Hi All,

Question : Anyone having success with retention while they are in a sexually active relationship?

Any tips? The basic problem is that while I can (usually) hold back when I want to, after about 10~15 min I no longer want to

I think I'm conditioned to see ejaculation as a goal or finish line. And while I keep reading about how important retention is, I've never been successfully for long enough to experience any benefits personally. So I just don't have enough motivation to break this conditioning.

I can see why people just give up on sex because if I really want to do this 100 days thing I think I might have to as well.

Help

p.s. Always wondered how women were able to stop when their partner does when they can just go multiple or enjoy going for longer so easy. I guess they just get so much "practice" with 2~5min sessions that they just get use to it. Personally I'd be screaming "No, I want MORE"

Anyone had some significant progress during retention?I dont belive retention does any good before you have opened the micro cosmic orbit

retention will open the microcosmic orbit on it's own, sexual energy is the strongest energy known to man.

Hmm,then it should be easy to open the MCO. Is this a fact or something you belive?because I have done it without retention using spring forest qi gong

Yes, you have to refine (use) the energy, otherwise retention is useless IMO

I'm interested in people that want to retain and how do they manage that in a sexually active relationship.

I.e. "yes it's all good now but it took me 6mts to not want to ejaculate"

or "No I still want to ejaculate, but after 3 months of practice the increased energy is just so much better"

That sort of thing.

have sex and don't ejaculate

Hmm - I think he's asking how you get yourself into a state that allows this.

I'd say
1) practice on your own
2) work a lot at PC muscle exercises
3) practice some kind of yoga/energy work
4) get your partner's support - she'll see the benefits ;-)
5) try using condoms, or thicker ones if you use them already

Through 1 & 2 you should be able to learn to have non-ejaculatory orgasms. They're almost as good as the normal kind, so this tends to reduce the attachment to ejaculation (and orgasm generally I think).

3, energy work, is important because you need to be aware of and fairly detached from, physical sensations to judge how close you are to the edge and respond appropriately. For this specific purpose, I think vinyasa/Ashtanga yoga works well. The PC muscle (aka mula bandha) is supposed to be engaged through the whole practice, the gymnastic nature of the vinyasa gives you some feedback about how well you're doing in this respect (your body feels lighter with the bandhas engaged) and you learn to monitor your breath to judge whether you're over-stretching or pushing yourself too hard. This last skill translates pretty well in a sexual context - and the stamina and flexibility are helpful too; it's easier to stay on track if you're not exhausted and physically comfortable and relaxed. (But if you do Ashtanga in particular, watch your knees - don't do the half lotus/lotus until your hips are flexible enough.)

Another benefit from energy work is that it can provide energetic sensations somewhat similar to orgasm (albeit generally much milder). If you're getting these sensations regularly during qigong or yoga, you probably won't feel such a need to get them during sex.

1-3 will also improve your stamina - in the sense of time to orgasm (ejaculatory or not). Women can only take so much - for some it's hours, limited by physical exhaustion, others seem to get a kind of overload of the nervous systems that makes it impossible for them to take further stimulation - sometimes after one orgasm. Regardless of your partner's limits, you can probably learn to outlast her - either with a long time to orgasm or ability to continue after the non-ejaculatory version.

Hi Mal,

Try the 3 finger approach. I have used that succesfully for years. It can be very awkward at first with your partner so master it on your own first. For me, this is all I have needed. Not saying that I now use it all the time but it is usually enough for the first "100" days.

Best,

Matt

Hi sykkelpump
how do you know you have opened it?

It's simple. Because women don't experience the physical sensation of needing to get off unless they go on Witch's Orgasmic Diet. Once I went on her diet I noticed the difference in a hurry. It was a totally new physical experience. For the first time ever I felt a physical sensation - a physical pulsing - need to get off. Never in my life had I experienced it before. I'm convinced Marrena Lindberg (Witch) is right. It's a biochemical/physiological thing. Without it you don't have the body compelling you with the desire or need to lose control like that.

It was a very 'yang' experience for me. Very disconcerting. Especially feeling that way at work and finding it extremely distracting to whatever tasks I needed to get done. I remember thinking in shock, "My god. Is this what MEN go through?" and then laughing, "OMG, yes it is."

When your body doesn't compel you with that need it's easier to find a stopping point.

I suppose only men who've lost their libido and their free testosterone are likely to really know what I'm talking about of what women usually experience though.

welcome to the world of the wang, sereneblue, LOL !

Thanks onebir, I can achieve non-ejaculatory orgasms whenever I want, as long as I pay attention
(Matt thanks for the 3 finger tip, use to use that one but I like internal locking now)

Nice to hear they are "almost as good" Which is probably why I still "want" to ejaculate, and it's a strong urge.

The problem may be more one of habituation. I had become use to shorter and less frequent sessions. Now after 15min (I think, don't really "watch the clock") my partner has had enough for now, she seems to like just 1 or 2. That's about 3x longer than I could manage at the start of the year (yes you can feel sorry for her) and my thinking goes like "Well that was cool fun, may as well come and finish"

I have been doing this for years (ejaculating) so I know it will take a while to get use to a change like non-ejaculatory orgasms, and I did manage to finish once without ejaculating and it was all good although we went for quite a while that time.......

Just having problems making myself want to do this in the "heat of the moment"

p.s. SereneBlue, yes it does sound like life as a boy

Hi Mal,

Just curious about internal locking. Is that something you learned from M Winn? So it is sealing the energy in with the perineum?

Best,

Matt

Hi Matt,
The retention method that was succesfull for me is Dr Lin's Anal Breathing, Using Trunk's readable site

http://www.precisiondocs.com/~altaoism/HLLinsLinks.htm

Pretty much the same procedure as Chia's. I like Lin's, I find the breathing gives you a chance if you don't pay enought attention and the point of no return sneaks up a bit quicker than you expected

Didn't occur to me that someone who could have NEO's (which is a bit of an achievement in itself, incidentally) would prefer the garden variety so strongly.

Reminds me of an italian colleague on pizza in the UK: "I used to find them discusting until I started to think of them as totally different to the pizzas in Italy." Maybe if you can think more about how NEOs and EOs feel different (as opposed to better/worse) and how you feel afterwards - I think this was the clincher for me - you won't have such a strong preference.

Something else that might help is asking your partner to disengage as soon as she's finished - some of the time. You'll probably end up having non-orgasmic sex this way, and might discover that it's not as bad as you thought.

NEO is a great achiviement and all the tips offered are good and valid, they lack the big picture thou.

Onebir, thanks for the tips, I'm guessing that not a lot of people are in relationships and practicing retention....

It not so much that I prefer EO's, it's just that after a couple of NEO's I've gotten use to to finishing with an EO. It's become a habit and an ego thing. I am still conditioned to go for as long as I can, it's hard to say "enough" when you can (and want to) keep going At least after an EO you HAVE to stop.

Also I've never had a practice like Kunlun that seems to successfully do something with the energy from retention. I'm sure that if I retain enough to notice ""negative effects" after an EO that that will help motivate me.

It's been a big learning curve for me this year.

Great Straight Upward Path.

My view is that this endeavor is usually much rockier than you (the general 'you', not you especially, Mal) are making out. If the saved jing is not harmoniously and fully integrated, that no amount of negative consequences will enable you to save at the crucial times. And, worse than that, what is saved but not fully integrated works against you as a sort of "all jiggled up but no place to go" form of jing that leads to potentially severe stagnation in the lower jiao. And, guess what?, with stagnation in the lower jiao, it's much harder to process jing (LTT breathe, etc.). So, this is back to step #1 of the bad cycle, but under worse conditions. Potentially (and not uncommon) progressively worse cycle of events.

And I'm not saying that the integration of jing into our consciousness path isn't important and all that... but that the potential difficulties are generally not advertised... and much of the popular info out there is shoddy, and none of us are perfect last time I checked. An interesting study, but it's not "ideal conditions all 'round".

Hi Trunk,

Nicely put, I totally agree. If it wasn't for Kunlun "needing" 100 days of celibacy I wouldn't even be looking at retention again. No matter how important it is "supposed" to be retention is a very difficult, possibly dangerous, path.

I'm sorry, but I get confused rather easily when it comes to the subject of stagnation. I have a friend who's been doing SKF for over ten years, and his best advice to me when I asked him how to achieve an NEO was, "lock the PC muscle by squeezing it as tight as you can the second you feel an orgasm starting, and then, still clenching the PC muscle, guide the energy up the spine to the head and keep it their until you no longer feel like you're about to ejaculate." How can stagnation occur from this?

I'm not real good at this either but I think the energy needs to come back down i.e. circulate.

I don't really understand about jing & all that but at a physical level the semen & prostatic fluid can stagnate. There seems to be a relationship between low frequency of ejaculation and prostatis (inflamation of the prostate), which is more common amongst celibates (eg priests etc) than sexually more active men. I've developed a problem with this, and it's proving difficult to cure. Several doctors I've seen have mentioned the little ejaculation - prostatitis link, and this is in China, where I think most docs have had some exposure to the implicit taoism of TCM, which you might think would lead them to discourage ejaculation...

For men trying the NEO route for some time, perhaps frequent prostate massage/drainage would reduce the risk of developing problems. (I don't know of any research on this, but some doctors in China do offer it, and I've read that it was used as a treatment for prostate problems in the west, but fell out of favour.)