Mantak Chia - Healing Love through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy

Acknowledgments

I thank foremost those Taoist Masters who were kind enough to share their knowledge with me, never imagining it would eventually be taught to Westerners. I acknowledge special thanks to Marcia Kerwit for her written contributions, for sharing her experiences, and for her candid opinions concerning the practice of Healing Love.

I thank the artist, Juan Li, for his illustrations throughout the book.

I also thank Suzanne Gage, illustrator of the book A New View of a Womans Body, for her groundbreaking work in illustrating womens anatomy, which provided inspiration for some of the drawings in this book.

Many thanks to Gunther Weil, Ph.D., Rylin Malone, and all of my students who provided feedback, particularly Michael Winn and Juan Li for their recommendations; to Valeric Meszaros, Helen Stites, and Felix Morrow for their valuable assistance with editing the first edition; and to Vickie Trihy and Evelyn Leigh, the editors for this edition. I also want to express my appreciation to Sarina Stone for her contribution to the editorial process. And a special thanks to Daniel Dubie for his promotion and marketing efforts and personal support.

Without my mother and my son, Max, the book would have been academicfor their gifts, my gratitude and love.

Contents

Putting Healing Love into Practice

The practices described in this book have been used successfully for thousands of years by Taoists trained by personal instruction. Readers should not undertake the practice without receiving personal training from a certified instructor of the Universal Tao, since some of these practices, if done improperly, may cause injury or result in health problems. This book is intended to supplement individual training by the Universal Tao and to serve as a reference guide for these practices. Anyone who undertakes these practices on the basis of this book alone does so entirely at his or her own risk.

The meditations, practices, and techniques described herein are not intended to be used as an alternative or substitute for professional medical treatment and care. If the reader is suffering from a mental or emotional disorder, he or she should consult with an appropriate professional health care practitioner or therapist. Such problems should be corrected before one starts training.

This book does not attempt to give any medical diagnosis, treatment, prescription, or remedial recommendation in relation to any human disease, ailment, suffering, or physical condition whatsoever.

The book does provide a means to improve your health by overcoming imbalances in your system and by providing a richly rewarding sexual experience. People who have high blood pressure, heart disease, or a generally weak condition should proceed slowly in the practice, particularly Ovarian Breathing. If you have a medical condition, consult a medical doctor.

Neither the Universal Tao nor its staff and instructors can be responsible for the consequences of any practice or misuse of the information contained in this book. If the reader undertakes any exercise without strictly following the instructions, notes, and warnings, the responsibility must lie solely with the reader.

A Taoist View of Womens Energy

Sexual energy provides us with an extremely powerful means to attain rejuvenation and a higher spiritual energy. In ancient times, methods for working with sexual energy were regarded as top secret, especially the way to channel sexual healing energy. Textbooks such as The Handbook of the Plain Girl (a sexology book written thousands of years ago in ancient China by an unknown author) demonstrate various traditional positions for having sex and promoting healing. But these books do not show how to channel the energy. At the time The Handbook of the Plain Girl became available, the Taoist system of channeling energy was not available to the general public, but remained a secret taught only verbally to the emperor and a few others, who were not permitted to put it into writing.

We feel today that the time is right to teach people how to benefit from this transformed energy, or Healing Love, because many people misuse their sexual energy, hurting themselves and others. Our purpose in writing this book is to help people benefit from the channeling of this energy. Many couples have used the techniques described here; they are no longer mysterious and they are no longer only the province of Taoist masters. These techniques will help you conserve and multiply your sexual energy and can increase the possibility that you will experience what the Taoists call beyond orgasm (or valley orgasm) whenever you wish to. This is one of the goals of this book.

The Taoist system regards the sexual organs as the roots of life, connected to all other glands and organs. Once you begin to practice the methods taught in this book, you will begin to feel the close relationship of the glands and organs, especially the pineal and pituitary glands, kidneys, liver, lungs, and heart, as well as the sexual organs and glands. This practice, which will gradually restore sexual, creative, and generative energy, will bring you many physical benefits. But perhaps most important of all, transforming sexual energy into refined Chi provides the foundation for spiritual exercises that can transform sexual energy (Jing) and Chi into Shen, a pure spiritual energy.

Microcosmic Orbit meditation is the way to circulate Chi throughout the body and is the foundation of all practices in the Taoist system. This very important practice is described in chapter 4 and in detail in my book, Awaken Healing Energy through the Tao. This practice is followed by the meditations of the Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds, set forth in my book Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality. All three meditations are emphasized throughout the Taoist system, and their mastery is essential to your successful practice of Healing Love.

HOW WE USE ENERGY

The Taoist sages looked at their own energy as a total unit, something like a bank account to or from which credits can be added or withdrawn. In one day, a young and healthy person earns 100 percent of her required energy from eating, resting, and exercise, and spends approximately 60 to 70 percent maintaining daily life: working, eating, digesting, breathing, walking. (You might think of 100 percent energy as one hundred energy credits, like bank credit.) But, as she ages, she gradually earns less and less, even though her body requires the same expenditures, and she starts to overdraw her account by drawing energy from the vital organsthe kidneys, liver, spleen, lungs, heart, pancreas and other glands, and finally, from the brain.

Taoism explains that the major way men lose energy is through ejaculation, while womens major loss of energy occurs through menstruation, not through sexual intercourse. For a young, healthy woman, menstruation entails an additional energy expenditure as she carries on her daily business. Assuming that a woman starts having periods at age twelve and continues through menopause in her fifties, she could have as many as three to five hundred menstrual periods in her lifetime. Each month the ovaries produce an egg that contains highly perfected creative energy. A great deal of energy also goes into creating necessary hormones and the uterine lining, which provides a nest for a fertilized egg. This expenditure accounts for 30 to 40 percent of a womans daily energy allotment. If this sexual energy is continually permitted to pour outward, she loses 30 to 40 percent of her life-force energy. However, as we shall see, there is a way for her to transform this energy into vital energy for the organs, glands, brain, and bone marrow and into spiritual energy.