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THE BODY ELECTRIC
As Western chemistry has become more refined, it is now able to demonstrate that our bodies are indeed filled with energy and electric charges. In the February 1984 issue of Discover magazine, K. C. Cole explained the comparison: “Electricity is almost certainly the most elusive of everyday things: It lives in the walls of our houses, and regulates the lives of our cells. . . . It runs electric trains and human brains. . . . Your entire body is a giant electric machine: body chemistry (like all chemistry) is based on electrical bonds.”
Sun Ssu-miao, one of the leading physicians of ancient China, recommended that men attain good health and longevity by ejaculating twice a month, as long as they ate healthily and exercised. He also offered the following more specific guidelines.
A man at twenty can ejaculate once every four days.
A man at thirty can ejaculate once every eight days.
A man at forty can ejaculate once every ten days.
A man at fifty can ejaculate once every twenty days.
A man at sixty should no longer ejaculate.
Your Arousal
According to Taoism, we need to feel aroused, to feel the life-giving force of sexual energy, every day, because when we feel aroused, our bodies produce more sexual hormones, which in Taoism were considered the fountain of youth. (This need for arousal is why sex sells: we are drawn to images that stimulate this sexual energy and these sexual hormones.) When you learn how to circulate your sexual energy, you can feel this rejuvenating power at any time.
FIGURE 11. TOUCHING YOUR TONGUE TO YOUR PALATE while ejaculating
Although each step helps move the energy up, contracting your anus is the most important part of the practice because it is this squeezing action that literally pumps the energy up your spine. Eventually, you will be able to rely on your mind and a quick squeeze of your anus alone to bring the energy to your head.
At first you will be working on drawing the energy up to your head, which will help you experience a “brain” or whole-body orgasm and feel energized. However, it is equally important that you draw the energy down to your navel to keep yourself balanced and to allow your body to store the energy for later use (see figure 12). The Taoists knew the truth of the expression “What goes up must come down.”
As doctors, the Taoist masters were interested in sexuality as part of a larger concern for the health of the entire body. They practiced Sexual Kung Fu because they discovered that ejaculation drains a man’s energy. You have probably also noticed this loss of energy and general feeling of fatigue after ejaculating. Even though you would like to be attentive to your partner’s sexual and emotional needs, all your body wants to do is sleep. As one multi-orgasmic man put it, “Once I ejaculate, the pillow looks better than my girlfriend does.”
“I really notice it in the morning if I ejaculate. I get up dragging my feet and I am tired by noon. When I have multiple orgasms without ejaculating. I wake up refreshed and I need less sleep.” Another man who was recovering from a chronic illness explained: “My sexual desire has always been strong, so I ejaculated often, once or twice a day. And with every ejaculation my health got worse and worse because I was losing a lot of energy.” Many men, especially young men, may not notice this feeling of depletion at first unless they ejaculate when they are sick or working hard.
According to the Tao, play is one of the best ways to learn, and “playing with ourselves” is an excellent way to strengthen our genitals and our sexual energy. Many people worry about masturbating “too much,” but the Taoists knew that there is no such thing—as long as one learns to control ejaculation. Too much ejaculation is the problem: it drains men of their strength, but this can happen with intercourse as well as self-pleasuring.
According to Kinsey and more recent surveys, almost all boys—and most men—masturbate.3 Prohibiting or discouraging a natural part of child sexuality turns boys into sexual thieves, forcing them to steal their pleasure. It is quite possible that most men ejaculate so quickly because they grew up trying to “get off” before they “got caught.” Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, in his book Boys and Sex, explains that since almost all boys masturbate, they should learn to do so slowly and for extended periods of time so that they will be able to make love longer when they eventually become sexually active.
The Taoists would add that boys should learn to pleasure themselves without ejaculating. Young boys or teenagers who ejaculate too much can find that their energy and motivation for other activities decreases significantly. When one of the authors of this book, Mantak Chia, was growing up in Thailand, he sat next to a boy in school who had repeated the fourth grade four times. The boy masturbated each day in class four or five times and ejaculated into a bottle. Obviously, his was an extreme case, but according to Taoism, his failure in school was quite understandable. He was literally draining himself and his brain. The expression “screwing your brains out” is an accurate description of the stupor that occurs after repeated ejaculation.
Many men (and women) who are married or in relationships continue to pleasure themselves. In 1972, the American Medical Association advised physicians in a book entitled Human Sexuality, “Masturbation is practiced by men and women of all ages, often as a supplement to marital coitus, and women tend to masturbate more as they grow older.” (Estimates suggest that about 70 percent of married men—and married women—pleasure themselves.4) Self-pleasuring does not take the place of sex with a partner, but it can serve as a valuable complement. A recent national sex study sponsored by the University of Chicago found that people who are having sex regularly with a partner actually pleasure themselves more than people who are not.5
Pleasuring yourself can help relieve built-up tension when you need a sexual release more than intimacy. It also can help when your partner is tired, distracted, or does not have the same sexual appetite. (If your partner generally has a lower sex drive, make sure to recommend that she read chapter 6 and that you both read the section called “The Seasons of Our Sex Lives” in chapter 9.) If for whatever reason you feel that you just can’t pleasure yourself, you can learn to become multi-orgasmic with your partner instead. It may take a little longer, that’s all. You can also do the exercises you have already learned: Belly Breathing, Century Count, Stopping the Stream, and PC Pull-Ups.
Pleasuring ourselves is not something we are taught to do. Considering the outcry that occurred when Surgeon General Elders suggested that masturbation “perhaps should be taught,” it is unlikely that it will be introduced into the curriculum anytime soon. Most of us learn how to masturbate in a hurry, by ourselves, or with other, equally inexperienced boys. None of these circumstances are conducive to developing real sensitivity—or much skill—so we offer a few pointers.
EXPERIENCE YOUR OWN PLEASURE. If you choose to use pornography or erotica to get aroused, try, once you are aroused, to shift your focus to the sensations in your body. Pornography, though it can increase your sexual energy, is also distracting and can make it difficult for you to focus on your own sensations as you approach orgasm. Many men learn to self-pleasure with pornography, and although this is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of the First Amendment or the sex industry, it is important to recognize that pornography succeeds when it takes you away from yourself. In this practice you need to go inward and experience your own pleasure, not someone else’s idea of pleasure.
FIGURE 7. PENIS REFLEXOLOGY
STIMULATE YOUR ENTIRE PENIS. It is important to try to stimulate your entire penis. Most men focus primarily on the head of their penis, which is the most erogenous part. However, according to Chinese medicine, the different parts of the penis correspond to different parts of the body (see figure 7). To avoid overstimulating one part of your body, try to rub your entire penis, the shaft as well as the head.
TOUCH YOUR BALLS. If touching your scrotum is not part of your regular routine, you may want to try it. The testicles can be especially sensitive to light touch, although many men also enjoy pulling on their scrotum. Rubbing your testicles actually increases the production of testosterone, which adds to your potency both by raising your sperm count and by improving your overall health (see the Testicle Massage exercise in chapter 8). In the next section we describe the Scrotal Tug, which can help delay ejaculation, but for now you should learn to touch your scrotum just for pleasure.
EXPLORE THE MILLION-DOLLAR POINT. As you masturbate, you should explore your perineum and the Million-Dollar Point (just in front of your anus). Pushing on this spot when you are about to ejaculate can help stop the ejaculatory reflex, but again, for now you are just exploring it for its pleasure. Pushing on this spot can squeeze more blood into your penis, which will make it throb pleasurably. Strong rhythmic pressure here also imitates the prostate contractions that accompany contractile-phase orgasm.
The Million-Dollar Point is best stimulated after you have an erection and are highly aroused, since once again the body gets aroused and swells from front to back. If you do not feel any sensation or it feels uncomfortable, stop until you are more fully aroused. If you don’t warm to this spot as a place of sexual stimulation, you can return to focusing on your penis and scrotum.
TAKE TIME. It is important to take as much time as you have to enjoy and learn to prolong ejaculation. “In our work with over a thousand cases,” Hartman and Fithian report, “we’ve found that if a man can learn to go for fifteen to twenty minutes during masturbation or pleasuring, he can go as long as he wants to during intercourse. That period (fifteen to twenty minutes) seems to be critical. Once you’ve passed it, you have control. It’s that simple.”
This may seem like a long time, and it is, especially if you have been used to two- or three-minute masturbatory quickies. One multi-orgasmic man explained the difference: “When I used to play with myself, I would jack off in three to five minutes just to release tension or because I was bored or whatever. Self-cultivation is different. I try to play with myself as long as I can and not come. After a while, I could play with myself for twenty minutes.” Once you become multi-orgasmic, you will be able to peak many times (without ejaculating) during these twenty or so minutes and you will be able to circulate rejuvenating, healing energy through your body. As another multi-orgasmic man described self-cultivation, “It’s somewhere between masturbation and meditation.”
The last thing we want to do is make pleasuring yourself mechanical or turn it into a burden, and as with lovemaking there is no one right amount of time or number of orgasms. Both depend on the situation, your free time, and your level of arousal. If you start to feel bored, ask yourself what is causing the boredom. Are you falling back into old patterns? Is your touch becoming mechanical? Are you focusing too much on your genitals? Are you distracted? If you are unable to concentrate, try the breathing exercise described in the next chapter to reconnect with your body.
Sensitizing our bodies and pampering ourselves is not something we generally consider very manly, but pleasure is just as manly as pain—and a lot more fun. It will help your practice to begin by taking a hot bath (maybe with a little soothing sesame or olive oil) and even massaging your body. Lowering the lights and lighting a candle can help you focus. You can also sit in front of a mirror (with or without a candle) and notice what your body looks like. Try to find its sensuality. Touch and feel your hands and arms, your feet (if you can reach them), calves, and thighs. Touch your chest and even your nipples. When you pleasure yourself, try massaging your thighs and stomach before you zero in on your genitals.
CULTIVATE LOVE. While most men do self-pleasure (feeling guilty or not), few are really able to do it lovingly, to cultivate love—make love to themselves—while they are doing it. Cultivating self-love is essential to being a loving partner. Sexual energy simply magnifies the energy in your body, positive or negative. If you are feeling love, love will be increased by your sexual desire. If it’s hate you’re feeling, then hate will be increased. It is essential that you understand the way sexual energy amplifies your emotions for both your solo and your duo practice. Cultivating your sexual energy into loving-kindness will also help you not to ejaculate; it is much more difficult to maintain control when you are feeling anger or impatience.
In Taoist sexuality you cannot separate your genitals from your heart because the sexual energy circulates throughout your entire body. As one multi-orgasmic man explained, “I used to actually want to keep sex and emotions separate, but as I practiced Taoist sexuality, my genitals became more connected to my heart and I discovered real, profound love for my partner and even for other people.”
The Taoists have a simple exercise for connecting your heart and your genitals (love and sex). Try it if you find that you are feeling irritable, frustrated, or distracted when you start being sexual with yourself or your partner: put your right hand on your groin and your left hand on your heart, connecting sexual energy with love. If you often feel anger, hatred, or other negative emotions, you must transform these feelings before cultivating your sexual energy. The Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds—techniques described in Mantak Chia’s Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality—can help, as can psychological counseling.
Self-love, which is quite different from egotism or narcissism, is the basis for any solo or duo practice. In The G Spot, the authors caution that they have not written a book about love. Our book is also not about love; it is primarily about sex. But the Taoists knew that if you are to stay healthy you can never really separate the two.
Now try a self-pleasuring exercise that will help you expand your sensual focus and extend pleasure to your entire body. In the next section, you will learn more demanding exercises for controlling your arousal and becoming multi-orgasmic. But they are based on your being highly aware of your pleasure, so we begin here with self-pleasuring.
If you are able to experience the involuntary pc contractions that occur at contractile-phase orgasm without ejaculating, you have already taken the right road to becoming a multi-orgasmic man. If you actually have two of these mini-orgasms, you already are! These will not be earth-shattering orgasms at first, but eventually they will spread throughout your body. For now just enjoy the sHIVering feeling of these mini-orgasms. One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “Just as I am about to reach the point of ejaculation, I stop and relax and breathe. It’s almost as if I am letting myself go or fall back into a nonejaculatory orgasm. Sometimes it feels like a pleasurable twitch in my prostate. Other times I can feel it throughout my whole genitals and it’s as intense—more intense—than an ejaculatory orgasm. My wife often can’t tell whether I have ejaculated or not until I tell her.”
If you have not yet started to feel the contractile-phase orgasm, and if the pressure in your pelvis feels uncomfortable, you can try the Pelvic Massage exercise described later in this chapter or you can just ejaculate. Drawing the sexual energy away from your pelvis and massaging your pelvis will help decrease the pressure that all men feel when they begin. Also, if you crest over accidentally, don’t give yourself a hard time. You are just beginning to learn the practice and to gain control of your arousal rate.
EXERCISE 5
SELF-PLEASURING
1. Start by lubricating your penis. Lubricant will increase your sensations. Oil is generally better than lotion, which dries up more quickly.
2. Pleasure yourself however you like, remembering to massage and stimulate your entire penis, your scrotum, and your perineum, including the Million-Dollar Point.
3. Try to notice your increasing levels of arousal: notice the tingling at the root of your penis, notice the stages of erection, notice your heartbeat rise.
4. When you are getting near ejaculation, stop and rest. Try to notice the contraction of your pc muscle and anus that occurs at contractile-phase orgasm, although don’t be surprised if it takes some time to experience this without ejaculating. You can also try to squeeze your pc muscle around your prostate if the prostate starts contracting and you are afraid you might fall over the edge.
5. After you regain control, you can start again as many times as you like and continue for as long as you like.
Learning to Control Ejaculation
Now that you have started learning how to control your breath and your sex muscles, you are ready to learn some specific techniques for controlling ejaculation when you are highly aroused. The more you practice the exercises you’ve learned so far, the easier it will be to practice the ones given later in this chapter and stop yourself from going past the “point of no return.”
STOPPING
First, and most important, you need to stay aware of your arousal rate and stop a few strokes (or thrusts, if you’re with your partner) before you think you will ejaculate. Many sexologists call this the stop/start technique, but it is just common sense. Better to stop too soon than too late. In the beginning, you will probably need to stop stimulating yourself for ten or twenty seconds to allow the urge to ejaculate to subside.
BREATHING
The deep breathing we described earlier is extremely important in controlling your arousal rate and in delaying ejaculation when you are highly aroused. One technique that has proved especially effective is to breathe in deeply and hold your breath for several moments until the urge to ejaculate subsides. Some multi-orgasmic men, however, breathe rapidly to delay ejaculation. (This quick, shallow breathing is called the breath of fire in the yoga tradition.) Deep, slow breathing helps control your sexual energy, whereas shallow, rapid breathing helps disperse the energy. You can experiment and see what works for you.
CONTRACTING THE PC MUSCLE
As already mentioned, the pc muscle surrounds the prostate, through which your semen must pass during the expulsion phase of orgasm. By learning to squeeze your prostate during contractile-phase orgasm (when it is contracting involuntarily), you can help yourself avoid moving from contraction to expulsion. (Between contraction and expulsion lies the infamous “point of no return.”) One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “I hold back the ejaculation simply by contracting the pc muscle at precisely the right time. It took quite some time to master this process, but the results are definitely worth the effort.”
SQUEEZING THE PENIS
Many sexologists recommend squeezing the penis, a technique that was originally developed for men who ejaculate “prematurely.” It is simple. Just place the first two fingers of either hand on the underside of your penis, place your thumb on the top, and squeeze (see figure 8a). Some men also find that gripping their penis like the handlebar of a bicycle and pressing down on the tip or underside with their thumb helps them reduce their arousal (see figure 8b). Although these techniques can be effective in solo practice, they are awkward when having intercourse because you must withdraw. To prepare for this situation, you can try using your mind to help squeeze the tip of your penis. Eventually, you will be able to squeeze the tip of your penis with just your mind and will avoid the clumsiness of having to use your hands. Another good technique is squeezing at the base of your penis (remembering to also squeeze with your mind). This will help you control your arousal and will also expand and strengthen your erections (see figure 8c).
FIGURE 8. DELAYING EJACULATION WITH THE SQUEEZING METHOD
FIGURE 9. SCROTAL TUG
PRESSING THE MILLION-DOLLAR POINT
One of the oldest Taoist techniques is pressing the Million-Dollar Point while contracting your pc muscle. This helps delay ejaculation both by focusing your attention and by interrupting the ejaculatory reflex. It is simple and effective. First locate your Million-Dollar Point, which is just in front of your anus (see figure 2). There should be an indentation when you push at the correct spot. You will need to push your finger in up to your first joint. One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “Pressing on the Million-Dollar Point for a while decreases my erection slightly and the danger of ejaculating greatly.” You will also be able to use this technique during intercourse without withdrawing.
SCROTAL TUGGING
Since your testicles have to pull up close to the body in order to propel the semen out of the testes, pulling them away from your body can delay ejaculation. Circle the top of your sac with your thumb and forefinger (see figure 9). Pull down firmly.
DRAWING AWAY SEXUAL ENERGY
More than any mechanical technique, the secret to stopping yourself from ejaculating is learning to pump your sexual energy away from your genitals and up through your spine to the rest of your body. If the sexual energy continues to build up in your groin, it will eventually be too great to control and will shoot out in the most direct way it can—through your penis. However, if you draw this energy away, it will be much easier to stop yourself from ejaculating. As we discussed in the previous chapter, this is also the secret to learning how to have whole-body orgasms. In the next section we will give step-by-step instructions to show you how to circulate your sexual energy through your body. In the meantime, simply imagine drawing your sexual energy out of your penis, past your perineum, and up your spine. Contracting your perineum will help pump the energy up and will prepare you for the Big Draw exercise we describe later in this chapter.
EXERCISE 6
SEPARATING ORGASM FROM EJACULATION
1. Start by lubricating your penis, as you did in the Self-Pleasuring exercise.
2. Before focusing on your genitals, remember to touch and massage the rest of your body, especially your belly, thighs, and nipples.
3. Self-pleasure however you like, remembering to stimulate your entire penis, your scrotum, and your perineum.
4. Pay close attention to your arousal rate. Once again, try to notice your increasing levels of arousal: notice the tingling at the root of your penis, notice the stages of erection, notice your breathing change and your heartbeat rise.
5. As you feel yourself getting close to the point of no return, stop, breathe, and lightly contract your pc muscle around your prostate. In addition, you also can delay your ejaculation by pressing on the Million-Dollar Point, by using the scrotal tug, by pressing on the tip of your penis, or simply by using your mind to squeeze the tip of your penis. You can experiment and see which of these techniques works best for you. Most important of all, however, is paying close attention to your arousal and stopping in time—at least a few strokes before the point of no return.
6. If you feel that your sexual energy is getting too wild and difficult to control, try to draw this energy up your spine with your mind, and squeeze and release your pc muscle several times. If you are still feeling too hot and out of control, stop for ten or twenty seconds and focus on deep breathing.
7. Try to notice the contraction of your pc muscle and anus that occurs at contractile-phase orgasm.
8. After you have peaked several times without ejaculating, stop. You will feel peaceful and/or energized afterward. Try to notice your sexual energy circulating in your body, which you will feel as a tingling, itching, or prickling.
In exercise 6, you will use these techniques to help cool you down as you start to get highly aroused. Again, you will try to experience the pleasurable involuntary pumping of the prostate and anus (contractile-phase orgasms) without ejaculating. One multi-orgasmic man described how he is able to orgasm without ejaculating: “I do a number of things. [1] Variation seems to help, not doing the same over and over again—varying the depth of the thrust when I am making love, or using different strokes when it’s just me and my hand. [2] Slowing down when I feel close to the edge. [3] Deep-breathing exercises. And [4] moving the accumulated chi up my spine and through the Microcosmic Orbit.”
Whatever techniques you use to heat yourself up and cool yourself down, the most important parts of the practice are breathing, squeezing your pc muscle, and learning to relax into a nonejaculatory orgasm.
FINDING THE WAY
Pelvic Pressure
Pressure in your pelvic area is a natural result of the increased blood and chi that have been pumped to the area and your increased sexual energy. If the pressure feels uncomfortable, go on and ejaculate or use deep breathing, PC Pull-Ups, and perineum massage (which we describe later in this chapter in the section called “The Finger Lock”) to relieve the tension. As you learn to feel your prostate pulsate and to draw your sexual energy up, you will be far less likely to experience pressure in your genitals (often called blue balls). One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “When I stop, my penis will often stay hard for a couple more minutes, but I am not tense or uncomfortable. I don’t get blue balls, because I do deep breathing and draw the energy up. I just feel relaxed.”
As Western chemistry has become more refined, it is now able to demonstrate that our bodies are indeed filled with energy and electric charges. In the February 1984 issue of Discover magazine, K. C. Cole explained the comparison: “Electricity is almost certainly the most elusive of everyday things: It lives in the walls of our houses, and regulates the lives of our cells. . . . It runs electric trains and human brains. . . . Your entire body is a giant electric machine: body chemistry (like all chemistry) is based on electrical bonds.”
Sun Ssu-miao, one of the leading physicians of ancient China, recommended that men attain good health and longevity by ejaculating twice a month, as long as they ate healthily and exercised. He also offered the following more specific guidelines.
A man at twenty can ejaculate once every four days.
A man at thirty can ejaculate once every eight days.
A man at forty can ejaculate once every ten days.
A man at fifty can ejaculate once every twenty days.
A man at sixty should no longer ejaculate.
Your Arousal
According to Taoism, we need to feel aroused, to feel the life-giving force of sexual energy, every day, because when we feel aroused, our bodies produce more sexual hormones, which in Taoism were considered the fountain of youth. (This need for arousal is why sex sells: we are drawn to images that stimulate this sexual energy and these sexual hormones.) When you learn how to circulate your sexual energy, you can feel this rejuvenating power at any time.
FIGURE 11. TOUCHING YOUR TONGUE TO YOUR PALATE while ejaculating
Although each step helps move the energy up, contracting your anus is the most important part of the practice because it is this squeezing action that literally pumps the energy up your spine. Eventually, you will be able to rely on your mind and a quick squeeze of your anus alone to bring the energy to your head.
At first you will be working on drawing the energy up to your head, which will help you experience a “brain” or whole-body orgasm and feel energized. However, it is equally important that you draw the energy down to your navel to keep yourself balanced and to allow your body to store the energy for later use (see figure 12). The Taoists knew the truth of the expression “What goes up must come down.”
As doctors, the Taoist masters were interested in sexuality as part of a larger concern for the health of the entire body. They practiced Sexual Kung Fu because they discovered that ejaculation drains a man’s energy. You have probably also noticed this loss of energy and general feeling of fatigue after ejaculating. Even though you would like to be attentive to your partner’s sexual and emotional needs, all your body wants to do is sleep. As one multi-orgasmic man put it, “Once I ejaculate, the pillow looks better than my girlfriend does.”
“I really notice it in the morning if I ejaculate. I get up dragging my feet and I am tired by noon. When I have multiple orgasms without ejaculating. I wake up refreshed and I need less sleep.” Another man who was recovering from a chronic illness explained: “My sexual desire has always been strong, so I ejaculated often, once or twice a day. And with every ejaculation my health got worse and worse because I was losing a lot of energy.” Many men, especially young men, may not notice this feeling of depletion at first unless they ejaculate when they are sick or working hard.
According to the Tao, play is one of the best ways to learn, and “playing with ourselves” is an excellent way to strengthen our genitals and our sexual energy. Many people worry about masturbating “too much,” but the Taoists knew that there is no such thing—as long as one learns to control ejaculation. Too much ejaculation is the problem: it drains men of their strength, but this can happen with intercourse as well as self-pleasuring.
According to Kinsey and more recent surveys, almost all boys—and most men—masturbate.3 Prohibiting or discouraging a natural part of child sexuality turns boys into sexual thieves, forcing them to steal their pleasure. It is quite possible that most men ejaculate so quickly because they grew up trying to “get off” before they “got caught.” Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, in his book Boys and Sex, explains that since almost all boys masturbate, they should learn to do so slowly and for extended periods of time so that they will be able to make love longer when they eventually become sexually active.
The Taoists would add that boys should learn to pleasure themselves without ejaculating. Young boys or teenagers who ejaculate too much can find that their energy and motivation for other activities decreases significantly. When one of the authors of this book, Mantak Chia, was growing up in Thailand, he sat next to a boy in school who had repeated the fourth grade four times. The boy masturbated each day in class four or five times and ejaculated into a bottle. Obviously, his was an extreme case, but according to Taoism, his failure in school was quite understandable. He was literally draining himself and his brain. The expression “screwing your brains out” is an accurate description of the stupor that occurs after repeated ejaculation.
Many men (and women) who are married or in relationships continue to pleasure themselves. In 1972, the American Medical Association advised physicians in a book entitled Human Sexuality, “Masturbation is practiced by men and women of all ages, often as a supplement to marital coitus, and women tend to masturbate more as they grow older.” (Estimates suggest that about 70 percent of married men—and married women—pleasure themselves.4) Self-pleasuring does not take the place of sex with a partner, but it can serve as a valuable complement. A recent national sex study sponsored by the University of Chicago found that people who are having sex regularly with a partner actually pleasure themselves more than people who are not.5
Pleasuring yourself can help relieve built-up tension when you need a sexual release more than intimacy. It also can help when your partner is tired, distracted, or does not have the same sexual appetite. (If your partner generally has a lower sex drive, make sure to recommend that she read chapter 6 and that you both read the section called “The Seasons of Our Sex Lives” in chapter 9.) If for whatever reason you feel that you just can’t pleasure yourself, you can learn to become multi-orgasmic with your partner instead. It may take a little longer, that’s all. You can also do the exercises you have already learned: Belly Breathing, Century Count, Stopping the Stream, and PC Pull-Ups.
Pleasuring ourselves is not something we are taught to do. Considering the outcry that occurred when Surgeon General Elders suggested that masturbation “perhaps should be taught,” it is unlikely that it will be introduced into the curriculum anytime soon. Most of us learn how to masturbate in a hurry, by ourselves, or with other, equally inexperienced boys. None of these circumstances are conducive to developing real sensitivity—or much skill—so we offer a few pointers.
EXPERIENCE YOUR OWN PLEASURE. If you choose to use pornography or erotica to get aroused, try, once you are aroused, to shift your focus to the sensations in your body. Pornography, though it can increase your sexual energy, is also distracting and can make it difficult for you to focus on your own sensations as you approach orgasm. Many men learn to self-pleasure with pornography, and although this is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of the First Amendment or the sex industry, it is important to recognize that pornography succeeds when it takes you away from yourself. In this practice you need to go inward and experience your own pleasure, not someone else’s idea of pleasure.
FIGURE 7. PENIS REFLEXOLOGY
STIMULATE YOUR ENTIRE PENIS. It is important to try to stimulate your entire penis. Most men focus primarily on the head of their penis, which is the most erogenous part. However, according to Chinese medicine, the different parts of the penis correspond to different parts of the body (see figure 7). To avoid overstimulating one part of your body, try to rub your entire penis, the shaft as well as the head.
TOUCH YOUR BALLS. If touching your scrotum is not part of your regular routine, you may want to try it. The testicles can be especially sensitive to light touch, although many men also enjoy pulling on their scrotum. Rubbing your testicles actually increases the production of testosterone, which adds to your potency both by raising your sperm count and by improving your overall health (see the Testicle Massage exercise in chapter 8). In the next section we describe the Scrotal Tug, which can help delay ejaculation, but for now you should learn to touch your scrotum just for pleasure.
EXPLORE THE MILLION-DOLLAR POINT. As you masturbate, you should explore your perineum and the Million-Dollar Point (just in front of your anus). Pushing on this spot when you are about to ejaculate can help stop the ejaculatory reflex, but again, for now you are just exploring it for its pleasure. Pushing on this spot can squeeze more blood into your penis, which will make it throb pleasurably. Strong rhythmic pressure here also imitates the prostate contractions that accompany contractile-phase orgasm.
The Million-Dollar Point is best stimulated after you have an erection and are highly aroused, since once again the body gets aroused and swells from front to back. If you do not feel any sensation or it feels uncomfortable, stop until you are more fully aroused. If you don’t warm to this spot as a place of sexual stimulation, you can return to focusing on your penis and scrotum.
TAKE TIME. It is important to take as much time as you have to enjoy and learn to prolong ejaculation. “In our work with over a thousand cases,” Hartman and Fithian report, “we’ve found that if a man can learn to go for fifteen to twenty minutes during masturbation or pleasuring, he can go as long as he wants to during intercourse. That period (fifteen to twenty minutes) seems to be critical. Once you’ve passed it, you have control. It’s that simple.”
This may seem like a long time, and it is, especially if you have been used to two- or three-minute masturbatory quickies. One multi-orgasmic man explained the difference: “When I used to play with myself, I would jack off in three to five minutes just to release tension or because I was bored or whatever. Self-cultivation is different. I try to play with myself as long as I can and not come. After a while, I could play with myself for twenty minutes.” Once you become multi-orgasmic, you will be able to peak many times (without ejaculating) during these twenty or so minutes and you will be able to circulate rejuvenating, healing energy through your body. As another multi-orgasmic man described self-cultivation, “It’s somewhere between masturbation and meditation.”
The last thing we want to do is make pleasuring yourself mechanical or turn it into a burden, and as with lovemaking there is no one right amount of time or number of orgasms. Both depend on the situation, your free time, and your level of arousal. If you start to feel bored, ask yourself what is causing the boredom. Are you falling back into old patterns? Is your touch becoming mechanical? Are you focusing too much on your genitals? Are you distracted? If you are unable to concentrate, try the breathing exercise described in the next chapter to reconnect with your body.
Sensitizing our bodies and pampering ourselves is not something we generally consider very manly, but pleasure is just as manly as pain—and a lot more fun. It will help your practice to begin by taking a hot bath (maybe with a little soothing sesame or olive oil) and even massaging your body. Lowering the lights and lighting a candle can help you focus. You can also sit in front of a mirror (with or without a candle) and notice what your body looks like. Try to find its sensuality. Touch and feel your hands and arms, your feet (if you can reach them), calves, and thighs. Touch your chest and even your nipples. When you pleasure yourself, try massaging your thighs and stomach before you zero in on your genitals.
CULTIVATE LOVE. While most men do self-pleasure (feeling guilty or not), few are really able to do it lovingly, to cultivate love—make love to themselves—while they are doing it. Cultivating self-love is essential to being a loving partner. Sexual energy simply magnifies the energy in your body, positive or negative. If you are feeling love, love will be increased by your sexual desire. If it’s hate you’re feeling, then hate will be increased. It is essential that you understand the way sexual energy amplifies your emotions for both your solo and your duo practice. Cultivating your sexual energy into loving-kindness will also help you not to ejaculate; it is much more difficult to maintain control when you are feeling anger or impatience.
In Taoist sexuality you cannot separate your genitals from your heart because the sexual energy circulates throughout your entire body. As one multi-orgasmic man explained, “I used to actually want to keep sex and emotions separate, but as I practiced Taoist sexuality, my genitals became more connected to my heart and I discovered real, profound love for my partner and even for other people.”
The Taoists have a simple exercise for connecting your heart and your genitals (love and sex). Try it if you find that you are feeling irritable, frustrated, or distracted when you start being sexual with yourself or your partner: put your right hand on your groin and your left hand on your heart, connecting sexual energy with love. If you often feel anger, hatred, or other negative emotions, you must transform these feelings before cultivating your sexual energy. The Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds—techniques described in Mantak Chia’s Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality—can help, as can psychological counseling.
Self-love, which is quite different from egotism or narcissism, is the basis for any solo or duo practice. In The G Spot, the authors caution that they have not written a book about love. Our book is also not about love; it is primarily about sex. But the Taoists knew that if you are to stay healthy you can never really separate the two.
Now try a self-pleasuring exercise that will help you expand your sensual focus and extend pleasure to your entire body. In the next section, you will learn more demanding exercises for controlling your arousal and becoming multi-orgasmic. But they are based on your being highly aware of your pleasure, so we begin here with self-pleasuring.
If you are able to experience the involuntary pc contractions that occur at contractile-phase orgasm without ejaculating, you have already taken the right road to becoming a multi-orgasmic man. If you actually have two of these mini-orgasms, you already are! These will not be earth-shattering orgasms at first, but eventually they will spread throughout your body. For now just enjoy the sHIVering feeling of these mini-orgasms. One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “Just as I am about to reach the point of ejaculation, I stop and relax and breathe. It’s almost as if I am letting myself go or fall back into a nonejaculatory orgasm. Sometimes it feels like a pleasurable twitch in my prostate. Other times I can feel it throughout my whole genitals and it’s as intense—more intense—than an ejaculatory orgasm. My wife often can’t tell whether I have ejaculated or not until I tell her.”
If you have not yet started to feel the contractile-phase orgasm, and if the pressure in your pelvis feels uncomfortable, you can try the Pelvic Massage exercise described later in this chapter or you can just ejaculate. Drawing the sexual energy away from your pelvis and massaging your pelvis will help decrease the pressure that all men feel when they begin. Also, if you crest over accidentally, don’t give yourself a hard time. You are just beginning to learn the practice and to gain control of your arousal rate.
EXERCISE 5
SELF-PLEASURING
1. Start by lubricating your penis. Lubricant will increase your sensations. Oil is generally better than lotion, which dries up more quickly.
2. Pleasure yourself however you like, remembering to massage and stimulate your entire penis, your scrotum, and your perineum, including the Million-Dollar Point.
3. Try to notice your increasing levels of arousal: notice the tingling at the root of your penis, notice the stages of erection, notice your heartbeat rise.
4. When you are getting near ejaculation, stop and rest. Try to notice the contraction of your pc muscle and anus that occurs at contractile-phase orgasm, although don’t be surprised if it takes some time to experience this without ejaculating. You can also try to squeeze your pc muscle around your prostate if the prostate starts contracting and you are afraid you might fall over the edge.
5. After you regain control, you can start again as many times as you like and continue for as long as you like.
Learning to Control Ejaculation
Now that you have started learning how to control your breath and your sex muscles, you are ready to learn some specific techniques for controlling ejaculation when you are highly aroused. The more you practice the exercises you’ve learned so far, the easier it will be to practice the ones given later in this chapter and stop yourself from going past the “point of no return.”
STOPPING
First, and most important, you need to stay aware of your arousal rate and stop a few strokes (or thrusts, if you’re with your partner) before you think you will ejaculate. Many sexologists call this the stop/start technique, but it is just common sense. Better to stop too soon than too late. In the beginning, you will probably need to stop stimulating yourself for ten or twenty seconds to allow the urge to ejaculate to subside.
BREATHING
The deep breathing we described earlier is extremely important in controlling your arousal rate and in delaying ejaculation when you are highly aroused. One technique that has proved especially effective is to breathe in deeply and hold your breath for several moments until the urge to ejaculate subsides. Some multi-orgasmic men, however, breathe rapidly to delay ejaculation. (This quick, shallow breathing is called the breath of fire in the yoga tradition.) Deep, slow breathing helps control your sexual energy, whereas shallow, rapid breathing helps disperse the energy. You can experiment and see what works for you.
CONTRACTING THE PC MUSCLE
As already mentioned, the pc muscle surrounds the prostate, through which your semen must pass during the expulsion phase of orgasm. By learning to squeeze your prostate during contractile-phase orgasm (when it is contracting involuntarily), you can help yourself avoid moving from contraction to expulsion. (Between contraction and expulsion lies the infamous “point of no return.”) One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “I hold back the ejaculation simply by contracting the pc muscle at precisely the right time. It took quite some time to master this process, but the results are definitely worth the effort.”
SQUEEZING THE PENIS
Many sexologists recommend squeezing the penis, a technique that was originally developed for men who ejaculate “prematurely.” It is simple. Just place the first two fingers of either hand on the underside of your penis, place your thumb on the top, and squeeze (see figure 8a). Some men also find that gripping their penis like the handlebar of a bicycle and pressing down on the tip or underside with their thumb helps them reduce their arousal (see figure 8b). Although these techniques can be effective in solo practice, they are awkward when having intercourse because you must withdraw. To prepare for this situation, you can try using your mind to help squeeze the tip of your penis. Eventually, you will be able to squeeze the tip of your penis with just your mind and will avoid the clumsiness of having to use your hands. Another good technique is squeezing at the base of your penis (remembering to also squeeze with your mind). This will help you control your arousal and will also expand and strengthen your erections (see figure 8c).
FIGURE 8. DELAYING EJACULATION WITH THE SQUEEZING METHOD
FIGURE 9. SCROTAL TUG
PRESSING THE MILLION-DOLLAR POINT
One of the oldest Taoist techniques is pressing the Million-Dollar Point while contracting your pc muscle. This helps delay ejaculation both by focusing your attention and by interrupting the ejaculatory reflex. It is simple and effective. First locate your Million-Dollar Point, which is just in front of your anus (see figure 2). There should be an indentation when you push at the correct spot. You will need to push your finger in up to your first joint. One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “Pressing on the Million-Dollar Point for a while decreases my erection slightly and the danger of ejaculating greatly.” You will also be able to use this technique during intercourse without withdrawing.
SCROTAL TUGGING
Since your testicles have to pull up close to the body in order to propel the semen out of the testes, pulling them away from your body can delay ejaculation. Circle the top of your sac with your thumb and forefinger (see figure 9). Pull down firmly.
DRAWING AWAY SEXUAL ENERGY
More than any mechanical technique, the secret to stopping yourself from ejaculating is learning to pump your sexual energy away from your genitals and up through your spine to the rest of your body. If the sexual energy continues to build up in your groin, it will eventually be too great to control and will shoot out in the most direct way it can—through your penis. However, if you draw this energy away, it will be much easier to stop yourself from ejaculating. As we discussed in the previous chapter, this is also the secret to learning how to have whole-body orgasms. In the next section we will give step-by-step instructions to show you how to circulate your sexual energy through your body. In the meantime, simply imagine drawing your sexual energy out of your penis, past your perineum, and up your spine. Contracting your perineum will help pump the energy up and will prepare you for the Big Draw exercise we describe later in this chapter.
EXERCISE 6
SEPARATING ORGASM FROM EJACULATION
1. Start by lubricating your penis, as you did in the Self-Pleasuring exercise.
2. Before focusing on your genitals, remember to touch and massage the rest of your body, especially your belly, thighs, and nipples.
3. Self-pleasure however you like, remembering to stimulate your entire penis, your scrotum, and your perineum.
4. Pay close attention to your arousal rate. Once again, try to notice your increasing levels of arousal: notice the tingling at the root of your penis, notice the stages of erection, notice your breathing change and your heartbeat rise.
5. As you feel yourself getting close to the point of no return, stop, breathe, and lightly contract your pc muscle around your prostate. In addition, you also can delay your ejaculation by pressing on the Million-Dollar Point, by using the scrotal tug, by pressing on the tip of your penis, or simply by using your mind to squeeze the tip of your penis. You can experiment and see which of these techniques works best for you. Most important of all, however, is paying close attention to your arousal and stopping in time—at least a few strokes before the point of no return.
6. If you feel that your sexual energy is getting too wild and difficult to control, try to draw this energy up your spine with your mind, and squeeze and release your pc muscle several times. If you are still feeling too hot and out of control, stop for ten or twenty seconds and focus on deep breathing.
7. Try to notice the contraction of your pc muscle and anus that occurs at contractile-phase orgasm.
8. After you have peaked several times without ejaculating, stop. You will feel peaceful and/or energized afterward. Try to notice your sexual energy circulating in your body, which you will feel as a tingling, itching, or prickling.
In exercise 6, you will use these techniques to help cool you down as you start to get highly aroused. Again, you will try to experience the pleasurable involuntary pumping of the prostate and anus (contractile-phase orgasms) without ejaculating. One multi-orgasmic man described how he is able to orgasm without ejaculating: “I do a number of things. [1] Variation seems to help, not doing the same over and over again—varying the depth of the thrust when I am making love, or using different strokes when it’s just me and my hand. [2] Slowing down when I feel close to the edge. [3] Deep-breathing exercises. And [4] moving the accumulated chi up my spine and through the Microcosmic Orbit.”
Whatever techniques you use to heat yourself up and cool yourself down, the most important parts of the practice are breathing, squeezing your pc muscle, and learning to relax into a nonejaculatory orgasm.
FINDING THE WAY
Pelvic Pressure
Pressure in your pelvic area is a natural result of the increased blood and chi that have been pumped to the area and your increased sexual energy. If the pressure feels uncomfortable, go on and ejaculate or use deep breathing, PC Pull-Ups, and perineum massage (which we describe later in this chapter in the section called “The Finger Lock”) to relieve the tension. As you learn to feel your prostate pulsate and to draw your sexual energy up, you will be far less likely to experience pressure in your genitals (often called blue balls). One multi-orgasmic man described his experience: “When I stop, my penis will often stay hard for a couple more minutes, but I am not tense or uncomfortable. I don’t get blue balls, because I do deep breathing and draw the energy up. I just feel relaxed.”
