[Note: This message is a pasted copy of message #10846 from the Healing Tao USA discussion site.

If you have any questions re: this practice, contact S.Biel: s_biel@yahoo.com]

Posted by S.Biel on September 10, 2000:

This may not help a beginner at this stage but just for posterity here is a much truer and more permanent solution.

This is 100 times more effective and 100 times safer than any big draw variant you care to do.

I have discovered that the most profound way for the beginner to stabilize their sexual energy is the following exercise.  And even for the supposedly so advanced Taoist it can work wonders.

In short, you must exchange the energies of the heart center, (the fire, the seat of love and compassion) with the energies of the sperm palace, (the seat of the sexual ching, sexual desire, the generative force, the water).

To understand this process you must understand the following:
Each of these two centers both possess a gross obvious water and fire aspect, respectively, and a hidden true inner fire and water aspect.  The water conceals the true hidden fire deep inside, and the fire conceals the true hidden water deep inside.  So this is a process of the yang half with the yin dot and the yin half with the yang dot, .  Or the water trigram with the yang center or the fire trigram with the yin center:

water (kan)                           fire (li)     

      yin yang yin                    yang yin yang     

To activate the true process start by drawing energy up from the sperm palace (outer water) up to the heart center.  The heart by itself is just fire and love energy, just a dry fire burning out.

When this water reaches the heart center you use the sexual ching by combining it with the heart's natural fire to activate the heart's inner water.  This is the true compassion.  It's a very distinctive cool and gentle feeling at the heart.

Then you take this newly formed seed of gentle cool heart compassion that has been activated and along with the heart’s natural yang fire, lower it down to the sperm palace point.  By itself it is just wet water looking for a way to leak out.

(This sperm palace area right above the penis at the pubis area is the male sexual center because this is right in front of the location of the seminal vesicles where the sperm is stored and the prostate further inside.  So it is no wonder this storage spot of the male’s most condensed ching is the pinpoint spot of the males most burning desire.)  [Webmaster's Notes re: the sperm palace, at the bottom of this essay.]

When you couple the heart’s fire with the sperm palace area it stabilizes and alleviates this cooped up burning sexual desire at the sperm palace point.  It transforms volatile male sexual ching which would otherwise leak out into harnessed generative force of the refined energy of higher consciousness and wisdom.

Along with the basic fire you have drawn down from the heart, this seed of compassion you have sparked at the heart also now assists in the process.  It should already be as though the sensation of a blissful white light and steam like the color of the moon.  You should feel that the heart fire energy is a ball of white light that is dissolving and sublimating the sperm.  It is a distinctive sensation of brilliant hot white light and mist.  This is the activation of the true inner fire within the ching's outer water.  You are really releasing and tapping into the ching's potential energy.  What this physiologically really does is to release the chi from the seminal ching thereby energizing the body’s chi circulation and after which it facilitates the actual physical re-absorption and recycling of the semen’s actual physical components into the blood stream to once again be reused.

You then should repeat the whole exchanging process, again drawing up the sexual center's water (now with the addition of the steam) and the whole effect at both ends will then be even more pronounced.  Do this continually back and fourth, constantly activating each one with the other's properties.  It is a reciprocal mutually benefiting process that builds on itself and multiplies its' own energy more and more each time as you exchange back and forth.

So you really are coupling the heart with the kidneys (sexual center).  Each one needs and is absolutely dependant on the other to unlock its' powerful inner potential.  This is also an inversion of everything, turning everything into its' opposite and upside down.

Each time you combine some of the ching's outer water with the heart's outer fire at the heart center it releases some of this white light steam but the steam produced here has a cool and gentle quality.  This once again is the true inner water of the heart.

Each time you combine some of the heart’s outer fire with the ching's outer water at the sexual center it also releases the same white light steam but the steam produced here has a warm and brilliant quality.  This once again is the true inner fire of the sexual ching.

All this white light of steam will travel up and down the length of the microcosmic orbit in between the heart and the sexual center, in the process harmonizing and tranquilizing them both.

So once you release the heart's inner water and the ching's inner fire, on both ends you generate this a strange and mysterious, at the same time cool and warm mist/light.  It is vapor - it is breath - it is chi - Just like boiling steam it is both cool and hot.

Although the lower steaming is of a hot nature as it begins and the higher steaming is of a cool nature as it does, they both start to become the same, they merge and unify into a perfectly neutral tranquil energy.  This perfectly neutralized tranquil bliss is a taste of the light of the Tao and the stillness of genuine universal compassion and wisdom.

So be sure and combine all this with the great inner/outer smile and radiate and emanate all this blissful compassionate energy to the world.

For women the problem is not quite the same circumstances, but substituting the ovarian palace center for the male equivalent accomplishes a similar thing according to yin’s own way.  Sorry I can't comment further, I only know from what I have to work with.  :)

I have also discovered that it is useful to distribute the sexual chi that builds up to the kidneys and to circulate it into the leg channels.  And in particular you should connect the soles of the feet and the cool yin earth energy with your sexual organs and perineum.

The following is an excerpt a very old post from when I first created this meditation, I have since refined it and come to understand it in much greater detail.

"This is my version of dissolving the collected sperm and transforming it into something less volatile.  Basically I don’t see how doing the big draw and testicle breathing is very effective in actually relocating and transforming the sperm so it doesn’t collect and pose a problem.

I don’t know the exact physiological mechanics of the whole reproductive system.  But it seems to me that when you draw energy from the testicles to the sacrum and up the spine it is just drawing chi up, which is easy enough.  But it seems to me that the physical seminal fluids and sperm still remain.

Pinpointing the perineum and hui yin has been a bit of a problem for me.  But it seems to me that the produced sperm and seminal fluids are actually stored in ducts and glands above the penis in the pubis area in what we are calling the sperm palace.

It is easy to draw sexual energy from the testicles and perineum up the sacrum and spine but it does not seem easy for me to circulate the physical seminal components from the area of the sperm palace via the micro orbit down to the perineum and then into the sacrum, etc., so consequently sperm seems to build up at the sperm palace.

So, from my understanding of the way chi and things circulate and behave I have developed a steaming technique (or at least my conception of what steaming means) that dissolves the sperm and fluids collected at the sperm palace and transforms them upward.

Here is what I do:

It basically involves concentrating on the sperm palace and feeling how it is a collection of cool yin water like substance (from the water associated lower energy centers-kidneys-sexual organs-etc).

And I concentrate on bringing a kind of yang white light (originating from the heart center like fire) down to the sperm palace and collected semen.  I visualize the white yang light (kind of like the bright white light from the moon) and the concentrated heat it produces kind of heating the semen in the sperm palace.  And actually boiling it so it is as if it evaporates and dissolves.

The steam like energy that is produced rises up the front of your body along the front channel, bypassing the navel (although it can be brought into the navel), and finally collecting underneath the heart like a mist (it seems to me that it is more efficient to bring the steam directly up to the heart center rather that first stopping at the navel center).  At this point the misty energy should seem kind of cool and yin.

Here resting in the heart center underneath the heart it should feel like a lotus or cushion on which the heart rests in order to nourish the heart, in order for it to blossom like a flower and radiate compassion outwards.  You see when this seminal steam reaches the heart center it becomes the cool radiant light of compassion.  You can accentuate this feeling of radiating compassion by smiling inwardly to the heart but more importantly smiling outwardly from the heart (the seat of compassion) out to the world.  So, this is (or at least how I figured out) how the gross physical substance of semen is transformed into subtle energy.

It is no longer a physical substance which burns lustfully inside of you craving further material gratification but an intangible subtle energy that is at peace with its' self and rests motionless at your heart emanating love.  (essence to energy)

I’ve probably figured out some variant or my own brand of some lesser alchemical formula by my self.  From my understanding real kan and li steaming most commonly takes place in the cauldron after fusion collection.  So don’t go doing this if you don’t feel comfortable with it, but as far as the exercise, I have been doing it seems safe enough and seems to dissipate and literally transmute the physical seminal constituents into the higher energy of compassion."

Follow-up message: http://www.healingtaousa.com/messages/10860.html

I would also like to emphasize that what I described is not actual kan li.
True kan li takes place in the central channel with the condensed pearl essences.
This is merely a simpler to grasp proto kan li done completely in the microcosmic orbit on the front surface of your body between the heart and sexual centers.
It is, however, the same mechanism wherever you do it.

Follow-up message: http://www.healingtaousa.com/messages/10859.html

: Dear S.Biel
: thanks for sharing what is essentially the basic steaming of lesser kan and li
: My question is : based on your personal experience, using this steaming
: method, how long have you been able to store semen in your body? years? months?

-----------------

It is not a matter of storing it. If you try to hoard it like a treasure it is only inevitable that it will be lost when it gets a chance.  It is rather making the physical substance disappear into thin air.  Essence into pure energy.

The process I describe must be done regularly.  Otherwise if you cease to do it will build up and you are guaranteed to lose it.

This way if you make it so there is literally nothing there so nothing can be lost.

If you accumulate energy like power the Tao mandates that you have to give it up when you get too powerful.  So you have to voluntarily give your excess power away in the form of transformed universal compassion.  And this technique is the practical key way allowing you to do that.  Understand this and you can conserve your seed indefinitely.

If it just sits there collecting without the transformation it is doomed to be lost.

This has been effective for me for months at a time and the longer I have practiced and further mastered this losing one's seed becomes ever less and less frequent with time.  Impulse disappears almost completely but libido is still twice as strong.

It's only when I neglect to tend to this need for efficient transformation that impulse it again resurfaces and I ever really experience any problems.

I stress that unlike all other ways this sexual center heart coupling or whatever variant on it is not merely a process for delaying or suppressing the inevitable but the true authentic way of alleviating the whole impetus at its' very root cause.

And eventually when one masters the even higher universal water and fire coupling on a much more subtle integral level the leak will in time be sealed permanently.  But then again, not one in ten thousand ten thousands has the mind to accomplish that level of asceticism.  But just because the common man views it as impossibility does not mean it is impossible.

Webmaster's Notes:

1.  Actually, I think that s.biel's technique is an apt introduction to the process of Clouds and Rain.

2.  Some notes to confirm the importance of the area of the sperm palace, and the related topic of the variety of locations that can be meant by the term "lower tan tien".

     The sperm palace, the whole area between the belly-button and the pubic bone (to include some layers inward from the surface of the skin), and particularly Ren-4 and Ren-6 - that whole area (and the major acupoints there) is so important (rich with jing, blood, their respective tubing) that in some schools of Taoism it is identified as the lower tan tien!  So, this is certainly acknowledged as an important area, and anything that you do to come to terms with the physical and energetics there, is time well spent.

     Other Taoist schools consider the whole section of the lower torso below the belly button (front to back, physical and/or energetics) to be the lower tan tien, still others consider specifically the deep-center (which is an especially direct means to non-duality) to be the lower tan tien proper.

4.  The Lower Tan Tien Massage also addresses the sperm palace.