“To understand this process, you need only to think of filling a very long straw with water. The bottom of the straw is at your penis/testicle and the top of the straw is the crown of your head. The straw is too long to fill with one breath, so you must inhale and then stop the end (of the water in the straw) while exhaling. Otherwise the fluid will run out and you will have to start all over again. Fix the power at the level to which it has been drawn, then exhale; then inhale the fluid still higher.
Keep driving the power (chi) higher and higher up the spine into the skull and the Pai-Hui. It may take one or two months (or many years) for the power (chi) to pass the coccyx, but once it passes this (very) difficult bridgehead, it will leap up to the middle of the back. Then it will jump to the nape of the neck and from there up to the Pai-Hui (crown chakra).
After some weeks or months (or years) of practice the head reservoir will fill and the power (chi) will run down the front of the body with relative ease. It travels through the point between the brows, then down through the roof of the mouth to the tongue tip. It continues through the throat, chest and navel. Collect the energy (chi) at your navel, when the chi is full in the navel (cauldron) it will overflow to the sex center and rejuvenate the sex organs, and complete the circuit at the Hui-Yin.
This technique will not be realized overnight.”
From pgs. 126-127. My edits are in parentheses.
Based on my experience, the most difficult part of SKF was getting my chi past my coccyx. It took me about 10 years to learn to do it. Chia apparently thinks it can be learned faster, I hope so, but just don’t know. I was very motivated, practiced pretty much every day and it still took me 10 years to “get over the hump” of moving my chi past my coccyx. In order to “grease the skids” for successful chi mobilization past the coccyx, I recommend spending the time it takes to become familiar with your microcosmic orbit (MO), it is the path that your chi will follow, make it a familiar path and your chi will find it a path of low resistance. Indeed, once one becomes familiar with one’s microcosmic orbit, one can move one’s chi past this point, and throughout one’s MO with little more than a flicker of the mind. Incredible but true. I believe that there is something akin to “muscle memory” in this process, but more appropriately considered as “nervous system memory”. For me, my nervous system seemed to have Alzheimer’s for 10 years. Now my nervous system has Ken Jennings-like memory for tapping into the pleasure center of my brain (having CCOs) via SKF. Phenomenologically, I believe CCOs are the conditioned response to SKF that 10 years of SKF training has wrought. But I digress.
For me, successful movement of chi past the coccyx was signaled by a feeling of mercurial warmth in the middle of my back. I knew exactly what it meant and made for a very happy day for me. Pulling it to the crown through the cranial pump was very natural and intuitive. 2-3 months after learning to move chi past my coccyx I was having CCOs.