PRESERVING THE YANG ELEMENT
By
my inner firmness I have caused my seed to remain stationary in the middle of
the Lingam. Thus it is always fruitful, ever ready. This is the power of
self-transcendence.
SKANDA PURANDA,
quoted in Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy
In
our western culture, “sex education” rarely consists of more than general
information on how babies are made and very basic instruction on how to protect
against disease and unwanted pregnancy. Much of the other knowledge we pick up
about sex comes from movies, magazines, friends, parents—and, given the sources,
much of it must be considered suspect. Eventually we gain some “hands-on”
experience, usually with another fairly uneducated partner. Experienced maybe,
if we look only at the total number of sexual encounters, but probably
inexperienced and uneducated in sexual intimacy, sexual techniques, and sexual
potential.
One of
the greatest areas of misinformation concerns the purpose of sex, its goal. Most
westerners, especially men, believe that the whole point of sex is ejaculation.
Many women also believe this; they may not have an orgasm themselves, but they
believe their men should. Besides, a man’s ejaculation signals that he’s
finished; too often a woman prefers that this happen sooner than later.
For
Tantricas, on the other hand, the purpose of sex is the conscious creation of
harmony and physical well-being, the buildup of sexual energy, and the
transcendence to spiritual levels of consciousness. This is not to say that they
deprive themselves of ecstasy; quite the contrary. Sexual ecstasy contributes to
the preservation and perpetuation of tantric love and partnership; and sexual
energy is one of the ways that tantric practitioners achieve spiritual growth.
Tantric
lovers experience more exciting, more orgasmic, more sexual loving than other
lovers do. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that part of their
ritual for lovemaking, the conscious creation of harmony through meditation and
communication on very deep levels, creates an environment in which sex and love
thrive. Another reason for the extraordinary sexual stamina of the Tantricas,
the frequency of engagement and the depth and length of their enjoyment, is the
practice of male ejaculatory control.
Techniques for controlling ejaculation are described in great detail in the
tantric texts, but the concept is practically a foreign one in our culture. From
the time a boy enters puberty, when his second chakra first begins to release
its powerful current of sexual energy, he’s pretty much controlled by sex, not
the other way around. And in the beginning there doesn’t seem to be much reason
for concern. A boy in his teens can masturbate like crazy and not experience any
problems, no physical problems anyway. Hair doesn’t grow on his palms, he isn’t
depleted of energy, he can do it again in a flash. His semen seems
inexhaustible. Of course, if he has been taught that masturbation is a sin, as
some boys are, he may suffer psychologically for his pleasure, receiving perhaps
his first negatively charged block to sexual expression.
However,
as a man ages, his sexual energy appears to diminish somewhat. A
twenty-five-year-old male is nowhere near as sexually obsessed as he was at
fifteen. By forty, some men begin to experience what they may think are normal
signs of aging: It takes longer to get an erection, longer to reach an orgasm;
force and volume of the ejaculation are less than they used to be; and after a
man has come, the refractory period, before he can ejaculate again, increases.
Some middle-aged men require twelve to twenty-four hours before they are able to
get an erection again after ejaculating.
The
tantric view of these symptoms is that they are not normal signs of age but
rather signs of the second chakra’s depletion, a result, Tantricas believe, of
the too-frequent expulsion of the life essence contained in a man’s semen.
Consciously controlling the ejaculation of that essence is the solution to such
problems.
Consider
this analogy: A boy inherits a trust fund when he’s twelve or thirteen. It’s
quite a tidy sum—to a youngster it seems a fortune—so he’s not shy about
spending some of it, even lots of it, even frivolously. Nobody talks to him
about saving any of it, or investing; or if they do, the advice isn’t
particularly appreciated. If the boy continues to squander his trust by spending
its principal, eventually, by old age, maybe even by middle age, he’s likely to
find his trust bankrupt.
Tantric
lovers make a conscious decision to nurture and thereby increase their sexual
trust. They invest it in a kind of mutual fund; they accumulate interest on it
and redeposit their interest to assure its growth. And this yields them the most
valuable kind of wealth—increased sexual energy well into old age.
Because
it is such a foreign idea, this aspect of tantric lovemaking encounters
considerable skepticism in the West. While westerners easily accept some pretty
far-out concepts—mystical sciences and theories, for example, such as astrology
or the power of crystals—they are unbelievably resistant to the possibility of
sex without ejaculation. The only way we are successful in convincing people
about the value of ejaculatory control is by getting them to try it, and in this
way gather data about its many benefits firsthand.
But
before we get into the benefits, let us say that when we urge ejaculatory
control, we don’t mean to suggest that a man should never have orgasms. Tantric
sex distinguishes between the experiences of orgasm and of ejaculation, which is
also a fairly revolutionary idea for westerners, who usually think of the two as
one. Tantra defines orgasm as the internal experience of explosive sexual
climax, and ejaculation as the external expression of it—the losing of orgasmic
energy, in a way, the releasing or letting go of it into the external
environment. With extended practice, ejaculatory control allows a man to
separate orgasm and ejaculation, allows him to keep his orgasm inside, and enjoy
it in its circuit through his body. He can learn how to direct it and extend it
and make it last for many minutes; and in so doing, he can enjoy and assimilate
a much higher degree of energy than he would experience from an orgasm that is
immediately released. You’ll see the difference in just a few loving sessions,
using the techniques we’ll describe.
Also,
when we encourage ejaculatory control, we don’t mean that a man should never
ejaculate. What we’re talking about is control, establishing a choice about
whether or not to ejaculate. In other words, once a man has control over his
ejaculation, he will no longer be led around by his lingam—he will be in charge.
This is an empowering realization for a man, with far-reaching influence in all
other areas of his life.
We ask now that our male readers think for a minute about how they feel after an
orgasm. You’re about as relaxed as you ever get, right? You’re so relaxed, in
fact, that the next step is unconsciousness. Frequently, that’s exactly the
state a man assumes within minutes after an ejaculation. This is not the same
experience a woman has after orgasm—not even if she has released her amrita, the
near-equivalent of a man’s ejaculation. Women are energized by orgasmic love;
men are temporarily wiped out. This has to do with the kind of energy each
releases in orgasm.
For a
woman, the shakti consists of yin, or negatively charged, energy—negative in the
polar or magnetic sense. The man’s sexual energy is the opposite; it is yang, or
positively-charged, energy in the magnetic sense. When a woman discharges her
negative energetic field in love, she is lightened by its release and raised up
by it. Having changed her balance of energy by releasing a quantity of yin, she
is more yang, especially if she has received some of her lover’s yang energy, in
which case she’s positively buzzing. On the other hand, when the man discharges
his positive, or yang, energy, he is depleted rather than lightened, left with a
deficit of yang, which is the energetic essence of his masculine aspect. Maybe
it’s just as well that he goes to sleep—he’s not really himself in this
condition.
There are
ways of retrieving a good measure of the energy that the ejaculate carries away
from a man along with his sperm, and we will describe some of them in Chapter
Eight; but for now, let’s focus on how to keep and build yang energy by
consciously taking control of it. Ejaculatory control is one of the ultimate
expressions of conscious loving.
BENEFITS OF
EJACULATORY CONTROL
When a
man learns the techniques for containing his ejaculate, he is able to make love
for extended periods of time—in fact, for as long as he chooses. The benefits
that result from this are manifold. Longer periods of lovemaking mean more
intimate sexual play, more time for communion through intercourse, more of those
electric feelings of arousal and desire and supersensitivity and pleasure. This
staying power is particularly meaningful for Tantricas, because the sexual
experience is also a spiritual experience.
The
longer a man engages in lovemaking, the greater his buildup of sexual energy and
the sharper its yang element. This results in far more powerful orgasms than if
he had been aroused and making love for only ten minutes or so. And if he
chooses to come, having held his ejaculate back for an extended lovemaking
session, the release is far more explosive.
Perhaps
even more significant than his own orgasmic potential in extended love is the
potential it provides the woman, whose energy is usually aroused more slowly.
The man who is not rushed in love and who has no personal ejaculatory intention
or goal lurking in the shadows of his consciousness during sex, loves, and
experiences the act of love, differently.
Frankly,
before a man understands and is capable of this control, lovemaking often has
more to do with his own perceived physical need for release than it does with
love. Ejaculatory control is an important step in elevating sex to the art of
love. Don’t be surprised if you fall in love with your partner all over again
when you use this technique in your lovemaking. Both men and women will see each
other differently because they will be experiencing their lovemaking with a
different kind of awareness in a different state of consciousness. When a man
purposefully doesn’t come, for example, the woman understands that he is saying
to her, “This lovemaking is only for you. My satisfaction is going to be in
assisting your ecstasy, and I want nothing more for myself because your pleasure
will touch my heart and my mind and my soul, and that’s more important to me
than ejaculating.” The man offers his lovemaking to his beloved as a gift, and
it is received as such. Women are profoundly moved by this gift, and it seems to
increase the strength of the relationship, and the power of the love. For many
women this experience can be the beginning of the kind of deep psychological
healing we discussed earlier—it is the antithesis of a male’s taking his
pleasure from a woman, using her in a manner of speaking, and giving nothing
back. The woman who has been used, bruised, or abused by men will be soothed and
reassured by the man who gives to her and asks nothing in return.
In
addition, a man who exercises this kind of sexual control often seems to give
the woman freedom to finally lose control of herself. Her orgasmic potential
increases with this discipline, and it’s a wonderful thing for a man to feel he
can influence the depth of a woman’s orgasm; it does wonders for his own
feelings of self-worth. So a more loving, less needy sexuality is fostered, and
psychologically both partners get a terrific boost.
Another
benefit to ejaculatory control is that the man doesn’t feel physically wasted
from an ejaculation, so he won’t shut down physically, emotionally, and mentally
after sex. This, obviously, can be of great importance to the woman who is often
frustrated by the sudden withdrawal, literally and figuratively, of her partner,
especially if she hasn’t had an orgasm herself. Even when both do experience
orgasms, his shutting down can be disappointing to the woman, because her orgasm
has left her with lots of energy; she wants to talk, cuddle, be intimate—and
he’s not available emotionally. In fact, he’s probably snoring away. But when a
man practices control, he won’t be snoring. The refractory period is very short
between erections for men who learn to control their ejaculation. Since he
hasn’t spent his sexual energy, he’s able to make love again if he wants to, or
if his beloved does. And his unspent yang energy, earning interest from her yin
essence, increases. Tantricas have more energy, more vitality for all areas of
life when they practice this technique.
We’ve
noticed another benefit for men when they use this kind of control—they look
younger. If a man doesn’t ejaculate there are no bags under his eyes the next
morning, his skin looks smoother, and there’s a kind of glow that’s noticeably
missing when he’s overspent his yang energy. This benefit may not be so obvious
in younger men, but for men approaching middle age or older, there’s quite a
difference.
In all
this, it’s important to remember that every man operates at a different level of
energy; each man has to discover his own formula for how often he chooses to
release. Some men can ejaculate three or four or more times a week with no ill
effect; others may find themselves feeling a little zombielike if they ejaculate
that often. There are just two rules: The first is never force an ejaculation;
the second is never stop an ejaculation once it has started.
Most men
have tried to force their ejaculation at one time or another. It happens
sometimes with extended sex, sometimes even with masturbation, when for some
reason a man can’t come, much as he might want to. Instead of accepting this, he
tries to force it—rubbing and pulling and manhandling himself until he drives
that ejaculate out. This is detrimental to physical well-being, seriously lowers
resistance to disease, and reduces vitality.
There can
be any number of reasons for a man to experience this kind of unwilling sex.
Eastern theorists recognize a cyclical period in men during which the energy of
the sex chakra becomes retrograde in a way, and requires recharging.
When a
man’s second chakra is so affected or stressed by external circumstances, he may
experience what seems like sexual dysfunction or a lowering of libido. The
sensitive sexual center can be affected by emotional or psychological tension,
by physical exhaustion or illness, by some medications or drugs, and by the
influence of the energy centers on either side of it—the base chakra, whose
energy responds to material issues, and the navel chakra, which is tuned to
power issues.
Whatever
the cause, when a man’s sex drive seems to be in first gear he mustn’t grind it
into third. He should allow the second chakra a period of rest, a little R&R to
replenish itself in its natural way. He can still delight his partner, build
intimacy, and connect with his heart.
Women
should also be sensitive to this rule, and not encourage an ejaculation that
isn’t forthcoming. Some women have the misguided idea that they’re doing their
lover a favor by trying to help him ejaculate when he is having difficulty doing
so.
It is
also important not to interrupt an ejaculation if it has already begun; this can
cause a bladder infection, or distress the prostate gland, or both.
There are
four levels to ejaculatory control. Once a man recognizes the benefits we’ve
just discussed, and desires to master his ejaculations, he has achieved the
first level. Level two consists of learning and practicing specific techniques
to accomplish control. Level three is attained when a man has mastered his
sexual energy, when he is able to exercise a conscious choice in the matter of
his ejaculation. When a man reaches level four he has become adept at
manipulating this energy—he has mastered techniques for generating,
transmitting, and absorbing chakra energy with the lingam. Let us turn our
attention now to level two and the specific techniques that can be practiced to
control ejaculation.
TECHNIQUES FOR
ACHIEVING EJACULATORY CONTROL
A man
needs to become sensitive to his normal sexual response pattern, which usually
expresses itself in three or four phases. The first phase is arousal, before he
begins to anticipate the orgasm. Phase two is the period when he’s aware he’s
getting close to his orgasm. This period builds quickly once it’s felt, mainly
because the man usually speeds up at this point. Phase three is orgasm and
ejaculation; among advanced Tantricas, phase three is orgasm, phase four is
ejaculation. Control techniques are applied during phase one or two; beginners
should start during phase one. The goal of the techniques we are going to
describe is to prolong phase two and thereby extend the length of lovemaking.
During
phases one and two, the arousal period, all the chakras are affected, turned on,
and they begin emitting energy that is inexorably drawn down to the high-voltage
second chakra. With enough buildup of energy in that center discharge is
inevitable, so the tantric way is to reverse the current, consciously and
physically, propelling the now sexually charged energy back up to the various
chakras. There are three internal practices that help turn the energy away from
the second chakra, and three external ones. Let’s look at the internal ones
first.
Internal
Practices
1.
PC Muscle Manipulation
If you
could look up into the body through the pelvic floor, you would see a muscle
that acts as a kind of cradle for the sexual organs, the urethra, and the
rectum. It’s called the pubococcygeal muscle, or PC muscle for short, and
because of its significant role in sexual enjoyment it is often referred to as
the “love muscle.” This hammocklike muscle extends from the back and base of the
spine, where it’s tied off at the coccyx, to the front of the body, where it
connects at the pubic bone. It is the major muscle of contraction in the female
orgasm; the stronger a woman’s PC muscle, the more powerful her orgasms and the
more likely the experience of multiple and extended orgasms. The PC muscle is
also of great importance in male orgasms. For the man, a strong love muscle
makes for a strong, firm erection, increases the power and duration of orgasm,
and allows him to separate orgasm from ejaculation.
Both men
and women can get a feeling for the location and potential of the love muscle in
this way: The next time you urinate, try to stop the flow of urine by clenching.
If the PC muscle is weak, an army of nearby muscles, including the abdominal and
anal sphincter muscles, will contract along with the PC muscle, but in fact it
is the love muscle that tightens around the urethra and shuts off the stream of
urine. To help strengthen your love muscle, make it a habit to do this clenching
exercise twice every time you urinate. As the PC muscle gains strength, you will
be able to distinguish it from the other nearby muscles. (Further discussion of
the love muscle, as well as additional strengthening exercises, can be found in
Chapter Nine.)
Once a
man has developed a strong PC muscle, he has taken a giant step toward
ejaculatory control, for as soon as he begins to experience impending orgasmic
feelings, he can clench and hold this muscle in a sustained contraction that
will reverse the flow of sexual energy away from the second chakra. Try it the
next time you and your partner are making love. As the man starts to feel an
impending orgasm, both partners should stop all movement, and the man should
focus attention on his PC muscle, clenching and holding it. He should remain
still and breathe slowly and deeply until the feeling of urgency has passed.
2. Breath
Control
Breath
control is the second internal method for reversing the flow of sexual energy.
Some very practiced yogis can hold back ejaculation by means of breath control
alone. Respiration increases as an orgasm becomes imminent, so consciously
slowing and deepening the breath can make a big difference. As the man is
clenching his PC muscle, both partners should remain very still and connect with
each other with their hearts and with their eyes. The woman should match her
breathing to her lover’s as he slows himself, and she should visualize with him
the current of his energy flowing up toward the higher chakras.
3. Shifting Focus to the Higher Chakras
As the
two partners connect during this still, quiet moment they are likely to
experience a profound feeling of intimacy, and as they begin to focus on the
higher chakras, the fourth (heart) and sixth (between the eyebrows), they will
also be channeling energy away from the second chakra.
Men
should not worry about the diminishing of their erection. This is bound to occur
as the yang energy retreats from the lingam; usually a man will lose only about
twenty percent, and when the erection returns, having touched base with its
original energy source, it will be stronger than before. Men will discover that
their level of passion increases, their erections last longer, and the quality
of their loving is enriched.
External
Practices
1. The
Pull
To
perform this technique, either the man or the woman gently squeezes and pulls
down on the scrotum, holding for ten to thirty seconds. Be careful not to
squeeze the testicles, but just above them where the sac meets the lingam. This
can be a very discreet gesture the man performs himself, or the woman can do it
as she caresses the perineal area and scrotum. This technique assures that the
man will not ejaculate; at the same time it allows him to stay inside the woman,
even with a softer erection.
2. The
Press
The press
is applied to what we call the male sacred spot, which is centered in the
perineum, in the area we refer to as “his missing three inches of lingam.” We
usually consider the lingam to extend from its tip to the place where the shaft
joins the testicles, but in fact the lingam continues through the testicles,
travels under the skin another three inches, and ends at the anus. During
lovemaking, these missing three inches respond just like the rest of the lingam;
they swell and become hard and extremely sensitive to stimulation. Westerners
are often unaware of the pleasure that can be generated with some attention to
this part of a man’s body.
The
sacred spot is distinguished by a slight indentation on the perineum midway
between the testicles and the anus, when the lingam is erect. Pressure applied
to this spot will turn around the direction of ejaculatory energy in ten to
thirty seconds. Either lover should use the index and middle fingers to apply a
gentle but firm touch. This technique allows the man’s energy to be rechanneled
without requiring that he stop moving, or withdraw from his beloved. As you
become proficient at it, especially when you’re practiced in allowing your touch
to extend energetically beyond the surface of the skin, the amount of pressure
required lessens.
3. The
Squeeze
A squeeze
around the frenulum is the third external method to prevent ejaculation. The
frenulum, located about an inch down from the tip of the penis, is composed of a
kind of epidermal tissue that is similar to the tissue of the mouth’s frenulum.
(The frenulum of the mouth is a highly charged receptor for sexual energy that
stretches, weblike, from the gum just above the two front teeth to the upper
lip.) The lingam’s frenulum is extremely sensitive and responds within ten to
thirty seconds to a firm squeeze, almost as if to a circuit breaker. Although
the erection is temporarily wilted and the desire for orgasm calmed, both return
within minutes of resuming lovemaking.
We cannot
predict how long a man will be able to sustain active intimacy, riding arousal
to the edge of orgasm and orgasm to the edge of ejaculation, but we can predict
with confidence that he will get better with practice and that by rerouting his
sexual energy in this way not only will he extend his lovemaking but also he and
his partner will share a much deeper experience than ever before.
ÃÖíÝÊ Ýí:13-7-2014... ÇáÍÈ æ ÇáÚáÇÞÇÊ> ÇáÌäÓ æ ÇáÊÃãá .... ÅÐÇ æÌÏÊ Ãä ÇáãæÖæÚ ãÝíÏ áß¡ ÃÑÌæ ãäß ÏÚã ÇáãæÞÚ
|