Maddie

Did you do as he suggests in the beginning of the book and have a well established MCO (microcosmic orbit) first, or did you just jump ahead to the retention practices? I'm guessing you did the second, which would explain the problems.

There are already so many threads about this topic, so I'm starting to feel like a parot talking about this, but I'll say it again just cause I sympathise with this issue. If the problem is simply pre-mature ejaculation this is considered a kidney yin deficiency in TCM. There are good herbs for this if your interested, or you can go to an acupuncturist and get them from them. Here is a site you can order these herbs from... http://www.agelessherbs.com/YinValleyFormula.html The homeopathic remedy Staphysagria is indicated from excessive masturbation and sexual thoughts. The sacral chakra is the chakra that has to do with sex, so focusing a lot on this point when doing the MCO helps as well.

I heard from a TCM doctor that if you clinch your teeth and stand on your toes when you pee it helps.

Alex your welcome. I actually just finished my 100 days of cold draw retention training and I have found the before/after results phenomenal, which inculde but are not limited too... 1. Far greater pleasure from much less stimulation. 2. Much greater ... "water pressure" 3. My emotional state is much improved compared as to when I began. This was actually the primary reason I started the 100 days of cold draw retention in the first place. Specifically my sacral and solar plexus chakras have seen a drastic amount of improvement, and thus I feel siginficantly better. Ironically a lot of what caused me to feel the need to retain was a guilt and shame complex related to sex. As these emotions are the primary issues of the sacaral and solar plexus chakras, using this excess jing to help balance those areas was very helpful. I now view sex as more of something to enjoy when its time as opposed to being bi-polar about it i.e. (either get totally obsessed about it to the exclusion of everything else, or avoid it as though it were evil) 4. My energy level while I can't say is as high as an Olympian athlete, is quite improved comapred to when I first began which as feeling fatigued almost constantly.

Yes, Testicle breathing converts sperm into jing, which are not the same thing. Sperm is made from jing, but is not jing. The goal of testicle breathing is to reconvert that sperm back into the jing from which is was formed. Then you do the cold draw which is to draw that jing into your MCO which then has the effect of converting this jing into chi. Generally in TCM nocturnal emission is considered a result of kidney yin deficincy. Now I can't see why doing testicle breathing before bed would cause that so what I think it may be is rather than a true kidney yin deficiency it could be a excess of yang thus producing a relative yin deficency. The reason I say this is because male sexual energy is yang, which causes me to suspect that you are not fully completing the converstion process into jing, and thus leaving an excess of male yang sexual energy in your system. If you enter a yang state while awake you can have more conscious control over dealing with it, but if you enter this state before bed then you obviously have less control over it, and the nature of male yang sexual energy is to expand outside the body. If this indeed be the situation I believe that you would benefit from prolonging the amount of time you do testicle breathing just a little to ensure you complete the converstion process completely, and then be sure to run that jing in your MCO which will help convert that jing to chi. Hope that helps, good luck.

Well basically doing testcle breathing/ cold draw sends chi down the the testicles which in turn converts your sperm into jing. My first thought was to say not to leave the chi there when you are finished, but you already said that you do not do this. When I practice the cold draw it makes everything down there shrivel up and get pretty small, and though I am not 100% sure, I do believe that this is the result of the jing conversion as jing is less dense than sexual fluid. As just an aside, yesterday I just finished 100 days of doing the testicle breathing/ cold draw. So as to not retain longer than is healthy I decided to relase what I had in there. Most unusual thing..... it was all prostate fluid, and no sperm at all!! I did not expect this, but then I was kind of like "oh well I guess the conversion process has been working effectively". So back to your concern, I do believe that what are you are doing is beneficial to your problem. Its always good to run your converted jing through your MCO once you finish, cause I notice that if I leave too much chi in the perinium / root chakra area where the prostate is that I tend to get aroused much easier (this could explain your increased occurance of nocturnal emission).

I generally don't really like to think about money and career stuff too much, but sometimes the situation becomes so problematic that I can't help but wonder how this topic ties into the bigger picture. I just totaled up my past earnings for the past 19 years and averaged it, and my average earnings of 19 years of adult life equals $8603. a year. I don't know why I do not seem to ever be able to get a good job, and make any money, but since this has gone on for so long it does make one wonder WHY? I am not an alcoholic or a drug user, I am pretty responsible and a hard worker, so what gives?! Is this karma? or what?

I have obviously been doing a lot of research on this topic the lately, and also a lot of introspection. The most pluasable thing I have come up with is that my Root chakra needs working on as it is the chakra that is all about survival issues i.e. money, job, career, rent, ect... and these are exactely the issues that are my problem now. A few months ago I had similar problems with sexual issues and did a lot of work on my sacral chakra and that did wonders. Nashenas the method I use to work on my chakras is mainly the MCO. I either power it with chi from my dan tien, or what I have been doing a lot lately is powering it with jing using the cold draw. Another method I use for working on a chakra is to simply breath into it until I feel more chi in it than before. As far as working on my Root chakra I have shifted back to placing an emphasis on doing standing meditation again as I feel that this is a very root chakra activity.

Yes zhan zhuang = standing meditation, and yes there are many different forms, but that book that Scotty recommened "The way of energy" is an excellent one. As far as a good source for the 8 brochades here is a link http://ymaa.com/publishing/dvd/qigong_DVD/8_simple_qigong_DVD, good luck

The side effects can be numerous and varied, and as to how you can eliminate that feeling, refer to what I said in my previous post.

My intuition tells me two things about what you said. The first is that this is pretty good and deep stuff that I need. Though I don't really understand it. The second thing my intuition tells me is that I think the fact that I do not really understand what you have said (though I believe it is good) is a large part of the problem. I think the same thing that does not allow me to understand what you said, is also the same thing that is causing my problems in the first place.

From a TCM point of view there are specific guidlines as to how often a man can safely ejaculate, and it varies by age and health. The jist of it goes that a teenager can pretty much safely do it daily, a man in his twenties ever other or every few days, thirties a couple timea a week, fourties every once a week if not less, fifties once every couple weeks, sixties once a month, and older than that should not at all. Traditional Chinese Medicine is a very old science (much older than western medicine) and has had thousands of years to be tested and validated. The thing is that yes semen does regenerate, but one must ask where does it come from? Since sperm has the power to make life, and a life with a soul is a very powerful thing, then it stands to reason that sperm carry a very powerful energy. This life giving energy is called Jing. We have two sources of jing, one is pre-natal and this is what we recieve from our parents, and it can not be added to. The second source of jing is post-natal and this is what we make from the food we eat and the air we breath. Ideally we try to draw upon our post natal jing and not use up our pre-natal jing. Doing Qigong is one excellent way of building up our post-natal jing. Our body uses our jing to make sperm (or ova for women). If we don't over do it then our body can mostly use post-natal jing to make sperm. But if we ejaculate past our capasity to replenish our post-natal jing, then our body has to dip into our pre-natal jing and this is where get get into trouble, because once we burn up too much pre-natal jing we age and have health issues, and once it is all gone we die. As to its morality, I think that is a very subjective debate, for each one of us has unique moral standards. If for one of us masturbation does not violate our personal convictions then for us it is not immoral. Yet for those of us who feel that somehow masturbation is wrong (regardless of the resons) then we are violating our own morality and now feel guilty and shameful, and thus it is better for those of us who feel that it is bad to not do it. Though I will say that if one tends to feel guilt and shame very easily then perhaps they might want to determine why it is that they feel this way. Inappropriate guilt and shame are very often sacral and solar plexus chakra issues. I have found that running my MCO through these areas has done wonders for me in helping with this area of my life, as well as Bach flower remedies.

As one who has recently been batteling fatigue and diligently trying to come up with solutions to this leme tell ya what I've found to help. A good general form of Taoist exercise is the 8 brocades which I try to do daily. Its good for moving the joints, streching the mucles and tendons, streching the meridians and clearing them out, ect.. As far as building the energy level standing meditation is a very good practice for this. The 8 brocades and standing meditation together are a really good combo, as standing meditation builds a lot of chi, and the brocades help circulate it. Aside from the practices I have found Siberian Ginseng (Eleuthero) to be highly effective at increasing my vitality. The homeopathic remedy "phosphoricum acidum" has also been very helpful. In the past I have used the Bach flower remedies of Olive and Hornbeam as well. I hope that givnig you a lot of options will help you to find one or a few that will be usefull to you.

Well basically when ever you loose Jing you lessen your vitality

I guess I've been somewhat supprised at a lot of the resonces here so far. It seems that a lot of people who practice cultivation and have no trouble believing that energy is behind our health and spiritual development, can not seem to wrap their minds around the notion that our energy also affects our "outer life" as well, including our econimic situation. The reason I say this, is because when I was trying other methods for my inner life nothing really seemed to do the trick until I began to work on my inner energy. If this has been the case, then why would it not stand to reason that the vibrations we send out into the universe do not affect out outter life as well. Why do the rules stop just because its money, or something else that is not in our paradim of understanding. From what I have read of the Root chakra and its blockages, it would seem that my problem is very much related to a blockage there. Since the same principles have held up with other things I have wanted to change about myself, why would this be any different? Why do we not want to take a peek behind the curtain when it comes to money?

Yea exactely, the people who most don't like the changes in me are my family members who have known me the longest. I guess they are used to how I am "supposed" to act, and now that I am not "playing my role" it seems to disturb them.

I do several practices, 8 brocades, MCO/cold draw, inner smile/healing sounds, ect... I guess in my case what I noticed is that where as I used to want to be around people as a distraction from my own emotional issues, now that such issues are improving and I feel a lot more stable emotionally I no longer have the reasons to seek out company that I used to. I guess I've become more content with myself and since a lot of other people have issues that they do not deal with or even acknowlege they are not so pleseant to be around.

Again I don't think that energy and psychology are really two separate things, just different perspectives of looking at the same thing, or different manifestations of the same thing. Energy affects psychology and vice versa. The way we think affects our energy, and the state of our energy affects our thinking.

If that works let me know lol ... seriously. IMO if you don't feel ok with masturbating then don't, perhaps that is what your body is telling you, as everyone's individual needs are different. One thing that I just recently came to realize is that as I was adding my cold draw jing to my sacral charka and the blockages there were opening up, I realized how large a part guilt and shame about seuxal issues had been playing in my life and I didn't even realize it. Guilt is considered to be a sacral chakra issue and so I guess it should have come as no supprise that as I worked on that chakra that I became aware of how this issue had been effecting me. Anyways I'd say if you don't feel ok with masturbating then don't, there is nothing that says you have to do it lol. Rather use the cold draw which does not use self stimulation.

As with all the other issues I have dealt with while on TTB I have been doing a fair amount of research into this issue, and so far the most likely explination I have come up with for these money issues I have is that its a Root chakra issue, as the root chakra has to do with issues concerning physical survivial (money and rent). Since I have begun to do the cold draw I have sort of been in a hurry to resolve sexual issues and sort of wisked all that jing past my root chakra point straight to my sacral chakra area. On that note I suppose that the thing to do is to focus now on my root chakra and see what results I get from that. The fact that I have gotten very good results from focusing on my sacral chakra encourages me to try this with my root chakra now.

Fire Dragon First thing that immediately came to mind when you said that when you practice retention you get more/strange dreams is that, the Jing you are saving is rising to your upper dan tien and clearing out blockages there. Specifically the Jade Pillow which is at the back of your head where the spine enters the skull, for this is the back door of the upper dan tien, and the point on your MCO responsible for dreams and abstraction. Another thing I have also noticed about the big draw vs cold draw is the same observation as you made. When I as doing the big draw I seemed to attract girls like honey does bees. Now that I do the cold draw I feel like I have turned into the invisible man lol. So the outward effect that it has is very stark, yet so is the inward effect too. When I was doing the big draw I was in a perpetual state of horniness, and now that I do the cold draw I am almost never horny. So I guess when I decide to end my celebate phase of my life I know which practice to switch to lol . As far as the debate about weather celibacy is with or with out masturbation, again I don't think it has to be either or. For now that I am doing the cold draw there is no masturbation at all, as I don't have the desire to do so, and also it is not part of the cold draw practice. Of course when one does the big draw masturbation is pretty much required to stir up the jing. In both cases there is celibacy (assuming one does the big draw solo) because there is no contact with a woman, its just the two practices of celibacy have different goals and different methods.

I think that just like we has humans have more than one dimension so does sexuality. I think that it has a physical side (obviously) emotional, spiritual, ect... To say its either/or is missing the point. I do believe that there is a very strong physical aspect to sex as any dr. will tell you in regards to the hormones n such. I don't believe that the only indication of physical withdraw is death, but there can be other sypmtoms of withdraw. I believe I have/had been experiencing these symptoms over the past few months as I stopped "cold turkey" and began to experience extreme fatigue to a degree I have rarely encountered. The next thing I experienced after I did not have the contiunal distraction of lust to numb me I then began to realize how much of sexuality was also emotional. Keep in mind that at this point the physcial drive was no longer much of a factor, yet this seemed to make the emotional aspect all the more LOUD. So I have experienced lately both aspects of this multifaceted subject.

I guess a drawback would be that the longer I practice the less and less I feel that I have in common with most people.