Maddie

I guess I should have specified a little more. On average I retain for about 1-2 weeks at a time. So when I feel that it is time to release I definatley am not over doing it lol. Chinese medicine allows even suggests that men relase every so often according to their age and health.

Ok previously I had started this thread about the lower dan tien in regards to energy level / fatigue issues. Now I am still pondering the LDT but in a new way. I am very curious to know about what effects it has on our mental / emotional / and sexual health? Reason I ask is because I've been working on/with it more lately for some specific reasons, and have been feeling "different" ....

Hmmm the whole toxicity issue is interesting, because as one who practices retention it seems that there are times that my body is screaming at me that now its to to NOT retain. It seems that at these times that if I listen to my body, then I feel much better, but if I don't and am stubborn, then it almost starts to make me crazy, ... really.

Yea they sort of do.

speaking of the lower dan tien, I have been doing something new today, and I was afraid this was going to happen, but I'll state my reasons in a sec. Today I decided to put a lot of focus on my lower dan tien, not only in seated meditative breathing, but also in the hold the ball position of ZZ. The reason I've decided to do this is because I've noticed that as I've begun talking to various girls the same pattern comes up again and again. I have no problem approaching them, starting a conversation, getting a first date ect.. blah blah blah, BUT I seem to have a hard time getting a second date, or a call back or what not. I realized that during our conversation on meeting that I was not feeling attraction, and I felt that she was not feeling it either. I suppose this has to do with my trying so hard to close down my sex chakra when I was still living the married life and now I think I am feeling the effectiveness of my past efforts now. So what has happened today is that since the sex chakra and the dan tien are pretty much in the same area I have been very aggressively horny today, but I figured it was something I'd have to go through if I decided to do this. Does anyone else have similar experience with such things? I hope I can get through this phase fast cause I really do want women to feel attraction for me, and I know for this to happen my sex chakra has to be doing its thing, but I'll be happy when feeling like a dog in heat is over. :-)

I wouldn't call me lucky lol.

1974 I'm a Tiger lol

One thing I like about qigong is that for example in Christianity I feel that some of the teachings are pretty good, yet they tell you what would be a good thing to do, but don't really tell you how to do it. I've found that qigong helps you to apply good principles to your life.

This feeling your dan tien even when your not meditating you speak of.... I've noticed that when this happens to me, that girls get way more flirty ;-)

Yup I love this forum too. As others have stated there are not a lot of people and places to discuss such topics, so this forum is wonderful. I just wish Drew Hemphel would return here, that zany guys rants helped me tremendously. Maybe we can get a petition going to get him back haha.

Yea no kidding, it took me a while to get my current routine that I have now, but "shop" around with various forms, and see how they resonate with you. Its a good way to decide what you want to make part of your practice.

Too bad a lot of the great things Jesus taught are just head knowledge in mainstream christianity :-/

I actually have the 5 Animal Sports DVD from YMAA. While the movements are quite external, it definately has internal effects. I actually began to wonder as I was doing these movements how they could have an internal effect. What I realized was that they have an internal effect on the energy much in the same way that acupuncture/pressure uses phyical manipulation on the exerior of the body, to manipulate the internal energy. How does acpuncture work? I really don't know, but it does. How do these movements have a balancing effect on our internal energy/organs? I don't know either, but it does. The 5 Animal sports have been around in China for a very long time and have been proven again and again. I heard a story about a lady in Bejing who got cancer. She refused chemo and the more standard treatments, and ONLY did the 5 Animal Sports like 3 times a day for a few months. The next time she went to the Dr. no more cancer.

I don't think Qigong practice conflicts with any belief system or the lack there of. In fact one of the things that drew me to Qigong was because it was NOT a religion. I had recently gotten out of extreme fundamentalist Christianity and was rather turned off to religion of any form what so ever. I saw that Qigong was a practice, not a faith which actually drew me to it. There is nothing about Qigong which would be incompatible with Christianity. There is no praying involved, no worship, no belief systems that contradict Christian doctrine, so its fine in that realm. On the other hand it is good for your health and that is a pro-Chrisitan aspect as Christianity considers the body the temple of the Holy Ghost. Balancing your chi helps one to live more virtuously which is a plus in just about any religion ;-).

Well cool cause you pretty much outlined my practice just now lol.

Hmmmm yea I'd like to know more about this...

Yea I know, this was for my own reference as I am curious about the various sublimation techniques and their effectiveness in relation to eachother. So far the various techniques I've heard of are ... 1. Sitting in full lotus (if you can) from Drew Hemphil. 2. Mantak Chia's methods including testicle breathing, and big draw. 3. Lower dan tien meditation/breathing. If anyone else knows of other methods for accomplishing this I'd be interested to hear. I'd also be curious to hear of the effetivness of the various methods in comparison to eachother? and personal experiences.

YMAA probably is where I learned about half of my practice. I do the 8 brocades daily, as well as MCO and dan tien abdominal breathing, all of which I learned from Dr. Yang's material. Its been very beneficial to me. :-)

Hey Joe Doesn't Dr. Yang teach that dan tien breathing converts your essence into chi automatically?

Hey Non I think I can relate to your frustration. I was told once before that for emotional balance to just meditate on your lower dan tien also. But since I was feeling very bad emotionally, this was definately not fast enough for me. I get much more direct and fast results in the emotional arena from using the inner smile and healing sounds. You can target each organ, and/or specifically focus on a specific issues that happens to be bothering you. The effect is much more direct, and the results of much faster. ;-)

He didn't really say why other than it was a genetic pre-disposition. I was having empty heat signs, insomnia, aggitation, ect.. A good source for learning the healing sounds and inner smile is Mantak Chia's method which is why I have used with great results. The kidney's healing sound ala Chia is "chooooo".

I went to my acupuncturist a couple years ago, and he told me that my kidney yin was low. He used acupuncture and herbs to get me started. After that doing a regular qigong routine has helped a lot too. The 8 brocades that I do have several movements that strengthen the kidneys. I also do the inner smile and healing sounds which include the kidneys and that has done quite a bit to help as well. I also noticed that doing retention/sublimation with practices like the cool draw helped them too.

Probably anyone who has followed my posts with even a half awareness for sometime would be able to realize that my marriage has been problematic, and that I have been uncomfortable with sexuality. I have recently come to a deeper personal realization that I guess seems pretty obvoius looking back. I have spent a great deal of effort in the past couple years in my Qigong practices in trying to reduce or eliminate my sex drive (as unusual as this might seem to many). It seemed as long as I spent a lot of effort in trying to reduce it, not only was my sucess in doing so only limited at best, I was not able to progress beyond it. At the same time I had for a very long time been having serious relationship problems with my wife, yet because I did not want to be a cheater even if we were having problems I felt very uncomfortable with having a libido because its tendancy was to tempt me to do things that would have violated my conscience. So for a long while I thought the answer was to reduce my libdo. What I have recently come to realize is that my approach to things was quite unnatural. Though it may seem obvious to others, the fact that a healthy libido is a normal, even healthy thing has been a recent re-discovery to me. I say re-discovery because before the years of relationship difficulties I did realize this, but as my relationship deteriorated this became lost to me. Not only was I trying to force myself to not have a sex drive which in reality is normal, I was forcing myself to love someone that I did not love which is also not natural or healthy. When we first got married I loved my wife more than anyone can imagine, but after that, after years of her breaking my heart with constant hurting words, and cruel behavior it seems that my heart was irrepriably broken towards her. Yet just because I had a broken heart towards her did not mean that the normal functions of my heart and libido ceased to function. It was after that she broke my heart that I found it increasingly difficult to want to remain faithful to her, and I also found myself having to "fight off" more and more feelings of attraction to others. Yet because we were still in a marriage, at least the in the technical sense of the word, I felt exceedingly guilty for such desires, though now I realize that such desires were actually the natural and healthy reaction of my body, and trying to force something against nature was the unhealthy thing to do. I am now at a point where now that I am being more honest with myself I wonder if there is anyway to work things out in a way that would be a true solution with her, or if doing so would still be trying to force things against nature? I have seen several other posts by people on this forum (mainly guys) who for various reasons also seem to feel uncomfortable with having a libido. But after now having become more honest with myself I wonder if for the other guys who feel uncomfortable with having a sex drive that the problem may very well not be the sex drive at all, but rather have a more emotion based explination. For someone in my situation the issue was not really sex drive, but a moral dilema of trying to force myself to be in a love-less relationship. I've seen other guys who seem frustrated in their abilities to find a mate. Again in this situation I do not feel that the solution is eliminating the sex drive, but discovering what it is within that produces such a difficulty. If it is a self-esteem issue then work on your self esteem, don't try to suppress what is a natural expression of your body. If you somehow feel that sex is dirty or bad, then find out why you feel that way and remove that blockage from your life, deal with your guilt and shame issues. I realize that Buddhist monks live celibate lives, but for one most people are not monks, and two I'm not exactely sure why they do that, and further more am not sure if that is the best way to do it, or even necessary at all (maybe it is, but I don't get it). I guess the key issue out of all of this is if you feel a way that does not seem to be in alignment with nature, then don't create more blockages in your life by going against nature; rather find out what it is that is keeping you from following the path of nature and correct it.

Since one of the main reasons for me posting on this thread is to make a personal log of my practice I don't mind being the main poster haha. Anyways as I stated yesterday I had been working on my liver in regards to the whole relationship aspect. What I found in there was a lot of the ego stuff that can make relationships problematic. Since the primary emotion of the liver is anger, all sorts of stuff in that realm were found such as frustration, jealousy, controlling attitudes, possesiveness, the need for validity, the tendency to be obsessive about finding a relationship, selfishness, ect... In addition to using the liver healing sound to eliminate those unwanted emotions I also used the liver inner smile to increase the liver's virtues such as kindness, generosity, ect.. It would seem that I found a lot of things in there that tend to be issues that sabotage a lot of relationships (stuff I didn't even realize was in there, but that tends to happen when one does qigong lol). If the liver houses kindness, the emotions of frustration when a relationship does not go how you think it should can poision things. If the liver generates generosity, envy, jealosy, and possesiveness will definately not be condusive to a good relationship as well. If the liver houses assertivness, things like agression, being controlling, and/or on the other extreme being timid or indecisive will not be good for a relationship either. One thing that did come up though after this is something I'm a bit confused by. I realized from doing this that happiness, and love and contentment do not come from another person (which is why a lot of people seek a relationship and turn out being dissapointed) they come from with in. So that raised the question for me, if we do not get into a relationship to become happy, or loved, why is it that we get into one then? Only thing I could come up with was back to the liver attribues of kindness and generosity, which don't seek to take to be happy, but rather to give.

Yea it makes a lot of sense to me. I also did my time in the fundamentalist Xtian thing also and that was all about being "fenced in". But yea Taoism is pretty much one of the philosophies with the least amounts of do's and don'ts, and yes it is about about finding your Tao, or your way. I also read that book by master Anatole and found it very interesting, and yes I had to read it several times and still feel like that I would benefit reading it more, its rather deep, unfortunately I lost my copy of it. In regards to that feeling of missing something spiriutally I believe its yourself telling yourself that you need to find your tao ;-)