Maddie

I live in Austin now, and it is NOT like the rest of Texas at all lol. I love it here :-)

Explaining something that the first verse of the book that is supposed to explain it says that you can't say what it is because as soon as you say what it is you've missed the point, makes explaining it quite problematic. I suppose that is why Taoists don't go to hear a sermon, its why they practice Qigong as to experience what Tao is. :-)

I would be curious in hearing people's various experiences with doing the MCO originating in the dan tien, and the MCO originating in the testicles aka (testicle breathing/ cool draw). I find both to be useful for different purposes, but the sensation and experience to be slightly different, and was curious if anyone else had any input from personal experience if they have done both?

not a problem, and what you said I totally get cause you pretty much described much of what I have gone through as well

I think for me one of the hardest parts it dealing with the stuff that meditation shows you about yourself.

Just from what you have said it sounds most likely but not necessarily that you might be suffering from either Qi or Yang deficiency or both. More specifically deficiency of the Lungs and possibly also the Liver, but do keep in mind that with out a proper tounge and pulse diagonsis I can't say for sure, but I would recommend going to see a TCM Dr. about this.

I'd say go see a TCM dr. because excessive sweating could be the symptoms of a few conditions, some of which could be kind of serious. Of course it would be really difficult to diagnose you via the internet though here are some guidelines. If this excessive sweating occurs mainly at night then its probably more of a yin deficiency issue, but not necessarily. If this happens during the day then it could be several things including qi deficiency, and or excess heat in one or more of the various organs. So a few questions... On what part of your body does the sweating occur the most? What type of sweat is it? oily or watery? When is it most profuse? daytime or nighttime? Does it have any color to it? such as yellow? or is it clear? Do you have any other symptoms, no matter how unrelated they may seem?

I'm in TCM school now, and as far as I know we don't learn MCO as part of the curriculum.

As to how Mantak Chia "survived" keep in mind I didn't say semen retention would kill you if you did it for a long time, so I don't think survival is the issue. The point I was making was that the point of semen retention is the issue of conserving your pre-natal jing, not surviving. As far as the Shaolin monks go, they are not your everyday layman. They practice a extraordinarily large amount of kung-fu and meditation. The reason they are celibate is so that they can build up enough chi, to convert to shen so that they can store this shen in their upper dan tien which aids them in reaching their goal of enlightenment. This of course is on a whole different level then the average person, and you pretty much need to live an alternative life style (monastery) to reach this point. If they were to ejaculate then a good portion of that shen they had built up would be re-converted back into chi, the chi into jing, and the jing into seminal fluid to replace the loss. Since shen is more subtle and less dense than chi or jing it takes a LOT of it to make a little jing. So naturally they would never get anywhere this way. So if you want to reach enlightenment yes long term retention is important, but then again if you want to reach enlightenment you need to be under the discipleship of a master who would direct you in all of that anyways. But to the average lay person who wants good health and is not under a master, long term retention is unnecessary, and even potentially harmful (stagnation, heat, ect...)

From what I understand, there is no one set ridged number of days across the board, but some guidelines and then you factor in the health and constitution of the individual. From most things I've read, if your a teenager and in good health you can get away with twice a day, in your 20's once a day, 30's once every couple days, and so and so forth. If your an old man in your 70's and in poor health you should not at all. I agree with what Fiveelemento said about retention and heat, specifically damp heat, which is why if you choose to practice retention you still need to release now and then so you don't get a build up of damp heat. j The important thing to remember in retention is NOT that saving sperm forever is magic or anything like that at all. The reason for retention is to allow your body to replace your post natal kidney jing before the next ejaculation so that your body does not have to tap into your pre-natal kidney jing to make more sperm. As long as you are doing this, you have gotten all that you need and can hope to get out of retention. At this point retaining any longer does nothing more for you.... (other than drive you nuts with desire cause the nerves in your testicles keep screaming at your brain that its time to empty).

Ah I almost forgot to mention retention via dual cultivation (my preferred method lol). This is also an EXCELLENT way to practice retention, and balance your yin/yang energy. If your a guy, and you practice fluid retention during love making, and only exchange yin and yang, this will have a wonderful balancing effect. Just one night of this can last me weeks before I feel the need again (of course I can also choose to keep the interval much shorter should I want to). Two things happen when doing this. One is the yang/yin jing chi transfer that takes place on an energetic level if you know how to use your intention to do this. The other is the fluid essence exchange that takes place through the skin. Both of these methods are excellent in allowing one to practice retention and balance their yin/yang polarity (its this polarity that causes people to want sex in the first place). As an interesting aside if dual cultivation happens to be your method of choice. The more one practices solo cultivation, as in lots of time spent sitting in meditation doing dan tien breathing, the more attractive one becomes to women, thus increasing the likelihood of drawing a dual cultivation partner to yourself. One important aspect to attraction that modern psychology won't tell you is that aside from all the obvious social cues and rules, another huge part of attraction is on an energetic level. As a male the more yang chi (you are yang in relation to a woman's more yin chi) you have, the more attractive a woman is going to find you. I've noticed in my own experience that when I have been doing a lot of dan tien breathing at the same time I'm practicing retention, I get flirted with way more often, and attracting girls becomes way more easy with out trying very hard. On the other hand at times when for what ever reason I neglect my time in meditation, it seems that every where I go, and no matter what I do I don't do so well with the ladies. I find it amazing how much of a difference time spent in meditation verses the opposite makes in this realm.

No I don't mean intentional by forced because even natural things have intention behind them. What I mean is retaining beyond your ability to do so naturally and easily. Retention should not be difficult or miserable. If you feel like you have to use a lot of "willpower" to keep yourself retaining then that is "forced". If you are not sufficiently converting sexual fluids and hormones through meditation, then retention can become torture or even harmful. Also keep in mind that anything done to an extreme is not good either. Retaining beyond your natural ability to do so naturally is not good for you, and can foster stagnation, frustration, and damp heat. So a lot of the time from a TCM perspective when you feel a very strong urge to "not retain" its your body telling you to do so in order to avoid, or release stagnation, or damp heat, or toxins. So that is what I mean by "forced". ;-)

Hey Shepherd First of all your 26, so don't think that if you release now and then that you have "failed" anything. As one who also practices retention its important in keeping the principles of the Tao that nothing is to be "forced" or done against nature. Sometimes our body tells us its time to release, and we should listen, for there is a reason. With that being said, to answer your question. The key to transmuting the sexual fluids into jing, jing into chi, and chi into shen is time spent sitting in meditation. The more you meditate, the more this transformation takes place. First begin by simply doing lower dan tien breathing. As you breath into your dan tien, and keep your focus there, the transformation of jing to chi begins. After your dan tien is full, then begin by doing the MCO. The process of doing the MCO reverses the polarity of the jing at your perineum which is yang to yin by bringing that jing chi up to your crown which is yin. Then once you bring the chi back down again and store it in your dan tien what was very yang jing chi, is now a more yin version. Think of it like turning a magnet around and reversing the polarity which thus neutralizes the charges. Now as Drew Hemphel stated in the past, if it is possible for you to do so, when you sit, sit in full lotus because that position further increases the yin/yang polarity balance, expediting the conversion of jing into chi. If this is too difficult then try half lotus. Hope that answered your question.

There are a lot of ways to work on the chakras. One good way is to do the MCO which sends chi through the front and back of each chakra. You can also work on a chakra specifically by breathing into it, and visualizing it in its color and in perfect balance. Crystal elixirs are also a good way, as well as the gemstones applied directly on the chakra area. I am a TCM student, and have also begun to experiment needling the chakras directly, and this seems to have some balancing effect as well (I suppose acupressure could be used to). If I find a chakra to be too difficult for me, there is a Shamanistic healer here in Austin that I go to sometimes, and he does a really good job at breaking up blockages in chakras, so I suppose any really good legitimate energy healer would be effective as well. So above are some suggests, and techniques that I have used myself that have worked for me. Above all else I'd say experiment with those, and see what works and does not work for you, cause after all its your body and you know how it feels and responds more than anyone else. Hope thats helpful. :-)

Hey from one Matt to another lol.... I enjoyed reading your post, and have had similar amazing results from working on my chakras, meridians, and zang-fu organs as well :-). So much of the work to do is finding out what is really inside of us, and dealing with it. Glad to hear of your progress ;-).

Perhaps a good approach to this topic of desire would to look at it from the Buddhist perspective, as Buddhism speaks a lot about desire. As the Buddha said all suffering is the result of desire, and if you remove desire you remove suffering. I don't think there is anything moralistically wrong with desire in and of itself, but if one "desires" to break out of the endless cycle of reincarnation that keeps us in the desire realm, then one must eliminate desires. Naturally eliminating the desires that we naturally have is not an easy or a fast thing to do. First if you look at what desires are and what they are meant for, with in the desire realm (which is what we live in) desires are not only normal but vital. If we did not desire food we would starve, if we did not desire air we would suffocate, if we did not desire sex our species would not perpetuate. So with in the desire realm desire is a perfectly legitimate and necessary function. It is only when one wants to break out of the desire realm all together that desire becomes problematic. If the goal of breaking out of the desire realm by letting go of desire is so difficult, then why bother at all? Because if you look at life in the desire realm, while it does have its rewards, it also has its suffering as well. Look at any nature show and see the circle of life which mainly involves one animal hunting and eating another. Not so fun if your dinner, and also not so fun if your the hungry hunter. So while the desire realm has its pleasant aspects, it also has suffering. So one need not feel guilty about having desire for it is natural. On the other hand if one truly wants to break out of the desire realm, then one must choose a radically different path, in which they seek to reduce their desires. Its all a matter of one's goals.

I was at a metaphysical expo today, and told by a psychic that I have a curse on me in regards to money and relationships. There actually are two areas of my life that have been problematic for a long time. So what I am wondering is how to remove any such curses?

Yup she did offer to remove it for "only" $100.00 lol, and if I ordered in the next five minutes I would get a super potato peeler for free... jk. But yea when she said I can remove this for only $100, and after having just had a stint last winter selling... or trying to sell cars, that did raise a serious eye brow, I know a sales man when I see one. I know now it might sound ridiculous that I even was pondering what she said, but the only thing that caused me to think about it for a moment is that the issues she said were cursed have always seemed to have been a problem in my life (I've never had a good relationship, and never had much money). On the other hand I did think back to the past few years that I have been doing qigong, and all the bad energy I have detoxed from myself doing qigong, and how my life is now slowly beginning to change for the better finally. So if this "curse" she refers to is this energy, then apparently I have already found out how to remove it myself.

Thanks for the replies guys, you all helped me to confirm my misgivings about that situation. ;-)

In addition to Qigong which I do almost everyday I also do Brazilian Jiujitsu :-)

I have actually done the healing sound practice extensively for a few years now and love it! :-). As has already been mentioned here Chia did not invent the healing sounds, they have been around a long time. And yes they do remove excess heat from the organs very well as I can attest from a lot of personal experience. I've also noticed that if you do the movements that Chia prescribes that the effect is even enhanced more. I realize that there is controversy surrounding Chia, but I've found doing what he teaches to work quite well.

I have been pondering a shift of emphasis in my qigong routine. Now that I am in TCM school, and can go to the school clinic I have been told I am qi deficient. This really came as no surprise to me since I have felt pretty tired for a long time. What did come as somewhat of a surprise to me though was that I was told the qi deficiency was also responsible for some of my emotional issues. Since the main emotion I have been working on for a while now is loneliness, and I was not really able to isolate it to any one specific organ as I had with other issues in the past, it caused me to re-evaluate something. For the most part, the vast majority of my qigong forms have been balancing ones. The 8 brocades, inner smile, and healing sounds all are meant to balance qi in the organs, and thus the emotions. These forms do not really do much though to build qi. Coupling this with the fact that I was no able to pin down loneliness to any organs well, led me to consider that perhaps such "empty" feelings like loneliness are not as much an emotional imbalance as they are a lack. After all loneliness is a very "empty" feeling. This in turn led me to consider something else... I was considering that most people who are considered "high energy" people also tend to be very charismatic. Think of Hollywood stars and such. They generally tend to be very high energy, and also very popular. On the other hand I've personally noticed that when I am feeling low energy not only do I tend to feel lonely internally, but I also seem to repel people. On those rare occasions when I actually do feel energetic I notice that people seem to be drawn to me. This has caused me to consider if what we call popularity is actually people's reactions to our qi level? Would a deficient person tend to sort of be a energetic drain on people and as people subconsciously feel this they tend to avoid having their qi drained? On the other hand would the high energy charismatic people who tend to have people flock to them, do so because subconsciously people enjoy to bask in their energy? With this new theory in mind I am thinking of changing up my qigong routine from one of balancing to one of building. It would not make much sense for me to balance my qi if I do not have much qi to balance in the first place. I think I shall do an experiment and see if a qi building qigong routine would have an effect in this realm. I think rather than focusing on the 8 brocades, inner smile and healing sounds, I will try Yi Jin Jing and reverse lower dan tien breathing for a while and see what effect that has upon me, and upon how people relate to me as well.

Yea I agree with you, its just a matter of getting there. Once BIG realization I just came to was that I was that in all my healing sounds I had somehow totally skipped over the Triple Warmer / Pericardium healing sound. Today in the library of my TCM school I was reading that the Triple warmer and Pericardium are the most responsible for intimacy, and relationships of any meridians. I believe this might explain why when it came to this issue I was not having sucess in finding the meridian to deal with as I had in other cases. All this time I had been doing all this work and skipping this, and this I believe is whats causing me my grief.

Pretty much am doing all that stuff you listed

I see what your saying, but lets say that it was in your Tao or destiny that for X amount of time you were meant to be alone, and no matter what you did you could not trumph fate? Then do you think that doing that book or anything else would have any effect?