Beyond Tantra: Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex (13 page)

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 65

Practising Sacred Touch – Tension Release Excercise 65

shock of having a hand suddenly placed somewhere else on their body.

The real exercise is to learn how to communicate about touch and sensation.

This exercise touches on many of the fundamentals of Sacred Sex: trust, respect, communication, sensitivity and safety.

After fifteen minutes (or longer, but no longer than half an hour) it’s time for the Receiver to turn over. First, take a towel and wipe down their back and then let them turn over in their own time. If they have really relaxed they might even have dozed off a bit. You can gently wake them by gently dragging the tops of your fingers up and down their back.

Now continue with up to half an hour of massage on the front of the body, the same way as you did on the back. Most people are a bit more sensitive around their stomach and chest areas so you will want to proceed gently and cautiously.

At the end of the front massage, wipe the Receiver down with a towel again.

Receiver:
At this point, you might wish to give the Giver a hug and a ‘Thank You’ for all the love and attention that you have been given.

Now it’s time to reverse roles as Giver becomes Receiver and Receiver becomes Giver.

At the end of the exercise, take a moment to sit quietly for a second and feel how nice it is to be relaxed and comfortable in each other’s company.

We’ve discovered that regular massages, even very short ones like a little shoulder rub, have made a huge difference to the energy flow between us.

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 66

66

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 67

67

The Understanding

It is elusive and evasive,

yet it does manifest itself.

—Lao Tzu

When you circulate your Sexual Qi throughout your entire body, you open up channels for the flow of orgasmic energy. This allows you to experience multiple, powerful and healing whole-body orgasms. Using this circulation technique, you can safely increase the amount of Sexual Qi that flows through your body.

The Background

Qi is a fundamental Taoist term for life-force or the spiritual energy that is part of everything that exists. Working with Qi forms the basis of all the Taoist practices that involve understanding the flow of energy, whether it be acupuncture, martial arts, feng shui or Dual Cultivation. Yet the existence of Qi has not been proven in any familiar, Western sense of the word. Even within Taoism and Chinese culture, there have been heated debates as to the nature of Qi. In the West, there have been people – for example, Wilhelm Reich – who attempted to work with Qi-like energies such as ‘orgone’. Yet none of these attempts have been accepted by the Western scientific community.

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 68

68

Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex But Dual Cultivation is all about working with Qi. This can, understandably, be a source of confusion and possibly an obstacle if you’re the sort of person who has to have intellectual proof of something before proceeding to invest a lot of time and effort in it. If so, you have my heartfelt compassion since that description fits me pretty well! The only reason I was willing to try working with Qi was the fact that it is a cornerstone of practices that have been in existence for thousands of years, and many of these practices clearly work. Few can doubt the incredible results obtained by martial artists and acupuncture has been clinically demonstrated to work. The way I got around this mental block was to, quite simply, accept that Qi stands for something that I don’t totally understand and then accept that I don’t need to understand everything!

After much research, what I did see clearly was that you don’t need to see, feel or understand Qi in order to be able to start with the Dual Cultivation practices. Most of the practices concentrate not on
understanding
Qi, but rather on
cultivating
Qi. The Qi cultivation process is often described as a combination of repetitive movements, concentration and breathing. Over time, a sense of Qi flow emerges when you follow the steps carefully and consistently. Different people experience it in different ways. Some experience warmth, some experience tingling in their hands and feet and some just report an inner sense of peace and grounding. Now, whether that sense of Qi is just ‘getting the hang of it’, ‘a useful way to describe a state where you are more aware of what is happening inside yourself ’ or indeed ‘an awareness of Qi’ is, in my experience, immaterial.

Everyone I have spoken to who has persevered with a Taoist practice, whether Qi Gong, Tai Chi or Dual Cultivation, has clearly felt that ‘something is happening’

and that whatever that ‘something’ is, it’s reproducible. Since the Taoists have a handy term for that ‘something’,
i.e.
Qi, it makes sense to use it.

As you do the exercises, it’s totally normal in the beginning to feel that not much is happening when it comes to ‘Qi sensing’. Just keep practising on a regular basis and you will observe how you become aware of Qi flowing and how you can use this awareness to manage your Sexual Qi. By learning techniques to work with Qi, you can accomplish many things that are just not possible using Western understandings of the body and life-energy.

So what does the statement in the
Understanding
‘safely increase the amount of Sexual Qi you move through your body’ mean? Imagine for a second that you applied a 100 amp electrical current to a circuit that was rated at only 3 amps. What would happen? If there were a fuse, you would blow it: if there were no fuse, you could start a fire or damage some equipment on the same circuit. Our body/mind system is no different. A severe Qi overload in the brain is called a ‘Kundalini Psychosis’ and it can lead to a delusional state. In my observation, less severe overload can create a state of being quite ungrounded and

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 69

Circulating Qi – The Background

69

slightly delirious after a good dose of Sexual Qi that has not been handled wisely. It’s good fun but, unfortunately, the effect does not last long and the let-down afterwards can be quite severe and be accompanied by feelings of depression and listlessness. That is why it’s a really good idea to learn how to circulate Sexual Qi before learning how to generate it. That way you’ve put circuits into place to handle the flow once it starts. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.

Stephan’s Story

When Mieke and I started working with Dual Cultivation practices, one of the books we used was ‘Cultivating Female Sexual Energy’ by Mantak Chia.

Being the enthusiast that I am, I read hastily through the beginning of the book (most of which made no sense to me at the time) and suggested to Mieke that we start with one of the ‘Traditional Love-making Exercises for Healing’ towards the end of the book.

There was a position detailed in one chapter that was specifically designed to help with the healing of all the internal organs and that was exactly what we needed. There are also some nice, Chinese line-drawings in the book that show quite clearly what to do. The instructions were clear as well: you are supposed to practise up to four sets of nine strokes, four times per day, for fifteen days. The man is also not supposed to ejaculate at all when doing the exercises.

‘Right,’ I thought. ‘This seems easy enough.’ So that evening we gave it a try.

We laid down on our sides facing each other, Mieke moved her legs back as shown in the drawing and I started off with my four sets of nine strokes. Except that I didn’t make it. The first nine went fine and the break in between was great as I managed to cool down a bit. I made it half way through the second set of nine strokes; Mieke wiggled just a little bit and then ejaculation time arrived.

After that my erection disappeared, as was always the case with me after an ejaculation.

Mieke was very understanding. ‘I’m sure we’ll do better next time,’ she said, encouragingly.

So the next morning we tried again. This time she was very attentive and did her very best not to move at all since that clearly was very stimulating for me and not at all helpful when it came to my attempts not to ejaculate. This time I managed two and a half sets. Oh well, better but not quite what I had hoped for.

We tried again that evening. When I sensed I was nearing ‘the point of no return’, I stopped moving altogether. I still ejaculated after a few seconds even though we were both lying still. Aargh! The next morning we tried with the same

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 70

70

Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex result. Double aargh! I was just not managing to make it through the four times nine without ejaculating. This was frustrating. I’d actually never paid any attention at all to trying to manage myself in such a way that I would delay or avoid ejaculating and I was amazed at how difficult it was proving to be.

So, somewhat chastened and feeling a bit humbler, I went back to the books.

This time I had a look in the other book by Mantak Chia that I had bought, called ‘Cultivating Male Sexual Energy’. Lots of it still didn’t make much sense, but I understood more of it than the first time I had read it. When I got to the chapter on ‘The Secrets of Semen Retention’, I slowed right down and read every word carefully. In the section titled ‘The Importance of the Small or Microcosmic Orbit’ I saw that what was described was exactly what I was experiencing. While we were practising, my sexual energy was getting hotter and hotter until finally it was finding the fastest way out it could which, not surprisingly, was through ejaculation.