hand on the right leg close to the ankle so that your "palm chakra" (the main acupoint on the hand can`t remember the name but if you google it you will figure it out quite easily) rests above acupoint spleen 6. Put your left hand on the sole of the right foot so that your palm chakra is resting righ above kidney 1/bubley springs. This placement will feel natural. Now slap the foot so that you hit it with about this placement. The main point is that the palm chakra point hits the kideny 1 point. Slap away then change foot. A normal person can slap each foot 500 times a day. A person with a particular issue such as yourself can slap 800 times a day. More would easily create imbalance. I think just 100-300 would do a lot for someone who has opened their channels a bit through yoga/qigong/meditation. I learnt this from her: http://www.qigonginstitute.org/listing/teachers/W_Yan.html Also, just stilling the mind can have an immense effect on energy levels

So a good morning practice would perhaps be a round of yoga, embrace the tree for 10 min, and then finishing of with looking at breasts

Great post. This is an essential part of why I love this forum and am more comfortable here than most other forums I have been at.

Next time you are skiing in the alps you might take some yoga with Kelly Aikins. Great girl. Knows her asana. And knows her skiing, used to be profesional.

I recently heard taht there are 17 different sexes

Well, I am actually one of those that think this discussion of MR. Yudelove is unproblematic, I just also want to discuss his teachings as I find it interesting, probably valuable for others, and valuable for myself as I have adjusted my own practice about acording to his book and had success with it. I think that when you are a spiritual teacher, and even proclaim yourself a master, and you get arrested for that kind of episode, it is only to be expected that you will be confronted with this in forums. As has been mentioned the practices could be destabilizing for one. People also expect cultivation to lead to a beneficial personality development, especially at master levels and are right in inquiring to whom they put their trust as a teacher/master can have huge influence on their thinking and lives. If the master is not a good person or just plain crazy one is usually best served by staying far away in order to protect oneself, at least one needs to aproach with great caution. So any "master" of spiritual teachings has no right to get offended for being confronted with such an episode. He might not be to blame for what happened, he might be falsely acused, but that does not give him the right to be offended by being asced to explain himself with regards to what happened. If he can explain/defend himself properly giving a good argument for not having been to blame or if he admits wrongdoing and is sorry for it, then he has the right to get offended if his explaination or remorse is not met with proper respect. If his explanation is not good/credible or he shows no remorse then he has no right to be offended by peoples scepticism and anyone would be justified in being sceptical of the master. To me Mr. Yudeloves explanations sounded very thin, the whole thing about being an assasin is much, much worse then the strip club episode itself IMO and his explanations and talk about himself in general makes him seem unstable and with a self agrandizement problem in my mind. He comes of baaad IMO. I would have been perfectly willing to not pay any attention to this story had his explanation sounded very plausible and had he otherwise come of as sensible. A lot of quality taobummers agree with that. I genuinly worry about him like with some of the other unstable characters taht sometimes drop by. I would stil like to discuss his practices with him. I can cetainly understand if he is not very interested after what I wrote here, although as I said there is no fault in such a case to be openly critical of him, but I liked his book and would at least want to hear his perspective on things. I am I more sceptical now than I was before of his teachings but at least up to the level his books describe stuff looks good to me, anyone I have read talking about practicing it has had good results, and there are several people her that want to practice his stuff and compare experiences so we will figure out if there are faults with it. With any practice were we don`t already have GOOD "data" of how the practioners turn out there will always be risks regardless of how saintly the master is. Comparing experience on the broadest possible scale is the way forward in figuring out what is safe and effeicient and what is not. It is unfortunate that these kinds of critical questions also reduces the chances of him being interested in sharing his vast knowledge but I don`t see how sweeping this under the carpet would have been the way to go. At aypsite.org they consistently deny posts that are critical of gurus regardless of how outrages and evil and proven the actions of the guru is. For example a post I made about Sai Baba being documented with camera footage as a fraud using magick tricks and being accused by many young men of sexual abuse was sensored. This was in a thread were several people had met him in person and others could easily have felt encouraged to go see him himself and possibly become his diciples putting themselves at high risk of sexual abuse and under the guidance of a fraud and complete psycho. To maintain a civil tone were no one got offended and to focus on usefull discussion my post was rejected. Maintaining such a policy at spiritual forums in general will lead to hoards of people becoming subject to abuse and or teachings that can be detrimental as spiritual forums are the place they have the best chance of getting such warnings. (Would just like to underline that I am of course in no way comparing Yudelove to Sai Baba and Sai Babas wrongdoings. It is just meant as an example of bad censorship policies in the name of civility and valuable discussion).

I know little about it but have a strong feeling that I want to have a dao yin practice as a large part of my overal yoga practice. I think Sarah Powers Yin Yang yoga looks good. Her book is very nice. I want my yoga to be more from the inside out and less forced from the outside in like the Iyengar yoga I used to do. My impression from reading about dao yin it is that it is considered an important foundational practice to get your body in order and as such can be quite powerfull but that in terms of chi prodcution and alchemy it can not compare to realy, realy powerfull qigong. Sort of like have longevity breathing is a very usefull and imporant foundationl practice that can take you far but it will never give the insane amount of power that Tummo will. Is this correct? Is dao yin always sitting practices? Are there standing asanas as well? I also think I have read something about dao yin being a practice primarily for the area from the navel to the kness and less so for the rest of the body. Is this correct? Are there Dao Yin practices that are intervwoven with standing and moving qigong?

http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/13975-eric-yudeloves-teachings/ I made a thread to discuss Eric Yudeloves actual teachings. The thread is reserved for that alone. No questions about his person allowed ad this thread already fills that function and such questions would ruin discussion of the practices in the thread. Keep those questions here.

Both perspectives is kinda right in my opinion. This article I think is very valuable in this discussion: http://www.interactivebuddha.com/bullshit.shtml

Thanks. But my ceel phone is not as pretty as Mal`s clock and I want that too

Jack Kornfield wrote an article for yoga journal (long time ago) about sexulaity and spirituality which was based on interviewing arround 50 meditation masters and their top students. About 10 of these were celibate but outwardly many more preahed celibacy while not practicing it themselves. Some were monomgomous, some were polyamorous, some were gay or bi, some were promiscuos, some were open about their choices others lied, some had affairs some did not. Basicly almost none of them activily worked with integrating spiritualiy and sexuality and kornfiled concluded this must be why they did not seem any mroe anlightened in tehir sexual lives than most people. I read this in of Kornfields books but have never read the article. Someone here wrote yoga journal to get it but the issue was out of print. Maybe if you contact Kornifeld directly he could give it to you. If so, please share:)

Yoga nidra takes your body into deep CONCIOUS sleep. It takes you all the way to samadhi if you practice it for long enough. It works better as a sleep replacement than regular meditation. WHen I do it I can wake up quite tired and needing more sleep, then do yoga nidra and be perfectly awake. It also teaches you how to sleep and how to fall asleep. Doing it will over time maximaize the quality of your sleep so you will need less of it and it will minimize the time needed to fall a sleep so you will save time there also. COmbined witht the fact that you can sleep a little bit less than you would othervise need to if you do yoga nidra that same morning as you wake too early the combined time savings is big. It will take some time to get there though. Needs to be done everyday for the most part. Swami satyananda and swami rama have good yoga nidra cds Michael Lomax who posts as Ya Mu on this board teaches a lying down qigong that reduces need for sleep time A LOT. If you take his stilness movement qigong workshop he can teach it to you.

In this one at 3.45 All the mentioned gross physical methods such as this one are very slow though. Safe and sound but sloow. I am working on the orbit myself these days and soemtimes I get energy up the spine that could easily make me manic if I could not get it down the front again which is very sooting. But sometimes I get very calm energies up the spine. My front is not at all as open as it needs to be but just enough for me to slowly open it by just keeping my toungue up a lot when energy starts to move. I am doing one of chais tai chi short forms and it is very good for the front channel in addition to being very calming. I will try to find out the name of the form. It is extreemly easy to learn. Tai chi is very grounding in general as well.

In general I agree with those who say there is no point for you in trying to abstain at your age. However, as I understand you the problem is that you don`t see your girlfriend often enough to satisfy your desires and so lust for other women. Firstly I would try to see my girl more if possible. Also look into webcam sex. And possibly long distance energy sex if possible. Then you could try some practical exercises to transmute on weekdays to keep your dick in your pants. Trunk has mentioned turtle breathing as a very effective exercise for this in another thread. Look into it. Does Trunk have instrcutions for it on his site? You could also try the "Biels fire and water technique" described on Trunks site. then and there it cools of desire and it creates a very pleasurable steam that is also emotionally satisfying. Also try RyanOs making love to the earth technique. You could also use the sixth tibetan but then I supose you would have to do the other five to make it balance and possibly to make it work at all. They are superb exercise though and don`t take much time so why not try them. Just keep enough horniness for your girl at the weekends. YOu could also try the aneros because it will give you such mindblowing multiple orgasms, eventually of a very spiritual nature. This might be very satisfying for you unlike regular wanking. It might though make you extre horny at other times. Not sure. Ask around at the aneros forum about this.

I wrote about this in this thread: http://www.thetaobums.com/index.php?/topic/13956-just-dealing/ Mindfullness meditation will hepl you not be so bothered by the thoughts that are actually there. It will also lead to most of them eventually dropping away. You can combine this with the secret smile to fill yourself with positive emotions. The secret smile is designed to make you relaxed, confident, happy, loving and blissfull. It does so to a very powerfull degree for those who are able to feel those things to a modest degree by circulating them arround, intensifying and storing them. If you use the search funtion you should find a thread with instructions by Santiago. The type of insecurities you mentiona re root chakra fears. At umaatantra.com they have instructions for an earth meditation to deal with material fears etc. Just look through the articles and you should find it. Any other qigong, yoga, meditation etc. will in general strenghten your psyche quite a lot.

I have been having a lot of success recently with using tools from cognitive therapy in changing my thinking patterns and as a consequence of that, my emotions. As a therapy cognitive behavioral therapy has shown very good and consistent results in countless studies. However, you can easily work on it yourself. Look arround for a good book on it. The key is more or less daily practice. Use 10-15 min everyday on it as part of your routine. It is the consistency that brings results. The best tool for me, when I am able to aply it, is mindfulness. This is more or less what Freeform is talking about. It just somehow makes the negative emotions process the way they are suposed to quickly and somehow then a sort of healing of the emotion and balancing of perspective comes by itself. One just has to bring awareness to the emotions and realy let go. Two types of therapy are built upon this principle. Mindfulness based cognitive therapy (different from regular cognitive therapy) and acceptance and commitment therapy. These two are essentially the same and build upon mindfulness principles and uses mindfulness meditation and mindfulness exercises as suport. Shinzen Youngs break through difficult emotions (amazon)I also think is very good. He has some articles on his webpage that also explain a lot about mindfulness. Six healing sounds has been very important for me for a long time in cleanisng and balancing myself emotionally. Any sort of culitvation practice that works on emotions directly or indirectly can e very helpfull. But for me it is important to keep a balance between those practices that aproach energy and emotions in an engineering mindset (cleansing, removing, building positive, balancing etc.) and those who are more about leting go and mindfullness. I practice the engineering exercises like healing sounds at set times a day and try to let go, be mindfull or change my thinking the rest of the day. Only when very pressed do I sit down and do engineering exercises at other times to heal. I find this aproache helps me avoid fighting my emotions and strenghtens my letting go ability while also giving me a lot of benefit from the engineering exercises. If you only try to change, change, change and do, do, do and remove, remove, remove you will stagnate. Essentially control is impossible, one has to let things happen, let it go. I had to deal with grief some time ago and healing sounds was only a weak band aid untill I actually was able to mindfully let go. One can and should also bring as much of a mindfull attitude to engineering exercises and this transforms them and sort of almost makes them into just clever mindfulness exercises. This is when they work best and you kinda get the best of both worlds. Inner smile and secret smile are also very powerfull tools to strenghten positive emotions. They, especially the secret smile, will also bring up more stuff to deal with.