markern

My practice has mostly been yoga (now Iyengar) and Vipassana meditation. I\d like to add a bit of Thai Chi since I realy feel it develops my awareness and helps my chi flow in a way the yoga doesn`t. I`m wondering if this is considered safe. When I do a program of yoga developed by a teacher there is a plan of how it is meant to work wioth my energies behind the program. If I do thai chi before or after this might not be a good mix or is it perfectly safe? I`m also very attracted to the tan tien aproach and the MCO and would like to use this in my yoga or at least right afterwards to bring the energy down and store it. Mantak Chia said this would be OK. I feel like otherwise too much energy fets to my head. Actualy I would like to use the Taoist/chineese understanding of chi and energy in the body to guide my sequencing of the yoga practice because it seems to be a lot more systematic and better explained, at least in available form. Is this possible and safe? I know there are taoist yoga that uses a lot of the same sitting postures as in the indian system so I presume this would be OK.

I`m getting very confused by what I am reading over at AYP and at certain other Tantra sites about orgasm. It is clear that they recommend that you ejaculate a lot less than at present but it also seems like they want you to stopp having orgasms al toghether and have what they call preorgasmic sex. I am confused about wether this is just another word for the taoist mal multiple whole body orgasms without ejaculation or wether it actualy means not having orgasms at all. They talk about stopping and cooling down and sometimes using a locking techique when you are close to orgasm but recommend doing this quite far from the point of no return. When I hav read about male multiple orgasms before it has been explained as going so close that the pelvic, prostate, anal and penis contractions just barely start and then staying on that edge an going back and forth. This way you get contionous contractions that start small and get bigger but don`t pull you over into ejaculation. This type of orgasm is supposed to feel more internal, deeper and also more in your upper body but it is still an orgasm and definitevly as strong or stronger than normal once you master it. What it seems like to me that AYP recommends is stopping before any contractions start al togheter and staying in that zone building up a blissfull energy. This then means you do not have orgasms of any kind but you have bliss. What they say it seems to me can be interperated in both ways and I am wondering wich they mean. I thought that as long as one skipped ejaculations there would be no energy loss despite of orgasms and as long as one could manage to integrate the energy in a good way through balancing practices of various kinds then this would be the most beneficial for your spiritual practice. So is it like this: orgasm with ejaculation is very depleting, orgasm without ejaculation is energizing but not as energizing as forgoing orgasms al togheter and being in the preorgasmic bliss without ejaculation? Another related question is the reltionship between enlightenment an celibacy. I got the impression in my previous thread about retention and celibacy that most here view celibacy as something wich comes automaticly with enlightenment. However, I have been researching that topic lately since I have no desire for celibacy and I\ve found that a lot of people disagree. Jack Kornfield interviewed a lot of enlightened masters about their sex lives and found that only a minority were celibate. Beyond that these people were everyting from slightly sexualy active to vwery promiscuos. In general what Kornfield concluded with was that sex usualy do not go away but that most of the masters were as "unenlightened" in their sex lives as everyone else. They had left it out of their spiritual practice and therefore not grown with regard to sex. I also found i site wich discussed Advait Vedanta and most who reach enlightenment in that tradition remain sexualy active. I\ve also read that B.K.S Iyengar, Krisnamacharia and Desikachar disagree that enligthenment should lead to celibacy although they are not opposed to it.

I`Ve been under the impression that it is ejaculating and not having an orgasm per se that depletes ones energy and that having non ejaculatory multiple orgasms actualy increases your energy and benefits a spiritual practice. Once you`ve built up a lot of sexual energy through orgasms you can either direct it to the dan tien and store it there. I\ve also been under the impression that if you store the energy in the dan tien and combine that with finding an ejaculatory cycle that feels natural for you there should not be many problems with it. At least not if you have a solid foundation in other energy work. Another point of view I`ve come a cross is that the problem is actualy just finding a way to direct the extra energy either through work, creative outlets or an energy practice. Hope some of you can clear this up for me. By the way I know a budhist monk that says in budhism there is normaly no rule against orgasms per say for monks just a rule against ejaculation. I also read in one of Chia`s books about a study done on some sort of caterpillar or something that had male caterpillars (or whatever it was) that had ejaculatory orgasms, multiple dry orgasms and no orgasms. The ones ejaculating had the shortest life span, the celibates the second longest and the multiorgasmic ones the longest. For me it is out of the question to forsake sex and orgasms for any spiritual goal or for long term health regardless of what benefits doing so might give me. I practice vipassana, a lot of yoga, and plan to ad in a little of taiji an qi gong. After a lot of searching this seems to be what fits me and therefore what I\m likely to stick with. From what is known on the health benefits on meditation alone I am a lot more likely to live very long and be a lot happier than most. Add in the yoga and thai chi and a good diet and I am statisticly likely to outlive most. Considering that the average life expectancy in my country Norway is around 80 years old, I`m not very impressed by toist masters becoming 95 or a hundred. Just by jogging and not smoking your life expectancy rises around 10 years anyway (90). With the likely benefits from meditation, yoga and diet there is little chance that I can gain more than a few years. I realy don`t care to sacrifice much for the prospect of living to a hundred and not just 95 years of age. Of course I could become a little more vital in old age, but still, with my current practice the likelyhood of being significantly more vital is smal. The issue her is in large part that you get after a certain amount of effort you get very diminishing returns with regards to living longer and vitality for increasing whatever it is you`re doing for your health. From my perspective it would be absolutely ridiculous to have any less sex than you feel like in order to take care of ones health. For achiving spiritual gains on the other hand, I certainly see that either retention or celibacy would boost ones practice a lot. If you are striving hard for enlightenment or if the extra energy benefits your spiritual practice so much that it outwheighs what you forsake then I can see the point even in celibacy or limiting sex. Still it certainly is not for me. I think I would get a lot more from having deep intimate multiorgasmic and loving sex with my wife everyday than once a week or not at all. Not only because I would be forsaking a lot of pleasure for myself but because I think my wife would be very upset if I didn`t want to sleep with her much and I think it would be very destructvive for the relationship. Lay people who practice a lot of vipassana get a lot of results even if they are not celibate or practicing retention. I am sure that`s the case for most other traditions as well. I`d rather be a highly acomplished vipassana/yoga guy miles away from enlightenment with a great relationship and an amazing sex life than closer to an unlike enlightenment with a dispassionate relationship and little sex. Anyway, what`s teh rush? If you belive in reincarnation and you have a practice that improves your life immensly but dosen`t lead you to enlightenment in this life time, why not cool down a bit and give it a couple of more life times?

Hmmm. Taiji is what I mean. I would apreciate if anyone has an opinion about my question.

Hi I`m markern. I\ve been doing yoga for a couple of years, recently started doing som vipassana style meditation, have tried a bit of thai chi and spent 10 days in Tao Garden learning basic Chia stuff. My practice nowadays is basicly Iengar style yoga, 30 minutes in the morning and 3-5 classses a week + 30 minutes of meditation and a bit of the inner smile. I\m also going to add som thai chi next week. I`m very gratefull to have found this forum since I can now finaly discuss energywork with knowledgable people. Looking forward to learning.