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Hi All I'll do my best to explain what brought me here. I began having energetic experiences about 3 years ago through the practice of the Wim Hof Method. His method (for those who don't know) combines breath work with progressive cold exposure. During this practice I would experience sensations best described as "magnetic" in my hands, belly and head during the breath holds. I also began to experience light behind my forehead when I had my eyes closed. I continued this practice for a while but at a certain point I felt that it was a little too frenetic and jarring to my system. I kind of modified the breath practices by slowing down the breathing and limited the cold exposure. A year later I went on a 5 day silent meditation retreat in the Insight tradition. My experience on this retreat was profound and afterwards I began to take meditation very seriously. After about 4 or 5 months of diligent practice I began to have extremely intense bouts of crying and emotional release. These experiences were often accompanied by an intense magnetic sensation in my chest. I had a history of trauma and had battled depression for most of my life... steady meditation practice was essentially releasing the valve on my emotional pressure cooker. I was very overwhelmed by these experiences, but I eventually found a buddhist teacher and a therapist that practiced western psychology within a buddhist framework who I am still working with. These experiences really threw a huge curveball into my life, and the last couple of years have been full of really intense transition and emotional release. As I began to gain some confidence with all the energetic experiences I had been having, I wanted to learn a way to work with them, so I started learning to practice Donna Eden's Energy Medicine, and eventually I enrolled at an Eastern Medicine school to learn Massage Therapy. My most recent experience with the subtle energy happened a few months ago during a moment of intimacy with my partner. My body began convulsing, I started sobbing and I was thrown into intense flashbacks from childhood as well as "memories" that I could not recall from this lifetime. This went on for about 4 hours and was accompanied by many intense visual experiences. Since this has happened, my body has continued tremoring and I've felt a build up of energy in my pelvic floor that is sometimes incredibly difficult to manage - either causing a "hemorrhoid" feeling or intense and difficult to manage sexual energy. A few times, I've been able to draw the energy up to my crown and back down through breathing, resulting in some pretty blissful experiences, but I haven't been able to do it consistently and for the most part this energy has been very difficult to manage. So I'm here looking for some recommendations for practice - While I do have a background in the Martial Arts (Kenpo) I don't have a ton of experience with Qi Gong... I've taken a few classes and read some Mantak Chia but I've never dove into the practice, I find it difficult to learn these things through books. I live in the NY area and am definitely interested in meeting teachers or other practitioners who my experiences resonate with. I'm also happy to have a place to share these experiences where people will have more understanding and experience with what I'm going through.

I dabble in programming and game design as a hobby. So now I'm making a game that uses explicit sex (not sugar coating it) as a way to convey a certain idea. From my point of view, I feel like we live our daily lives separated. In simple terms, there is the observer and what is observed. In this elemental duality of the world that we perceive we try to more than understand what we see, to be that what we perceive, this being the ultimate form of understanding of reality. And for that to occur one has to somehow merge with reality (whatever that really means). To merge with everything, like in an orgy. Hence sexuality.And why coming up with sex in this context? And not say tao, nirvana, ego death, samadhi or simply love? Because by saying everything is love, is to most probably fail the intended message. People relate to love as only a positive thing. Therefore a way to bias the message, missing the duality altogether. On the other hand, sex comes from our most primitive form, hardwired biology we should not ignore, coming from the very fountain of the infinitesimal. Because saying "I f*ck you", has at the same time a derogatory meaning as well as a nice meaning. Hence the unifying of the perceived duality.By making a game where I present characters that are the forces of Nature anthropomorphized, I try to show this concept. Battling but making love, make love but battle. And from that struggle, the world we perceive comes to be.

I've done some research but I've started to understand how this energy works. It has came to me mostly thru qigong, sexual kung fu and sexual yoga practices, the latter of which I've done with my current partner. I also should mention that I practice retention and cultivation and I have my own observations thru this, namely, when you don't emit semen often all of the energies seem reflected back into your body and everything gets more intense. I ejaculate once in awhile, i'm still young and my partner sometimes enjoys it, but when I'm older I plan to limit it even more; I've discussed this with her and she understands how we will ultimately move toward Karezza. Basically i believe that puberty / time naturally make a male more Yang and a woman more Yin, but because balance is quintessential in all things it's important to keep in touch with the other side. For some reason when I think of yang I think "upper" and yin I think "lower." Losing jing often seems to make the body more yang, and vice versa seems to help balance and dissipate. That's another thing, yin seems to disperse and yang to gather. Yin would be going for a walk or run, yang would be lifting weights. My experience has also been that one extreme causes a tendency toward the other in myself, I seem to have an internal sense when I am out of balance for my own health which is really what this is all about. Shooting in the dark a bit here, but any thoughts? Thanks

So I found a good read when I was younger, maybe 10 years ago or so, a book by Mary Summerrain called The Phoenix Rising. Another book she wrote, Dreamwalker, spoke of a concept that has been on my mind for a while and I figured it's time to just hash it out and put it into words. Maybe get some answers just doing so, but it's here as well, for discussion. (note, for some reason I cannot use the enter key to add vertical spaces between paragraphs, this wont be easy to read.) So! SummerRain makes note of something genuine: That a holy person, sage, monk, or other spiritually aware and/or advanced person's lifestyle is irrelevant. You can be a dreamwalker, as noted in this book, even though you drink sodas, smoke cigarettes, and eat red meat. MAYBE spiritual titles are irrelevant, that this applies across the board, or perhaps it's only relevant to dreamwalkers? It rings true, in my ears, that a physical lifestyle influences only the physical life-world, and is irrelevant regarding spiritual and/or psychic experiences and ability. So I am wondering to myself if it matters a person's sexuality, gender, diet, habits, addictions, or lifestyles have any genuine meaning in regards to practicing anything of the spiritual/energic sort? I personally do not believe smoking dope and promiscuity are going to directly inhibit immortality, but as with all things, everything in moderation...