Sexual Kung-Fu

Osu, my mother introduced me to Hatha Yoga when I was very young; she has practiced it for over 40 years now, though she has never studied it to a high level; it’s just part of her life. She and I are both ‘bookworms’ rather than TV watchers, so have a rather substantial library of yoga info covering Hatha, Kriya, Karma, Rajah, Mantra, Gnani, Bhakti, Jnana and probably other branches of Yoga. I really have only ever skimmed through a few of them for interest and to see how it compares to Taoist philosophy.

A couple of my martial arts teachers have studied Yoga in much greater depth and often compare certain Yoga techniques with Taoist and Buddhist techniques from China. I also have had students who have done a lot of Yoga and are interested in the ‘cross-over’ between practices.

I have a lifetimes worth of work ahead of me just practicing Qi Gong and martial arts, so will probably never study Yoga in great depth. I love the path I have chosen. As a teacher of Tai Ji Quan I really shouldn’t say this, but for most people with limited time I think from a health point of view they would benefit more from Hatha Yoga than from Tai Ji.

Yoga’s Pranayama exercises have the same energy development aims as Qi Gong. For the reason Qi Gong works mainly with the lower dantian (in it’s first few years) I will quote from the book I recommended, as Bruce puts it better than I would! :

From B.K. Frantzis ‘Opening the energy gates of your body’:

This (the lower dantian) is the first main focus of all Chi Gung and Taoist alchemical practices. Taoist practices all begin from the premise that physical health is the foundation upon which spiritual development is built, and it is in the Lower Dantian that all the energy that affects the physical body is processed, purified, and generated. This energy can later be connected to the middle and upper dantians for purposes of emotional and spiritual growth.

Eventually, many of the health problems caused by the premature development of the higher psychic centers can be alleviated through practices that involve the lower dantian. For this reason most of the energy and meditation practices of Japan, China and Korea, ranging from Zen, to Chi Gung, and to the martial arts, pay particular attention to the lower dantian.

Development of the energy of one dantian does not necessarily lead to development of the others. We have all met people who are physically healthy and emotional/psychic/spiritual wrecks. It is also common for people who are advanced on the emotional/psychic/spiritual planes to have incredible health problems. This is often because the energy of the higher centers is creating more pressure than the body can handle. B.K. Frantzis

Hopefully this answers your question. Yoga’s chakras and Qi Gong’s dantians have a general correspondence. Qi Gong always ensures the lower DT is developed first. Traditionally in India, Pranayama (energy development) students would always have a Guru to study under on a frequent (often daily) basis, so the guru would decide which chakra a person needed to work on, and he was at hand to monitor any problems.

Hmm. Years ago I took a semester class of tai chi, it was some corrupted bastard system with 20 (40?) moves, I think. Actually, my bum hip troubled me much less then. And then I moved to a new place without possibility to continue.

In my situation now, I can practice weekday evenings - instead of spending all my time here entertaining you guys - but I don’t have access to a teacher or guru. Possibly I can take a class with some amateur leaders. Hatha Yoga seems to be available, with amateur leaders (I suspect - by amateur I mean one who hasn’t spent lots of time studying and time abroad).

Firegoad, Osu et al. - have a look at this homepage, they sell a downloadable film/DVD. Does this seem decent?

Mgus, I took a look at the example pages - it doesn’t tell me enough to judge it, except I don’t like the way she is transferring the weight through her hips to her feet - her body alignment is fairly poor. It looks like she is doing a ‘western’ exercise. Without knowing how she is breathing it is difficult to say if what she is doing is any good or not.

It looks from the text write up as if it is a composite method rather than from an established tradition. More research needed!

On the swedish home pages they say it is done by physical therapists (who have studied Qiqong) in co-operation with Qiqong masters. I guess that makes it a composite method (aka. bastardized method).

Make sure you turn up the sound! :D

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Firegoat,

Could you please post as least some of what you know about real, traditional Tantra and Taoist spiritual and/or sexual kung fu? I would be very grateful to hear it. Like what are the differences between them? How long does it take to master the basics? Do techniques and things you learn in one help you master techniques in the other faster? Do teachings in one conflict with anything in the other? If you could only choose one which would you study and why? Is there a way to learn some of the more advanced practices if you don’t have access to or are too poor *cough* *cough* to afford a guru?

I just bought one of the books you recommend off Amazon today but it’ll take a while to get here.

If you don’t want to post it could you PM me?

I had saw another one like that also that got the song stuck in my head, which thanks to you is now back in my head again:D

I get this exact same problem, I started a thread about it, unfortuantly didn’t get any help, so I had to stop.

Hi Aeris.
As pointed out above, my knowledge of Tantric and Yoga practices is more intellectual than through personal practice. The Taoist practices form part of what I teach.

With either system (qi gong or pranayama) if you are practicing correctly, you will feel very comfortable in your body. If you are getting great feelings of power or energy, this is caused by blockages and tend to show you are doing something wrong, even though it may feel great to you and like you are making real progress.

How long to master the basics? Everyone is different. It depends not only on how much you practise (like any exercise, too little and you get no results, too much and you overtrain), but on how focused you are in your practice. It also depends on how integrated your nervous system is when you begin and how much tension you hold in your body. You should begin to realise benefits after 3 months or so; they won’t be startling revelations, you’ll probably just notice that some old aches and pains have gone, that you feel more focused, that you get more natural and effortless in your sports, that you don’t get tired as easily, don’t get colds etc.
You never ‘master’ the basics really; the basics are what you keep returning to after each more advanced step is taken: if you build your foundation stronger and stronger, you can build more onto it.

Do techniques and things you learn in one help you master techniques in the other faster? Both systems will help you learn to feel what is going on inside your body. This is important whether you are pitching a baseball (you can feel the way the power links through your body unbroken from your feet pushing against the ground all the way to the ball), trying to reduce stress (you feel muscular tension building and release it automatically), or as the old Taoist masters would say, it even helps you defecate more efficiently! Basically, yes, learning one system should enable faster learning of the other. Again I would not use the terminology ‘mastering’ techniques. A master is someone who has nothing more to learn. Basically if someone claims to be a master, avoid them. They have stopped growing as they believe they know everything already. As the Chinese say “Study reach old, live reach old, still have three-tenths study not reach”.

Do teachings in one conflict with anything in the other? In genuine Taoist practices, the breath always leads the movement. Never the other way around. The breath is not held. In some of the martial qi gong practices I teach, the breath is held and more ‘chi packing’ is practiced. This is more common in Hatha Yoga Pranayama, so there is a degree of cross-over in some things. Generally with Pranayama practices, the degree of benefit is roughly equivalent to the degree of risk. In qi gong, that is not the case. There are many systems of qi gong with differing agendas. Some have high risk and low benefits. Some have low risk and high benefits. Some are in the middle. The primary differences between them are more in execution than results. Both have as their ultimate aim ‘enlightenment’, but can be used for both internal and external physical health and creating a clear, flexible mind.

If you could only choose one which would you study and why? Because I am a martial artist my main interest is which is most applicable to what I do. Because my martial arts come from Taoist and Buddhist lineages, and they have worked out how to adapt the qi gong exercises to the martial arts, that suits me best. It rather depends on what your needs are; neither system is inherently better than the other. The best system to practise is the one you can find the best teacher in. Some teachers may know a whole system in depth. Others know only portions of a system that apply to their other interests, or else they have only learned and teach an incomplete system. I teach qi gong as it applies to martial arts but this gives the full range of health benefits too. The ‘basics’ of all qi gong systems, the foundation, is the same for all systems, whether for martial effectiveness, health, enlightenment or for purely sexual qi gong. The specific practices for each end result are different though. Research what is taught at a good level in your area and decide if it is what you are interested in.

Is there a way to learn some of the more advanced practices if you don’t have access to or are too poor *cough* *cough* to afford a guru?
If you are a beginner, you need someone with excellent basics, who is also a good teacher and can get you started on the right path. The advanced practices are what would take you down a particular direction; MA’s, sexual, enlightenment etc. If you spend a few years on the basics, you will better be able to spot if someone knows what they are doing with the more advanced practices. Occasionally a sifu/guru/teacher is good at passing knowledge to people at a higher level, but is too ‘deep’ for someone without a good grounding in the basics. This is often because they have reached a high level in their own practice but are not actually very good at teaching. If you have good basics you can ‘read between the lines’ of what they are saying and so learn from them. Many use this as a technique anyway, so that people who are not ready for a certain teaching simply won’t understand it. Often these people have good students who remember the various problems they had when learning themselves. It’s often better to learn from the good students rather than the highly accomplished teachers. They break things down more, want you to understand the material, and are usually much cheaper to study under.

Please feel free to ask any more questions. It will be a couple of weeks before I answer though, as I’m off on vacation tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy the book. It covers the foundation skills very well indeed. Remember that the things which appear simplest are the ones you have to really work on. You might think you have learned them quickly, but after doing them thousands of times you find ever greater depth in them. I keep returning to the basics and working hard on them. Every time I do that I make more progress with the advanced stuff than if I just kept working on the advanced stuff alone. Have fun!

Could you please clarify what “exact same problem” means?

Thanks for the reply. I’m revisiting this question though I know the thread is old.

I am now going to rephrase that question to “Is there a way to learn these practices correctly on your own? Especially the foundational exercises/path?” I simply do not have the option of hiring a guru because I’m only part-time temp employed and have no money to give. I have to watch every penny I have like a hawk and will have to keep doing so until I’m hired for a full-time job.

When I tried Microcosmic Orbit I was shocked at how easy it was to get it going. The thing that scared the heck out of me was finding out I had a very difficult time shutting it off!! It literally felt like a river of electricity was circulating throughout my body. I enjoyed it in the beginning as it confirmed to me that Qi Gong isn’t just some goofy New Age Hocus Pocus Pseudo-Science if you know what I mean.

But once I decided to quit and then discovered just deciding to stop it didn’t make it stop…well…I got scared. The only way I eventually shut it off was to start doing squats with my barbell. That finally shut it off. I have no idea why. It’s this way every time the few times I’ve tried it.

I am now wondering if what I experienced is exactly the wrong thing. How does one..um…eliminate it..avoid it…go around it..or do whatever you need to do to get it right?

From reading your description above it sounds as if I was doing it wrong. The very fact I felt something is a sign I’m practicing wrong. And as I’ve heard musicians say…”Practice wrong and you only get better at doing it wrong”. So how will I guide myself to do it right? If I’m not supposed to feel anything how is that any different from the state I’m already in going about daily life?

Well, it _is_ a natural circuit.. Just because you finally allowed yourself to rediscover it after decades/years of trying to ignore it and yet used it unconsciously for all this time doesn’t mean you know how to use it consciously. ;)
Besides, energy works work in whatever format you like (chakras, meridians, etc.), but they have one thing in common: Focus
Those are natural after all, so they are really easy to notice and use (once you got through the at least partial unlearning of all those beliefs you got from “helpful” people).

In other words: You don’t eliminate it just as you don’t eliminate seeing, feeling, your liver, thinking or whatever you can think of as part of a human (consciousness and body). Energy stuff is more of a hybrid between the two.

What the microcosmic orbit really is about is rediscovering how to focus to do what is and was natural for every human to begin with.
Of course, you “redirect” the energies from your dick back up the tailbone, spine, ( around the head) and back down on the front.. But what it really is is simply deliberately focusing on what you want. And if that is ‘feel and redirect the “orgasmic” energy’ to somewhere else (not that you could, but that’s really besides the point.. Balance / Harmony / Equilibrium, remember?).. so if that is what you want, hell why not.. Believe / Expect anything and it’ll come true, and not just in the “energy” systems. And no, believing and expecting isn’t the same thing.

Or to put it in really “complicated” words: Play around with what you want, decide what you want your reality to be and then define your reality as you want it to be. Works for PE, too (at least I heard so) ;)

And on your last question:
Yeah, this means you have to do what feels right to you, mainly. There isn’t really overdoing, despite what Chia and others are saying. There is only resistance to what you feel is possible for you to experience. Do what feels right for you in this very moment, what feels like the next best step for you and by you and just have fun with this (as you have with the rest of your life as well).

On a little last sidenote before I stop this mixup post: Some people say that “fear” (AKA “feeling scared”) is just the feeling of the same “energy” that’s making up you, the universe and generally all-that-is; it just can feel “bad”, because there is “resistance” AKA “beliefs / expectations working against what you want / think / experience / etc.”. Sounds funny and newageish, but it has a pretty true core at least in my experience. :)

Ys

I’d recommend walking before running. Most people have no experience with ki (Chinese “qi” or “chi”, Hindu “prana”, German “megin”, Scandinavian “hamingja”). A lot of activities I’ve been involved with over the years have involved using ki and have given me a very strong ki ( Japanese swordsmanship,Taiji jian, Rune working, Spirit walking -so called astral projection, to name a few). I would recommend that people wishing to learn about ki development first practice ki meditation with focus on the one spot, and work at changing their perspective from “me here, the rest of the world there” to one of unity with the world in order to promote a healthy flow of ki and prepare themselves for workings involving the manipulation of ki. Too much too soon can be a problem. But, that’s just me. Definitely the advantages to ki development are very real. I’ve got nearly limitless reserves of energy, am healthy as an ox ,and most people think I’m, nearly ten years younger than I am, despite the beard. It’s definitely a long term commitment, not an instant fix.

Aeris, in the early stages (which can last quite a long time), you are bound to feel something, because you are bound to have blockages. When I referred to ‘great feelings of power or energy’ I wasn’t really talking about the feeling of moving energy when you are actually doing the exercises, I was talking about what some other members here have mentioned in above posts; buzzing in the head, inability to sleep, feeling over-excited all the time etc.. These are feelings that creep up on you after, usually, a few months practice, if you have blockages and are trying to force through them, rather than trying to dissolve them.

When you have dissolved the blockages in the microcosmic orbit, it’s more like water running through a hose; comfortable and free moving, rather than water running through a partially blocked hose; agitated and causing increased pressure.

If you bought Bruce’s book, which I mentioned above, he covers a lot on where blockages commonly occur and clearing blockages. It is good to do those exercises for a while before working on microcosmic orbit (MO). The exercises in that book are excellent foundational exercises; they all have a high reward to risk ratio. You should get no problems following any of them, but very good health benefits.

When you do MO, or indeed any chi gung exercises, you need to settle the energy back in the lower dantian/seika tanden/hara afterwards. For males, the right hand should be placed on the dantian (about 2 inches below the navel), and the left hand placed on top of the right. Focus on bringing the energy to the dantian and storing it there. I normally teach settling breathing exercises to do after this, but I could not explain them easily here.

If you follow the exercises in Bruce’s book you will, over time, build an excellent foundation to do future energy work with much reduced risk. Risk comes from blockages, health from no blockages. His exercises are focused on clearing blockages and creating a clear energy system. They are a very sensible way to proceed if you have no teacher.

Thanks. I guess I will need to re-order it. I’d originally purchased from an Amazon Reseller and they cancelled the order a few days later saying the book was out of stock. I guess this time I’ll purchase straight from Amazon.

Thank you. I’m female. Would it also be 2 inches below the navel for women as well? Would I place my hands the same way?

I’m glad to hear it. I’ve been doing a bit of searching on this subject across the web and to my surprise I’m hearing a LOT of negative feedback about Mantak Chia! They just all keep saying his methods can be dangerous not to mention all the other unflattering commentary. But nobody really comes out and explains WHY he is so disliked, WHY his methods are dangerous or WHY I see so many people across so many forums saying he is a Charlatan. What has this man done to earn such widespread disrespect among Qi Gong practitioners?!!

And there was something about Frantzis on his website saying his method is the more ancient Water Method as opposed to the more common Fire Method? I read on several forums later that Chia’s books are the Fire Method. Does the Fire Method just skip over clearing blockages or whatever?

Can you or anyone else explain what any of this is referring to?