Title - proper orientation, progressive steps, guiding concepts.
Posted by KeithF on April 17, 2001 at 18:31:28:
Gil,
g> I have a dream that a time will come when I will be able to be sexually active
(a few times a week) & not need to ejaculate. ...
Has anyone really & truly mastered the ejaculation control in a healthy way? >
I'm enjoying your posts. You're asking the tough questions, bottom line stuff. This is fun.
g> the 1 million dollar point, but I hate that method. I prefer ejaculating. >
Agreed. I never used that method, it never appealed to me. If it came to that, I'd just ejaculate. My impression (and I can't back this up with anything but an impression) is that it's prone to causing injury, as well.
Ok, for the rest of it: I'm not going to directly answer your questions until late in this post, so bear with me.
I think we can all agree that sexual energy is a powerful force, and has valid potential for health / personal / spiritual development. Yet, personally, I think that strongly promoting long term ejaculation control early-on is backwards and self-defeating. There are a lot of things that need to be addressed first. In general theory, the HT system totally agrees with preparation and balance. In particulars, some places it does very well, others it falls down pretty hard.
First there needs to be some relatively free flow of qi in the body, and some sensitivity to the energy. Early HT practices that address that are the microcosmic orbit, inner smile, and so forth. imo, those aren't sufficient for many people. A 3 month diligent program of hatha yoga can assist greatly in opening up your body to energy flow. There are other ways, as well. What ever it takes to get you there (sensitivity and free flow), it has to happen - as long as it takes.
The next number of things don't happen in a discreet sequence, but do progress gradually over a period of time (as does all of this work).
You need to start working with, getting a feel for, and learning to balance the energies in your body, in general.
Part of this is getting a subtle facility for your sexual energy. A very important part of this are the unaroused practices, especially testicle breathing.
After a while of this, you'll begin to develop the ability to abstain from ejaculation, some times, in some positions, when the mood is not too rowdy.
Now, here's the kicker: Aroused sexual energy is a dense, explosive, highly polarized energy. Any harmonious program of storing that energy (beyond one or two sessions) must balance it first, or you're only going frustrate and hurt yourself. Experience has shown that the microcosmic orbit is not sufficient for this job.
Sometimes the upward draw does balance the energy through interaction with the upper centers, and you are supposed to bring that energy back down to balance your sexual center... but, usually, the sexual center doesn't really get fully harmonized... though it does happen sometimes. Also, just pushing the fiery energy up through the body can cause difficulties as well. So you really need to be attentive to circulating, exercising, and so forth, to even things out. Plus, some other tools are in order.
What else helps to bring balance?
1.
Unaroused sexual energy can be (mostly) balanced by fire & water
techniques. (Kan & Li, or some variation.)
2. Aroused sexual energy can be balanced by exchanging energy with your partner
during dual cultivation. (Exchanging energy is distinct from releasing
substance.)
(Those areas are two of the important places where the HT errs, imo. Kan & Li is put as a much later practice, and exchange generally gets little, if any, emphasis. Exchange is in the books, true, and that is something. The fault here, imo, is partly with a matter of presentation and emphasis from the HT, and partly a lack of thoroughness by students. In any case, retention generally gets far more emphasis, sometimes to the point that one energetically retreats from one's partner, in the lower tan tien... which is rather silly. That's what you came there to share, and that's what your best hope is for attaining balance. Not to say that there aren't times for retreating, but you need to be able to do both in a healthy way: retreat, consolidate inwardly, open, share.)
So, in my opinion, a healthy program of dealing with sexual energy would not advise long term conservation, until way down the road. A much healthier orientation would be to focus on learning to harmonize your sexual energy in various ways. Testicle breathing, fire and water, learning to exchange energy with your partner. And keep opening your body up in various ways. Ejaculate sometimes, don't other times - don't sweat about it. Adopt the ideal of learning to promote harmony and balance of your own energies, including sexual energy.
If you just took up that approach, and dropped the obsession with long term retention, you'd be fine.
And, if your practice naturally progressed to the point where you could really balance your energy well, then it's enjoyable and fairly easy to keep it in your body for some periods of time. So long term retention will perhaps come to you naturally as a product of learning to balance. Again, it is "perhaps" it will progress for you along that way, don't force it. Forced conservation is not healthy. Balance and harmony are much, much, much higher priorities than conservation. (That doesn't mean that you should ejaculate 50 times a day. Moderation is part of all this.)
This is all a huge topic... We come to surrounding practices, and the question of "what to do with the stored energy?". Also, practices to harmoniously integrate the energy throughout different areas of our body & being (a good five element practice is so important). On and on.
Ok, now, to your questions.
g> to all those who actually abstain from ejaculation with no difficulty >
It varies for me. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not.
g> since I am a young man. it is very unlikely that I will have success in this practice. >
Sounds about right, if you define success as long term (much more than a month) retention. Very few people really have their practices to the place where they are consistently competent at retaining, as well as very capable at harmoniously integrating, over long periods of time.
It depends on how you define success. As far as endurance and conservation, longer love-making sessions and ejaculation only a moderate amount of the time - that's very attainable. But it's attained by working a lot on these other preparatory things. Opening the body. Working with meditation, breathing. Lots of unaroused practices to gradually teach your body how to work with sexual energy on a more subtle level. Focus on balance & harmony, let those be your guiding concepts.
As far as specific practices: stretching, abdominal breathing, testicle breathing, pc muscle exercises, to name a few. The body really needs to be prepared, outside of the bedroom (mostly with unaroused practices). You teach it over and over, carve the grooves so to speak, with calm daily practice. Those gradually get more stable, to increasingly be able to withstand the strong forces in the bedroom.
Hope this helps,
Keith
There are various essays on my website that fill out some of the concepts that
I've mentioned, with specific techniques (still some gaps on the site, also). As
well as, of course, the HT materials.