How do I retain my seed/energy?

[Lomistick]

To whom it may concern,

 

I have read countless forums, websites, and books on this issue without reaching a complete level of understanding or knowledge on it.

I discovered the power of the retention of one's seed when I was 23 years old.
It has been a life long dream to figure out how to harness that power for my
health, spiritual growth, and longevity in life.

I have been trying to solve this "problem" and "unlock the riddle" so to speak
off and on for 9 years now, without reaching a level that I would deem "successful".
I would like to ask for any help that I can.

I have done 1 year of tai chi quan (15 hours a week). I've done tons of chi gong,
meditation, and practices all geared towards this sort of practice.

Recently (last month) I hit a huge milestone and broke my previous record of 40 days
of retention. I abstained from all sexual activity for 43 days and established to
myself that I could hold out indefinitely.

If anyone is thinking about posting "You're learning this for the wrong reasons"
or any silly stuff like that, or "You need to study 2 years of basic healing sounds,
inner smile, and stuff like that before trying this", please just don't bother posting.
I need real help and guidance.

I've taken 6 months of courses from one of Michael Winn's teachers on top of my tai chi
training and while it was lovely none of it helped a great deal for this particular problem.
The teacher promised to teach me the microcosmic orbit and said it would be exactly what
I needed, but I was greatly disappointed with the end result of that.


Here are my issues:

While I have great willpower and can abstain from sex indefinitely, the "energy" leaks
out in my sleep. The moment I go to sleep, despite having no dreams of sex or any
sexual thoughts, I maintain an erection all night and the energy slowly drains out.
In other words, strict and permanent celibacy does not work for harnessing this energy.
Over time my "cup" "fills up" so to speak, and begins spilling over.

The energy needs to be moved, transmuted, or relieved, but I do not know any techniques
that work for this.

I have tried meditation, the microcosmic orbit, the "million dollar spot", controlling
my PC muscles, breathing techniques, using my mind to "guide" the energy, and a long
list of other techniques that others have suggested including "sat nam" and yogic types
of exercises.

I have read Mantak Chia's book and tried just about all of his techniques. I've practiced
them for countless hours.

When I do the microcosmic orbit, or the "big draw", or any of those practices, I feel a
"cold energy" rising at the base of my spine. I've managed to get it to move part of the way
up my back. I can feel a sort of energy moving.

I also get "vibratory sensations" or "pumping sensations" in my spine when I have a lot
of energy that has built up. Still, I am not able to conserve this energy, prevent it from

flowing outward, and keeping it all for myself.

What I need:

I need a way to reduce, lessen, or move all of the "energy" that is constantly building up
in my genitals. It just keeps building and building every day, and I don't know what to
do with it. None of the techniques I have tried seem to work.

The best thing I can do is use my PC muscles to clench and squeeze during sexual activity
to minimize the amount of fluid I lose, but I end up urinating sexual fluid out through my
bladder and in the end I lose energy. The whole time I'm doing this, I'm trying to use
my breath, mind, microcosmic orbit, and other things to "guide" the energy "UP" instead
of "down and out," and I have succeeded to some small degree, but nowhere near the level
that I would like to reach. The energy always leaks out.

The reason I'm posting this now is because I always thought that if I had enough willpower
to maintain strict celibacy, that I would be able to retain my energy completely, and that I'd be able to build my energy levels, but as it turns out, celibacy doesn't cut it. You need some sort of practice or your cup just begins spilling over.

I'm not horribly optimistic that anyone here can help me, but I thought I would try.

I've been at this for 9 years now, and I would like to learn how to retain my seed before
I start getting older. It would be depressing for me to live this life without ever having
accomplished this or figured it out, especially after learning about it 9 years ago.

Another question I have, is this practice REALLY this hard? I mean, I've been trying to learn it for 9 years with marginal success.

It's difficult for me that the understand that the human body seems to be built to harness
this sort of energy, and yet the method at which to do so seems to elude most the entire
human population. It seems incredibly difficult. Am I overthinking this?

 

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

[nickyro]

Hello, what you are trying to do (ascendance of physical energy into refined energy) is a Tantric path (and taoist...).

The most important thing to maintain a bramacharya and allow your energy to progressively ascend is your diet. There is NO WAY you can begin a healthy retention practice with a normal diet, you will just produce semen and sexual energy endlessly, you are clearly not "Sattvic" enough.

 

Some foods (meat, eggs) contains an etheric energy (the closest to physical, not contained by vegetal food) which is processed by the body to physiologically transmute into sexual semen by a downward flow of energy.

Sattvic = promotes ascendance of energy physically (up the body) AND its vibration.

Tamasic = promotes a downward flow AND lowers its vibration

 

You need to start with a "sattvic diet" to allow the ascendance of energy (and other "sattvic" practices qi gong or yoga practices...). When you are very sattvic your body will now have a different functioning, your GI tract will try to refine and ascend energy instead of processing it into sexual energy.

At this point you can practice bramacharya fovever, you can even have sex you don't need blockage techniques or anything since the downward flow is reduced to the minimum...

 

BUT sattvic food is a very bad fuel for the body (the physical body and the first three chakras) you would just end up depleted without any physical strength nor ecstatic or sexual energy and you would not be able to produce enough energy to have a powerful spiritual practice (the one you are practicing, your bottom to top approach)

SO you need to reintroduce those foods which contain etheric matter in a very small amount (poultry for instance but your overall diet should remain sattvic) 1-2 times per week because you can't process too much yet, this food will now produce a huge amount of energy.

Once you have this huge primitive energy in the lower centers they may awaken... And you know what happen next.

Tantra or taoism is a bottom to top approach, and if you use a bastard/mixed practice using an all vegan diet trying to awaken a lower centers emanation (kundalini) it doesn't make any sense from the beginning.

 

Progressively your GI tract/cauldron will "purify" and be able to process much more and this energy will radiate into your body.

Edited March 23, 2014 by nickyro

[soaring crane]

here's a thread with a lot of good information for you:

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/22912-semen-retention-100-days-and-my-experiences/

[madMUHHH]

Hi there,

first of all, please do take everything I write with a grain of salt. I am no master or expert of anything and all I can offer you is my personal experience/opinion. But either way, you can still consider it. It might be of value, or it might not, I dunno.

 

It's difficult for me that the understand that the human body seems to be built to harness

this sort of energy, and yet the method at which to do so seems to elude most the entire
human population. It seems incredibly difficult. Am I overthinking this?

 

The way it appears to me, yes, you are definitely overthinking this. Because, you know, the thing is, your body is incredibly smart. You can't try to force it to do what you want. It just doesn't work. And actually, you don't want to force your body anyways, because it knows much better what it needs than your mind does. So, I really don't think what you need is another technique or exercise or trick or anything to retain your semen. You seem to have tried a lot of those already anyways, and it didn't really seem to do what you want. And I think this should tell you something.

Because you know, semen retention is all well and great and fine and I am not denying that it has a lot of tremendous benefits. But in my personal opinion, if you have to force your body to retain semen, if you have to even try to do that, in other words, if it doesn't come naturally to you, you are doing something wrong. And I think that can do a lot of damage actually. That's at least my very own, personal experience. So just seeing the health benefits of semen retention without realizing that it might actually be hurting you or at the very least not serving you, is a bit one-sided in my opinion. And that's basically the reason why I wanted to join in here. To offer a different position. Make of that what you want.

Edited March 24, 2014 by madMUHHH

[Aeran]

Your approach sounds incredibly unhealthy. I'd recommend finding a teacher who can do whatever it is you're trying to do, and train under them.

 

edit: meant to say únhealthy''

Edited March 24, 2014 by Aeran

[Andrei]

Kidney Yin Deficiency

 

Signs:

 

Deficiency Yin causing empty heat

 

Hot palms and/or soles, malar flush, red cheek bones, night sweats, afternoon fever

Constipation, dark urine, thirst

Kidney Areas

 

Soreness of knees and lumbar region

Kidney and Brain (Kidney Yin fails to cool Kidney Yang)

 

Tinnitus, poor memory, dizziness

Sexual dysfunction such as premature ejaculation and nocturnal emission (especially with dreams)

 

PE and nocturnal emission are related since they have same underlying cause, in Ayurveda is considered a Vata imbalance due to Ojas depletion (in chinese medicine is defined as above Yin deficiency). The vata imbalance is treated with pitta and kapha, depending on your particular energy.

 

Here are some remedies:

 

Another remedy is a general Ayurvedic recipe for restoring the ojas, it is the yogis traditional food, the same food Gautama Budha was given by the young lady on the river bank episode:

Milk, ghee, spices (ginger-warming, cardamon-cooling, cinnamon-warming, turmeric-warming, fennel-cooling, etc. ) heated and honey. Just make sure you don't heat the honey cause it becomes poisonous. The rule is if you want this potion to be more pitta (yang) add honey to ghee ratio 2:1 and use warming spices.

A more kapha energy (yin) potion the honey to ghee ratio is reversed 1:2 and use cooling spices. Should avoid use 1:1 ratio.

 

 

 

[ChiDragon]

Nature gave us the energy to spare. When it is too full, get them released once awhile, like rest of the males but not too often. Celibacy Retention is a canon for the Buddhist monks.

Edited March 23, 2014 by ChiDragon

[dogson]

Hey Lomi, I just want to weigh on this too, as it's also an important aspect of my practice.

For me personally, I was born with a huge amount of "yin" energy, I'm straight but growing up all the jock kids called me gay, etc. I've just always had more feminine energy, and it's made it really difficult to accomplish things in this society.

 

Eventually I made it an all-out quest to balance this stuff, through herbs like ho shu wu, maca, ant extract (tons of zinc), pumpkin seeds, HARD workouts, retaining my jing, getting sunlight, especially on the genitals, eating oysters (tons of zinc) - ANYTHING that would increase my male energy.

 

It worked, almost too well, I became really aggressive and pushy, felt angry a great deal of the time, and eventually had to scale it back, but it's so helpful to know it works.

 

Now personally, I know I fall on the far end of the scale, in the sense that if I ejaculate, I'm worthless for days. Hitting the gym feels like it's physically damaging me, I feel more anxious and generally not grounded at all, I sleep 10 hours and still wake up exhausted... whereas if I retain for a week or two, I'm invincible. So it's very devastating to me when I ejaculate, and it feels unfair in a sense, but that's just how I'm wired. And I'm in this thing to get fa jin, and to really experience the full energetic potential of a human, so I'll never give up.

 

Having said that - I've never had wet dreams. I think I just don't produce sperm very quickly. My longest streak was 65 days, and still nothing. I'm only 30, so this leads me to believe (especially with all those herbs) that I just don't produce very quickly. Or it's getting re-directed immediately, or something.

 

My longwinded point is that, if you're leaking jing, that's your body saying you're beyond max and you're just rebalancing. If you're 23 I wouldn't sweat it.

 

I think it's really important to understand that men might have impossible standards they're reaching for, just like women who look at pictures of women with fake breasts and photoshopped ribcages. I know that I can be like Musashi, or Morehei Ueshiba someday, but probably not like Goku from Dragonball Z. I probably won't be able to create an energy ball so big it could blow up the planet, but if I can have enough jing to work for 13 hours straight on my music, or a novel, and still feel strong enough to practice my forms, sleep 5 or 6 hours and get up and do it again, that's enough for me.

 

It's really important to know what you want the energy for and always be pushing the envelope in a useful way. If it's not measurable, it's easy to fall into a black hole of impossible expectations. I just try to feel good all day, and to have fun with what I'm doing. I still get pissed at myself if I lose my jing, but I don't let it destroy my mindset for long, because I know the whole point is to enjoy life as much as possible.

 

Hope this is helpful <3

[Aetherous]

You could just practice Kunlun...that does it.

[Iskote]

Lomistick, yes, there is a simple way to achieve this, with a caveat. If you are practicing sex that involves semen retention techniques such as Mantak Chia and others 'teach', then I don't know if this method will help. However, for a person who is interested in at least fairly serious qigong/neigong cultivation, and who will be entirely celibate or who will only have sex infrequently, then this method should help to completely prevent any nocturnal emissions. There are certain internal cultivation practices that require complete celibacy for an extended period of time, at least in the foundational stages, and in such cases for example you need to completely prevent nocturnal emissions. This is a simple way to achieve this.

 

Basically the method is just practicing zhan zhuang regularly, specifically the wu ji zhan zhuang stance. You do have to practice wu ji zhan zhuang correctly however. The knees should only be bent a little bit, so that you are not having to strain at all, and the breathing should be kept soft, deep, slow and natural, with the emphasis in the entire practice on being natural and relaxed. You do not need to do any special concentration with the mind. Just relax and practice the wu ji zhan zhuang stance every day, and preferably practice your main wu ji zhan zhuang session shortly before you go to bed for the night. You can add other sessions such as in the morning as well if you like, but the evening session will be important for the first six months or so. Later you will probably find that you can practice any time of the day and still get the same benefits. Also, later, once your practice is effective, you can add other zhan zhuang stances to your practice as well if you like. It may take a month or even a few months of regular practice to start seeing results, depending on various factors.

 

If you are not familiar with the wuji zhan zhuang stance, then it is demonstrated in this video.

 

 

There are variations of how the hands are held in the wu ji zhan zhuang stance, but the main thing is to keep the shoulders down and relaxed and to keep the armpits open a little bit. If you haven't practiced zhan zhuang before, then start from standing just a few minutes and slowly work yourself up to 20 to 30 minutes per session. If you are starting to strain, then you should end that particular session. Once you get really comfortable with it you can stand even longer if you like. It is a an excellect way to open and balance the meridians and to build up qi as well. IME, for preventing nocturnal emissions, besides balancing and strenghtening your system it seems to refine the jinq/qi such that it prevents nocturnal emissions. There may be other methods that can help in this area, but this is the simplest and most effective method I have come across. I have been completely celibate for a number of years now and do not ever have nocturnal emissions. It really does work. If you try this method, post back here after three to six months or so and let other people know if it worked for you. It being such a simple cultivation practice to do, all serious practitioners should be aware of its benefits, IMO

 

 

Notes:

Doing sitting practice in a similar way, is not the same as doing the wu ji zhan zhuang stance as described above. The stance itself seems to be important in the way this works. In my experience, practicing regular sitting meditation may not resolve nocturnal emission issues.

 

The above method was found based on a good many years of trial and error, with this particular method having proved very quick and effective to get results, and to prevent nocturnal emissions long term.

 

It would be hard to understand why this practice is so effective if a person is not celibate for an extended period of time. If a person is not celibate they may well not need to practice any such methods. The method I have described is meant for a person who plans to be celibate for an extended period of time, such as a year or several years or indefinitely. Generally this is only needed for people who are very seriously practicing internal cultivation methods which require celibacy.

 

Good luck with your practice.

Edited March 23, 2014 by Iskote

[Harmonious Emptiness]

There are some herbs traditionally used for this purpose, but I would strongly caution you against using any of them without first getting a pulse diagnosis by a excellent Chinese herbalist (not necessarily of Chinese descent), preferrably who also teaches internal martial arts so they know why you're doing this. They should be able to tell you how long to use these herbs, and how much to take for your current balance of organ energies.

 

See the bottom of this page for info on these herbs.

 

Not that I'm a master on this, or even really recommend intense long-term celibacy for most people, but to disperse the energy before sleep, I suggest meditating on the lower dantien so that the energy will move up to that cauldron where is will then be processed and distributed elsewhere, such as to the heart center and other organs. It's also important to "turn the light around" or "lock the gates" during the day, meaning to have your senses well protected, content, and stabilized, rather than unsettled and searching about for new stimuli.

 

However, consider if you are going to do this for the rest of your life. It's something that needs to be maintained. You can't just build up all that jing and then quit, like lifting a 100 pound barbell over your chest and then forgetting about it. If you're going to do this, you need to build up gradually and follow through as well.

[Lomistick]

I am speechless.

 

The information you have all provided is jaw-droppingly good.

 

I extend all of you my sincerest gratitude.

 

Whatever time and effort you took in posting this valuable information has helped another human being immensely.

 

I didn't expect to get even a single useful post, and there were so many.

 

Wow, thank you all so much.

 

Thank you thank you thank you.

[soaring crane]

I really like this guy's series of ZZ videos. Very lovingly done, and I think the information is topnotch:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO9vC-YFacc

[GrandmasterP]

Turning 60 worked for me.

[Wu Ming Jen]

Reproducing is extremely important we need to reproduce waking up, going to work, paying bills, healthy relationships,going to sleep and so on these are all a matter of reproduction. True vitality or jing is not a physical substance at all like semen.

 

If you become aware of vitality in a non sexual way the most powerful energy in the human body of reproduction becomes manifest and you can have sex all day long or not at all.

 

Our lives may change and shift constantly so there is a time for everything. Forced retention with intention is an error it can only be natural or it becomes an obstacle to overcome. Most retention teachings are directed towards those searching for something that they think retention leads to.

 

There are two sides of the coin but I thought I would flip this one over for a minute.Good results are good results.

[Gerard]

Another question I have, is this practice REALLY this hard? I mean, I've been trying to learn it for 9 years with marginal success.

 

It's difficult for me that the understand that the human body seems to be built to harness

this sort of energy, and yet the method at which to do so seems to elude most the entire

human population. It seems incredibly difficult. Am I overthinking this?

 

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

 

"Overcoming lust is the ultimate challenge in attaining nibbana/returning to the Source."

 

Now to be successful you need to look at the following points:

 

1. Diet and time las meal is eaten (the closer to night time the worse, and the larger close to that time also the worse).

2. Stress levels during your daily life.

3. Have you found a moving practice that really works that is slowly making you more and more aware that after you ejaculate a huge amount of energy/vitality/jing is lost and you are basically starting from zero after that happens; hence the need to increase the time between ejaculations to the point where you stop sexual activity (solo and partnered) altogether. No more sex because you ave effectively overcome lust (lust does not penetrate a well-developed mind.)

4. Are you practicing seated and walking or any sort of moving meditation during the hours in which the mother (kidneys) of the child [the direct manager of sensual desire (liver)] is active (3-7pm) and during yin times (night); and also during the time and season the ruler of all desire (heart) is most active (11am-1pm and summer). If not start by practicing during those times. This is just a rough guideline since all the internal organs need to be purified, all bockages dissolved and all meridians fully opened. This is a monumental task, fruit of many lifetimes cultivating the mind. Preserving vitality/jing is a must because it acts as purifying agent, the lubricant that allows for those events to occur. Little fuel little gains to be made, especially when fully opening and cleansing the meridians in the head, your back and legs. This process will allow you reaching the heavenly realms during meditative practice as well as the hell and other lower realms (ghost, asuras), which will give you an good understanding of how samsara and karma really operate.

5. Have you considered practice for at least 6h a day? The more the merrier. Less than that will make your job extremely difficult (in my personal opinion, nearly impossible).

6. Cutting off or reducing social contact to a minimum. Time for yourself. Healing is most effective when practicing and living alone. Solitude is the place of purification.

7. Are you practicing loving-compassion towards all sentient beings quality of a purified heart which is the seat of wisdom and compassion.

8. You need to develop wisdom in order to succeed and wisdom only comes from mindfulness, morality and compassion. You will no longer see women as sexual beings when your mind is 'pure', hence lust has been overcome.

 

Feel free to ask any questions but hard work, determination and a carefully devised and intelligent plan is a must if you want to reach this goal. It's not easy, it never was and will be or there would be countless walking Buddhas on this planet.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Gerard