dao

VALLEY ORGASM SUMMARY

1.First make love actively, using 3 or 6 shallow strokes for each deep one, or 9 shallow and 1 deep.

2.Stop thrusting when you feel near orgasm. Use the Big Draw to bring power up to the Pai-Hui.

3.Embrace and synchronize the breathing. Get in a comfortable position with no undue stress on the limbs.

4.Open the Microcosmic Orbit by directing your chi around the circuit with the power of thought.

5.Exchange power by circulating your energy in and around your entwined bodies using meditation. Focus your attention on the polar balance of energy in your lower Tan Tien. When the power builds move it upward in a wave towards your middle and upper tan tien.

6.When your energy has been transformed up, or you feel the loss of 50% of your erection, start to thrust again if you wish and build up more energy, keeping the urogenital diaphragm closed, and stopping before ejaculation.

7.Exchange power several times. Each time try to bring the energy up to increasingly higher centers, meditating on each Tan Tien for as long as you feel comfortable.

8.Women should also perform the Big Draw during the act of love. It will help her to tighten the vagina, stimulate hormonal production, and it offers the same benefits of longevity and spiritual development, just as the man's practice does. Remember the Big Draw is a muscular and mental practice; whereas the exchanging practice is a mental and spiritual operation. The higher energy in women is different from men. This study merits a complete work of its own which is projected for a later volume.

In the true Taoist dual cultivation both man and woman are regenerated in the practice, and neither is harmed. It is highly important the practice is not used for selfish interests. I recommend that neither partner have genital orgasm in the higher stages of the practice, although it may not be as great a loss for a woman and might even stimulate her to higher levels sometimes. When one partner approaches too near the orgasmic abyss, the overheating partner must signal the other to stop motion. Either may lessen the urge of orgasm by immediately doing the Big Draw to vent the power away from the genitals.

orgasmic ejaculation of your seed. You can still leak some of the clear "water" or semen which lubricates the passageway for the sperm out of the penis during the plateau phase of exchanging energy. This watery seminal fluid may carry a few invisible sperm eager to meet some lonely egg. This is also a caution against sleeping with women whom you do not love—an unwanted child will cost everyone far more dearly than the momentary sexual pleasure is worth. Remember that you are not only cultivating your sexual energy, you are cultivating the Tao in everything you do and think. Try to do it wisely—avoid big problems by taking the correct small measures.

A WOMAN'S VIEW OF DUAL CULTIVATION

Michael Winn conducted this interview with a 35 year old dancer, teacher, psychotherapist, housewife, and mother of one child.

MW: Did you find it difficult to learn the female half of dual cultivation, Ovarian Kung Fu?

Student: I've been practicing it for about 2 years. The concept was simple, the physical part was fairly simple, but it has taken me time to find my own needs and balances in sex. It was more difficult to help my partner to not have orgasms than to turn my own orgasm back. The question of whether or not to have an orgasm, whether or not it gives me energy or depletes me of energy seems to change. It depends on a couple of things. It depends on the type of orgasm, the type of energy between myself and my partner and where my energy is during that sexual encounter during that day or time or emotion.

MW: So, if your energy is at a low place, does your orgasm take you to a high place? Or if you're at a high place, does the orgasm drain you?

Student: I think if I'm in a low place, stirring up the sexual energy will increase my energy. But going all the way and having an ordinary orgasm will deplete me. If my energy is high, stirring up the sexual energy will make it higher and clearer and having an orgasm won't deplete me. It sometimes can give me more energy. When my partner gets more energy from my orgasm he's learned how to transfer it back to me so I don't lose energy from an orgasm, unless I'm depleted to start with. Then I tend to want to really conserve and do the Big Draw.

MW: Do you think this has radically changed sex for you? Student: Definitely. Without a doubt. It's very special. I

would say the ability to tune in to each other is really heightened. The harmony is far beyond what sex I had before. It's turned the sexual act into a really high art form of communication. Sex was great for me before, but this is much deeper. It has to do with the ability to communicate physically and psychically which I have gotten to at other times in my life, but this is a consistent path of getting there.

MW: So, let's break this down, is it just more physically intense?

Student: It's more intense, it's warmer, it's longer. And I

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think longer is a big part of it. I can have a whole body orgasm, and sexual excitement all over my body. I had that before a few times, but it happens much more often now. I can sustain the orgasm a long time. They last longer, a couple of minutes sometimes. Before it was only a few seconds. I'm really tuned into different types of orgasms now which I hadn't been before.

MW: What are the different types of orgasms?

Student: Each one is different. There are real gentle, mellow ones, there are intense ones, there are really driving forceful ones. They can happen in different parts and happen in the brain. It can happen in the genitals. I have used it for healing and it works. A couple of times I had an orgasm I've directed it to the weak organ to be healed, but I find it more useful to hold back on the orgasm and send the energy there. I have found one trick that really seems to intensify and lengthen an orgasm and that's to go into it about Vi way and then begin to hold back on it.

MW: So when you are already into an orgasm you can do the ovarian kung fu.

Student: Yes. It's as if you would withdraw from it but since you are already into it, it continues it and lengthens it and makes it last for a real long time. What it does is instead of turning off the orgasm if I'm already into it, it makes it last for a real long time. I send the energy up my spine. I'm not actually doing the Big Draw clenching contractions. I'm just tightening the vagina muscles and tilting the pelvis back. It's a slight arching of the spine out so the back is rounded.

MW: And that prolongs your orgasm. Student: Yes, tremendously.

MW: Is it because the spine is aligned that the energy can travel up easily?

Student: Probably. I'm not sure how it's pulling energy up, I found out about it trying to keep an orgasm from happening in my partner. When I start to have an orgasm it will trigger him to orgasm and I don't want that to happen. So if I start to have an orgasm and I feel his orgasm coming on, I'll pull back. I pull his penis out of my vagina and start to send my energy up. And what I found often happens is that just prolongs the orgasm in me.

MW: So you'll have an orgasm withdrawn from him; you'll have the orgasm more privately.

Student: Yes, I'm trying not to pull him into it. At other times

we stay together if he's feeling totally in control, and that's wonderful.

MW: What's the response amongst other women doing Ovarian Kung Fu?

Student: Generally it's good, they like doing it. Most women I talk to tend to think they had it all together before.

MW: I've heard that a lot also. Is that a common reaction? Student: To tell you the truth, there are only a few women that I think who have really been practicing with partners. Some of the

women are doing the exercises, but I know only one other woman who has been doing it with a partner. It's pretty much my own isolated experience, there just aren't enough women doing it.

MW: Have you ever felt, in terms of the quality of your sex, the quality of the energy, a high vibrational level?

Student: Yes. Sometimes I have a sense that I'm under water after an orgasm is over. I see things differently, and there is a buzzing in my ear. I've also had this happen after an intense meditation.

MW: How has Ovarian Kung Fu practice affected your daily

life?

Student: It's made me more sensitive to my partner and more sensitive to my own energy. There is a deeper level of tenderness and I think from this there is the impetus to conserve one's energy. To hold and cultivate it is precious. I think when you do that you create a certain type of presence in the world, and other people respond to you in a like manner.

MW: In terms of your energy and sharing it with your lover, what's the difference between energy and love? Is just having more energy in physical intensity the same as having more love?

Student: It's not just physical; it feels psychic. You're creating a loving relationship. The sex is a vehicle in creating harmony. The Taoist methods put more power into your emotions, into everything. There have been times in the middle of love making that we've both just cried, it is so powerful. That quality of tenderness, that connection. So it's definitely more than physical.

MW: On any level, do you feel you can distinguish between yin and yang energies?

Student: I don't think of it as yin and yang, but I do feel his heat going up my spine, and it transforms me. I feel more like a woman. But I couldn't define it as feelings. I would just define it

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more as a special energy. It's like fanning the fire inside yourself and then allowing yourself to melt into it.

MW: So what's the difference between this chi exchange and love?

Student: It's one way of exchanging love. It's one way of sharing energy. It creates more polarity. I feel fed, it's like a food. I get yang energy, and hot yang energy allows me to then create more yin. I become more balanced. I'd felt it before but I couldn't always get to it. And it wasn't as intense.

MW: Has this increased your appetite for making love? Student: Yes. It's increased my appetite but I'm okay without

it. I feel so satisfied so that it's not an absolute requirement. And also the Ovarian Kung Fu allows me to transform my sexual energy up so I don't get crazy if I'm horny and he's not. But when the opportunity is there I like to take advantage of it.

MW: Did you ever feel that your partner was more concerned with conserving his energy than in actually making love? Did you ever feel it got in the way of love making?

Student: No, never. It has only enhanced it. Sometimes it is frustrating when it doesn't work. But I look forward to getting better and better at it.

CHAPTER 10

THE SEVEN SPIRITUAL STAGES OF CULTIVATING SEXUAL ENERGY

In the practice of exchanging sexual power with one's partner or absorbing one's own seminal power there are many ways of proceeding. Each individual must develop himself using his current stage of evolution as the starting point. There are higher, more purely spiritual levels of transforming human consciousness than the beginning techniques of sexual cultivation taught in this book. But it is impossible to fully comprehend them and attain lasting benfit from them until a man is able to exert positive control over his sexual drive.

Many yogis, gurus and masters from the East have arrived in America thinking themselves fully enlightened, but soon discovered they had not achieved control over their sexuality. They had merely repressed their sexual desires while developing their higher spiritual centers. Some may have been genuinely accomplished but were trapped by their religious or cultural taboos against sex. This imbalance is made possible by the strong local taboos against free sex in the orient.

The Eastern culture is still tightly controlled by religious or family pressures that greatly reduce the temptation to have extramarital sex. The penalty for being discovered is too great and would ruin the "career" of an aspiring yogi or other spiritual teacher who is assumed to have transcended the sexual urge. In the climate of unbridled sexual freedom that exists in America, their

sexual urges re-emerged forcefully and became stumbling blocks in their spiritual development. Many slept with their followers, who later became disillusioned with their guru as he proved himself too human and attached to sex for the pleasure of it.

Some spiritual leaders are very critical of "lower" attempts to transform sexual energy using physical techniques as described in the beginning methods of Taoist dual cultivation of chi energy. They ignore that man is human and will make mistakes even while pursuing a spiritual path. Because sex and eating habits are deeply engraved in the nature of a man, you can't change these habits overnight. But if a man gradually changes inside, his habitual way of thinking and behaving will alter to conform to his innermost spiritual nature. This is the essence of the process of chi cultivation. The likeness is to a young tree beside an old tree: the first may bend easily but the old will not be bent so suddenly. Sexual essence, or ching chi, is our own internal fountain of youth, the sap flowing in the young tree. When you conserve and circulate it, it has a rejuvenating effect. Your mind, body, and spirit become more supple and pliant, then spiritual development can happen gracefully without great struggle. When the sap has run dry and you are crooked and arthritic, the path is painful and difficult.

IS DUAL CULTIVATION A LEFT HAND PATH?

Certain people involved in spiritual practices will recoil from Taoist cultivation of sexual energy and accuse its practitioners of using the "Left-Hand Path." By Left-Hand they mean that it involves the use of man and woman meditating together while sexually coupled. For this reason the practice appears to them suspect, tainted, or somehow less pure than a meditative practice or prayer which does not consciously involve sexual energy. In the Right-Hand path one takes a vow of celibacy.

Sex is not by itself spiritually undesirable. Without it no holy man would ever be born. The purity of the practitioner's intent in dual cultivation is critically important, as it is in every spiritual practice. If the intent is to control another person, then the practice can become "black". The crucial distinction is whether there is an attempt to interfere with the will of another, for his/her "good" or ill. Any manipulation or interference charged with subtle energy is a form of black magic, unless the other person freely asks for help or love and willingly expresses the desire to receive it.