Maddie

Ah Drew just the man I wanted to talk to. Got a few questions. I've been noticing that every day this week after I come back from the clinic I am just drop dead tired and fall asleep for several hours and a deep deep sleep. So I'm wondering a few possible explanations for this. 1. Are the patients that I am doing acupuncture on sucking my energy? I had 4 patients today. By the last one I was totally zoning out and very tired. I let my partner do most of the talking lol. 2. This week all the other interns with me have been female. I've noticed that when I show up at clinic and feel energized they are very chatty and make a lot of eye contact. Once I feel tired they sort of stop talking or go off and talk to each other lol. And this pattern has happened every day too. 3. Also I've been doing a LOT of meditation lately. So don't know if this would have anything to do with it either, or some sort of combination of all three? Or something else? *oh and when I woke up from my nap today I stunk :-( , which is odd cause that is new.

Yea this is exactly what happens when this technique is used. Its important to remember that there are several different levels of retention practice. I was first introduced to it the same way many people were, through Chia. The method he uses (no matter how he tries to sell it) is NOT spiritual, but health and performance. When I used that method I was VERY wound up all the time, constantly thinking about sex all the freaking time, and able to have sex all the freaking time (though I believe my wife at the time liked that haha :-). Also my testosterone / yang levels went through the roof as I was always stimulating so that my testicles created more yang, but since I did not loose it through ejaculation it built up with in me. I suppose it was good for me (or because of) that at the time I was going to martial arts training several times a week, and working the heavy bag and training on my own just about every single day. It made me sooooo aggressive which caused me to fit in with the MMA crowd perfectly as our sparing matches were more like death brawls lol. I think the only spiritual progress I made at the time was due to the Qigong I was doing at the time. I was doing a lot of 8 Brocades, and the Inner Smile and Healing sounds, so at least I got a lot of organ work done and had a lot of fuel for it. I finally even went to an acupuncturist to help me cool my jets. It was funny when he sat down to check my pulse I remember his eye brows going up and saying "wow you have a lot of qi!!" haha. I felt like I was buzzing all the time, though not in a beneficial way. As to your question about if done this way would we be constantly meditating, well yes, BUT not getting too far though because even though meditation would convert the jing to qi, the stimulation and desire would reconvert the qi back to jing so you'd be going round and round the merry go round. Even as it is now, (I am celibate with out any kind of stimulation) I have to meditate a lot to sublimate the energy. So as I said before there is no "right or wrong" way, but just a matter of what you are trying to accomplish. If your married or in a relationship it would be rather non-compassionate to leave your wife or partner with unsatisfied needs. Now that I am not married and not in a relationship I don't need to worry about these considerations (hmmm I'm also happier than I've ever been too haha).

Hey, according to TCM this is caused from Kidney Yin def. In addition to the nocturnal emissions do you have lower back pain, sore/weak knees, and/or night sweats? The formula Liu Wei Di Huang Wan is the classic Yin def. formula, try it. http://www.activeherb.com/yinvive/

Yes the term meat market is gross, so is the experience of being there haha. The problem with alcohol aside from lowering your inhibitions is that it makes meditation harder or impossible. Usually when I feel a desire flare up if I can sit in mindfulness meditation for a while it clears it right up. Last night however I was unable to meditate due to the alcohol so I just had to sit there and endure. I totally understand your difficulty and frustration with abstinence for a while. Here is the main key if your doing it for a spiritual goal, you have to do it with a lot of meditation. Abstinence alone will just drive you insane and beyond a certain point isn't even good for you as it can lead to stagnation. Meditation with out enough fuel (your sexual energy) just won't have the octane to do much transformation to you. The key is abstinence AND meditation. If you abstain and cultivate emptiness through meditation, that sexual energy is TRANSFORMED and that is the real secret. ;-)

Another suggestion eh? lol. Ok, you can try this also. Take a seven star needle or something similar and for a good 5-10 a day gently stimulate the scalp area with a light tapping method. The link has a picture of one so you may know what I'm talking about. http://www.globalmed-hk.com/7-star-needle/53-7-star-needle-double-sided.html

Hey John i'm a TCM student. Did your acupuncturist give you herbs for your Kidney yang def? That's probably the best and easiest way to go about it. If not Huan Shao Zhuang Yang Pian is a good formula. http://www.activeherb.com/youngain/ As far as Qigong goes reverse abdominal breathing is a good method for this problem.

Shou Wu Pian. here is a link where you can order it. http://www.activeherb.com/shouwu/

Had an interesting insight during meditation this morning. It suddenly occurred to me that the story of Sampson and Delia is all about cultivation. Sampson was strong while his hair was long. Hair is one of the outward manifestation of Kidney jing. As long as Sampson didn't loose his "hair" / Kidney jing to a woman he was strong. After he lost it to a woman who cut off his "hair" or took his jing he was weak, and then blinded as all that shen in his upper dan tien that gave him spiritual sight was lost as it was de-converted back to sex fluids. Also when he was strong he was able to defeat all his enemies which you can think of as all the blockages in your channels that give you problems. But after loosing his strength his enemies took him and made him push that grind stone around in circles endlessly. Round and round in the addictive world of Samsara. Just thought it was and interesting parallel. :-)

In TCM that's usually explained by Kidney jing deficiency. There are herbs though that can help with this.

Hey Oildrops. The main thing I'm noticing now I'd say isn't so much people draining my energy... well wait yea sort of but since I'm in TCM school I only notice that after doing acupuncture on patients lol, but people converting my energy. Drew was explaining this and I've noticed that it does seem to work this way. Like that bar I went to last night. Obviously everyone knows bars are meat markets so you have a bunch of horny guys on the prowl looking for girls. Of course you also have girls doing the same, but with guys being yang its more intense and noticeable. So that frequency the guys operates on has this way of trying to cause your body to reverse the jing-qi-shen conversion process. Yesterday I was noting that I personally notice this beginning to happen when my heart "freaks out". According to Drew this is the parasympathetic to sympathetic nervous system switch which makes sense. But even if I had not gone out this process is not always easy because once you abstain for a while and you get all that extra qi clearing out Heart meridian blockages things can get intense lol. Bill Brodi says there is really no easy way around it, and pretty much the only thing you can do is cultivate emptiness which I have found to be really the only way personally as well. Though I do agree with you about spicy food, also beef and yang foods in general do make it more difficult. I'll try the inner leg stretch.

Thanks guys for the advice and encouragement. As Brodi says this issue is THE hard one (pun lol) and in the end you just have to mindfulness your way through it. Though I did have a couple more insights. The first is now I see why most monks don't drink any if a whole lot lol. So after I came home from the bar last night I felt another desire flare up as I had posted. What sucked was that since I had been drinking I just couldn't meditate for nothing. I sat there for 20 min trying and my mind just couldn't do it. So with no mindfulness I just kind of laid there half the night and did my best to be aware of it, ugh not fun... desire induced insomnia lol :-/. The second was when I first woke up it hit me. I saw how you can describe this process (my insight post yesterday about the rising of energies) in multiple ways. Basically my explanation yesterday about qi rising to the heart meridian and cleaning out blockages and all the side effects that causes was the Taoist/Chinese take on the matter. What I saw this morning was that the Hindu/Yoga/Indian explanation was describing the same thing, but just in a different way. So yesterday I mentioned how if you abstain for X amount of time the unused jing converts to qi in the lower dan tien rising to the middle dan tien and purging the heart and heart meridian thus producing all those desire side effects. Well the Indian take on the matter says the same thing, but just in a different way. They would say as Kundulini rises from the Root to Sacral chakra it begins to burn of Sacral chakra blockages and you have desire issues, as the Sacral chakra lies in the middle of the lower dan tien.

So right after my last post my roommate comes home and is like hey lets go out and get a few drinks. So we go out to this bar and meet her bf and another friend. I hadn't been out in a little while because for one its the end of the semester and I'm broke and two I've sort of been using the break as a meditative retreat time. But not wanting to be too anti-social I agree. Well its not really any secret that bars are meat markets and everyone is on the prowl, especially guys. So needless to say after returning home after being in a place with a bunch of hungry wolves I'm feeling the effect... sheesh.

Ok the thing with the legs makes sense since they have not only the Kidney channels which store jing, but also the Yin and Yang Wei (linking) and yin and yang chiao (motility) vessels which amongst other things act as reservoirs of qi, so I can see how building those up would increase your capacity...also once you increase your capacity more jing to qi conversion would have to take place to fill up those extra vessels...ha an in leg conversion... hmmm interesting, never thought of that. The perv addiction cycle thing you mentioned was interesting as well because this evening I was meditating again and had somewhat of an insight (guess that's why they call it insight meditation lol) Anyways I noted how if you regularly are loosing your sex fluids then the two primary organs for sexual function which are in the lower dan tien / lower jiao area the Liver and Kidney are always occupied with that. The Kidneys providing the material base (fluid) and the Liver providing the functional ability with blood and qi for erection as the Liver meridian is the one that enters and circles the genitals. No real build up occurs and the common man is content. If he goes a little while with out such release then his body would begin to turn some of that excess un-employed jing into qi in his lower dan tien. As this qi (small in volume it may be) rises to its abode in the middle dan tien where the heart is, it begins to stimulate the heart. Now in most cases the heart meridian is going to have a lot of blockages. As this little bit of qi begins to try and clean out heart meridian blockages its going to stir up the over-excitement/passion/impatience of the heart. This will result in making the poor bloke feel stimulated and will usually result in that stimulation ending in sexual gratification and semen loss, thus the qi of the middle dan tien is reconverted back into jing and drops down again to the lower dan tien-kidneys-genitals, thus temporarily alleviating that until the next slight amount of jing is converted to qi and round and round and round it goes.... or to put it in other words addiction. The only way I could see how to push past this envelope and break the cycle was to enter into emptiness when such an event occurred as opposed to being taken over by it. That emptiness allows the blockages to be cleared with detachment so one is not carried away by it all. One final note, and this is a bit more speculative on my part, but I've noticed that when a desire flare up is intense that sometimes it can take up to two hours of sitting meditation to obtain a decent amount of emptiness. What I've noticed is towards the end of these two hour sessions that mindfulness of desire sensations gives way to awareness of the role of ego in my life. So what I'm wondering/speculating is that just in the way a wee bit of jing converted to qi in the lower dan tien and rising do the middle can cause the symptoms I mentioned before, if after a bit of emptiness if some of that qi in the middle dan tien is converting to shen and rising to the upper dan tien..... thus the quite profound insights into ego?

About "perv attacks" a few questions. Is this something they do usually subconsciously and can it be done at a distance even if you are not using any medium of communication at the moment? Also what/how do they do it? Might that explain my heart freaking out totally out of the blue? I also notice in addition to feeling it in my heart, I also get quite a bit in my solar plexus early on as well, but I'm not sure why. Also what is the reason that Chunyi recommends 3 to 1 standing to sitting?

How do you tell if your being spiritually parasited? (grammar)

I see, so what happened to your energy?

It kind of goes back to what I was saying. What is the goal? Of course abstinence alone does not really do a whole lot of anything. Its celibacy (including mental... which is tougher) and the cultivation of emptiness that does the trick (assuming your goal is spiritual in nature) http://www.meditationexpert.com/yoga-kung-fu/y_celibacy_difficulties_in_spiritual_cultivation.htm

Since I can't really get into full lotus at least not for a few seconds or a minuet at the most I do half lotus, I'm assuming though probably less effective than full lotus it still provides some benefit? So you use full lotus and standing exercises to store the energy in the dan tien, as far as your personal way of doing it?

I think as several people have posted here the issue seems to be more with your gf, perhaps you should talk to her about the wisdom of contacting her cousin in meditation.

Hey Wolf I took a look at that website and if your goal is increasing sexual potency and experience then I think its a good way to go. But my real point is that I think a lot of the confusing and debate in a lot of these kinds of retention posts in TTB's stems from the fact that there are several different types of retention, sexual, and/or celibacy practices all with different goals and methods. Some systems are good on a health and performance level. Others are more purely spiritual as far as goals and methods go such as what monks do. So I think its important for one to identify their goals as far as sexual practice goes and once that is accomplished there will be less confusion as some of the various methods while fine for their own purposes are contraindicated with another method. (I sure hope that made sense and did not sound like random babble as I'm fasting again and my mind is a little spacey lol) *but yea if your goal is more potency I think this will get you want you want. ;-)

Its interesting the pattern you mentioned because that's pretty much how it plays out. It kind of goes like this... I can be sitting there minding my own business, with any desire related topics the furthest thing from my mind. Then BAM! out of the blue desire hits me and at the same time my heart starts kicking into over drive, and at this point in my life I say to myself "oh boy here we go again" and if possible try to get to the meditation cushion as fast as possible. Then once I'm sitting there usually the next thing I feel (in addition to the desire) is a great deal of irritability and all the classic symptoms of Liver qi stagnation including constriction and discomfort along the course of the Liver meridian especially in the lateral-costal and epigastric regions (classic symptoms). So yea its just like you said, first my heart freaks out and then my Liver freaks out. Its like the heart fire catches the liver wood on fire. So I meditate for a while, and observe all this with as much detachment as is possible, and gradually it dissolves. What I don't understand is the suddenness of it all, as in just BAM out of the blue, it freaks me out. As far as storing the energy in the lower dan tien, what method do you use to do that? Abdominal breath, intention, ect.. ?? Yea as far as diet goes I modified it again like I did a few days ago (when I fasted because of this). I was going to go out and get some BBQ, but with the flare up decided that probably eating in general and especially beef would not be helping my cause lol. So since my Spleen qi is a bit on the weak side, I guess I'll just fast until tomorrow morning since I have to go do hours at the clinic. Just as an aside, I had this patient today, a middle aged lady who had severe Shen disturbance, as in hadn't slept for 48 hours because she was hearing things, and on bi-polar meds and all that fun stuff. At least by the end of the treatment she seemed to have calmed down significantly, and was weeping a bit, as opposed to looking like she was on the moon. Oh the point... it seems that celibacy+meditation/cultivation= much better results from my patients :-), ... ok enough tooting my own horn lol. Joe thanks for sharing that stuff :-). I skimmed that wiki article you posted and noticed something interesting. It said that the Efferent never lead to the inner ear. Weird thing was today as I was meditating in the midst of the situation I was describing earlier for a while I kept having to unblock my ears by popping my jaw cause they kept closing up... weird.

I had some recent thoughts and observations about the issue of desire. I'm not quite sure how desire manifests itself in other people, be it physically, mentally, ect. But personally what I've noticed lately is that from time to time I have what I'll call "desire flare ups". Now I suppose there is nothing really noteworthy of this in and of itself as that is pretty much part of life and the reason we are in Samsara in the first place. The dilemma for this with a cultivator as has already been discussed extensively in TTBs is holding onto and transforming one of the most potent "fuels" for spiritual cultivation which is sexual energy. The energy can either go up to further spiritual progress or go down for the purpose of pleasure. Either way there is no judgment or right or wrong in this, just a matter of goals. In my case the goal is using this energy for fuel for spiritual progress, yet which from time to time creates the dilemma of desire flare ups. Now what I've noticed lately is where and how desire is felt when it flares up. When I was a teenager and shortly thereafter usually desire would manifest in the sex organ itself, and most commonly in the form of an erection or at the very least swelling and an increase of sensitivity and the craving for physical stimulation. What I have noticed now, and this applies for the past several years is that desire flare ups now usually don't affect the sexual organ, but I tend to feel it strongest in the chest. While sitting in meditation lately, specifically when doing mindfulness of the body and breath I've noticed I tend to feel desire manifest as pressure and constriction in my chest primarily, which then sort of radiates down and up a level to create this same sensation in my throat and solar plexus. There is a lot of constriction, tension, and I can feel my heart rate and blood pressure increase. Lately I've noticed by internal observation during mindfulness of the body and breath that not only physically do I feel my chest constrict and tense, but I feel my lungs constrict and breathing becomes more labored and my heart rate and pressure increases. Along with those physical symptoms I've noticed as this is occurring an acute experiencing of the emotions of these two organs, that being the grief/sorrow/nostalgia of the Lungs, and the over excitement/passion/impatience of the heart. Generally after about and hour and a half to two hours of sitting in meditation the intensity of these symptoms tends to subside and at last I am usually able to reach some level of emptiness. It is at this point that I feel the constriction and tension relax, the heart rate slows again, the mind quiets down, and those emotions that I previously listed calm down. I guess what surprises me about this is that in the past I had usually assumed that sexual desire was just always felt in the sexual organ primarily and what ever other sensations occurred in the body were just a result of the excitement of the sex organ being the stimulus for it. The notion of having no arousal of the sex organ at all but feeling extreme sensation in the chest area has been novel. My question is fist of all to those who are really in the know about this, as I really don't want a bunch of guesses or people who don't know what their talking about speaking a bunch of rubish. But if someone else has been through this or something similar, and/or has some real knowledge or insight as to this type of experience I'd love to further my understanding of this somewhat confusing and at times stressful event.

i'm not sure, maybe I have, but I'm still not too up to speed with the Sanskrit terminology for things yet. Also the fact that I find some concepts of Buddhism confusing is why I'm at the Buddhist forum asking questions in the first place.

I agree ^ ;-)

That's the five senses right? could you elaborate please?