For only $42 / week I will keep your Chakras aligned and have you Abide in Essence Nature ™️ with Pure Wakefulness. Sign up now and get a free T-shirt with a picture of me blissing out in the tempel of आनन्द  कुण्डलिनी  (that's Ānanda Kuṇḍalinī for the illiterate ones who don't yet read sanskrit; basically meaning "Fucking Bliss!" 😏)

Gratitude to Roaman for passing this shakti teaching down the guru line.

Namaste brothers and sisters
I’m glad you gathered here
I stole this little song
To sing of things that I hold dear

You see I used to be like you
Just a fool in the 3D
Until one day I woke up KNOWING
I’m a Starseed

So now I’m a coach, I’m a healer
I’m an indigo child
Take naked pictures by a waterfall
Because I am so “wild”

My favourite word is “sacred”
And I use it all the time
Cause it’s really good for business
Never sad I’m always high

[Chorus]

Cause I'm spiritual
Love and light the language that I speak
I don't need to face reality
I'm tripping every week

I'm spiritual
Chanting as I burn my little sage
I'm not delutional
I AM the Golden Age!

You see I love to meditate
But only when somebody’s looking
I wouldn’t want to waste a chance
To get another booking

My coping mechanism
is to smile and power through
All the shit I should be working on
But that’s what holy people do

I’ll realign your chakras
If you’re life is getting hard
I’m sending love and blessings
Now please swipe your credit card

I don’t deal with human drama
I live in the 5th dimension
But the truth is
I’m just craving your attention

[Chorus]

Cause I'm spiritual
Love and light the language that I speak
I don't need to face reality
I'm tripping every week

I'm spiritual
Chanting as I burn my little sage
I'm not delutional
I AM the Golden Age!

Im'a call it intuition
But it’s just another thought
I take no responsibility
it’s all the planets’ fault

So when mercury is in gatorade
I’m gonna be a 🤫
I put flowers in my lemonade
And call myself a witch

I gave myself a name that
I don’t even understand
I’m really really good at…nothing
But I own a conscious brand

See I’m constantly blissed out
And I make sure that people know
Have you even seen my Instagram?
I’m always in the flow!

[Chorus]

Cause I'm spiritual
Love and light the language that I speak
I refuse to face reality
I'm tripping once a week

I'm spiritual
Stressing as I burn a little sage
I'm half delusional
I think I'm living in a Golden Cage

Kundalini2

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/3:42

1×

Growing up in Sweden, I learned that emotions should be controlled. Other kids will try to startle and scare you, and if you can't keep your cool and shrug it off, you've failed, you'll get laughed at. The grown-ups showed their mastery in this; I can't remember ever seeing my parents crying, or any adult for that matter.  Even laughing was something to keep under control or to the right situations.

Excitement could be put in slightly approving words, like "OK, that sounds like a good idea".  But never should you let your feeling of excitement go up into a "WOW HELL YEAH LET'S DO IT, I CAN'T WAIT!". And there too, in kid play culture it was almost systematically suppressed. One kid would offer a suggestion of something really good, and as soon as excitement was shown, it could be laughed at as "Did you really think you could join in?" or whatever the suggestion might have been.

Slowly but surely, before I was a teenager I was quite adept at not showing emotions. Exciting suggestions were met with a "mhmm". Instead of laughter, I mostly had a short inaudible titter through my nose, almost more sounding like a snort than a laugh. Crying was gone completely. Going to amusement parks and riding a roller coaster was basically relaxing, and mostly an exercise in showing how untouched I could be.

I never wanted to stop feeling. I never consciously viewed emotions as anything bad, and I even saw myself as being in good contact with my emotions, but also in control over my expression.

My journey in self development, my spiritual path, and maybe just general maturation as a human adult, at last got me to start expressing more. In the last 3 years, I've started letting go of inhibitions around allowing my emotions to show, and it quickly became so clear that the expression is part of the emotion itself. When I let it express, I let it flow. Laughing out loudly, the joy gets to fill the space and flow through and around me. Screaming and banging in rage takes the tension and blockage out of my body. Crying out and having tears flow down my face, my whole being is overtaken by the sadness, and there is a profound ecstasy in feeling that movement in my body. Sadness, when I can let it move, isn't something to avoid, it is a beautiful intense emotion putting colours to my experience of the life!

But still, often when I relax and allow myself to feel, I notice the patterns of wanting to shy away and suppress the uncomfortable emotions, especially if someone can see me. Often when we have gatherings here at Hökås, circling and sharing intimately, letting down our defences, I have some hours when I face feelings of being unwanted or not included in the group. At the same time I can see myself keeping others at a distance because of the habits of hiding my emotions. I go away to the corner of the room, I put on a neutral face whenever someone is looking toward me. But then, catching myself doing this, relaxing into that it is OK to feel and be seen feeling, I can see the patterns from everything I suppressed when being teased as a kid and all much worse things my mind made up around it.

The emotions come with triggering thoughts, like that I'm unwelcome, unworthy, unwanted, and my mind starts working at plans and strategies to fix it! Maybe if I'm smart enough, if I look better, or can make people laugh, they'll want me to join?

So many emotions had been bottled up during decades of fears and inhibitions going under the fancy names of "self control" and "fitting in". But emotions are energy, and energy that doesn't flow gets stuck, creating tension and blockages. For me, I would guess that the frequent headaches I've had since I was a kid at least partly are due to blocked emotions, leading to tensions in jaws, neck, and shoulders.

In Sanskrit sources of classical tantra and Indian philosophy, they talk about samskaras (संस्कार), stored up impressions in your energy body (both mental and emotional). It is similar to the western psychology of "trauma", but much wider in the sense that this is something we all carry (unless you are fully "awakened" or "enlightened"). Whenever I have an experience that I don't digest in that moment, it is stored up as a samskara. If I experience joy or sadness, but control myself to not laugh too loudly or show my tears, tensing up even slightly, some of it will be stuck somewhere. Even Freud stated this when he said that:

Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.  - Sigmund Freud

So what is it that I do, when I say "open up"? That deserves a whole blog post by itself, but basically, whenever something triggers me, making me uncomfortable, making me want to fix it (from a place of tension), instead of reacting to it or suppressing my experience of it, I relax into it. I let it feel. I relax jaws, neck, perineum, and I breathe through the heart. I've noticed some days when relaxing my neck, then relaxing my perineum, I find the neck tense again. Shifting focus to my heart can make the tensions both above and below fade. Sometimes however it needs to express; I need to move my body, make sounds, cry, scream, dance, run... for it to start releasing. For a short while, it can make my heart heavy and put me in a mostly useless state of mind from an outer perspective. But nowadays I recognize that feeling so well, the feeling of tensions melting like ice, the ice cold waters of emotion trickling by my throat and solar plexus, into and through my heart. It may be heavy for the heart to digest this, but there is nothing wrong with heavy. Just like in strength training, the heaviness just makes me stronger. After a while, it lets up, and the relaxation starts coming naturally. Being left with more energy and more flow afterwards is a clear sign that at least a part of it has been digested. My mind is no longer fixated on fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or even fix, and if still called for, I can now act from a centered place in myself. The techniques and teachings of digesting samskaras and traumas are milennia old, but personally I've mostly received them from authors and teachers like Michael Singer and Christopher Wallis.

In my circle of friends and acquaintances I see several people identifying themselves as "Highly Sensitive Persons" or very emotional, struggling with feeling so much and not being able to keep their emotions in. Some of them recognise it as a blessing though, more than just a struggle, and I can clearly see why. When feeling and letting the feelings show, my life flows and I connect to other people much deeper.

The singer/songwriter Fia has this song called "I Feel It All", where she sings about not being able to keep it in. I know that I can keep it in, but I also know that keeping it in means tensing up, and feeling less. So nowadays, more and more I just WON'T keep it in.  I changed the lyrics a bit to fit my journey and will end with this modified version of the song:

I am one of those who won't keep it in, and I feel as if I'm peeling off my skin.
Walking through this world is intense, when I lay down my defence.

You may read me like an open book. In my eyes there's truth if you dare to look.
Sometimes I scare people off by showing my heart from the start.

And I've become so sensitive. Feeling just everything.
For the truth of the matter is that, this is my gift.
When flowing in my brilliance I'm tuned in, tapped in, turned on.
And I feel it all, I feel it all... I feel it all.

Let's dive deep into our human mess. There's no point in skimming surfaces.
No I want to meet you soul to soul, right away, come on let's go!

And I've become so sensitive..

So I still open up to the things that makes me most unique, even though at times it's a pain.
I'm moving through this world, confident and clear. I know why I'm here.

So sensitive

0:00

/14:15

1×

I have many teachers, inner and outer.  Every morning, in my ceremony, I meet up with some of them.

This morning, when meeting the mistress of ovate, she was a young girl, sitting on the grass, playing with something on the ground.  Without looking at me, she tells me "It's OK to cry, you know."  I felt the tears flowing up, a tension I was barely aware of softening a bit.  There was no sympathy or pity or any emotion in what she said, just the simple naturalness of the statement, relaxed and soft.

Then she came in the form of a young woman. "It's OK to be horny, you know?"  Her statement a little bit playful, poking at my fear of showing emotion.  My years of feeling wrong for ever having an arousal that wasn't reciprocated. I could go into how the society deems any man with an erection a danger, because a few cannot control themselves, but no, this is my fear of being wrong, my fear of letting anyone see that I'm moved or touched.  These last 2-3 years has been a journey of finding acceptance for parts of me I wasn't even aware I had rejected, and even less having the idea that it could be accepted by anyone else. Not digging for any background of why I inhibited my own emotions so much in the first place, I feel the gratitude of my community of teachers in everyone I meet and feel safe with. A softening opens up, allowing both tears and arousal at the same time.

Joining in, she now comes as an old crone, chuckling a bit and stating "It's OK to die, you know."  ...  It is, I know. I've often imagined myself living for quite many years ahead, and I couldn't really feel into any fear of dying.  I seldom feel fear about anyone else dying either. It's just death, the most certain part of any life.

It's OK.  I sit with these statements for the rest of my ceremony.  Grateful for inner teachers and my daily practice.

Thank you.

Its ok

0:00

/2:38

1×

My religion is surrender.  My spiritual path is relaxation.

Surrender to whatever there is, because it is the only thing that is. What comes to your attention, is the reality to attend.

The path of relaxation leads to the most beautiful of destinations: Here.

All that tension does, is fighting to get away from here.  Tensing up to keep away the discomfort, which in the end is just the discomfort of the tension that it tries to keep away.

So relax.  Nothing is under control.

There are practices on the path of relaxation, the path to here; what's a spiritual path without a discipline? 😉

There is yoga asana, for how else will I relax when leaning sideways from a ladder screwing a beam in place?

There is still meditation, the relaxation of just observing, the mind, the sensations, the emotions.

There is ceremony with spirits that as frankly as a child points out to me where I'm still deceiving myself, so I can relax tensions I didn't know I had.

There is ceremony again, with powers filling me with the presence of awareness to catch myself wanting to flee from here, when here is where I am, the only where I am.

There is qi gong and other energetic practices, giving me the energy to see the melody, to feel the beauty, and to hear the softness of reality.

And relating... In it all is relating. Relating to what is, to who is.

Relating when relaxed, surrendered;  I am free to love.

Surrender as religion

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/2:19

1×

I first came across "tantric massage" 20 years ago through a book by Kenneth Ray Stubbs.  But it wasn't until the fall of 2019 when I received a lingam massage and my own energy channels opened up widely that I really started to experience the depth and width of it and started giving yoni massages more often to a couple of women.  Studying more (both video courses of yoni- and taomassage, and live teachings), I now combine it with my knowledge of energy channels like the microcosmic orbit and the body's yin/yang flow, and it has became a ceremony of worshipping the divine feminine.

In our society, many men have littered the path into the yoni with their own lower urge to release themselves, dump their load, fed by sexualised imagery.  And that, together with shame and all shoulds and should-nots, leaves scars in the hearts of women, blocking off parts of their feeling, their openness and ultimately the creative forces themselves.  Few people have a healthy relationship with their own sexuality, and a so called "tantric massage" can help to heal this, to release blockages and de-armour this source of all creation.

In being honoured to deeply touch the inner essence of a woman, to experience her whole being open up in an increasing flow, I really feel the base point of the creative forces in the universe.

A tantric yoni massage opens up for a full flow of life through the very potent energy source of the womb, opening up for healing in all areas of life.  It is beautiful to witness and a deep honour to facilitate and assist in opening this flow.

The word yoni is Sanskrit, योनि and has many meanings: place of birth, source, origin, spring, fountain, place of rest, repository, receptacle, seat, abode, home, lair, nest, stable, the womb, uterus, vulva, vagina, female organs of generation. – Christopher Hareesh Wallis

Treading the path toward the origin must be done with open intuition, feeling into the woman and building trust, step by step releasing tension.  It is always different, but here is what this ceremony could be like:

Before I meet her, I make sure that I am in my own flow.  I do my daily ceremony, renewing and affirming connection to ancestors and helper spirits, and let go of any blockages in my own body.  I put myself into a mindset of grace, a state of reverence of the divine, doing qi gong to have my energies in order.  Clearing and setting the space.

Meeting her, feeling the flow of love, I hold the space in openness.  I feel into her body with my awareness, and let her express where she is in her beingness right now, what draws her attention and where insecurities might lie.  Meeting in a long hug, relaxing, and sitting down in eye gazing for a while, allowing for whatever comes up.

The massage starts with guiding her into a relaxed state.   I place my still hands on energy centres, for her to let her thoughts rest, let go of disharmony, receive acceptance, open up for curiosity and freedom in centeredness.  She is reminded throughout to breathe deeply all the way down to the perineum.  With flowing strokes I start to balance and invite flow to her energy channels all through the body.  I move as in qi gong, breathing out when stroking away from my body, breathing in on the way back.  Only soft touch on yin channels, a gentle pressure on yang.  Tactile massage mostly, some muscle massage where needed, mostly on neck and shoulders (but when more tension is present, deeper muscle work could be done before the energy massage to get an uninterrupted flow).  Following the microcosmic orbit going up her spine and neck, down the front to perineum…  Flowing out in legs and arms.  I activate energy centres in her heart and sacrum with a soft knocking, then mixing the chi from those energy centres in a flow around the spine.  All the while I keep a meditative mind and the energy in my own body flows up my spine and out into my hands with every breath.

After massaging the whole body - neck, head and face, every finger and toe - having the flow open all the way, if she feels ready and open, I sit down by the yoni and start with connecting to her heart.  I awake her own sexual energy from the heart and breasts and direct it down the front energy channels to open up the yoni with a jing chi flow, softly massaging the whole area around yoni, pubic bone, perineum and labia, applying some pressure to tensions and hardened spots.  Any emotion may arise, and all emotional expressions are welcome.  There are often a lot of feelings repressed and stored away as blockages in this area, and the flow of energy starts to pull forth that which can be handled and released in a safe space.

If invited into the yoni (by energetic pull and verbal confirmation) the massage continues to feel out and stimulate blockages inside, all around the vaginal walls.  The tensions many women carry in this area are often unknown even to herself, and thereby neglected in self care, but can really open up to a much higher flow of life over time when released.  It is often hardened to a level of muscle knots, and can be painful in the beginning; to be breathed through (or screamed out) and let go.  Sometimes direct memories of traumatic events can come up, but often just a flow of different emotions.  All emotions are welcome to come up, be expressed, and flow through.

Going deeper to the cervix, there is often a very tangible flow of vibrating energy that is being freed up and activated by the massage.  Keeping a finger on the cervix, I let the jing flow down the back of the vaginal wall to the perineum and I direct it back through the coccyx and up the spine.  I remind her to breathe all the way down and let the energy all the way up to the crown of her head.  Instructing her to keep the tongue to the palate so the energy can trickle down her throat, filling up the chi repositories in any organs needing it.  The excess is readily stored in tan tien below the navel.

When the energy starts landing, I balance it out with a whole body yin/yang massage before covering her with a soft blanket.  The candle burning in stillness, I sit in present silence until she is ready to sit up. With a cup of herbal tea, we do a sharing of the experience and following up what's been drawn to the surface.  Perhaps I show her some simple qi gong techniques to keep renewing the energy flow before parting.  Gratitude in awe.

Thank you 🙏

Note: I am not a professional masseur or therapist.  I do not do this for money, and this is just a description of my limited personal experience. I am still new at this and am learning every time, but I feel this is something greatly needed in humanity and I am deeply honoured to be a small part of opening up for deeper self realisation in the receiver of this ceremony.

PS: This is not a traditional "tantrik" practice in any way.  I use the term "tantric massage" as it is used in the neo-tantric community.

Feel free to contact me if you are interested in receiving a massage, and we'll see how the energy flows 💞  https://m.me/fiddur

Yoni massage worshiping the source of creation

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/9:27

1×

I'm quitting ejaculation, and it is changing my life!

This is my personal journey how I came to do "Semen Retention" and the experiences following that the last 3-4 months.  It's personal; for generic information, follow the links at the bottom.

Trigger Warning!  This post includes a lot of metaphysical woo-woo 😏

My experiences include:

• Great energy in all my endeavors.
• Increased presence, feeling of being me and standing in my own power.
• Getting rid of social anxiety.
• Deeper personal relating, eye contact, open honesty.
• Accelerated personal development, facing fears and expanding comfort zone.
• Full body orgasms without ejaculation.
• Less need for sleep (delayed effect, goes away with a single ejaculation).
• Decrease in body fat.

My journey includes a lot more than just semen retention, but it was a step that profoundly accelerated everything.  I have a hard time expressing how big this shift has been for me; each week has felt like a month of active self development, and I can only hope to inspire someone else to try this out and get their own amazing new perspective on life!

I am beautiful and fucked up in the most glorious way! - Fia, Shedding Skins

First encounters with non-ejaculation

Back in 2000 I bought some of Mantak Chia's books.  The one I studied most teaches how to awake and use the microcosmic orbit, circulating the qi energy for improved health.  The other ones are about "sexual kung fu"; I read some and tried practicing non-ejaculatory sex in 2001 with what later became my wife, but I was not very successful, rather it was just frustrating for us both with me stopping constantly.  He talks about not ejaculating, and that there are great benefits from circulating the jing energy stored in the semen through the microcosmic orbit, but I never managed to experience that back then…

The teaching is that according to taoism and traditional chinese medicine, our semen contains huge amounts of jing, and by frequent ejaculation (like every week and more…), that energy is lost and instead a lot of otherwise available energy goes to producing new semen.  There are physical parts of this, like nutrients required for the body to form new semen, testoterone increases after 7-10 days without ejaculation etc.  Jing energy from semen can be transmuted to other types of qi and used for bodily healing, and if you learn to move it through the microcosmic orbit, it leads to even more healing and eventually spiritual enlightenment.

In ayurvedic terms, they talk about ojas, a type of energy said to promote mental strength, stability, endurance, patience, calmness, good memory and sustained concentration, happiness, contentment and bliss!

But, most importantly the effect is one of the change in mindset; regarding yourself, your sexuality, and your relating to other people, especially the people of your arousal.

A meeting of hearts 💞

Jumping ahead to the summer of 2018.  We had our annual shamanic gathering here at Hökås gård, with people offering different workshops.  This year, Ove & Maria held a "Hearts meeting" ceremony with breathing together in double circle and then sitting in couples breathing through each other, eye gazing, for a long while; breathing deeply, laughing, crying, seeing the full beauty of this woman I only knew as an acquaintance before.  It was very intimate, and at times arousing.  The rest of that weekend during the gathering, I was frequently sexually aroused, and honestly had a hard time not looking at all the beautiful women as sexual beings, and at the same time feeling shame for having that association in a non-sexual context.  I tried going for masturbation, but my heart was not interested, it didn't feel right…

After the gathering, I started feeling an urge to meet people, being more personal.  Up to this, most of my free time outside work and family I dedicated to projects and open group activities; the activity was the focus, not the person.  Now I was interested in being more personal.  I went to wonderful shamanic drum circles, getting insights and opening up.  I went to two "Sexsibility" meetings in Gothenburg (clothed but intimate tantra inspired group activity); which was both exciting but really more frightening - leaving me with a feeling of being unwanted and unattractive and having me face my fear of rejection, even though looking back, that was just me manifesting that fear in the meeting.  I got to meet those fears, and took weeks to turn them over in my head and journal, talking to my wife, crying and both wanting to go to another meeting while still dreading it.  I was signed up for the last one in 2018, but didn't have the energy to go and meet my fears that day, so I never went.

But, as it does, winter came.  It got still.  My process took a pause, as I remember it, until the summer of 2019 arrived.

Ceremonies, sweat lodges, starting to let go

One warm Saturday alone in my garden I felt the calling to hold a sweat lodge ceremony again.  Since we moved out, we only held one or two lodges per summer, and often as a preparation for something else; but now, spirit said it was time.  Instead of making an open invitation to relevant contacts, I invited one by one in personal messages, letting my intuition guide me on who to contact.  I felt this should be a close intimate ceremony (non-sexual of course) letting go of social barriers and going in naked.  Nudity was common during our gatherings, people taking a bath, and during my work with the tobacco spirits I had repeatedly been told to take off everything as a ceremonial letting go, and I invited this closed sweat lodge group to that.

But, I noticed disturbing associations in my mind.  Nudity in summer during ceremonies or bathing has never made me sexually aroused in any way, but THINKING about nudity did.  So when inviting friends to a naked ceremony, I got to really question my motives.  The sweat lodge is never sexual, that is extremely clear from the spirits guiding me.  So when getting a thought around inviting a beautiful woman, having my associations make me horny, made me question: is this really my intuition, or some hidden sexual attraction?  With meditation I cleared out my motives, but my associations from thinking about naked women to sexual arousal distracted my thoughts, and I wanted to get rid of that connection in my brain.  I assume it is a very common association in a man's brain in this society, considering both pornography and how movies and advertisement uses (semi-)naked women, but that doesn't mean I have to have it.  I thought I could at least weaken it so it wouldn't invade my thoughts in a meditative flow.

The sweat lodge was good.  And personal.  Opening up and connecting to all participants, I also sent out prayers to help me get rid of my unwanted connections to sexuality, in essence to heal myself from associative sexual thoughts.  And I held one more.  And one more…

The last masturbatory ejaculations

In the beginning of September, things started shifting inside.  I started to get another relation to my own sexuality, accepting my arousal but disconnecting that from the urge to have sex or reach ejaculation.  I saw more and more how much shame I had around my own sexuality, not even wanting my wife to see me with an erection if we were not having sex that moment.  When noticing myself getting sexual associations, I started shifting the lust into love quite easily, seeing and appreciating beauty rather than feeling an urge to have sex or touch.  Later on I also learned to appreciate arousal without the want for anything more.

In some of my morning ceremonies, I started reconnecting to my sexuality, praying and intending to heal it from the associations and lower urges of it.  When the weather allows, I'm naked during ceremony, and I could enjoy my body freely.  Sexuality in itself was never banned in my daily solo ceremony (as it is in sweat lodge), but when acknowledging the arousal with a ceremonial mind set, and in thinking about a woman who was not in ceremony or even in an active sexual relation with me, I got a very strong message: Keep it clean.  The meaning was clear, I may NOT fantasize about another person in my ceremony (unless they've asked for healing or so), my flow is my own and inside my energy body; thoughts are affecting reality, and unless asked to, it is disrespectful to indulge in mental imagery about anyone else.  In the same instance, I got very aware of an energy tension in my throat and in the front of the top of my chest, connected to the urge to reach ejaculation; tied to the part of lust that is, for me, "unclean".  Focusing on that point and relaxing that, the urge was completely gone!  The flow of sexual energy, arousal and enjoyment was still very much present, but without wanting to bring myself to ejaculation.

So then it all shifted.  I lost interest in porn, seeing the beauty in any body without getting horny unless there was a real intimacy with the right energies flowing.  After that morning (at Sep 11), during the following two weeks, I did ejacualate twice from masturbation getting pulled into old thought habits when having a cold and being tired, but those were the last times I ejaculated on my own.  I started coming to terms with being a sexual being, which also started to reflect in my relation with my wife.  I have for many years had much more sexual lust than my wife; she being tired from illness and whatnot.  We have almost from the first month had an open relationship by principle; not seeing the need to restrict the other, but I hadn't had sex with anyone else.  At times I have wanted to meet someone else to match my sexual desires, but not seeing myself as sexually attractive and fearing rejection made that more frustrating and most of the time I let go of those wishes.  That, too, was about to change…  Starting to let go of shame, I was able to talk about sex with my wife more than we've done for a very long time.

Masturbation turned into a self-massage.  All fantasy gone, and all urges for ejaculation; left was just the feeling in my own body, my penis, scrotum, and anus.  Not completely new to me, but most of my masturbation had been about fantasies and building up towards ejaculation.  Now, the sensations themselves took precedence instead of constantly feeding the mental association between thinking about women and wanting to ejaculate.  You can argue for hours around pornography and its place in our society, but for me it has very clearly been a mental poison destroying my sexuality.

In the end of September, a week after the autumnal equinox and under the new moon, I held a sweat lodge with the theme "Into the darkness", focusing on going deeper into our own darkness for spiritual healing.  I sent out prayers to get help with habits and associations that does not serve me, regarding food, relations and sex, and I asked to get reminders of when I go outside of my true flow.  The lodge was fantastic and strong, and the group was so healing in closeness, everyone's own magic flowing together to build the group momentum and call in the spirits…

Out of the darkness

The morning after the sweat lodge, I sat a long while with my journal, consolidating what I've taken in and gone through in thoughts and spirit.  I had started thinking more about the taoistic sex teachings last weeks, as described by Mantak Chia, around non-ejaculatory sex, and I decided to give it another try, after 18 years or so; because even if I had let go of the need to bring myself to ejaculation, I still came during sex.  I was also thinking a lot about my sexual desires and wanting to meet some other woman in a more spiritual-sexual merging of energy and body, but I was not sure if that longing was relevant anymore.  Was there a purpose to that, or should I just let go of those thoughts completely, accepting life as it is and enjoying sex when my wife wanted?  The recent growing and better communications did make it better, but I felt something was still way off in our relationship, we didn't really meet each other on a deeper level.  I felt as if I was accepted, but seldom wanted or really received.  I was longing for someone who could meet me with the energy and love that I felt.

While writing about this in my journal, considering letting go of that longing for someone else, I got invited to a new Facebook group for "Alive dating" (translates badly, "Levande dejting"), for people interested in spirituality, seeking relationships of all kinds.  I felt a bit baffled from this invitation by a person I had met at some spiritual event but hardly knew.  OK.  Was this a sign to keep that longing, or to clarify my intention and see if I was really ready to let it go?  And, if I would accept that invitation, what would I write there, knowing my friends and wife might read it?  Writing about my longing for a deeper connection including spiritual meeting in a Facebook group was quite a bit outside my comfort zone, to say the least.  But, expanding my comfort zone was something I was ready to do.  So I wrote a presentation, open and honest about what I was looking for and that I was in an open marriage.

Into non-ejaculation and semen retention

I got some nice chat contact with a few women (and later on got more than I ever had imagined…).  Excited from the new contacts and inspired by the great feeling of pushing my comfort zone, I pushed it a bit more, putting up a video of me singing:

My quantified self statistics indicates clearly the profoundity of the switch.  I've been logging daily every ejaculation and every intercourse in a spreadsheet, since I knew it could affect my health and well-being, and it's surprisingly clear from the chart that when I stopped ejaculating, I started having much more sex. Without looking at the numbers, with RED being sex, BLUE indicating me throwing away my jing energy (and yellow indicating days in a row without throwing away jing), the shift around October 1st is not minor...

(Blue: ejaculations. Red: sex. Yellow: Days without ejaculation.  Charted projection, not absolute numbers.)

My semen retention started making itself noticeable.  Before September, I had been ejaculating at average 3.4 times a week, 0.7 of these being during sex.  After 6 days without ejaculation, I could clearly feel the energy building up.  It was a bit harder falling asleep; and yes, before I have used ejaculation to more easily fall asleep sometimes.  I woke up earlier, with more energy in the morning.  I started feeling attractive, gaining more confidence.  I noticed myself looking others in the eyes a lot more than before, kind of standing my ground in being present while meeting other people, where I previously would have had a short eye contact and then looked away.

One of the women from that group offered me a lingam massage with an ayurvedic walking massage.  I was of course nervous, going to an intimate massage from someone I had never met in person.  But from the contact with her, I felt very safe and cared for.  This was on day 7 of my semen retention.  It brought me to tears and laughter and a long full body non-ejaculatory orgasm.  It also brought me a deep feeling of being allowed to receive, that I am worthy of being touched in a compassionate way, someone cared for me.  It seemed odd to react that way, with having a caring wife and great friends sharing long hugs... But there is a difference between sharing a hug and receiving a compassionate touch.  And it made me face even more of my self imagery of self worth, and confront old wounds from an earlier relationship that ended after the last year without any sex at all which left me feeling quite unwanted and unattractive.  Maybe I didn't need to be that unwanted unattractive man with shameful sexual associations anymore.

The first time I had sex after that, it was a completely new experience, energetic orgasms cursing through my body, and apparently through my partner's body; in the words of my wife:

Wow, that was fantastic!  I never want to stop, I just want to stay in this energy!

The energy was flowing through my body in more areas of my life. Talking in group ceremony like a blot felt a lot more charged than usual.  Doing yoga and qi gong was more pulsating than before, and expressing the passion in latin dance classes with a much stronger presence.  And I can feel attractive in a way I never did before; getting that confirmed from other women!  I don't know how much is me just opening up to receiving that confirmation of attraction, and how much is really becoming more radiant from the energy, but to both effects, I am truly grateful.  At the same time, my sexual desperation is gone, and I'm no longer interested to have sex with every beautiful woman that would allow me to 🙄

I could feel the energy flowing through my body when giving massage (all kinds of massage), and I feel more energized afterwards.  It is a healing flow for both me and the receiver, and it inspired me to learn a lot more about massage, especially tantric and tao-massage for opening energy flows.  And yoni massage seems to open up quite a lot of healing as well; my wife describing how she got back the warmth in her hands from the first yoni dearmouring I gave her, a warmth she hasn't had in many years now but used to have when she was younger.

Building up all this energy felt like coming out of a cocoon.  I started facing my own fears in a rate that puts the previous 43 years to shame. Reexamining my life and my relationship with my wife, for a moment realizing that I really thought our relating to each other had a lot of problems for many years and feeling that we were in very different places, we in a week came through a rough spot in sharing tears and reaching a much deeper relating with such an open honest communication that I haven't really dared to imagine before.  Rather than leaving her behind, we both took giant leaps in opening our hearts and in the way we meet, both in communication and energetically.

Effects of ejaculating after some weeks

18 days into my semen retention, I had some fluid come out of the penis during sex, and I thought it was a partial ejaculation, so I chose to come fully.  Later I learned it was not (there are other fluids coming that way, especially if you start using the perineum musculature and PC-muscle more…).  I have ejaculated a few times more or less involuntarily during sex since I decided to quit. Sometimes it just comes on too quickly, getting into the old habits of trying to get the partner to orgasm rather than just enjoying the meeting and letting the energy guide.

Quite immediately after ejaculation, I can feel something best described as a sucking feeling behind and a bit below my eyes.  The second time it happened, I went down to the store, and I could feel an insecurity, a want to shy away and not be in contact with other people, and I definitely did not want to look anyone in the eyes.  There was no shame from ejaculating, and I didn't see it as a failure, but still it was like a step backwards from all the gains I had experienced in just those few weeks.  A few hours after one ejaculation, I was making dinner for my family, but I just wanted to go and be by myself with no human contact.  I felt like I could fall into anger to distance me from the world, and I realized that it was a feeling I had often felt before, when being tired after work, and just wanting to be left alone.  Only, I hadn't felt that now since I quit (mostly) ejaculating and was no longer used to it.

BUT; I didn't go all the way back.  Most of the positive effects were either still there, or came back in a day or two.  That's why counting retention "streaks" seems a bit pointless, it's more about frequency. I've gone from more than thrice a week to less than twice a month. Although, I do intend to make that a few times a year or not at all…

Postive egoism and great sex

Being present, open and honest, I have the deepest respect for anyone I meet.  In this process, I've also developed a deeper respect for myself. Finding a positive egoism, learning to both feel and say what I really need and want, has opened up for so much more authentic relating in all relationships.  Sure, it can be scary.  But being more of myself, I have all in all found that I also have so much more to bring to a meeting.  I have started letting go of all the thoughts about impressing people, or pleasing others, and instead just being me.  I still like making others happy, but it doesn't come from a place wanting them to like me, it comes from the joy of the others' happiness.  If someone meets me, they should meet me, why then play a role of people pleaser or trying to impress with being knowledgeable or anything else?

"Great sex is about presence, not performance." - Chris Bale

With my own ejaculatory orgasm off the table in sex, it stopped being about reaching a goal.  Sure I could still want to bring my partner to orgasms, but enjoying the moment, appreciating all sensations and not building up a tension toward a goal, made sex more awesome.

Links, books, etc

• Chris Bale has some very inspiring pod cast episodes and youtube videos, some with tips and information around not ejaculating.  I don't agree to all he says regarding men & women, but it is really worth listening to!
• Youtube playlist with Semen Retention tips  This one is really good for anyone curious to try this out, and earned Bale the first place in this link list =)
• Mantak Chia Writes about esoteric taoism.  This journey wouldn't have been the same without his books about how to transmute the sexual energy.  I've seen many people having problems with semen retention when too much energy builds up, I believe my practices with the microcosmic orbit helped greatly.
• The Sexual Energy Elixir Blog post with tips about sexuality from the taoistic point of view.
• Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao  Book about the microcosmic orbit with qi, non-sexual energy.
• Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy  Sexual energy usage for men, many great practices.
• Healing Love through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy  Sexual energy practices for women and for couples.
• SemenRetention on Reddit A very interesting forum with lots of experiences shared.  The most amazing experiences however I believe are from people coming from porn addiction into non-ejaculation.
• 99 Days of NoFap & Semen Retention: What Are The Actual Benefits? Good but really really long blog post. (Yes, longer than this one!)
• Beducated selling video courses on tantric massage.

There is so much more interesting happening these few months, but writing it all would make it into a book rather than a blog post.  Please contact me with any questions or comments on Facebook.

Awakening semen retention

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After having used OKR at work first at Textalk and now later at Auth0, and reading up more about their whats and whys, I decided to try it out as a personal "goal setting" technique in 2017-Q4.

What?

OKR stands for "Objectives & Key Results".  You define an objective, preferably with a motivation, and key results that will measure your success in obtaining that objective.

I started with 6 weeks left of 2017, and set "real" quarterly OKRs for 2018-Q1.  I defined four objectives, two purely personal and two involving my family; let's focus on the two purely mine.

O1: Increase my fitness, to make everyday tasks like carrying fire wood, moving furniture and dancing feel light and easy. (...trying to capture the nice feeling of being strong...)

O2: Be in good health.

Those are clearly related (at least in my approach).  My professional objectives, like becoming a better public speaker, I put in my individual OKRs at work (making the difference between personal and individual OKRs...).

Measurability

A good OKR has clearly measurable key results, and at best they are also quantifiable, i.e. you put a number of how well you've met them, not just a "yes" or "no".

In my fitness objective I was thinking about strength, stamina, flexibility, endurance...  But when expressing the reason I wanted increased fitness, I chose to measure this in strenght training repetitions.  I considered running goals, but think of running more as a method to feel good than a measure in itself, and having a speed or distance KR might defeat the relaxation I get from running.

Measuring health is a bit more tricky.  Head aches is a problem I've had a long time, and logging when I take a pill is easy enough to keep doing on a day by day basis.  In my experience, I also have less extraneous body fat when I'm in better health, and in order to not confuse muscle weight with fat, I chose to measure waist circumference.

O1 (fitness)
KR1: Knuckle push-ups (reps in a set).
KR2: Chin-ups (reps in a set).
KR3: One-arm kettlebell 20kg clean & jerk (reps in a set).

O2 (health)
KR1: Having less head ache, measured by head ache pills taken last 6 weeks.
KR2: Reducing waist size.

Aim for the stars

The goal values here are set as moon shots, something to strive for.  Reaching 60-70% of the key result is considered a success.  Consistently reaching 100% just means the goal is set too low.

I tried setting reasonable key results that would motivate me while not placing more stress than needed, knowing that I have a busy life with family and work.

O1 KR1 (push-ups): Start 9, goal 25.
O1 KR2 (chin-ups): Start 0, goal 3.
O1 KR3 (clean&jerk): Start 20, goal 35.

O2 KR1 (ache pills): Start 24, goal 0.
O2 KR2 (waist cm): Start 101, goal 95.

Tactic is secondary

In contrast to a new years resolution, the OKRs in themselves do not define anything you would actually do.  They don't hint at any method to reach your goals, even if the push-up key result might indicate I should do push-ups.  However, I am free to set up a plan for how to confront my objectives, and alter that at any time if I think there's a better way.  The more elusive health objective is not as clear how to approach.

Head aches: I have been logging head ache in periods over many years, but consistenly logging number of head ache pills taken since May 2017.  Looking back at that, I see correlations to stress (in e.g. wedding preparation) and alcohol, but also around movement.  I still haven't charted this up properly, but I believe that in periods when I've taken more steps every day for the last X days, my head ache is significantly less.  I.e. no immediate result and not when running a half marathon but being still the days around that.  ...more on that in a later quantified self-post :-)  And, I do believe it is also food related.  This led me to do smaller changes in several areas:

• Taking shorter walks during breaks in my work days.
• Taking micro-pauses while working (using a 5 * 5 minute schedule in Workrave), every 5 minutes closing my eyes, streching or relaxing.
• Getting Bertrand meal replacement both to lessen stress around cooking when I'm not inspired/don't have time, and getting better nutrition than taking yet another banana sandwich...

Weekly follow-up

I keep my OKR spredsheet open most of the time in a browser tab, but the important habit here is to revisit it once a week.  The actual logging for measurements is done elsewhere, like  Exercise.com for strength training (synked to Runkeeper), a separate health spreadsheet for head ache pills and waist size.  (I've tried keeping such measurements in other systems like Myfitnesspal, TrackThisForMe or Fluxtream, but so far none has been better than spread sheet).

At end of week (or beginning of next week), the week value of best exercise set or last 6 weeks of head ache pill count is entered into the OKR sheet.  This gives a good reminder of the objectives; in fact, if I were to find (or make) an automation of entering those numbers, I would require a dashboard with interaction to keep up the re-iteration into consciousness.

The spreadsheet gives me a percentage for each KR.  For motivation, I let the spread sheet make an average percentage for every Objective, and an average of all those for every week, and chart it up like this:

(On posting, there's 2 days left of the last week, some things might change...)

So how did it go?

Here is a copy of my spread sheet translated to English and with only mentioned objectives.

I'd say it started out really poorly during my yule vacations with a cold, preventing me from doing any exercise and giving me a lot of head ache.

W7 was a school vacation for the kids.  As you can see, I didn't even fill out the OKR sheet that week. Some weeks I didn't do any exercise, and the fitness numbers are from previous weeks.

All in all, ending up below 30% is a miss.

I think the influensa and cold interrupted my motivation and routines.  Had it been method focused new years resolutions or other diciplinary tactics, it would have been broken by that time and lost all effect.  Being OKRs though, I believe they did a better job of regaining some motivation, even if I didn't reach as high as I had hoped.

Oblective 1, fitness

I failed in keeping any regularity in exercising.  I'm confident the goals were very reasonable had I worked out for just 20 minutes 2 times a week...  But, I didn't.  Perhaps I don't need to push that so hard, but I do think it would be good for my health as well to have a better regularity in my strength training.  I will be happy when I have the strength (and less weight?) to do chin-ups properly; when training with negative chin-ups (chin downs?) I quickly get very sore in my muscles, but that should resolve itself after a few weeks of doing it!  Toward the end of the quarter I changed my exercise approach a bit to NOT push for maximum repetitions on my clean & jerks every time, to instead both have less of the daunting feeling of how hard it will be, and easier get back to do it again a few days later.

I will keep the same key results for Q2 in this.

Objective 2, health

I'm happy with the 46% reduction of head ache pills, and measuring it over a 6 week period is long enough to see it as a trend and better habits, and still short enough that I could put the first weeks cold behind me.

I have been taking more walks, but not every day.  It will be easier now with warmer weather coming.  I think it would be most effective if I make sure to take walks every day, since I am working from home, I don't have any natural transport walking, to work I just need to move between the rooms of my house.  So walking every day, and running twice a week would probably be both reasonable and have good effect on both head and excess fat.

To OKR or not to OKR

I will definitely continue with OKR another quarter.  Maybe I will also have some methods I decide to use to reach my goals, but the objectives and their motives are going to keep coming first.  Deciding to e.g. run 10 km each week could be an experiment or method for next quarter, for an objective to learn more about my health or how it affects me...  Stay tuned for Q2 or 2018 wrapup later on =)

I believe using OKRs is more resilient than dicipline/method focus when something comes in the way of the method for a day or a week.  Then it must of course be followed up with good methods to reach the goals.

Planning to make a little stronger ale with more Münchner-malt, using my homegrown Redsells Eastwell East Kent Goldings for aroma and some leftover hops for bitterness and taste.

The brewing process was surprisingly smooth.  Last time, the wort got too hot; the lautering was almost impossible, the cooling was slow, and the result was 22 litres of fermenter malt porrage!  So, this time I kept it closer to 66º.  Lautering was very quick and easy, but the result was a much lower original gravity than I thought.

Plan

5.5 kg münchnermalt II, 150 g chocolate malt, should give me 1413 Öchsle-litre, for 2 litres resulting in a final gravity of 14 ºÖ and an alcohol of 6.0%.

Result (so far)

I got only 968 Öl, an exchange of 74% rather than 93%.  That probably gives me 3.9% alcohol, rather than the 6.0 I planned.  I'm considering three possibilities:

1. Accepting that it is a lighter ale.
2. Making a braggot instead, adding some honey.
3. Adding spray malt.

Log

Brewing day: 2015-09-13.

7:20 Lighting the wood stove

Before breakfast, I light the stove and start the heating of ~40 litres of water.

8:30 - 9:30 Constructing a malt funnel

I have a Monster Mill 2 for crushing the malt, since earlier mounted on a board with four legs.

Adding to that, I now made a funnel for the malt…

I made a board to regulate the speed…

…but I need to make a large single hole there; these were much too small.

(Small pause for cleaning the kitchen.)

10:20 Crushing

All crushing was done in a few minutes; much easier not having to pour it slowly into the mill!

10:30 Mashing

The mashing was kept at 65 - 70 ºC for 90 minutes.  I was aiming for 66 - 69, and from earlier experience very careful not to get too high.  The next time I think I'll experiment a bit with different temperature and protein pauses…

12:00 Lautering

Using a perforated fermenter bucket inside another with a tap, pouring water of 70 - 75 ºC over…

12:10 - 17:10 Boiling…

Aiming to boil it down to 22 litres.

…while picking the hops…

15:52 Adding 30 g Cascade

Dried cascade from an opened packages that's been in the fridge a long time.  Placed in a nylon sock.

16:22 Adding 8 g Mouteka + 10 g First Gold

More olded dried hops.

16:37 Adding the fresh hops

I forgot to weigh it, but the weight of fresh hops is not really comparable to the dry ones anyway.

16:57 Removing the hops

It looked like it was still a bit over 22 litres, so I removed the hops and let it boil a few minutes more.

17:15 Cooling

It had actually boiled down to 18 litres.  I added 4 litres of cold water to get up to the planned 22.  In retrospect, that was perhaps a bad idea…

17:55 ~22 ºC, measuring OG

The original gravity was only 44 ºÖchsle (1044).  It seems I shouldn't have filled up to 22 litres, and maybe the mashing was too cold or too short…

Well, I added the yeast and put the lid on.

18:45 Airing

Adding some oxygen by tapping it from one bucket to another.

18:55 Fermentation

And now, the fermentation commences.

I started using javascript promises about half a year ago, and I still haven't settled on the best syntax for cases with chained promises.  But I do believe I use a better syntax than what I've found in other blogs.

The problem with chained promises

You have several functions returning promises of values that you want to keep, but you have to run them after eachother.

I searched a little for best practices regarding this, but didn't really find any satisfactory answer.  Nolan Lawson adresses the problem (and some promise anti-patterns) in We have a problem with promises.

Suggestion 1: Create a variable outside

var page

getPage()
  .then(function(pageIn) {
    page = pageIn
    return page.getSite()
  })
  .then(function(site) {
    // …do what you intended with page and site…
  })

First of all, I dislike the ugliness of having to receive pageIn where you really want page…

You could end up with a bunch of variables declared far above the actual usage, and you can't break out the function and place it in another place - it wouldn't know about page.  Refactoring this code when it grows will give you more pain than you need.

Suggestion 2: Embrace "the Pyramid"

getPage()
  .then(function(page) {
    page.getSite()
      .then(function(site) {
        // …do what you intended with page and site…
      })
  })

This happened to be Nolan Lawsson's preferred variant.  I don't like it; one big purpose of promises is to avoid nesting.

This would also hinder refactoring, forcing you to make a separate call inside the closure.

Solution: Pay it forward

Using spread, you can pass on an array with a mix of values and promises:

getPage()
  .then(function(page) {
    return [page, page.getSite()]
  })
  .spread(function(page, site) {
    // …do what you intended with page and site…
  })

This is my currently preferred syntax, but in some cases it seems like a programming language where you need to explicitly pass on every variable you need to use for the next statement is a bit cumbersome.

But, every function gets the arguments that it will work with.  You could easily refactor this and break out the last closure:

function doIntendedThings(page, site) {
  // …perhaps placing this in another file altogether…
}

getPage()
  .then(function(page) {
    return [page, page.getSite()]
  })
  .spread(doIntendedThings)

You can see a real usage of this in some of the unit-tests of Some comments: models.js line 88-109