Jing Retention

[sanjuro_ronin]

Well, its better than saying semen retention !

As we know many internal systems and training methods advocate "semen retention" as they equate "jing" with life's "essence".

But:
Have more sex. Researchers say that having intimate sex makes you happier, better rested and less stressed, which in turn can lower blood pressure and protect against stroke and heart disease.

A study published in the April 2004 Journal of the American Medical Association found that "high ejaculation frequency was related to decreased risk of total prostate cancer."

[Xiao3 Meng4]

I hear what you're saying. :)

The whole "No sex" thingy is more an exercise in developing willpower, which is assosciated with the kidneys and therefore Jing.

If you've got the willpower (for instance if you can say no to sex)...

Once a day is fine until you're 30.

30 and over, they recommend once every other day.

Can't say no to sex? Better conserve that Jing until you can! ;)

[sanjuro_ronin]

I've read that there are even formulas in regards to age, after 30 onlu ejaculate every 10 days or somethign like that.
But if modern medicine proves to us that there are huge health benefits to "chi blasting in the old school way", then...

[herb ox]

200 years versus 4000 years...

Western med changes its opinions every other day (just read Google News).

The ancients have advised the same practices for thousands of years.

Who you really gonna trust?

ox

[sanjuro_ronin]

200 years versus 4000 years...

Western med changes its opinions every other day (just read Google News).

The ancients have advised the same practices for thousands of years.

Who you really gonna trust?

ox

Dude, did the ancients even know about Prostate Cancer ???

[herb ox]

No, man! I think it's 'cause they died before it had a chance to develop :D

I think prostate cancer has more to do with what else you're doing in your life beyond ejaculating. Modern science may have simply found a way to ameliorate a cancer that is brought on by our toxic living conditions...

just my 2 cents worth

ox

[sanjuro_ronin]

The age of a view doesn't mean much to me, flat earth anyone?
What I'd like to know is what is this "retention" view based on.
As it stands right now, there seems to be more cons than pros for it.

[taai gihk yahn]

The age of a view doesn't mean much to me, flat earth anyone?
What I'd like to know is what is this "retention" view based on.
As it stands right now, there seems to be more cons than pros for it.

Taoist hermits trying to justify why they didn't get any...

[Reverend Tap]

Wasn't there an article in KFM not that long ago talking about a type of training that included a prohibition on ejaculation based on the assertion that the trainee would immediately get physically violently ill otherwise? Something along those lines.

Strange stuff. Not for me, I'll say that much.

[TaichiMantis]

And this would apply to me how? :rolleyes: I can't believe that there is only one meaning for jing...:cool:

[SimonM]

Western med changes its opinions every other day (just read Google News).


That's actually a good thing.

Western medicine has a process of experimentation based on the scientific method and thus does not get bound by dogma to the same extent.

So saying that western medicine has changing opinions whereas TCM has stagnated...

Good advertisement for western medicine. :p

Funny thing about the "flat earth" thing...

Almost nobody every believed it.

In Columbus' day it was well accepted by academics that the world was round. Being unaware of the extent of the americas they under-estimated the diameter of the world by about the same amount as the area of the americas and part of the pacific ocean.

The reason that Columbus was seen as a fool is because everybody thought the ocean was too wide to ever cross in a ship.

Oh, and one last point, in the rennaissance and previous the idea of "Jing" was widely believed in Europe, where they called ejaculation "the little death" because of the belief that it would sap life essence from the ejaculator.

John Donne, the famous reformation poet, even wrote slightly off-colour poems with references to "the little death" (such as The Flea).

Then we learned that the body doesn't work that way...

[sanjuro_ronin]

That's actually a good thing.

Western medicine has a process of experimentation based on the scientific method and thus does not get bound by dogma to the same extent.

So saying that western medicine has changing opinions whereas TCM has stagnated...

Good advertisement for western medicine. :p

Funny thing about the "flat earth" thing...

Almost nobody every believed it.

In Columbus' day it was well accepted by academics that the world was round. Being unaware of the extent of the americas they under-estimated the diameter of the world by about the same amount as the area of the americas and part of the pacific ocean.

The reason that Columbus was seen as a fool is because everybody thought the ocean was too wide to ever cross in a ship.

I think there was a passage in the Old testament that mentions the world is round ( an orb).

[SimonM]

It's possible.

But I haven't read the old testament in a few years so I'd have to hedge my bets on that one.

Found a source for the poem I mentioned.

The Flea by John Donne (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Flea)

[sanjuro_ronin]

It's possible.

But I haven't read the old testament in a few years so I'd have to hedge my bets on that one.

Found a source for the poem I mentioned.

The Flea by John Donne (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Flea)

Isaiah 40:22 (NKJV)

22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,

And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,

Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,

And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

[Xiao3 Meng4]

Oh, and one last point, in the rennaissance and previous the idea of "Jing" was widely believed in Europe, where they called ejaculation "the little death" because of the belief that it would sap life essence from the ejaculator.

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/5629/worstsinbh0.gif

[SimonM]

Is that link safe for work?

[Xiao3 Meng4]

Is that link safe for work?

It's clean. 19th Century clean.

[SimonM]

It's blocked by my work filter.

The same filter that doesn't always block Sanjuro Ronin's pictoral explainations. :eek:

[sanjuro_ronin]

It's blocked by my work filter.

The same filter that doesn't always block Sanjuro Ronin's pictoral explainations. :eek:

Who says Shinobi-no-jutsu doesn't work !

[Xiao3 Meng4]

It's blocked by my work filter.

The same filter that doesn't always block Sanjuro Ronin's pictoral explainations. :eek:

File size is too big to attach...

You'll have a laugh when you get home, then. :)

[sanjuro_ronin]

Obviously the ancients had no temptations like this:

[TaichiMantis]

GUYS! So jing can't just mean semen...no jing for (from?) women?:confused:

[Hendrik]

I hear what you're saying. :)

The whole "No sex" thingy is more an exercise in developing willpower, which is assosciated with the kidneys and therefore Jing.

If you've got the willpower (for instance if you can say no to sex)...

Once a day is fine until you're 30.




Have you walk the path of cultivation? if yes, what do you cultivate? and How is the above fit into the cultivation? or this is just a scientific guess that your guess is as good as mine guess?

[Hendrik]

GUYS! So jing can't just mean semen...no jing for (from?) women?:confused:


Semen is a derivation of Jing.

IMHO, in todays' language , Jing is one stored raw energy before got transform into semen, cell, muscle, activity, Qi......

[Reverend Tap]

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/5629/worstsinbh0.gif

Well, what do you expect when someone uses up all their Precious Bodily Fluids? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY)

[taai gihk yahn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDIHzgf0cSY

(I miss those "Happeh Days"...)

[Xiao3 Meng4]

Have you walk the path of cultivation? if yes, what do you cultivate? and How is the above fit into the cultivation? or this is just a scientific guess that your guess is as good as mine guess?

There are many paths of cultivation. Mine relates to "Yi Wo Zhi Bi" - Know yourself to Know others - and my signature.

Regarding the before age 30, after age 30 comment - it runs along the same lines as "before age 30, ginseng is not needed or even recommended. After age 30, Ginseng is recommended" and "Before Age 30, Zu San Li is needled as needed. After age 30, Zu San Li is needled or moxa'ed daily."

So before age 30, if there is no habituated need for sex - that is, if each and every sexual encounter is a conscious, purposeful and NON-HABITUATED event - then every day is a good day. :)

After 30, Once every other day is recommended so as not to exhaust yourself as much. The same non-habituation rule applies, though.

Any habit - be it sex, caffeine, nicotine, drugs, emotions, or whatever - can deplete Jing in the sense that habits erode willpower and one's primal, instinctive relationships. Willpower and instinct are intimately related to the kidneys, to the bones, to preheaven, and Jing. Any kind of abstinence practices are undertaken to a) replenish and strengthen willpower and instinct, and b)reduce and remove habituation, thereby restoring pre-habituated metabolic function. As such, abstinence practices can be said to "conserve and replenish" Jing through both through its psychoemotional spectrum/pathway as well as the physiological one.

[taai gihk yahn]

I think that the metaphor of "jing" (vitality) is something that is prone to a great deal of relative interpretation; I also think that to make any sort of general recommendation about the degree to which one ought to ejaculate is ludicrous, has no basis in reality and the only "proof" is highly subjective stories;

at base, it appears that the main contributing factors in living to a ripe old age are "good genes" (something about long telomeres, I think), a balanced level of stress in life (some is ok, because otherwise you get too soft; but also not too much, especially of the "free floating" anticipation-of-something-bad-happening-in-the-future type) and good hygene / sanitation (if you consider why a Taoist recluse might have lived to be older than the general population 500 years ago, think about the what public hygene / sanitation was like in any major urban center, and suddenly living up on top of a mountain not surrounded by lots of people with things like cholera, dysentery and tuberculosis might make a difference)

living a healthy life is simple and a lot of these Taoist "prescriptions" just make it unnecessarily complicated; indeed, the Ch'an Buddhists were notorious for mocking what they considered unnatural practices of Taoists, accusing them of being "walking corpses"...