Podcasts about mantak

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Eva Williams is the founder of Golden Lotus; A divine online portal of meditations, movement practices, and sexual/spiritual energy education designed to cultivate spiritual awakening, sexual activation, and embodied sovereignty. This episode explores rebirth and the unfolding of the sacred feminine through preparation and activation rituals, with a deep dive into birth and pregnancy. Tahnee and Eva journey into the numinous layers of Eva's healing work, her Golden Lotus portal, her focus on cultivating and purifying the body through ancient techniques, sexual embodiment, self-pleasure practices, and the many dimensions of birth work. A healer and teacher with over a decade of experience in bodywork, energy work, and feminine sexual cultivation techniques, Eva carries a depth of knowledge that women need now more than ever. Currently, the way most women in society birth is within the structure of an over-medicalised patriarchal system. Sacred feminine lineages of natural birthing wisdom have been at large, replaced with time constraints, interventions, inductions, and regulations; The antithesis of a naturally unfolding feminine space. How did we end up here? With so much of her work focused on this space and where sexual embodiment falls into birth, Eva discusses the importance of birth preparation; From detoxing, orgasms, and opening the pelvis to the deep work of trusting the body and baby to do what they instinctively know how to do. This conversation is a deep weaving of energetic, sexual, and birth culture healing; For all women, past, present, and future.   "Many people come into tantra with a concept of a partner base in mind. But the way I was trained, particularly with my teachers in this more Sufi tradition, I never went into any of this work looking for my sexuality. I never thought I would only work with women; I never thought I would be working with birth. That was not my aim; My aim was to heal people. I worked on everyone. Ultimately, I wanted to find God. I wanted a very deep spiritual experience or a series of those. And over time, that guided me in that direction.  But there was a level of care and sobriety cultivated within me before I was put on that path. And this level of deep devotion and sobriety to my self-development was paramount".   - Eva Williams     Tahnee and Eva discuss: Doula work. Ultrasounds. Inducing labour. Foetal monitoring. Dolphin midwives. Birth preparation. Empowered birth. Tantric practices. Devine Female Orgasm. Self-pleasure practices. Feminine embodiment. Female sexuality and birth. The pelvis is a fluid body. Somatics and embodiment. Time constraints placed on pregnancy and birthing.   Who is Eva Louise Williams? Eva Louise Williams is a healer and teacher with over a decade of experience in bodywork, energy work, and feminine sexual cultivation techniques. She began her journey at 18 learning reiki and pranic healing, before becoming initiated into Kriya yoga (the lineage of Babaji) at 20, then went on to study Shiatsu, Japanese Acupuncture, and Taoist sexual cultivation techniques. She began teaching others at 26 and received the transmission for Golden Lotus at the age of 29. She currently has over 10,000 hours of experience as a bodyworker and teacher. Eva is also a doula, a birth educator, and an RYT 500 in tantric Hatha and kundalini lineages. Golden Lotus was founded to both serve and lead female seekers towards awakening and remembering Self-love & trust. It is a series of teachings that cultivate spiritual and sovereign embodiment; the focus lies in stabilising, purifying, and awakening through ancient techniques and spiritual secrets taught through a state of ritual and Holy full-body Prayer.     CLICK HERE TO LISTEN ON APPLE PODCAST    Resources: goldenlotus.com Golden Lotus Instagram   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We'd also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher, CastBox, iHeart RADIO:)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:00) Hi everybody, and welcome to the SuperFeast Podcast. Today, I'm joined by Eva Williams. I'm really excited to have her here. I've been following her work online and she's really aligned with what we do at SuperFeast. She's an explorer of this wide world of Daoist medicine through the Japanese lineage, but also, she waves in, from what I can tell, you seem to bring in all these beautiful, different traditions, Sufism, Kriya yoga, different types of feminine embodiment, Pranic healing, that kind of stuff. So I'm really excited to have you here today. I'm really excited to share with our community your work.   Tahnee: (00:37) And if you guys are interested, we'll talk about it through the podcast, but Eva has a whole lot of resources on her website, courses you can do related to different aspects of a lot of the stuff we teach at SuperFeast. So thank you for joining us here today, Eva, it's such a pleasure to have you here.   Eva Williams: (00:53) My pleasure. Thank you so much.   Tahnee: (00:57) Yeah, I'm so excited. I think I first came across you on Instagram and I've had a look through what you offer. I know you haven't studied with Mantak, but it really seems aligned with a lot of the work that I learned through studying with him, the feminine work around energy cultivation. Obviously, you've studied Shiatsu and Japanese acupuncture. So you speak to the meridians and all those kinds of things. Would you mind telling us a bit about your journey here? How did you get to be offering Golden Lotus to the world?   Eva Williams: (01:30) Yeah, sure. All right. My journey's been quite interesting in terms of length because my mom is really into alternative medicine. I remember when I was six years old and I just had this incredibly bad tonsillitis, it was to the point where I was being taken out of school for days and days every week. And my mom noticed that I responded really, really well to the osteopath that she would take us to because she used to take us all three to the osteopath regularly. And so the osteopath said, "Look, this kid is responsive as hell. You should just take her to a cranial osteopath because that will help."   Eva Williams: (02:12) So I started going to this professional cranial osteopath when I was six, and it was the only thing that assisted, it was the only thing my body would really respond to. So really, from an early age, my mom knew that, particularly me, I think my brother and sister definitely as well, but particularly me, if anything would happen, like when I was 13 and I had anxiety, my mom was like, "Oh, we could put her on anti-anxiety or we could do reflexology with Bach flower remedies." And also, I had psoriasis, I had developed psoriasis when I was 13. And psoriasis, for those of you who don't know, is a skin issue, and it's one of these just really stubborn, autoimmune things.   Eva Williams: (02:55) Anything that's autoimmune is basically, no offence to all of the fantastic doctors and the medical community, but anything that's autoimmune is basically in the realm of, "We don't really know what the fuck is happening, so here's some steroids. That's where we're at." And so I started trying out these different things and some of them are called like bowel neurotherapies, which are where you'd have a salt bath and then UV light therapy or something like that. And there's not a lot of sun in the Netherlands where I was living at the time. So I started getting into this world where every time I'd be going to this clinic, I'd be checking out the cards on the notice board.   Eva Williams: (03:34) And there'd always be like random things like Karma healing or like emotional Chakra clearing. And one day I found this card and I was like, "This is so good." I walked around with this card for like a week or two, and then I called the person. And I remember, as soon as I called her, she was like, "Yeah, how can I help you?" I'm like, "Look, I don't really know what you do. Do you speak English? I don't really know what you do, but I feel really like this is something that I need to try." And she was like, "Hmm, no, you need Dini." I was like, "I'm sorry, have we even met? I'm trying to book an appointment with you."   Eva Williams: (04:04) And she was like, "No, you need Dini." I was like, "Oh, okay. I need Dini." And then this woman was this like 75-year-old woman who looked so young. And she was like, "How old do you think I am?" I'm like, "We've been through this before." She was just amazing. And she barely spoke any English. And I remember I was 15 when I first went to see her, and she did Meridian massage. She did Meridian clearing and healing. She was just a healer, so she would tell me a bunch of different things, and then she would do this work on me. She would tell me things that I look back on now, I'm like, "Dude, she was so on point."   Eva Williams: (04:44) But at the time, I was like, "What the fuck is she talking about?" She's like, "You're taking on a lot from your father." I'm like, "Okay."   Tahnee: (04:51) What does that mean?   Eva Williams: (04:51) Exactly. And now, I'm like, "I'm that person." But it was quite a unique experience. And I remember when she first read my astrology chart, she just looked at me. And it was very Dutch. The Dutch are very dry, they don't beat around the bush, they're very pragmatic and straightforward. And she was like, "Wow, that's not good." I was like, "Why are you doing this to me?" So she started saying to me really early on when I was 15, 16, I didn't like high school, so I left high school when I was 15 to teach myself. She started saying to me really regularly, "You have to promise me that you will do this work." She's like, "Do you think what I do is amazing?" I'm like, "I think it's pretty out there."   Eva Williams: (05:36) And she's like, "Okay, but what you are going to do is this, but much, much more." And she's like, "You have to promise me." And my mom taught me from when I was really young that a promise is a really strong word and you don't use it if you can't keep it. So I was like, "Far out, man, this is my life ahead of me and you want me to..., " But she sent me to some other people, liquid crystal healers and all sorts of things, so I was getting into some really bizarro stuff. And I wasn't telling my parents that much about this because it no longer had this homoeopathic application anymore. Now, it was just like, "Fuck it, I'm going to go on a journey and meet the [inaudible 00:06:07]. See you later."   Eva Williams: (06:08) I was getting into some really out-there stuff at like 16, 17, but it was, it was really amazing. So I followed that thread and I taught myself, I homeschooled myself. And I got into a really great university. And so I went to university, everyone told me people are more free thinking in university, etc, etc. And I thought, "Okay, great." But actually I didn't find that, I actually found that the institutionalised information had just become denser. I didn't find that people were more free thinking, I found that there were more presumptions. And especially for someone who didn't go through the IB or the international baccalaureate programme, it was really difficult for me.   Eva Williams: (06:51) I had some really awakening moments, just some really jarring stuff happened where I was like, "I don't think I really belong here." And my dad moved to India that year, and so my brother and sister and I all went to see him in India. My dad's a geologist, so all around the house, ever since we were little, we'd had tumbled rocks, amethyst, turquoise, this or that. So he was always teaching us about all these crystals. So when my brother and I got to India, we saw the tumbled rocks, these beautiful amethyst, and we both took one. We were like, "Let's go to the Himalayas."   Eva Williams: (07:28) He's like, "Yeah, let's learn yoga from a really old yogi." I was like, "Yeah, let's go do that." So and I was like, "Dad, I'm taking this rock with me." He's like, "If you take that, you're bringing it back. That's my rock." So I took this amethyst in my pocket and I went into the Himalayas. And I met a woman and she... I wanted to study Reiki, that was my thing. She just looked at me and she was like, "Hey, look, I'm going to give you these codes for all the different levels of Reiki, and then I need you to come back and I want you to teach my level two students." I'm like, "Lady, I just walked in here. I don't know what Reiki is yet."   Tahnee: (08:01) I've got to learn.   Eva Williams: (08:06) "I've got a nab at this, I had a dream on the bus. There's a lot going on right now. I don't think I'm ready to teach people something I haven't learned." But what she was picking up on was that I could touch people and feel what they were experiencing. So I came back the next day, and I was just putting my hands on people and I just explained what I could see or feel. And she's like, "You need to promise me ... " I was like, "You know what, I've heard all of this before, my friend. I have heard all of this before." So I went back to the Netherlands to university, and I was doing my 30 days. You have to do this self Reiki thing after you do Reiki.   Eva Williams: (08:45) And during that period of time, I was like, "I'm not meant to be an architect, I'm not meant to be doing what I'm doing. And so I need to go." And so I gave away everything I owned and I said to my dad, "I'm free again." And he's like, "Yeah, great. You left high school twice and now you're leaving an international honours university. This is a great run you're having over here. I hope you put my amethyst back."   Tahnee: (09:07) Yeah. So proud.   Eva Williams: (09:10) He's like, "You'll face... " I'm joking. And he was like, "Okay, look, you've always been who you are, no one's stopping that. But what are you going to do? You should have a bit of a plan." And I was like, "Yeah, well, what do I have to my name?" He's laughing. He's like, "What do you have to your name? You're a broke student. You have nothing but a ticket home to New Zealand that I will give you until you're 22." So I was like, "All right, great. I'll take it." So I went to New Zealand for three weeks and I went for a Reiki session. And this woman, she did that same thing, she's like, "You don't need me, you need Barbara and you need Jan."   Eva Williams: (09:43) And I'm like, "Okay, send me the names." So I started exploring all these different modalities of incredible light work, just incredible, incredible things while I was there. I go down to the ocean and dolphins would come and visit me, and then I'd go see the healers, and they're like, "You called those dolphins." I'm like, "Okay. All right. Let's calm down." But now I'm like, "We all call the dolphins." Now, I'm like, "Of course, I called the dolphins."   Tahnee: (10:07) They're our people.   Eva Williams: (10:08) My allies. They came to me in my hour of need. It was just a beautiful time. And then one day, in my heart, I just heard... I was waiting for that moment where you hear it from within, because I have a very active mind, so I can make up whatever I want to hear. But I heard Melbourne from my heart. And I was like, "Okay, that's where it's going to be." So I called my parents, I'm like, "I'm going to Melbourne." They were like, "Oh, thank God, she's got a plan." And I went there and I thought I was going to stay doing something graphic design or something design oriented, because that's a big part of my passion in life.   Eva Williams: (10:42) And I found the Australian Shiatsu College, and I found my shakes. I found my Sufi shakes. And once I found these two things, everything else fell in line. Yes, I was initiated into Kriya yoga over when I was 21, which was amazing. When I was 20, still finding my feet, I hadn't found the college yet, I hadn't found my shakes yet. I used to lie in my bedroom listening to singing balls. And that was this one guy who I just loved, very camp, but amazing, but just incredible sound healer, just such an amazing heart and soul. And he would just put all this water in a bow and he'd be like, "These are the dolphin's ball, the dolphins are coming to sing us."   Eva Williams: (11:26) And he would hit it and he would play it. And it was like, oh my God, this man, I don't even know where he comes from, but he's amazing." So one day I fell asleep, listening to this and I woke up and how you know YouTube just plays. And I saw this image on my screen, and I looked at it and it was this blue light and this golden man. And it just said, "The golden body of the Yogi." And I knew in that moment this is why I'm on the planet. This is why I'm on the planet. And so then I found out who that was, and that was an image of Babaji. And so then I found out about Kriya yoga.   Eva Williams: (12:00) And it's interesting because when I had looked for yoga schools in India years before, the only ones that I had found that I wanted to go to were the Kriya yoga schools. And so I became initiated into the Kriya yoga lineage of the Babaji and then his disciple Lahiri Mahasaya, and then Sri Yukteswar, and Paramahamsa Yogananda. And that was the beginning of things unlocking for me. And then I found Shiatsu in oriental medicine, and I went on to study Japanese acupuncture. And then I also found a teacher, a female teacher, and she did a beautiful mixture of yoga and Daoist work with the Jade egg. And then through the studies that I was doing and her even teaching in the same building, I just made this place my home and we'd get all these amazing international practitioners.   Eva Williams: (12:50) I found myself picking up exactly what I needed from that, including doula training and all sorts of things like this that were going on in the space. And then I worked at a Japanese bath house after I graduated for five years or so, I think it was, or something around that. And I really was so lucky because even if you want to rack up hours as a practitioner, it's very hard to find a place to be doing flat out work as Shiatsu practitioner just right out of school. But I was able to rack up at 10,000 hours really quickly in my first, I would say, first six or seven years of work.   Eva Williams: (13:27) And then I went to Bali, I got married. I went to Bali for a honeymoon, and then I just decided I was going to move to Dubai because it was something I really wanted to do. And then about a year into being in Dubai, I was just lying in the bathtub and I just had this full download through my body. And these images came to me and all this stuff and I was just being told what to do like, "You need to write this down, you need to go and get these things." And I was told to build out a whole altar. So I had this massive altar. And I was just sitting in front of it like, "Okay, I now live in a church. What next?"   Eva Williams: (14:06) My husband, he was in Iraq at the time, so he wasn't home. So I was like, "Nobody's going to know about my weird little mat?" And then when he came home, he's like, "That's a lot of candles. Do you need to light all of them at once? Are we doing a séance? What's happening here?" But as I was doing this, the spirits of these different plants I've been told to buy exactly 13 were coming to me, people were sending me things. I was finding things that I'd had in my library for a long time, I'd just never seen them with that particular glow or from that angle, that a transmission was coming through.   Eva Williams: (14:41) And I basically just sat down and I wrote the 10 transmissions of level one of Golden Lotus, which is the eight extraordinary vessels and the 12 main meridians. Unless you do a practitioner training, I don't do Triple Warmer and Pericardium. So it's basically just the five elements. So water, wood, earth, metal as it were, and fire. And then the eight extraordinary. But we do the Chong Mai twice because it has the main vessel and then two other vessels. And for the purpose of female sexual cultivation, it's important actually to separate those two. And then from there, it just started unlocking, like level two became the three gates of orgasm and just the content was just pouring down.   Eva Williams: (15:28) And it was a mixture between a really pure transmission I was being guided to and led to, and then a really deep weaving of just years and years. I'm very, very autodidactic because I didn't go to high school even, so my ability to sit and research and work if I have the impetus is quite high. If not, guess what?   Tahnee: (15:54) Very low. I can relate to that.   Eva Williams: (16:00) I'm like, "Let's have a show of hands." I'm pretty sure everyone's like, "Yeah, that's a... '' So I was able to just channel this, and then it just was really natural that these two modalities, the way it's structured is that the level one is really about working with the Yoni egg, so the Jade egg. It's really about clearing your own body, detoxing and recentralizing through the pelvis. So clearing trauma in the pelvis, opening the sensitivity of the pelvis, and really weaving in the whole rest of the body to a pelvic alignment. So beginning to really understand all of these different reflex zones that we have in the body that all relate to the pelvis.   Eva Williams: (16:43) And I don't just mean the internal reflex zones of the different organ systems, I also mean really beginning to explore somatically the balance between the sacrum and the buttock and the stone and the breasts, or how there's different alignments of your pelvis and your jaw and your mouth. And there's multiple different ways that we can set up these reflexologies that allow us to have a sense that we're hinging from the pelvis. So it's very much about coming into that, and it's not supposed to be... It's supposed to basically teach you how to come into contact with your own energy, to disperse it through your whole body so that you can actually have proper tantra experiences and also to self-regulate.   Eva Williams: (17:23) Because the level two work, it's almost like we go from a pelvic central model out to the body. And then the next level is all more explicit. So it's like self-pleasure practises. Or if we do like a retreat, we'll do some touch exchange practises. If you come to my clinic, I will do internal work at times, things like this. And so that's very triggering work. And I've seen, because I have been in many of these schools with sexual energy, the lack of self-regulation that is taught before highly activating practises come into play. And I didn't like that.   Eva Williams: (18:02) And so while I didn't necessarily plan the way that Golden Lotus was channelled, it is a very deep reflection of the beliefs in the general that I've taken, which is that we need to prepare our body before we do all this highly sexual activating practise. Because otherwise, I think one of the big things in the tantra communities and things that's happened is, it's just become all about sex dressed up as something spiritual, you know?   Tahnee: (18:26) Oh, I know.   Eva Williams: (18:28) You're like, "Really? I've never come across this before."   Tahnee: (18:31) I'm just laughing because I spent some time at Agama Yoga in Thailand I have never laughed so hard. We did a 10 day silent meditation and we were asked to abstain from sex for 10 days. And every day, someone would ask, "I really feel like I need to have sex today. Could I possibly not have... " I was like, "So you guys can't go 10 days without touching yourself or someone else." I've never seen anything like it. So if you love Agama, I found it a really toxic culture. It was almost high school. I was really shocked.   Eva Williams: (19:10) It's infamous. It's infamous for this. My teacher went there, one of my teachers was there and she told me all about it. And then even recently, I was sitting with a friend and I was mentioning some of these things, and she was like, "Oh my gosh. One time, when I was at the very beginning of my path, I went to this place." And as soon as she said it, I knew. I was like, "I know where you were talking about. I've never been there myself, but it's infamous."   Tahnee: (19:37) It was an experience. Yes, I hear you.   Eva Williams: (19:37) I think that this thing is also, I think a lot of people come into tantra with a concept of partner base in mind, and the way that I was trained, particularly with my teachers in this more Sufi tradition and things like this, I never went into any of this work looking for my sexuality. I never thought I would only work with women, I never thought I would be working with birth. This was not my aim. My aim was just to heal people. I worked on everyone. And ultimately, my aim was just to find God, I just wanted to have a very deep spiritual experience or a series of those. And so that over time guided into that direction, I just saw the level of care and sobriety that was cultivated within me before putting me onto that path.   Eva Williams: (20:30) The level of deep devotion and sobriety to my own self-development was paramount. And so there wasn't a sense of like there was a real sense that I wasn't allowed to just mess around, I wasn't allowed to just go to whatever workshop I wanted or something. I was really guided very strongly as to what is an integrity and what is not an integrity as far as transmissions go. And I'm very grateful for that. At least it worked for me within my system of integrity. So then basically it brought the birth of this beautiful work and I think that people love it when they do it, and I think people do feel that they can regulate themselves through it.   Eva Williams: (21:12) And that work for me, very, very naturally falls into birth work. If you are learning how to move and you're learning all these different ways of detoxing and opening your body and then you're learning these three gates of orgasm, which is very specifically sent into the pelvis, so then we are really going into the semantics of the pelvis alone. If you're doing all of that work, that is the birth prep is just extraordinary. And so I developed that into a birthing programme as well, because we need more of that. I think that you're not really taught how much prep goes into birth until you're pregnant.   Tahnee: (21:48) And it's really not a great time then to be exploring.   Eva Williams: (21:52) No. Not at all because it's traumatic.   Tahnee: (21:53) Because of your trauma.   Eva Williams: (21:53) You can definitely do some work on it then, but you need some guidance and holding through that because unwinding trauma can take a really long time, the somatic body's not quick   Tahnee: (22:10) Not fast, very slow.   Eva Williams: (22:17) It really likes to take its time.   Tahnee: (22:17) Oh man, it's so true. And I think what is so interesting about what you're speaking to though with coming into birth work, I know for me, I did muntuk's work and I was having internal work there and working with eggs and clearing those, that whole period of time was big for me. It was unpleasant in some ways and really beautiful and powerful in other ways. But I came to birth and I remember thinking like, "If I hadn't done that work, I wouldn't be able to hold myself through pregnancy and birth the way I've been able to, through pregnancy and birth."   Tahnee: (22:56) And you are speaking to this sense of sobriety and this sense of strength and just the ability to hold your own energy and read your own energy and tune into it, I think that's the piece for women going in and it's like, you're going to have people try and tell you things that you have to filter through, your truth filters. You have to make decisions around your sovereignty and around your care that you probably... These are big decisions and you don't have much context for them usually. I know for me even being fairly educated, there's just stuff I was like, "Do I have to do this? What are the rules?"   Tahnee: (23:32) And I think if you don't have that strong foundation, I think that's stuff golden lotus, it sounds like it just provides that container for women to start to build that trust in themselves so they can go and then really be open to what is honestly the most incredible experience you can have as a woman. I know woman choose not to birth, but for me, profound, but a lot of preparation too, I think in my experience.   Eva Williams: (23:58) I think it's really underestimated how much prep it takes. And I think it's also, to understand that you've got so much content that you want to read about the spiritual, about the physiological, but also how much you've got to inform yourself around just-   Tahnee: (24:13) Practical.   Eva Williams: (24:14) Yeah. Just random medical stuff, because we are taught to just, if someone's wearing a white coat, they know. They wouldn't suggest it if it wasn't for your best.   Tahnee: (24:23) Is that true?   Eva Williams: (24:23) That's not true. And it's sad. It's so sad to acknowledge that, but that's unfortunately the truth. And so I'm in the process of putting together a programme now which really takes people, basically it's like a month-by-month programme. So you can buy the modules as a month or you can buy them as a whole. And it's got workbooks and meditations. It addresses the emotional, the spiritual, how far along your baby is and where they're growing.   Eva Williams: (24:57) And it really also, for me, there's like this very strong concept of, you have the mother, you have the child, and then you have the mother-child unit, this third that's being generated and they call it mama toto in Swahili, this concept of the mother-child. And to build a bridge between these things because one of the things that I've noticed in for example, certain modalities like APA, like the pre and perinatal psychology, people who do fantastic work is that one of the main... how do I explain this for people who don't maybe come from this context? Someone asked me recently, how can you tell if your doula is a good doula? How can you choose a good doula?   Eva Williams: (25:44) How many stars are there in the sky, my friend? And then immediately it came to me, I know it really... And I realised that the doula that I really, we don't even call ourselves doula's anymore because we consider ourselves more birth keepers or birth workers because the work gets so close to midwifery at a certain stage that the idea that you are not advocating for a client or all these sorts of things, it doesn't have a place when you get to a certain level of birth work. And these women, all of them speak to the baby individually to the mother. And immediately I realise, "Oh, if your doula will have an individual relationship to the baby, as they do to you, but they are there for you, to me, that's a good doula."   Eva Williams: (26:38) And I know that sounds strange, but I come very much from this concept that the baby is always the most conscious being in the room, born or unborn. And so if we can begin to actually... What I would love for more women to know is that a lot of women really get bogged down with this idea like, "It's me, it's my body. Yes, my partner's helping me, but I have to carry this. I feel heavy, this baby's relying on me." And so there becomes almost a scarcity of this really deep sense of drudgery or something related, or just a deep sense of lack of support that becomes related to birth.   Eva Williams: (27:10) And one of the things that I think is really important for women to understand is neither on a physiological level, not spiritual level are you alone? This baby is the one that will release the hormone that will tell your body and your stomach when to dilate. This child will send stem cells to heal your body into your blood. This child is there for you, and this child is leading this labour actually. So this child is bringing you energy and bringing you protection, and bringing you gifts of healing. And this moment is actually for you, it's not happening to you, it's happening for you.   Eva Williams: (27:49) So the moment that that child is born is your rebirth as well, it is your moment to also let go and let something new come through. And I think that interconnection, that interplay is what allows women to not just trust their body, which is one of the thing that I wish more people could establish prior to falling pregnant, we should call it rising pregnant, "I rose pregnant."   Tahnee: (28:14) It's beautiful.   Eva Williams: (28:16) But also that they begin to trust not just their body, but the baby. So they're like, "Yeah, my body knows how to do this and this, baby's got this, I've got it. Our relationship got it and my body's got it. So this is what's going to happen." And just really leading from that place. And for many people, that might sound fantastical, but the more that we're going to understand birth, the more that we look at what's happening with the stem cells, the more that we look at the neurology and the physiology of labour itself and the more that if you have done that previously, you'll know that this is real, this is actually what's happening, that there is this very deep exchange of support.   Eva Williams: (28:56) And that's what I think is the most powerful thing is when a woman trusts so innately in her body and in the child that has chosen her to take this journey, that bond is what's leading the labour. I just think that that's very powerful. So the course that I've developed is to try to assist with that, and then obviously is also bringing different movements for different trimesters because different parts of the body obviously get affected at different times, and hypnobirthing scripts and of dolphin and whale stuff going on there, because you know, our allies.   Tahnee: (29:31) It's so funny all the stuff you're speaking about. With my daughter, she's five now, nearly five, but I had a dolphin come to me while I was pregnant with her in the water. And she had me through the whole pregnancy, guiding everything. I was doing body work at the time and I had this really strong download that I had to stop. And I remember contacting my teacher, who's the female teacher of Chi Nei Tsang from Mantak Chia. She was like, "If the baby's telling you to stop your stuff," and I had this golden thread with her and she was this little golden being, so probably about, I think around two dissolved completely. It got weaker and weaker over time. But just all of that stuff...   Tahnee: (30:17) And I had a lot of stuff going on in my life when I was pregnant with her and she just held me like I was... I remember thinking, "I should be really stressed out right now, but I feel really safe and really held through this." And it took me a little while to realise that that was her contributing that to my experience. And I think that trust is something she gave me, which I think is a really beautiful thing. I'm halfway through my pregnancy now, I'm four months, but this pregnancies been really different for me. So it's interesting. I'm interested to see how they play out, because I haven't had that same sense of baby protection or strong baby messages.   Tahnee: (31:03) But I'm interested in that space because I think it's hard to talk about that stuff as a woman, the midwives I had were very practical, wonderful women, but they were very grounded and of the earth. And you had a textbook pregnancy and a textbook birth, well done? And I was like, "Yeah, but what about all this cool stuff that's happening to me?" And they were like, "We don't want to talk about that stuff." I was like, "Okay."   Eva Williams: (31:33) It's a shame actually because it's weird thing-   Tahnee: (31:35) I'm glad you're here.   Eva Williams: (31:35) What did you say?   Tahnee: (31:38) That I'm glad you're here in the world.   Eva Williams: (31:41) Dolphins are so important in birth. That's so important. People who are not getting this message, I'm like, "You guys have to... " I always tell my clients, I'm like, "Just Google." I'll be like, "Yeah, the dolphin midwives." And then everyone at the table laughed. I'm like, "Huh." Wait until you see it.   Tahnee: (31:57) It's true, Hawaii.   Eva Williams: (31:57) I know. And then I'm like, "Google it. You Google dolphin midwife." And people come back, "Whoa." I'm like, "Yeah, that's actually a"-   Tahnee: (32:01) And wasn't they doing it in Russia, the Google something?   Eva Williams: (32:05) They did, yes. Birthing to being, Alana's work was incredible.   Tahnee: (32:08) Because Jeannine Parvati Baker talks about it a lot in her work, and some other people have talked about studying.   Eva Williams: (32:16) I think the woman who found a birth into being, she had a centre in the Caspian sea where the dolphins would come in and people would just be freebirthing in the water, which is wild. And so we have over here, birth it's a very obstetric-run American imported system. It's pretty brutal. So we are looking at different birth centres talk of shifting some things around birth here because Dubai is like a playground in terms of, they're so open to new ideas. And people may not think of them like that from the outside, but they really are.   Eva Williams: (32:56) They're so innovative and there's some very special, very, very, very special energy to the Emiratis to the Bedouin people, just something very special. So we were looking at working with a very beautiful woman whose work I incorporate a lot into mine, her name's Dr. Gallery. And she has some beautiful, gentle birth clinics in London and things like this. And she said, "Oh yes, I'd love to come out and do something with you guys in Dubai, but I only want to work with the dolphins." And she's a full OB/GYN. And I was like, "You and me, this is going to work so well." I was like, "Scrap all the land we've found, we're going to the ocean."   Eva Williams: (33:43) I was like, "This is the future of it. This is the future of birth." And I think that there's a lot of beautiful places in Cairo and around Egypt as well like in Sharm El Sheikh and in the Red Sea that we might begin to also see really beautiful work with the dolphins popping up. And I know that a couple of people that I know have wanted to do things like this in the North of Ibiza, and South, but the problem is the water's very cold over there, so it's not really something that can work as well. But in these waters, when the dolphin comes to the baby, it is telling you that you are going to give birth soon. Maybe in this instance, I don't know where you were in your pregnancy.   Tahnee: (34:18) No. I was heavily pregnant. My husband I got engaged there, and we got married there. It's this very special spot for us. And I was standing probably naval deep in water and it came, honestly, I was terrified. I was not like, "Oh my God." I was like, "Ah, I think a dolphin is coming at me." And it whooshed so close to me. My husband was out deep and he turned around and saw the dolphin and was like, "Whoa." And then there was a whole pod behind him. But it broke off and came and checked me out. And they can sonar heartbeats and stuff so I was thinking it must have been checking me out and being like, "What are you doing?"   Eva Williams: (35:00) So what they do is when you're very heavily pregnant, if they come towards you and if they put the nose toward the belly or come very close to you, usually you're always going to give birth.   Tahnee: (35:08) I thought it was going to scare me.   Eva Williams: (35:08) Oh, what a lovely experience.   Tahnee: (35:14) I was not like, "Oh my God." Seriously, I was like, "Holy crap, is this safe?"   Eva Williams: (35:18) I know. Every time I was in New Zealand and dolphins came as well, I was swimming in the water and I just shot bowl upright and I was standing and I was like, "There's something in the water." And I'd hear these voices like, "It's okay." I'm like, "It's definitely not fucking okay." My instinct body was like, "This is not okay." And my spiritual body was like, "It's going to be okay." And every part of me was like, "That's fine, but I'm still going to stand because I can run, and those, they can swim. This is not my territory."   Tahnee: (35:45) It's true.   Eva Williams: (35:49) It's so true. But they can activate the labour. They can do this really strongly by communicating with the child as well. It's something very, very powerful.   Tahnee: (35:58) Super cool. And the indigenous people here where we are, they believe that they are their people. Every time I've been in any ceremony or anything they will speak to the whales and the dolphins here as being ancestors.   Eva Williams: (36:10) Yeah. They bring children.   Tahnee: (36:14) Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.   Eva Williams: (36:18) I believe they bring the children because they don't just turn up when a woman's very pregnant to assist in the physiological activation of the hormonal aspects of labour, many, many women will see dolphins on the night they conceive or at the time or just before conception. And whenever a woman's like, "Yeah, we're trying to get pregnant. Oh, I saw dolphins." I'm like, "You go have baby." I had a friend and she saw porpoises. They're not even dolphins, I was like, "You go have a baby." And they did the ultrasound and they tuned it back to that time.   Tahnee: (36:49) Perhaps they're related to a dolphin somehow.   Eva Williams: (36:51) I'm like, "It could be a manatees, I don't care, you're having a baby." I'm joking.   Tahnee: (36:59) An orca. Let's not get too crazy. But it's okay. Tell me about this primary thing. That's interesting, because I know if you're not aware of this, I don't know if we've spoken about this on the podcast yet, so the hormonal cascade that the baby triggers in the mother, this is all these beautiful juicy hormones like oxytocin and things that, A, make birth less painful, which is a good thing. And B, obviously also the whole cascade of uterine contractions, breast milk coming in, all of these things. So the baby actually triggers that. And one of the things that happens a lot in our culture is we induce, or if there's an obstetrician that my midwife shared with me who wants to induce everyone at 38 weeks in a hospital near us.   Tahnee: (37:40) And this kind of thing just terrifies me, and I have friends who've waited 43 weeks plus for their babies to come.   Eva Williams: (37:48) Especially plus babies.   Tahnee: (37:51) My daughter was 42 weeks on the day. And I just think, can you speak a little bit to women who might have fear around, "I'm getting pressure from my OB/GYN or my midwife to induce." I know it's a real slippery topic, but at least speak to that.   Eva Williams: (38:06) No, no. It's not. I don't think it's slippery at all, I think it's underdressed. And it's interesting, I remember, so here they've got DHA, the Dubai Health Authority, has a policy around a certain time. Even if your OB/GYN is more liberal, there's a certain red tape that they can't really cross. And so I remember the first hospital birth I did in Dubai, home birth is illegal here by the way. It's actually not illegal to give birth at home, it's illegal for anyone to assist, anyone who has a licence issued by the government could get it taken away if they assist you.   Eva Williams: (38:44) So if you bring in a midwife from overseas or for me, I'm not an OB/GYN or a midwife, so I'm also not really assisting people with home births here because I don't think that's necessarily a great thing to do. But if someone were in labour and it was progressing really quickly, rather than stress them out and shove them into a car, I think I know what I'd probably end up doing. But it's an interesting thing because I remember the very first one I attended, the OB/GYN was just pressuring my clients so hard and she was outside and afterwards she was crying.   Eva Williams: (39:20) She's like, "I don't know what to do." And so obviously, as a birth worker, I've got 117 different things to pull out of the cupboard because I'm acupuncture, Im like okay acupuncture, we've been doing Homoeopathy week, 36 or 38 at that point, let's try some different homoeopathy, maybe something that's addressing more of the fears and emotions. Let's do massage, let's do the dirty three, hot food, a glass of wine and have some sex, all of that. And then also internal work, massage the cervix, check how it phased someone is, just at that stage of pregnancy. So we did a really beautiful ceremony of her husband and her on the bed, and I did the internal work. It was very dark. We put on music.   Eva Williams: (40:10) And we just really checked out what was happening, what the engagement was. So not a vaginal exam, but just to actually see, and definitely not a sweep or something, none of that stuff I'm trained in, but just really actually to feel how the effacement was going, how the pelvis was feeling, what was actually getting caught up in the pelvic. Was there something caught up there or was she just not ready? And for me, it was really clear that she's just not ready. It's her first baby, it's 39 weeks and the baby is just not ready. It's not coming yet.   Eva Williams: (40:38) I think that what's difficult about getting pressure... I remember after this situation, I gave them all these techniques. I said, "We're going to make a plan. Don't worry." And they felt better, and I went to my car and I just fucking sat in my car and cried for 20 minutes. The sense of stress and pressure, and it's not even my baby, that happens in that room when a doctor strong arms you and tells you that what they know is right, when it may not feel right for you, is so intense. And I know that doctors don't fully understand that. I know that OB/GYNs, not all of them fully understand that. I have the great privilege of working with many who do.   Eva Williams: (41:17) And I remember during this labour, I was sitting out in the hallway and I was just crying. And the doctor came to me and she's like, "Why are you crying?" I'm like, "Dude, you're pushing so hard. This is ridiculous. This is going to end really not well." And then she started tearing up and sat down next to me. And she's like, "It's just a lot of pressure." And we were just having this full heart to heart, just weeping in the hallway. Like, "What the fuck?" But it managed to buy me another 48 hours for my clients, which is amazing.   Tahnee: (41:46) Good work.   Eva Williams: (41:52) It's so much pressure. It's so much pressure. The thing is that there's very little that actually requires induction. Things that do not require induction, your baby is too big for your pelvis, it's a big baby, your baby has passed 40 weeks, meconium has passed, the cord is around the neck. These are not reasons for induction and they're not reasons for C-sections either. It's just very intense. I think some something that people don't understand is that an OB/GYN or a medical professional on your birth is someone that you want there in an emergency situation, they have no requirement to witness physiological birth. They have none. They do not have to witness a single, natural, physiological birth as part of their training, they have to do surgery.   Eva Williams: (42:48) So their whole frame of reference is coming that birth as an emergency. They have never had to sit. If you ask an OB/GYN what's a normal to long labour, I had an OB/GYN tell me that 10 hours was a long labour. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, what are you guys having? Have you got a slip slide set up out here." I was on a midwife tour recently in Aspen, someone's like, "How does labour take?" And the midwife's like, "It can take up to two hours." I was like, "What?" If it's your fourth baby and you're at nine centimetres. It's just ridiculous.   Tahnee: (43:19) Wow.   Eva Williams: (43:19) Yeah, I know. I know. And I always think to myself like, "Wow, I think that 40 hours of fairly active labour is long." I think that labour from early labour onward can go on for a week. That's the sort of time I'm willing to just give a woman and her body to just dilate at its pace and do its thing, and it's just unheard of. So if people are getting pressure to induce and it's funny, because we've made this thing over here and we're not doing it yet, but it's a couple of doulas and I have this, it's kind of our joke, but I also want to do it. And it's going to be for women who for partners, 36 and 37 weeks onward, and it's going to be the induction group.   Eva Williams: (44:01) Basically, you all come together and we watch a funny movie or a beautiful movie about birth, and you get a glass of red wine. We're not getting hammered over here, but you get a glass of red wine. We have some food, whether it's Indian or Thai, something with a little bit of spice, a little bit Mexican or something, and you just share. And you can share if it's stressful, you can share if it's funny, we share content and information. And then if you want to stay for the second part, we teach something like certain techniques, maybe not actually internal, but certain techniques like clitoral stroking or labial massage or hip massage or things like that that your partner can do that will assist in your hips getting ready and things like that.   Eva Williams: (44:42) And just from 37 weeks on, everyone is welcome to just join, come, have that glass of wine, just get a move on. Do a bit of dancing, have a bit of laughter. Because the group, you share more pheromonal energy. Because that's something that isn't readily shared, adrenaline and cortisol inhibit oxytocin. So if you're stressed, you cannot go into natural labour, they inhibit one another. So if women are feeling stressed about being induced, the thing that they really need is they need to disconnect from the timeline of intensity, they really need the opportunity to disconnect from that.   Eva Williams: (45:17) So if the doctor's pressuring you and says, "Okay, well take your time, but I need to see you again in two or three days." Don't go, don't go in two or three days. If they need to see you again, they can see you in a week. All they're going to do is an ultrasound and whatever, maybe a sweep. Give yourself the space that your body needs. And also, really, really, really take your homoeopathy from 36 weeks, from 36 weeks, be taking your homoeopathy and be taking just this very gentle way of beginning to release the stress on the system. Take the aconite, take the arnica.   Eva Williams: (46:00) Another thing that's really important, and again, this all goes back to prep, because if you're doing everything at the last moment, you're going to be dealing with a lot. In the programme that I run, around third 30 to 34 weeks, in between this time before your GBS test, we explore different internal works. And not necessarily me doing that, but maybe it's related to sex with the husband, maybe it's related to self-pleasure, maybe it's just internal gaze and interception kind of meditation, but we start unblocking and unlocking anything that might be held in the pelvis.   Eva Williams: (46:37) And then also, if you have a chiro, there's the Webster technique, or if you have a Bowen therapist who can do the sacral... There's a series of sacral releases that they can do. Anything you can do to prepare your body, to feel really good and open, speak to your cervix, ripen your cervix, yourself, speak to it, see beautiful pink light moving through it. All of these things work, they really, really work. And what doesn't work is being pressured into having a baby, it just doesn't fucking work. There's no evidence to support that it's ever worked.   Eva Williams: (47:11) It's insane, even with the foetal monitoring, even that, there's the only proof that it actually has any benefit is it there's no proof. The only thing that it's actually done is increased C-section rates. And so, these sorts of things, we have to just be really mindful of what the outcome is. Is the outcome an alive baby or is the outcome an empowered woman who knows herself and knows her body and can recover in the postpartum process because she's actually connected to the child, because oxytocin is also a huge part of recovery. It's what's bringing the colostrum and the breast milk, it's what's actually involuting the uterus.   Eva Williams: (47:52) So if we don't have this connection from the outside, if we're having those issues, then we also face a much longer recovery period. And that's when you really begin to see from an emotional perspective, from a body work perspective. If I see diastasis, like a herniated diastasis or something like this, for me, that's always that the woman has been opened in the birth process, but she hasn't had the closing afterwards, so she has no centre. Can you imagine what it would be doing to your back, to not have your rectus abdominis working? Basically, your back would be as stiff as a board, and that's a woman who feels that she's not supported. She hasn't been supported through that process.   Eva Williams: (48:37) I don't know, this stuff is so intuitive and natural, it feels so natural to say, but we aren't there as a culture of medicine and we're not there as a culture of birth yet either, and it's difficult. And there's a way I just want to say to people, just protect kept yourself. But I actually love working with OB/GYNs and I do love working with the medical system when they get it right, and they very often, if you find the right people and places, they do get it right. I had a doula complain to me the other day about how, at this one hospital that's really great here, the midwife didn't even turn up and the baby just came out.   Eva Williams: (49:17) And I was like, "Is this a complaint? This is a complaint that the baby just naturally came out and the mother caught her home own baby?" I'm sorry, I don't feel the same level of stress around this that you feel. It's so beautiful to hear about less managed births. And this is for those people who are being pushed toward induction, this is called active management, basically, of expectations in relationship to doctors. And another thing to understand is that 40 weeks doesn't really mean much.   Tahnee: (49:52) So arbitrary.   Eva Williams: (49:54) It's insane. I'm not standardised by that. Some hospitals do it from the first day of your last period, some do it from the last day of your last period? It's just ridiculous and there's no evidence that proves that. I think of 10% of children come on their due day.   Tahnee: (50:11) Not good odds-   Eva Williams: (50:12) I know, right. Yes. And everyone wants to be fucking Natalie Portman or Kate Moss or something. And guess what, 1%. You know what I mean? It's one of these expectations that we set up. We are lying to women when we tell them that they should be fitting that mould, and we are taking away from them the opportunity for them to make their own mould of what it looks like. So contentious. It doesn't actually feel that contentious, it feels really straightforward, but whatever.   Tahnee: (50:39) Well, it's interesting because I think one thing for me with birth too, it felt like... I don't want to be in the feminine/masculine, for me, time when I'm in a feminine space, linear time is not a thing. It's not real, it doesn't exist and there's this just natural unfolding of things as they are. My feeling around birth was very much like we're trying to apply this very linear masculine dimension to it and it doesn't exist like that. I think this idea of 10 moons or being able to see it in this sense of it's with them and it's a flow, but it's not something that's going to happen on a day. I'm struggling with it right now, people are like, "What's your due date?"   Tahnee: (51:33) And I'm, "Well, I don't know, sometime in April." And they want a due date. Well, I do know it's April 1st, but I don't believe my baby's going to come on April 1st.   Eva Williams: (51:44) I can tell you what I do always is I just take the full moon of that month. And I was like, "She's not due, then she's due in the beginning of the month." I'm like, "I don't care."   Tahnee: (51:56) That's when they come.   Eva Williams: (51:57) The baby is now officially due on the full moon. Baby's like a full moon, that's what's happening. It doesn't mean we won't prepare and I don't necessarily calculate my weeks from that, I'll do it from that ultrasound or whatever. And the programme that we are doing is a 10-moon programme, it's 10 modules and they're 10 moons. Yeah, it's just recognising that children have a rhythm, it's not something that we can set or determine. That rhythm is related to obviously the tides of our own life. Some babies like a new moon. There's no set rules, you can't apply them one way or another, like you said.   Eva Williams: (52:33) And I love this idea that, look, birth is very much about learning about abundance, about our own abundance, that we can actually create a whole other being. It's this radiant space that we enter into. Adding scarcity of time to that means that a woman feels a scarcity of space. And if she's feeling a scarcity of time and space, as these two things do manifest together within her own body, you're taking away the whole dimension and realm that she needs to live inside of during her birth, like you said. It's this feminine space. And that doesn't mean that we can't have a plan during pregnancy, it doesn't mean that certain practises won't be better at different times.   Eva Williams: (53:12) It doesn't mean any of that, but it's the invasiveness of how we treat birth needs to stop. I'm working on a new project right now, and I'm very excited about it and I can't say much about it, but what I can say is that one of the main focuses of it is the removal of incredibly invasive techniques. And some of them aren't even necessarily invasive, they're just fucking disgusting like the gestational diabetes test.   Tahnee: (53:40) Oh, that was the only fucking thing I did last time. And I was like, "This is the most sugar I've had in my entire adult life." Maybe as a kid, I gorged on Lollies, but other than that." That's the only time I was sick in my pregnancy was after that.   Eva Williams: (53:54) Yes, so many women have said to me like, "Oh yeah, definitely, the most traumatic thing of my pregnancy was that time."   Tahnee: (54:01) I was like, "Fucking hell, guys." It's like nine Coca-Colas or something. I'm like, "Great."   Eva Williams: (54:07) And it's not necessary. It's not necessary because there's so many other ways to remediate or even to tell. And what was so funny is, I was with a client recently and she had to shift OB/GYNs because on her due date, the original OB/GYN is not going to be there. And so we had just gone to that OB/GYN and said, "Look, we're opting out of this." And she was ready to fight. She's like, "I don't want this person." I was like, "Just chill. I'm sure they'll be fine with it." Don't go in for a battle, that's one thing. All birth workers, everyone, just don't go in for a battle. If you have to put your armour on, do it, but don't go in for a battle. And the doctor was like, "Huh. I've been in birth for a long time and I've seen a lot of incredible advancements and devices and ultrasound and all sorts of things really. And yet they still haven't managed to make something less disgusting than that drink. That's okay. Don't worry about it."   Eva Williams: (55:01) Even an OB/GYN was like, "Yeah, you'd think we'd gotten to this level, but really it's just Lucozade, sugar." And then we had to go to this other one and really communicate once again like, "Hey, the preference is for this off the table." And she just was like, "That's the most disgusting drink in the world, I wouldn't push that test on anyone." I was like, "Wow."   Tahnee: (55:19) Amazing. That's a good change in culture. [crosstalk 00:55:22]. What's your rate on ultrasounds in general? I haven't spoken about this much on the podcast either, but I do get asked about it a lot, and there's the one side of it where people are like, "It's good to know and it gives you that reassurance." And then there's the other side, which is probably more of the side I'm on where it's like, "What would it tell me that actually... What benefit would that information actually give me?" So I'm curious as to your take on that as a birth keeper.   Eva Williams: (55:53) Well, it's a great topic. One thing I can definitely say is, you know your body, you've done a lot of work with your body. I have also clients who are just super on it, and yet sometimes, and I'm thinking of one person specific, that if a woman, for example, has a miscarriage or something like this, even if she isn't someone who would naturally or usually lean toward wanting ultrasound or something like that in that early part of the next pregnancy, it brings an enormous amount of relief to know that everything's going healthy.   Tahnee: (56:38) Reinsurance.   Eva Williams: (56:38) Exactly. If you have chromosomal issues in your life, those 12 week tests, in your family, for example, or even the 20-week morphology exams, they can bring a lot of knowledge. So from my perspective, what I usually say to women when they say, "What do you think is necessary, blah, blah." I said, "The first thing that's necessary is anything that will bring you comfort. If your level of comfort and certainty and anxiety will drop with each or any of those visits, then those are the ones that are necessary, because your emotional and mental wellbeing is more important to the baby's health and growth than anything that an ultrasound is going to do to your body. That's my perspective.   Eva Williams: (57:25) And then usually, they just say that the main tests that are important are your morphology, your 20, 21-week scan, and that's really just to see if there's any... For those of you who don't know, that's not really an ultrasound, it's a full building out of, they check all of the different organs.   Tahnee: (57:44) It's pretty cool. I was like, "Whoa. There's a kidney and there's a... "   Eva Williams: (57:53) They go in, they check all the tissues, they check the formation of the organs. This is technology that I'm grateful that we have because it can put a lot of decision making power into people's hands. And simultaneously, I know a lot of people who aren't down for it, they're like, "No way, that's even worse than an ultrasound. That's super intense for the baby, blah, blah, blah." For me, it's all about comfort. And I have had a couple birth workers recently and clients saying, they're like, "Well, I know you're very pro natural birth and this is not."   Eva Williams: (58:26) I'm like, "Hang on a minute. I'm not really for or against anything, I just don't really have a role to play. If you're planning a C-section... " I know what the body is capable of, and those are personal experiences that I've had. You can't take that away from me or I cannot pretend that I don't know what the physical body can do and what we may need to train for, but can actually get what this experience can be. So I can't take that out of my being that if you know that that's available, that you gravitate toward it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I am anti anything."   Eva Williams: (59:03) I've had my time being anti epidural, and then I saw a series of Pilates teachers and yoga teachers who had super tight pelvic floors get an epidural after like 36 hours of labour, and just one hour, boom, baby was out. Really incredible experiences. Legs were still working, everything. So I can't go through the level of experience that I've had, I can't afford to fight anyone. I hate it in the birth world, I hate this, the fight that happens when people are... I believe in advocating that there's a point where if you can change that inside of yourself, you stop attracting moments to have those conversations. That's what I have found in my personal experience.   Eva Williams: (59:45) And so I try to just be very, very open, and the reason is because I don't necessarily need to specify what I will and won't work with, because I really only attract people that I really will be the right person for. But I would say, if someone is just like, "I don't know what to get and when." I would just say, "Look, the most standard thing is that you have a 12-week ultrasound, you have your 21 week morphology. That puts a lot of power in your hands. Look it up, do a little bit of research." And then usually, there'll be something as a bare minimum right before your birth, like a 36-week thing, and then we'll do a GBS swab."   Eva Williams: (01:00:21) And you don't have to do your GBS swab, you don't have to get that scan. You can just wait and go into labour naturally as well. But those are some of the options. And I don't believe that you need anything more than that, but I've been with women who are going every third day in the end of their pregnancy just to sit in a room for 20 minutes just to hear if the baby's safe and good. If that's wh

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From the man who brought qi -gong(chi-gong)to the west Mantak chia, the man who taught me the microcosmic orbit and how to stop pre mature ejaculation during sex and a bunch of other essential practices I use in my spiritual development we discuss and go over ways to premier healing and delay aging through sex. The do’s and don’ts and so much moreMantak chia pdf’s:Taoist secret of lovehttp://krishnamurti.abundanthope.org/index_htm_files/Taoist-Secrets-of-Love-Cultivating-Male-Sexual-Energy.pdfTransform stress into vitality (inner smile)https://www.pdfdrive.com/download.pdf?id=55674209&h=45f8667dbcd92dafa8a816e9c4681d07&u=cache&ext=pdfSimple chi- Kung awakening life force energyhttps://www.pdfdrive.com/download.pdf?id=156751610&h=afee0299222de6ba07b79d7bc3bdf4a1&u=cache&ext=epubCosmic healinghttps://www.pdfdrive.com/download.pdf?id=35942234&h=bdb5117dedaa2477aaab212edd9c6b7e&u=cache&ext=pdfQi gong and kunji- inhttps://www.pdfdrive.com/download.pdf?id=159100929&h=1b3d2fb910db25f273ec8fbe0773b57f&u=cache&ext=pdf

Mantak Chia is a Taoist meditation master who has taught millions of students worldwide for over 45 years. He's authored 57 books and founded the Universal Healing Tao Center in Thailand. Master Chia has also studied Western anatomy and medicine. In this episode, we discuss the ancient tradition of mind training called Taoism and its methods, like meditation and dark rooms. Master Chia explains how to stop wasting mental and sexual energy and start cultivating more of it for a happier and healthier life. FitMind Neuroscience-Based App: http://bit.ly/afitmind Website: www.fitmind.co

On This episode of The Healing Springs Show, host John Edmonson interviews Mantak Chia Universal Healing Tao.

Was hat es mit dem Drachen von Metzenseifen (Medzev) auf sich? Wo haust er noch heute? Wie kam der erste Kaffee in die Stadt? Und wann werden Kinder zu Geschichtenerzähler*innen? In seinem zauberhaften Café taucht der karpatendeutsche Künstler Helmut Bistika in die Geschichten der Mantak*innen ein.

BUSINESS ACCELERATOR - Open Now: https://londonreal.tv/biz/ 2020 SUMMIT TICKETS: https://londonreal.tv/summit/ NEW MASTERCLASS EACH WEEK: http://londonreal.tv/masterclass-yt LATEST EPISODE: https://londonreal.link/latest Mantak Chia, the Taoist Master, author, and healer, who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. He is the creator of the Universal Healing Tao System, and has been named one of the 100 most Spiritually Influential people in the world. Mantak is best known for your deep understanding of the power of sexual energy, through the male and female multiple orgasm. He also explains how we can activate our bio-battery known as the “second brain”, and teach the art of using our “chi” energy to heal ourselves. With entire countries on lockdown, Mantak’s practices are providing guidance on how people can strengthen their immune system, manage emotions and transform stress into vitality.

Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin; the King and Queen of SuperFeast, join forces on the pod today to bring us a beautiful conversation around the healing art of Chi Nei Tsang. Chi Nei Tsang is the ancient form of massage practiced in the Taoist healing system. Chi Nei Tsang is used to detoxify and energise the body's organ systems via the release of stagnant Qi. Chi Nei Tsang is performed primarily on the abdominal region however the technique is a full body practice. Tahnee shares her personal healing journey with the practice both as a student and Chi  Nei Tsang practitioner, outlining the methods you can use at home to encourage the smooth flow of Qi throughout the body as a whole.    Tahnee and Mason discuss: Tahnee's healing journey with Chi Nei Tsang. Chi Nei Tsang as a healing art. The core philosophy of Chi Nei Tsang. Integration and congruency as an integral part of personal evolution. Tonic herbs as vessels for change. Health sovereignty and home based health care. The energetic personality of the body's organs. The value of rest and listening to your body's wisdom.   Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin? Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast). Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin Yoga teacher and Chi Ne Tsang practitioner, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is the General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast).   Resources: Nourishing Her Yin Event Video (The Chi Nei Tsang portion of the chat starts around the 38:45min mark) Mantak Chia Website Mantak Chia Self Massage Book Mantak Chia Chi Nei Tsang Book Dan Keown   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here: Mason:   (00:01) Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. I'm sitting here with my lovely Tahnee.   Tahnee:   (00:07) Hi.   Mason:  (00:08) So Tahnee, as many of you know, is SuperFeast mumma, my baby mumma. And well, one thing we haven't been doing as much as we'd like because Tahnee is running SuperFeast and teaching yoga and getting ready for yoga teacher trainings and doing all kinds of things while we raise our little human, and our dog as well that we have now.   Mason:  (00:34) One of the things we haven't done as much is sit down and jam on the podcast, but we've really worked hard to be able to carve time for that as we focus more and more and more on the educational piece. Now, as you guys know, when it comes to SuperFeast, we're really rock and hard on these Daoist Tahnee herbs and in talking about them and educating and taking them in that frame of sovereign health and taking responsibility for our own health.   Mason:  (01:04) And that is why also we educate about many, many other things, not just herbs. And today, we're going to be kind of revolving around organ health and that companion to herbalism, which is massage and self-massage, and we're going to say where it goes. Tahnee studied Chi Nei Tsang Daoist abdominal massage. As we were just saying, it's designed to be a self administered healing art. Right?   Mason:  (01:35) Again, something we work with herbalism. Everyone knows our herbs. You need to go to a practitioner to get herbs. I can't possibly figure out what herbs to take, especially when you see really institutionalized Chinese medicine, it's very like this paranoia around herbs. You might as well not eat any food because every bit of food that you eat is going to have an energetic impact on your body. That's like extreme institutionalization.   Mason:  (01:58) But massage can be like that as well, just a subconscious, “Hey, I got to go and see a masseuse in order to get my healing.” But one thing we're going to dive in today with Tahns is how we can bring that into our own lives. So why don't you … I know roughly, but why did you choose to go and do Chi Nei Tsang massage out of everything you could have been doing?   Tahnee:   (02:23) You remember me having a crisis of faith before I went in to that?   Mason:  (02:26) Yeah.   Tahnee:   (02:28) I had an eating disorder growing up was why, and I kind of hated my tummy, not even just physically, but I just always felt like all of my health problems came from there. It was always bloating or gurgling or not digesting something or there was pain or there was just weird sensations. And I just felt like it was this kind of mysterious land in the middle of my body.   Tahnee:  (02:59) And so much of my practice, up until that point, had been on the anatomy of the muscles and the tendons and the bones. And yoga is very physical, but we don't talk a whole lot about the organs per se. It sort of gets mentioned. You've done yoga training as well. You know it's like, “Yeah, this is good for your organ health,” but doesn't … in terms of really the unique characteristics of the organs, their personalities, their functions.   Tahnee:  (03:27) I'd studied Chinese medicine a little bit at that point, so I kind of knew that there was some interesting stuff there, but I hadn't really gone deep into it. So I don't even remember how I heard about Chi Nei Tsang. I think it was on the internet somewhere and I just had this weird feeling like, “Oh my God, I have to study that.” And it made absolutely no sense. I'd never received one. I'd never seen it done.   Tahnee:  (03:51) It was literally like … I believe in writing maybe in a blog post or something. And it kind of coincided with me being about to travel and a few things kind of happened. I think I was traveling like the next year or something. Anyway, I looked up who invented this thing and where it came from and I found Master Mantak Chia, who was kind of teaching it in Thailand and that he'd revived this lineage, which got lost in China after Chairman Mao kicked out all the healers and philosophers and artists and intelligent folks.   Tahnee:  (04:24) That's a bit of a broad stroke, but a lot of people had to leave China around that time. And so in Thailand, one of the remaining masters of this art survived and my teacher met him. This man saved his uncle's life and so he was curious about studying it, so he basically apprenticed himself to this guy for a few years.   Mason:  (04:44) That guy was Mantak's uncle, you said? That was insane. It was like three days with the deepest kidney disease, was that right?   Tahnee:  (04:51) Yeah. So apparently in Thailand, if you get unwell, they don't want your death on their records because it reflects poorly on their funding and stuff. It's like the more people that die in the hospital, the worst funding they get, sort of thing, or they get investigated or something. So basically, the doctors apparently told this guy he had to go home and die because they couldn't do anything for him.   Tahnee:  (05:12) He had kidney disease and it was so far along that it was just done. And Master Chia's family had heard of this guy and they contacted him. He was in Bangkok. So they traveled to Bangkok and took the uncle there. And apparently, he had three days of excruciating treatment, which from what I understand, and hopefully if anyone knows better than me, they can let me know, but I'm pretty sure it was like 12 hour days of massage and this man was screaming in pain.   Tahnee:  (05:40) It was apparently incredibly painful, but the healer was able to free whatever was causing the problem probably on a multidimensional level. And yeah, he walked out of there three days later, fine and lived a long, happy life as far as I'm aware. So Master Chia was so impressed. And this is a guy that traveled back to Hong Kong as a teenager to start studying Daoist healing.   Tahnee:  (06:06) He had a master who … he used to work to preserve his life and he was very much au fait with the whole canon of healing tradition that came out of the Daoist philosophy and he was just so impressed with this. He was like, “I have to keep this alive.” So yes, he basically studied with this guy. I think he was an apprentice for a couple of years and then kind of his peer.   Tahnee:  (06:29) He worked alongside him for a while and then he basically systemized what is now Chi Nei Tsang. So there's a few places you can study it around the world. Thailand tends to have a bit of a hotspot of it. And then in The States as well, it's more common. It's not really well known in Australia and certainly when I first google at … I don't even know if I spelled it properly and I couldn't really work out.   Tahnee:  (06:51) There was nobody I could find to give me Chi Nei Tsang. Anyway, I ended up going traveling and in Guatemala, I received one from a woman at a little town off San Marcos, La Laguna. That's where I was. Lago de Atitlan was the lake and she gave me one and I remember going home and I felt like shit and I cried. I think I was very resistant to it. I was like, “Yuk.”   Mason:  (07:19) It's like when you discovered … whenever you find something that ultimately becomes a love … I don't think it with me, but you hide it. That was the same with doing, yin yoga, right? You absolutely hated it.   Tahnee:  (07:31) I think I have a really strong resistance to what's good for me probably. I think I'm really confronted sometimes by the depth of my own suffering like how shitty I can feel through my own self and Chi Nei Tsang really highlighted for me how much stuff was stored in my body that I was just ignoring. So I think there's this part of me, this maybe more intelligent part of me that knows it's good for me and then there's this other part of me that has a toddler tantrum about the situation.   Tahnee:  (08:02) So I had my toddler tantrum, decided I was never going to do that again. Then I ended up somewhere else in Thailand at the sanctuary, which is this like a resort. And there was a guy there doing Chi Nei Tsang as well, and it was a completely different experience with him. And I wouldn't really say I enjoyed that either, but it was more just … I didn't enjoy the therapeutic relationship.   Tahnee:  (08:24) I felt it just wasn't something that I enjoyed. It didn't really do anything for me compared to the first one, which obviously moved a lot of stuff. I found it to be quite kind of superficial and I was like, “Oh, okaymaybe I'm wrong about this whole thing.” So that, I was in traveling through Thailand on my way to this training. So I was kind of having a lot of doubts.   Tahnee:  (08:54) And then I obviously spoke to you, I think you were back in Australia and I was in Chiang Mai and I was going, “Oh my God, what am I doing? I'm about to spend $4,000 on this training with this guy I've never met, with this thing I'm not even sure I like.” And like I guess my gut, funnily enough, drew me to it and … yeah, I decided to go and I was very, very ill when I arrived. I'd very stupidly eaten some fruit off of the ground in Thailand.   Tahnee:  (09:24) And would you believe I got sick? And it was probably the worst gastro I've ever had ever or could even imagine, lying in a toilet … Oh sorry, lying in the shower with the shower, running just pooing because I couldn't get to the toilet. It was so bad. And that went on for three or four days. I was supposed to get there early and enjoy the grounds and do some practice and spend the whole time pooping.   Tahnee:  (09:47) And the cute little staff were bringing me soup and trying to look after me and I just couldn't handle life. And I met Mantak Chia the night before we were supposed to star and he said to me, “Tahnee, you need to go to the hospital.” I said, “No, Master Chia, I want to do your training.” And he was like, “Well, my advice would be you need to go to hospital. You're very sick.” And I said, “Yeah, I know, but I want to stay.”   Tahnee:  (10:05) And he said, “Okay, well. Then we'll take care of you.” And yeah, within three days, I felt amazing having like … I was being practiced on every day. It was a really great group. They all looked after me for the first week while I was healing and the second week, I just felt amazing. So yeah, it just was really proof in the pudding, I guess, of how effective it was. And just … yeah, it's such a beautiful thing.   Tahnee:  (10:29) I think so many of us are so vulnerable with our tummies and we don't like being touched there. And even within our love making, a lot of us are sensitive to having our tummies touched and played with and I think it's something now as we evolve as a culture, it's really useful to start to think about, “Well, what's going on there?” And that's what's so interesting about the Daoist perception. It's that it's not the brain that thinks and creates thought and emotion.   Tahnee:  (10:57) It's the organs. The Heart receives everything that comes through and then it filters it out to the different organs of the body. And so anything that's stressful, the Liver is going to deal with. So that can manifest into anger and irritability, but just any kind of a stress. Any fear is going to come through the Kidneys, any thought, analyzing, thinking and that can turn into anxiety and worry that comes through the Spleen.   Tahnee:  (11:23) The Heart receives joy, but too much joy, excess joy can injure the Heart. I think I've missed one. The Lungs. The Lungs kind of perceive our grief, but also that bittersweet beauty of life. So there's this really … working with those as archetypes, I think it's a really powerful way of starting to live because you're out of your head and you're down in your belly.   Tahnee:  (11:47) You're not just perceiving with … even like in spiritual traditions, it's like, “just feel with the heart,” and it's like, “well, no. That's not enough.” There's different seats of consciousness in the body and when we look at it through this lens, it really aligns a lot with yogic thought as well. And when we look at where the energy of the organs manifest from, it manifests from the chakra, from the multidimensional body, but that's kind of a more complicated story.   Tahnee:  (12:13) But we're looking at this really kind of … we're looking at the organism being a powerful receiver and transmitter of thought energy and emotion as well as an alchemizer of physical compounds. You can put something into the digestive system and it can be alchemized into Blood and bone and transport it out to the Liver and the Kidneys and moved around. We can breathe through the Lungs and that becomes this fuel that fires our entire body, our metabolism.   Tahnee:  (12:44) That's just, to me, some real mystical shit right there. Science can talk about these things, but it can't really explain them. And when you look at what Daoist practice is all about, it's about alchemy. It's about how do I take these kind of gross material things and transform them into something more? How do I be a physical body and at the same time be a spiritual being?   Tahnee:  (13:06) And how do I have enough strength and enough capacity in my energy that I can hold that spirit in me? And it'll not just be this idea or this concept, but actually an embodied experience. So, yeah. So Chi Nei Tsang opened up that a lot more for me, I think. I think yoga had started that process and I think I just … Obviously, having had an eating disorder and having had digestive stuff through my life, it made me realize you literally digest your entire life.   Tahnee:  (13:36) It's not just food, it's thoughts and feelings. And so I started to realize, yeah, I wasn't digesting my life fully. There was some work around that for sure. It wasn't an easy process, but worthwhile.   Mason:  (13:51) So the Chi Nei Tsang is speeding up the emotional or energetic processes around that?   Tahnee:  (13:57) You've heard it. Like you touch someone's organ and suddenly, they're in tears and it's like, “ well what happened?" You know? And it's like acupuncture, it's like herbalism. It's like therapy or any of these things. Part of it it's the practitioner's Qi, so the ability of the practitioner to facilitate and transmit energy so that the person's body can respond. And it's partly the person, it's the individual. And I think what I love about Chi Nei Tsang and Master Chia is it's all about self healing.   Tahnee:  (14:32) It's not about someone else doing that healing for you. So I don't heal anybody when they come on my table, but I can facilitate what maybe needs to move for them to release the blockage to healing. So yeah, I might touch someone and they might cry, and to me, that's a positive thing because their energy that was blocked is now moving and all that energy wants to do is move.   Tahnee:  (14:54) That's... Health is movement, is flow. Anytime we have a blockage to movement of Qi, of energy, we're in trouble. That's what all bad things in the body are, tumors, injuries, any kind of inflammation, anything like that, it creates a blockage to flow. So when we start to move that, then we get a chance to get fresh blood into that space, fresh energy into that space, nutrients that are required for healing.   Tahnee:  (15:23) So the touch part of it is therapeutic in that there's a transmission of Qi and a mechanical movement of tissue which creates space for healing. But then I think a lot of people just to be touched in a non-sexual way with intention is really powerful too. So I think there's that side of it. And then a lot of the techniques are based on Qi Gong, so we have to visualize color and sound and use different positions and hand positions.   Mason:  (15:51) Do you find yourself doing that?   Tahnee:  (15:53) Yeah. So the idea is that as a practitioner, you're the bridge between the heaven and earth. So you're releasing toxic Qi down to the earth because the earth … Like how a tree loves our carbon dioxide and we love its oxygen, the earth is really happy to receive what's negative for humans. It's like compost for it. It turns it back into positive good stuff. And the heavenly Qi is what we can use for healing.   Tahnee:  (16:20) It's like universal violet light Qi which comes down and again, you learn to feel and transmit these things. And I'm certainly not a master at this like Master Chia is a master at this, but as you get more sensitive to it, it becomes more perceptible definitely. And yeah, these things are all really powerful.   Tahnee:  (16:38) So as a practitioner, your job is to be open to that flow and to be able to channel it, and as the receiver, you're obviously starting to build your perception of these things. So one of the reasons a therapeutic relationship is useful at the beginning is many of us can't feel our energy. We don't know what Qi feels like. We don't know what our organs feel like. It's just tense and tight and painful.   Mason:  (16:58) Well, it's almost like we're scared to actually go in there and touch it. Like, “Am I allowed to do this? Can I just touch my liver like this? Is that bad? Is it going to explode?”   Tahnee:  (17:08) Yeah. Well, you've seen people at workshops that I do. They're like, “Aah.” And I'm like, “Just press into your tummy.” And they're like, “What?” And people freak out of it and I get that. Again, I was like that when I first started exploring this stuff.   Tahnee:  (17:22) And I think I still like … Massage may tell me sometimes, because my mom used to tell me to do it when I needed to poo and stuff, but I never really liked … I had an idea of where the organs were from studying anatomy, but I didn't … I would never have gone and, like you said, and tried to poke my own liver because like you say, it's like, “Well what happens if you do that? Is it a balloon that'll just pop or?”   Mason:  (17:45) Yeah, I think the extent of what everyone has, I think it comes up sometimes in yoga teacher trainings and anatomy trainings of just following the line of the colon. That's what it would be like. And even in geriatrics and that kind of thing, it says, “That's what I'll do. I'll just follow that line,” and that's probably the extent of it.   Tahnee:  (17:59) Yeah. I think for a lot of people, even to touch their colon is to not appreciate that this is an organ that is working against gravity for a solid portion of the transit of your feces. So it's going up the right side of your body underneath the liver. The liver is meant to deposit toxins down through its tissue into the large intestine to be transported out.   Tahnee:  (18:18) Often, a lot of people have congestion there, so the liver remains toxic and that goes back into the blood then that has to go across the body again. Not exactly the most mechanically simple process given that we all sit all day in a half rounded shape, and then it goes down the descending colon and to exit the body. So there's a lot of potential just in the colon for things to go wrong.   Tahnee:  (18:47) But then you've got the Liver, you've got the Stomach, Spleen kind of system. You've got the gallbladder's there, which can often get blocked in a lot of people. The bile gets very thick and sticky especially if people are in a really low fat diets and stuff. The fat actually triggers a release of bile. Anyone who's done a liver flush will know all about that.   Tahnee:  (19:06) And the kidneys, which are harder to massage, like I usually have to work with someone for at least … best case scenario, probably three or four sessions to get there because just for most people, they're too tense and they can't relax enough to let me go into there.   Mason:  (19:20) Yeah, I think you've got that one-   Tahnee:  (19:21) Abdominal cavity. Yeah.   Mason:  (19:22) … maybe once with me.   Tahnee:  (19:23) Yeah. I think once. But, yeah. And then obviously they can, especially if someone has a diet or has the sense of proclivity toward calcium build up and stuff, they can get quite painful if people have that. So I suspect that it was what happened to Mantak Chia's uncle. It was that they had to work on the kidneys to break up all the calcification in order that the kidneys could start to filter again.   Mason:  (19:50) Well, it's the same … It's same plaque build up. It's just one of those things that make us susceptible to gravity. And it's always that. When you were talking about that story again, that's actually what I was thinking. I was like … It makes sense that this guy's … Like what gets the turtles, the great turtles. They're hundreds of years old and it's just this bad calcium arthritic buildup that eventually just makes it, “Nope, can't swim anymore. I'm tightening up.”   Tahnee:  (20:13) Freeze.   Mason:  (20:13) It's what happens to organs naturally. It's like plaquey build up in the heart, plaquey build up in through the brain for stroke and so on and so forth. Arthritis has a lot to do with age, has a lot to do with the fact that we've got inflammation, blockages of Qi, low immunity, all these kinds of things. But then, it's always … It seems like this big leap in perception of self healing.   Mason:  (20:41) It's like to be like we've got our exercise and that moves our lymph … Yet we've got such a hectic world that it would … Superficial massage and superficial movement isn't a lot of the time.   Mason:  (20:55) It'll do a lot, but as soon as he started getting into really spending an hour or spending two hours, or even spending 20 minutes of yourself really getting on verse, just doing a rub in a clockwise direction on your belly, all of a sudden, it just opened up this whole layer of deeper intention, which I was just like, “Oh man, if we had this in hospitals, you would just completely and utterly avoid so much shit.” I mean, I think it's like one of the-   Tahnee:  (21:28) We're very scared of pain though and it hurts. This is a thing. I was actually talking to our acupuncturist about this the other day because he does the traditional Chinese massage, which is painful, right?   Mason:  (21:39) It can be.   Tahnee:  (21:42) And Master Chia teaches us to massage. We get in between each rib and we rub really hard and it's like to break up all that gristle and that fascia in there. It's painful. And I remember like cry laughing when I first had it done. I was like, “This is outrageous.”   Mason:  (21:57) Especially in the ribs because … I think a lot of guys relate. You said the cry laughing like that. You see all this … What you're seeing when you've really overly ticklish and skittish, you can see it's like a compensation that you have with your [crosstalk 00:22:12].   Tahnee:  (22:11) Yeah. Well, and Master Chia said they're people that avoid pain through laughter. So there'll be people that make a joke when they're feeling uncomfortable or so he said, “You can tell a lot about a person's personality when you're massaging that part of their body because there'll be people that avoid discomfort with humor.”   Mason:  (22:31) Yeah. That's me.   Tahnee:  (22:32) Yeah, me too, to some degree. And he said, “As they get more comfortable with …” And I think all of us … I certainly know over my … I think I've been practicing yoga now since I was 15. I'm 34 and that's a long time. And meditating not anywhere near that long, probably like 10 years at the most, maybe eight. I feel like my personality has changed a lot.   Tahnee:  (22:58) Not that I don't find humor in things, but just that I don't need to avoid discomfort as much as I used to, so I don't have as many compensation patterns. And if you think about avoiding an emotion, that energy has to go somewhere. This is one of those … I think it's Einstein's laws or... “Energy doesn't leave. It just gets transformed.” So if we don't express our emotions, then the energy has to be stored.   Tahnee:  (23:24) And so it will be stored as tension, usually in the body. And so what you'll find is people will have chronic patterns of tension, which are related to emotional patterns. A really common one is neck tension. A lot of people have that and they find if they get stressed, they get neck tension, which is the Yang channel of the Liver, the Gallbladder channels.   Tahnee:  (23:42) It's all around the neck and the trapezius muscles there and the back of their heads. If you ever get those kind of back of the neck headaches, they're often related to Gallbladder, which means your Liver is stressed and which means you're stressed. That's kind of the pattern. And this is an emotional thing. You're not capacitated to deal with the level of input you're experiencing and it's manifesting as stress.   Tahnee:  (24:07) So that's an emotional response to an external stimulus that manifests as a physical symptom. So people would go take a painkiller, but that's done nothing to deal with what's actually going on. So a better thing to do would be to learn to manage stress or reduce the input so that there's less external stress.   Mason:  (24:26) Look, another thing there is when you're getting rubbed and you're hitting a point, it's possibly like a trigger point. What's it called? The ouchy points.   Tahnee:  (24:40) Well, all trigger points, acupuncture points.   Mason:  (24:42) Acupuncture points. That's what I am thinking… I forget the name, but it just means it was like an ouchy point. It's like a barefoot name for the, those running around barefoot acupuncturists, but you can't stop the perception that you're going to be able to get it out of your body. You're in Meridian at that point.   Mason:  (25:00) That's always one of the things I was like … I really think about the fact that feeling emotions, feeling your Qi and then feeling your physicality, that's all intertwined in that. That's all related, right? So it's constantly getting these headaches in the back of the head and you're getting this tension in the back of your neck. One of the things we're trying to do is go like, “All right. Well, let's feel you know and what's the path of least resistance?   Mason:  (25:26) Is it feeling where physically, that tension pattern is coming from?” You're feeling the emotion that's associated to it and I think I can relate to the fact that we're also not embodied that. You can quite often try and intellectualize that idea and it's hard to slow down to get that perception of whether it's the emotion or the physicality.   Mason:  (25:48) I was feeling it this morning when I was running with Goji. I was like, “Oh, for the first time I can feel why sometimes when I run, that tension emerges into my neck,” and all I did is it took me having less agenda with my running and slowing down.   Tahnee:  (26:05) Yeah. It's adrenaline which creates stress as well because running is a stimulus to the body that you're in danger. You have to work … In my opinion, you have to work very hard to maintain equanimity while running that you don't have a negative effect on your adrenals. That's another story.   Mason:  (26:19) Absolutely. Absolutely. That's why I like barefoot running as a philosophy.   Tahnee:  (26:23) Yeah. And I think if you are stressing the Kidneys, it'll affect the Liver. That's where your manifest that tension from, because the sinews will tighten because the Liver gets stressed. But again, if you can manage it, I think it can be very healthy as well. But, yeah-   Mason:  (26:37) It's healthy because then the dog's worn out.   Tahnee:  (26:42) We have a Kelpie. She needs running. Yeah, I think it's healthy that there's … I think from … This is where herbs certainly are useful because I look at … Let's say there's someone with a chronic liver pattern. Herbs that support the liver are going to really support their capacity. So I would look at yoga practice. I would look at … This is why with Tai Chi Yin especially, but you can do this in a Yang practice too.   Tahnee:  (27:09) It's just a bit easier to communicate these ideas to students because it's slower, but you can work on the Liver channels when you're about to bleed for example, because your blood is moving and your body's kind of creating new blood and there's all this good stuff happening on account of your menstrual cycle about to occur. So if you work on the Liver channel in that time, you take your liver herbs, you nourish and support yourself with enough rest and minimal stress.   Mason:  (27:36) Which Liver herbs are you talking about?   Tahnee:  (27:38) Well, I'd look at things like He Shou Wu, I'd look at … It depends on the person and the constitution, but typically, you're going to look at … From our end, we're working with tonics. If you wanted to be more kind of medicinal about it, you could certainly work with other ones. But I'd be looking at things like Dong Quai, things like He Shou Wu, things like maybe Schizandra if you're constitutionally appropriate for you, Reishi.   Tahnee:  (28:01) There's all going to manage the symptoms. Again, it would depend on the woman and what is going to work best, but they're the ones I'd be looking at. And for me, I'm a Livery constitutiony person, so liver herbs in general just work well for me and they keep me balanced. Whereas someone who's more of a Speeny constitution person would be better with Qi herbs and so on it goes.   Tahnee:  (28:25) So I think the thing with herbs as we work with them, with the tonic kind of side of things, it's like I'd stick to stuff that works really well for your body and generally, we're going to find that most of the herbs we sell work on the Liver, Kidney, Spleen areas, which are the most important in terms of general metabolic health. For sure, if you're asthmatic, work on your Lung channel. That's super important.   Tahnee:  (28:53) If you're going through a lot of emotional stress with grief, work on the Lung channel. This is where these ideas of emotions become really powerful because it's like, “If I know I'm going to …” say someone dies, it's like that would be a time to really ramp up my Lung herb regime because it's really common. And some of you may even know people that someone dies and then that person grieving gets a really bad respiratory infection or pneumonia.   Tahnee:  (29:20) Actually, I've read some studies that correlate a lot of the secondary deaths after married couples, like say the husband dies and the woman will die of pneumonia or some kind of respiratory failure. And that makes a lot of sense. If you look at what Chinese medicine says, that level of grief is going to injure the Lung literally on a physical level and then it's going to be susceptible to pathogens which are bacterial infections or whatever.   Mason:  (29:42) And then you're looking at physical manipulation as well.   Tahnee:  (29:47) In terms of massage?   Mason:  (29:48) Yeah.   Tahnee:  (29:49) Yeah. Well, so that's why Chi Nei Tsang is just another tool in your tool kit. So it's like, “Okay. Well, I know I'm going through something really potent and powerful. I'm going to massage my ribs. I'm going to take my herbs. I'm going to talk about my feelings. I'm going to meditate or do some kind of a practice that connects me to my body and myself.”   Tahnee:  (30:05) That isn't a mental thing, like you were saying. This idea of being able to think through your emotions is kind of futile because they're not a thinking process. The brain in Chinese medicine is from the Kidney's and has little to do with feeling, if anything really. It's more of like the feelings tell the brain what to do. The feelings dictate the response.   Tahnee:  (30:26) So if I have to go on stage and I'm afraid of speaking in public, then my Kidney's are going to tell my brain to initiate my panic response and I'm going to go into, like, my bowels might empty. I might start hyperventilating. I might … Whatever people-   Mason:  (30:43) That's an extreme.   Tahnee:  (30:45) Well, that used to happen to me when I had to public speak. I used to get the poos. This is what I mean. My belly was so sensitive to things. As a kid, I used to say to my mum, “I feel sick.” And she'd be like, “You have to poo.” And I'd be like, “Oh.” I was so disconnected from that part of my body and I would respond to everything through it.   Tahnee:  (31:05) If I was heartbroken, it would show up in my belly and I was like … I feel everything through my tummy and I was terrified of having it touched because I guess subconsciously knew that that's where it was all going to be. And I actually managed to get through the training without any massive emotional dramas.   Tahnee:  (31:27) A few people I worked on that fully broke down and had some pretty big crises on the training. And I think probably because I'd been meditating and doing a lot of other stuff in the lead up to being there, I was probably in a better position than if I'd gone-   Mason:  (31:42) It can just crack you wide open.   Tahnee:  (31:43) Yeah. I think, if anything, meditation did that more for me than Chi Nei Tsang. But Chi Nei Tsang really for me, gave me a practical tool and a piece of biofeedback where I could … I know that if I'm touching my tummy, it's really sensitive and inflamed that I need to probably, first of all, check in with my diet, maybe drink a bit more water and then look at what's going on emotionally in my life and what I might need to balance out.   Tahnee:  (32:08) And similarly with clients and anyone I work on, it's just like there's so much information there. You look at the navel area, it's where we were connected to our mothers for 10 months of our lives. So there's all of this idea of nurturance and what we did or didn't receive in the womb that remains with us after we are born. Again, this is energy that doesn't disappear or just get consumed. It just changes form.   Tahnee:  (32:36) So it still exists. Our ancestral line, the navel is associated with the ancestry of our entire lineage. So I've had people that are very open, energetically have big visions of their past lives and various things through that center because they've been able to connect to it through that. And again, there's a transmission that occurs when two people who are energetically open work together.   Tahnee:  (33:02) So that's something that can happen if I'm working with someone who's on that level, I suppose. I've had people obviously with trauma stored around their uterus and different parts of their body where we've worked through that kind of stuff. It's always really interesting what the body holds that the person isn't willing to share.   Tahnee:  (33:25) And I mean I would never … It's something as a practitioner obviously you're really mindful of, but I never try and force anything out of anybody. Often, I'll see or hear something that I try not to … And I mean that more on an energetic level. I don't literally hear anything but I can sometimes have visions of things or whatever and I'll just wait and see if the person wants to share that with me or not.   Tahnee:  (33:50) Sometimes I might offer it if they ask, but that's probably the trickiest part to navigate, I guess because often, like I said, it's stuff that we've blocked away for a reason.   Mason:  (34:03) Well, it's interesting. I think what you're talking about there when you didn't get blown out of the water and have a huge peak experience that was hard to integrate, which I think is an interesting. It's like anything. It's like whether you go to meditation, silent retreats, plant medicine or you do like huge doses of the mushrooms when you begin to like in a lot of the time and sometimes it's because we're desensitized and sometimes, it's because when we need it.   Mason:  (34:27) We have this huge peak experience that's super transformational a lot of the time. And then it's, “Okay. And now it's a time to integrate.” And what is integration? Well, integration is you know, you've got a lifestyle that consistently is supporting you to stay healthy. So your physical tissue and your Qi can work through anything that you're bringing up as well that you've got the foundation so that psychologically, you can handle these changes that are occurring. And it's quite simple, but-   Tahnee:  (34:59) Jing, Qi, Shen, right?   Mason:  (35:00) It's very simple, Jing, Qi, Shen. But what I like … Again, what comes up constantly with Chi Nei Tsang, it's like, “Oh great.” Well, we like a peak experience and they're fun. However, generally … Especially if you're going to be doing the chop wood, carry water and integrating a little bit into your own lifestyle, you are consistently working psychologically and emotionally on something.   Mason:  (35:25) And hopefully, you can keep that in a point where you don't consider yourself that you're someone that … You've got something wrong with you or you're bad or broken because you always have to be working on something. That's the development of our Shen. It's the whole point of taking life experiences and taking it through the peculator and hopefully, bringing out some wisdom so that our virtuous nature can come forth.   Mason:  (35:48) So I mean, important to not expect all these knock-it-out-of-the-park experiences. I like to, I think, when it comes to Chi Nei Tsang. I know that's definitely-   Tahnee:  (35:58) I mean, I don't think that's common. I mean, I think for whatever reason … My yoga teacher talks about this a lot. He's like, “The karma has to be right for these things to happen. You can meditate for 40 years and never have a peak experience. It doesn't mean you shouldn't meditate.” I think he says that he's meditated for 40 years and never had a peak experience.   Tahnee:  (36:19) And I've meditated for less than 10 years and had a bajillion peak experiences. And why, I don't know. For whatever reason, I'm predisposed to them and he isn't. It doesn't mean that he shouldn't teach me or that he shouldn't teach or … He is, as far as I'm aware, a very advanced meditator, far more advanced than me and able to maintain his focus for much longer. And I think it's just like anything.   Tahnee:  (36:48) It's like for some reason, sometimes certain stars align and stuff happens and other times it doesn't. And I think that's my experience with Chi Nei Tsang. I've had clients where we just have a beautiful healing, connection. I just massage their bellies and we spend time together and that's all it is. And then there's people that are puddles on the floor and I have to spend three hours talking to them to get them calm down again. So I think it's just-   Mason:  (37:15) And all in all, if we're trying to sustainably create this ongoing system in our lifestyle to help us consistently transform right, I think that's kind of fair to say whether it's on a micro or macro level as we're moving along, we'd love relationships to become richer, to work more towards passions or get more onto the path of our destiny. I think this has been a really, really nice practice for me.   Mason:  (37:42) It's not something I'd sit there and do in 20 minutes of every afternoon, but every now and then, I can really … I feel it and I get in there. And it's a nice one having a tool and the arsenal because you're moving along and you get to these crescendos when you're possibly going to really get some distinction on an emotional set that you have or something that's going to allow you to create distance between your noticing and your reaction, something most of us are working on and especially working on at the moment.   Mason:  (38:10) And then just having … And then you've got your herbs to support that. You've got your personal practice, your time in nature, your relationships and having … You've got your physical practice and you've got your fascia stretching, whether it's Yin or whether it's the work I'm doing with Benny, Movement Monk Benny. We got all those things.   Mason:  (38:25) But then having this … I think this in the arsenal, quite often for me, it's enough to just bolster all my efforts to make sure that I bring it up to cresendo that point and then I don't just … it doesn't just slide back down and actually I can't get the boulder over the mountain. It's just one of those things I can use to just really bring it along that physical touch, that physical manipulation.   Mason:  (38:47) And it's the same with any deep healing, as you were saying, when you've got menstrual issues that are hardcore congestion in through the female sex organs or a tumor sitting within an organ. Why would we not touch these things? It's so difficult for the body to overcome these huge blockages.   Tahnee:  (39:08) Well, it's painful, is reason one … Usually when there's stagnation, which is what you're talking about in those two examples, then there's pain because things congest around there, the toxins build up and it's usually a got an emotional component. And pain science is one of the most fascinating areas of science because it's purely subjective. I could have cut my arm off and you could cut your arm off and we can both describe completely different levels of pain.   Tahnee:  (39:32) It's not like there's one pain scale that everyone, like they go, “Oh, happy pain or sad pain at the hospital,” but they're completely subjective experiences. You tell the doctor how you're feeling and that's where to digress a little bit. Like lower back fusion, it's proven to be completely pointless. It doesn't stop lower back pain whether it's fuse the discs of the lumbar spine, usually, it's all completely, the surgery is a waste of time.   Tahnee:  (40:01) And I feel very confident in saying that, what was actually proven to be best is psychotherapy and movement. And the combination of those two are going to relieve stress. They're going to manage emotions. They're going to support the Kidney and Liver channels, which low back pain typically is correlated to. So we're looking at this system, I suppose, with the body as opposed to individual symptoms.   Tahnee:  (40:26) So if I was looking at menstrual symptoms or a tumor in my sessions, it's like tumors are typically cold stagnation, so you want to warm that up. And again, cancer's a tough one for us to talk about. As everybody knows, it's the big thing you can't talk about. And if I have someone come with cancer, I obviously don't work directly on their tumor usually because it's not appropriate, but I'll do energy work on it.   Tahnee:  (40:52) So I've only worked with one person with bowel cancer and that felt to me like a black sticky tar-like energy, so I just spent time countering that with healthy Qi. And she was going through different courses of treatment anyway, so it wasn't really appropriate for me to do anything beyond that. I was just there to support.   Tahnee:  (41:18) But from my experience working with a lot of types of infections and things as well, anytime I felt anything really chronic and bad, its felt like black tar. I can, in really heightened states, which is not frequent for me, unfortunately. I can feel like I can pull that out. But that's only been like twice that I've felt that. And I've spoken to some acupuncturists and healers about it that I know and they have said, “Yeah, that's when you're a really strong Qi Gong practitioner.   Tahnee:  (41:48) You're able to actually pull that out on an energetic level,” which I'm sure there are healers out there that can do that. I'm not at that point. But yeah, I think normally, it's like, well, if you're warming it up, you're increasing blood flow and circulation. In general, these are going to be really helpful things to get going. Like menstrual disorders work really well with Chi Nei Tsang. If anyone out there has any kind of menstrual stuff going on, start massaging your uterus every day.   Tahnee:  (42:13) You don't have to do anything fancy, just scoop around your pubic bone and your inner pelvis and just get in there. And if it feels painful, spend some time rubbing it until it stops feeling painful. It's that simple. It doesn't have to be complicated. In Chi Nei Tsang we have lots of complicated techniques and I've certainly used a lot of them, but I also have found when teaching people, it's best to just … simple, simple, simple.   Tahnee:  (42:38) So just if it hurts, spend some time on it, breathe into it, send some love to it, give it a good massage and generally, you'll find that these things dissolve. That's what I've found really interesting in my body. It was like you feel something that feels like a huge knot or a lump that it's really painful and it's like, “I can't possibly deal with this.” And 10 minutes later, it's gone. And it's like, “Wow.”   Mason:  (43:02) And sometimes, it's not.   Tahnee:  (43:02) Yeah. Well, sometimes it's 20 or 30 or 40 minutes later. And like I said, I've had clients that come back three or four times and I finally get to a point where I'm able to soften them up enough. So there's lots of things that can happen...   Tahnee:  (43:15) But yeah, I think in general, anytime we're looking at pain when there's touch and those kinds of things, it's generally coming from some kind of Qi stagnation and it's usually helpful to massage it. Again, within reason. Don't go hard on yourself.   Mason:  (43:34) Well, that's kind of the real … we mentioned barefoot running. It's like that's something that's very obvious for people to say, “You start running barefoot, not in shoes. If you put that little bit of new stress on your ankles and your arch and your knee, the whole rule is if you feel little tweaks or if you feel anything becoming, feeling really vulnerable, you open yourself up to something.   Mason:  (43:54) That's it. Your session's done for the day. And I feel like it can be the same like this. And in terms of techniques, I mean, I really started like going deep when I let go of the techniques. When I was rubbing my organs and I let go a little bit more of going like, “All right, now here I'm in the duodenum. Okay. Now, in the pyloric valves and …” again, I was intellectualising a lot rather than just getting to know myself through feeling and through touch.   Mason:  (44:28) Because my mind quite often works like if I can't explain what I'm doing externally, how do I justify doing this in the first place? And through that, my techniques got more advanced in relationship to my unique little organ system rather than trying to use a particular technique. That was really nice, getting that little insight.   Mason:  (44:48) But I think that's just something … This is … Everyone's on practice here. Even though it's called Chi Nei Tsang, it's literally just you sticking fingers and-   Tahnee:  (44:58) Yeah. Well, look, I've only received Chi Nei Tsang from probably let's say 20 or 30 people in total in my life and let's say 30 of them were on training. Oh, sorry. 20 of them were on a training. And then I've had Master Chia, Utah, the lady in Guatemala, the guy in Thailand, probably … I'm trying to think of any other professionals who've massage me … oh, Sola.   Tahnee:  (45:26) I've had a few professionals messaged me and they've all been very different in how they approach Chi Nei Tsang. And even friends of mine who having received them from me were like, “Oh my God, I have to go study this.” They called me up and were like, “It's so different to what you do and I wanted to learn what you do.”   Tahnee:  (45:42) And I was like, “Well, I think like anything … Anyone who's learned to teach yoga or done anything, it's like you put your own spin on things.” So I certainly think while I respect Master Chia's work and his techniques … And he's very much a stickler for the techniques. I'll often start much further along than he recommends in the flows that he teaches and stuff.   Tahnee:  (46:07) I think I've just found intuitively there's different techniques I'm really comfortable with and ones I'm not comfortable with. There's ones that I've found effective in general for people that I wouldn't … I had … Utah did one on me one time where she just pulled my spleen for like an hour and went, “Oooh,” and that was it.   Tahnee:  (46:27) And I was like, “Well,” and it was amazing, but on paper, that sounded like there was no flow to that. It wasn't a massage per se. It was kind of a shamanic style of healing. So I think there's probably a lot more of my influences from her and on that side of things where it's just-   Mason:  (46:47) She's Mantak's student-   Tahnee:  (46:49) Yeah, yeah. She's in her 60s and has been living with him in Thailand with her husband for, I would guess, 20 or 30 years. I remember speaking to her about it, but I can't remember exactly. And she's European, so she travels all through Europe teaching this and she's a master in her own right. And just like … we've spoken a few times about that she has a different style to Master Chia and teachers differently to him.   Tahnee:  (47:11) And I know there's people in The States that have developed their own versions of Chi Nei Tsang now and this woman in Thailand who has her own version. So I don't think there's a right or a wrong way. I think it's anything that just each practitioner will have their truth and the best way of expressing it. But I think if you're just curious about touching your own belly, you've got permission.   Tahnee:  (47:32) Go do it. And it's interesting. The history of it, I find really interesting because it correlates a lot to what happens in our culture now. I think is, it became unfashionable to touch. The healers weren't allowed to touch the higher cast of person they want … Especially not allowed to touch women. It went from being like a village-based medicinal practice to like a more systemised medicinal practice.   Tahnee:  (48:02) And Chinese medicine has evolved a lot over the centuries and the millennia. So Chi Nei Tsang came about from a much older time when hands-on healing was considered appropriate and then that lost favor especially as Western styles of healing penetrated into China. And I'm studying acupuncture at the moment. So I just learned that that was around the late 1800s, early 1900s.   Tahnee:  (48:29) But yeah, I think when we look at that, we see that we lost a lot of the touch based healing arts from China. And massage, in the West, is very different to Tui Na, the Chinese style of massage, which is more similar to what I have learned. And you've had massages with John, our acupuncturist. He gets into all the gristle and runs up and down the bones and gets right into all the fascia.   Tahnee:  (48:55) Most Swedish style massages, they're nice for moving Chi at a superficial level like you're talking about, but in terms of getting Chi into the joints, which is where it really matters and that's why Yin Yoga, Qi Gong, that type of massage is so important because the joints are where the Qi … This is when you talk about calcification and stuff before. It's where the Chi will stagnate the most easier because the joints are dense.   Tahnee:  (49:17) There's no blood. Blood andi are really close, but when you're looking at an elbow or a knee, there's very little blood in there. And so these are really prone to deterioration really quickly, especially if our Liver is struggling, which again, like we said, everyone is stressed. So that's really common in our culture. So it makes a lot of sense to do these painful joint based massages like we do in Chi Nei Tsang.   Tahnee:  (49:41) Chi Nei Tsang isn't just the belly, just to be clear. It covers the entire body, so we'll do anything that needs doing, really. I've done Chi Nei Tsang on a friend of ours who's in his 70s … Nearly in the 70s and it was all around his knees and his pelvis because that was what was required. And it's really about where are the blockages of Qi, how do we break it up so that these blockages are removed.   Tahnee:  (50:06) Again, it was a very painful session for him, but he felt incredible and could walk differently afterwards. So it's these kinds of ideas of maybe the session won't be that fun, but the benefits are going to be huge because you're breaking up adhesions and … Yeah. Anyone who's had a frozen shoulder and had manual therapy done on that, I've heard it's very, very, very painful. And it's the same idea. It's like to get that fascia to dissolve-   Mason:  (50:31) Adhesions on the fascia, yeah.   Tahnee:  (50:32) … Yeah, you need to heat it up and it needs to be broken up in a lot of cases. And there's some really interesting work around how sensitive fascia is and that breaking it up isn't always that helpful if there's a really strong emotional component because it just creates more trauma. And I think there's something to that, so I think you want to work with a good practitioner who understands the nuance of when it's appropriate and when it isn't.   Mason:  (50:54) Or have your own ability to actually process emotions and just look historically how you've done it that it's very accessible.   Tahnee:  (51:00) Yeah, I've worked with this really inspiring woman when I taught yoga in Newcastle. I think she came to my classes for … I'd want to say like 18 months to two years of Yin Yoga and she had a frozen shoulder and she'd just sit there. She'd sit next to the wall and she'd do half versions of everything because she couldn't really do a lot. And I remember speaking to her and she's like,” I can like lift my arm up over my head now.”   Tahnee:  (51:24) She was just … And it took a really long time, but she just kept showing up. And that was a really inspiring to me and that's really indicative of how long it takes to change fascia. We're literally talking about reshaping ourselves and the shape we are is because of our thoughts and how we respond to the world and how we respond to life and what we were conditioned to postulate ourselves toward or against.   Tahnee:  (51:45) You'll see people in families have same posture and those kinds of things and it's because we learned so much of this and we're conditioned as children to pick up on our parents physiology and their responses to things and how they … We've both done therapy, all about that. So our bodies hold that just as much as our minds and our personalities and our thoughts and emotions do.   Tahnee:  (52:07) So it's a lot quicker to change a thought than it is to change the body. I think that patterns are very slow to change, but again, I would say the pattern is more closely correlated to the body. The yogic tradition talks about samskara's and vasana's, so these character traits and conditioned ways of behaving. So a samskara is like a conditioned pattern of behavior and vasana is like when that becomes who I am.   Tahnee:  (52:37) So I might say I'm Tahnee and I am a yoga teacher and I've been doing the thing, teaching yoga so long that I identify with that as me. And if you take that away from me, I'm going to suffer because it's who I am. And that's just a silly example, but it's a good one to demonstrate it.   Tahnee:  (52:55) So when we look at the body, the body will often mirror these same ideas because your yoga teacher will walk a certain way and they will hold themselves a certain way and they will think certain things and they will speak a certain way, and so as a result, you start to embody this idea of something instead of actually just maybe being more authentically like you.   Tahnee:  (53:14) And so yoga is all around how do we remove these hats that we wear, all these masks that we wear to the world and find out what's really underneath. And I think Chi Nei Tsang is one of the tools that we can use to start to dissolve some of those attachments and conditioned patterns I suppose. So I think it all fits into me to the same framework.   Tahnee:  (53:35) I separate yoga and Taoism when I teach because it's easier that way, but I see them as being very similar, if not the same, at the risk of offending some people. I think that the ideas fundamentally are very, very similar.   Mason:  (53:48) When you get bare bones about it, everything is, unless there's a very, very unique spiritual intention that someone would have.   Tahnee:  (53:59) Yeah. Well you could look at maybe Tantra as deviating because it starts with the assumption that there's oneness, whereas … I mean, I think … Oneness to me is a whole another podcast, so I don't think we'll go there. But if anyone's interested, let us know and we can go there because I love talking about this philosophy stuff.   Tahnee:  (54:18) But coming back to Chi NeI Tsang, I think when we can embody ourselves fully and unify with ourselves, that's the first step. It's the absolute foundation. It's the fundamental step to any personal growth and transformation and evolution, which is what this path is about. You can't take tonic herbs without changing and evolving and this is why we do this. It's certainly what motivates me to get out of bed every day.   Tahnee:  (54:45) And it's not this idea of becoming someone better or … It's just like I can feel that there's so much that I look through when I look at the world that isn't me. And it's like … And I've felt me, and these two things aren't completely congruent yet and that's okay. I'm still really young and I think that there's time, but I think that the more I practice and the more I explore these really ancient healing traditions, that I can feel this congruency coming.   Tahnee:  (55:17) And that's what yoga talks about. It's like we start to abide in our true selves. It's not this split where we think we're one thing and we do something else. And we're all hypocrites, every single one of us, and yoga doesn't say hypocrisy is bad. So much as it says, well, it's a sign that your inner and outer worlds aren't aligned. You say one thing, you do something else. You think one thing, you do something else.   Tahnee:  (55:36) There's no congruency there. It's because you haven't fully integrated. And that's what I think all of these healing tools point us toward. It's this idea of being able to be congruent and cohesive and consistent and all of the good things.   Mason:  (55:55) So we'll put the video from the Nourish Her Yin event where you're on stage taking everyone through a little massage sequence.   Tahnee:  (56:05) Can we do a better video than that?   Mason:  (56:05) Yeah. That's what I was going to say. It would also... Goji's (dog) getting in there. It'd be really good to just have a couple of different series like YouTube videos.   Tahnee:  (56:16) Well, what I've got in mind is doing a self massage one and then showing a simple partner massage or something, just a little flow.   Mason:  (56:27) Well, especially it's a good for mums and dads in the household to just have a little bit under your belt in terms of a little digestive flow.   Tahnee:  (56:35) Yeah, well, if you have a bubba, I wouldn't do Chi Nei Tsang so much as just rub their tummies really gently in a circular … So you want to go, I'm never good at this way, but clockwise, I think. Is that the right way? Yeah. So you want to go-   Mason:  (56:48) Looking at the belly clockwise.   Tahnee:  (56:49) So if you're looking at your baby's tummy, you want to go clockwise around. So basically, from their right to their left, an arc like a rainbow, that's going to help, especially if they get colic or any kind of constipation or anything. It's going to help to move what is stuck. And babies, like us, they process a lot through the digestion.   Tahnee:  (57:12) They're very open energetically, so it's always interesting to have a look at what else is going on in the family life if that sort of stuff is happening, what they might need to be buffered from or what they might be experiencing. I mean, these amazing little perceptive beings they are, so pretty cool. But yeah, Aiya doesn't love being massaged, unfortunately.   Tahnee:  (57:35) I always had dreams of, “I'll massage my baby.” And Aiya is, “Oi, get off.” So maybe when she's a bit older, she'll appreciate having a massage therapist mum.   Mason:  (57:44) That's all I was thinking. It's like when you get a little bit older, it's like having your little herbal remedies around and you have your Gua Sha stone around-   Tahnee:  (57:49) She does like Gua Sha.   Mason:  (57:54) … she does like Gua sha. You have your little Chi Nei Tsang technique. I mean, all we're talking about is a very practical focus even like putting too much on it and it's just very simple skill sets that hopefully, are going to keep you out of a doctor's office.   Tahnee:  (58:08) Yeah. I kind of always think-   Mason:  (58:10) Or a naturopath's office.   Tahnee:  (58:11) Well, I've said this to you before, like about being a cool old grandma, and I think it's such a shame in our culture. We've lost … I know … even when I was in Japan, when I was 16, the grandma and grandpa and the aunty and uncle all lived in the same compound and they were old, the grandma and grandpa and they did all the prayers.   Tahnee:  (58:30) They'd light all the incense, set up the alters every morning, facilitate that. If I saw the kid had a cold or something, grandma was boiling up stuff. I was too young to really comprehend exactly what it was, but now I'm thinking she was probably doing some herbal treatments or something. It's like they were holding that wisdom and that role in the family of just providing the health care. And you'd use a doctor only in a really extreme situation.   Tahnee:  (58:55) And I think there's really something … I know you saw me, I started reading nursing books and how to look after sick people because I was thinking, “Well, if I Aiya's unwell, how do I manage that?” And I think there's this lack of skill in our culture that us younger people have especially, that we don't know basic home remedies for things that aren't silly.   Tahnee:  (59:20) Like, “Oh, garlic if you have a cough or whatever,” I'm thinking more like, “How do I actually know when a fever is okay and not okay?” Because fevers, in my opinion, are an incredibly powerful healing tool and it should be left alone in general, but I know there's a point when they can get dangerous too. So it's like we've got to … h

Watch the full episode for free here: https://londonreal.tv/e/mantak-chia-2/ Mantak Chia is the Taoist Master, author, and healer, who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. He is the creator of the Universal Healing Tao System, and has been named one of the 100 most Spiritually Influential people in the world. He is best known for your deep understanding of the power of sexual energy, through the male and female multiple orgasms. He also explains how we can activate our bio-battery known as the “second brain”, and teach the art of using our “chi” energy to heal ourselves. MANTAK CHIA: Website: https://www.mantakchia.com/

Watch the full episode for free here: https://londonreal.tv/e/mantak-chia-2/ Mantak Chia is the Taoist Master, author, and healer, who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. He is the creator of the Universal Healing Tao System, and has been named one of the 100 most Spiritually Influential people in the world. He is best known for your deep understanding of the power of sexual energy, through the male and female multiple orgasms. He also explains how we can activate our bio-battery known as the “second brain”, and teach the art of using our “chi” energy to heal ourselves. MANTAK CHIA: Website: https://www.mantakchia.com/

Taylor Johnson joins Mason on the podcast today. Taylor is a sex educator and relationship coach who is deeply passionate about helping people to supercharge their sex lives and build powerful intimate relationships. Taylor believes that sexuality is at the core of what it means to be human, and when you supercharge your sex life, you supercharge your entire life. Taylor takes a grounded, practical and real approach to his work and we're thrilled to have him chatting to us today.    Taylor and Mason discuss: Premature ejaculation and self love. Taoist sexual practice and Tantra. Tension as a global epidemic and as a major factor in sexual dysfunction. Semen retention. Sexual practice as part of a holistic lifestyle. Re-channelling sexual energy into work and creativity. Multiple orgasm and edging.   Who is Taylor Johnson? Taylor Johnson is a sex educator and coach. Taylor helps men master their sexual energy and use it to supercharge their entire life. Taylor's programs and coaching synthesise elements of Tantra and Taoist sexuality with western practicality - in a grounded, accessible and powerful way.    Resources:  Taylor's Website Taylor's Instagram Taylor's YouTube Orgasmic Mastery Course   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:04) Taylor, welcome to the podcast man.   Taylor: (00:06) Thanks for having me, happy to be here.   Mason: (00:09) So, can you just say a quick g'day to everyone, let them know what you're up to with your life and in the world?   Taylor: (00:16) Yeah, absolutely. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening. My name is Taylor. I am a sex educator and a consultant for men primarily, and I help men do things like overcome premature ejaculation and master their sexual energy and be able to put it into whatever they want in their life.   Mason: (00:34) Yes, sweet.   Taylor: (00:35) [crosstalk 00:00:35] version.   Mason: (00:36) Man, I really like that. That's nice and succinct, and that's something that normally doesn't happen on this podcast. But you know what, you're refined and you're refining sexual energy. So no wonder you're able to actually refine your vocabulary into something potent. It's all macrocosm, microcosm stuff.   Taylor: (00:53) Working on it. It's a practice, you know, it's a practice.   Mason: (00:56) So I really wanted to have you on this conversation. Being Brovember we're talking about men's health. SuperFeast, the people listening to community here, are aware that we're looking at a very ancient system when it comes to the herbalism being the Taoist common herbs. We're looking at how we can very sustainably with respect and with, responsibly take something that's got such an ancient lineage and make that relevant to modern times, and that's why I put that respect there. So we're actually respecting the roots, and we kind of stay within that frame, but then how do we actually bring that relevance where these things like these sexual practices or even the fact that you take Taoist tonic herbs or do Taoist sexual practices or tantric practices. How do we not bring it over so it doesn't just get caught up into an egoic identity, which I think happens a lot? Sometimes you get into these communities. I remember when I got into the yogic community, it was like out of the frying pan into the fire.   Taylor: (01:55) Right? Yeah. How do you make it practical so you don't have to spend months and months and years, [inaudible 00:02:00], these techniques that you may or might not use. This talk about in conversation to like prove your worth or something, like grounded and practical and real, that's what I'm all about.   Mason: (02:11) Ground and practical and real, absolutely. And that relevance. I mean, I was talking to you about it because like we're going to go into multiple orgasms for men. We want to go into the retention of ejaculate, and how these conversations are actually going to be relevant to a modern man and in a modern relationship, and I was chatting to you about it. I'm kind of arriving at this point where I'm feeling really nice about approaching this practice in my own life. It's kind of feeling like, I'm not chasing anything, I'm not kind of not really coming to these practices anymore from that seeking or looking to mend a pattern that I picked up when I was a kid or in my teenage years, around where my own sexuality.   Mason: (03:01) I've kind of done a lot of inner work, a lot of psychological work, psychos, just getting into it, just trying to be, whether that's around stories I had around my own cock from porn. The shame I had around my cock from stories I'd made up by being, getting changed with other boys, couple of experiences when I was a teenager, and then again, probably watching porn and being like, "Hang on. I'm coming way too quick so I should probably go to Taoist sexual practices and be able to hold my come, so I don't feel embarrassed or self-conscious when I'm in the bedroom."   Mason: (03:38) I felt like that's been quite insidious for me coming out. I've gotten to that point where I've been on the precipice of being able to really do these retention practices and then gone, years ago and gone, "You know what, I'm not coming at this from the right reasons. I'm really trying to mend something that should come from a little bit more internal psychological, alchemical, spiritual place." But now I'm really feeling like I'm arriving with a clean slate. So I'd just like to hear your take and your experience on how you personally arrived in these practices, these sexual practices, if you've got any little caveats or advice for guys who are approaching it.   Taylor: (04:24) Yeah. Thank you. I'm curious to hear more about what you're experiencing right now too maybe in a little bit. But for me, This has been, I guess ,this has been a curiosity for me, sex, since I was a teenager, right? Sex and also those deeper energetic realms of spirituality and yoga and meditation, Qi Gong and that sort of stuff. From a young age I was interested in those things and I pursued yogic practice, I did yoga teacher trainings, I did the silent meditation retreats, I studied different religions. At the same time in this different compartment of my life, there was sex, and I was fascinated by it.   Taylor: (05:00) I was super attracted to women, super curious about sex, and at the same time, all these practices that I was studying around spirituality and energy, none of them ever mentioned sex. In fact, there was almost like an anti-sex attitude in a lot of those things. And it felt like this really strange disconnect in my body and in my mind, and heart and spirit. At a certain point, I had discovered a book, I believe it's called Sexual Energy Ecstasy. It's a blue book, I don't remember exactly. It was like 12 years ago, and it gave me this idea that you could actually mix yoga and intention and presence with sex. It was this like, the beginning of a process of merging those two worlds for me that has been a sort of lifelong journey since then. But that was a really catalyzing moment, like a huge lightbulb went off in my head because there was so much programming around sex not being spiritual and sex not being good, and sex pushing it to the side, that it was beautiful to experience that coming together.   Taylor: (06:08) And so fast forward a little bit. I started to try those practices and I regularly struggled with premature ejaculation during that time. So it was a little extra motivation to dive more deeply into that. I tried it a bunch, I tried it a bunch, I had some successes and then I noticed that it started to make me feel like, "Oh, yeah. I'm a sex master." I got this all figured out and it got to my ego and got to my head, I guess sort of similar to what you were saying. There was a certain point where I had to take a step back, because at the same time, I was struggling with porn addiction, yada, yada, yada. Fast forward to now, I feel like I've come into a much more balanced place with things too. I just skipped a bunch of stuff in the story, but I'll pause there to see. You looked like you had a little hand motion.   Mason: (06:57) Yeah. I mean, if we quickly go over the practices because I'm sure we've got men and women listening who haven't read like the Sexual Mastery for Men book by Mantak Chia, haven't been in that world of looking in Taoist multiple orgasms. However, if we can just have a quick little look at what those classic exercises are. You're kind of like talking about the squeezing the PC muscle.. I remember when I, like Mantak's just like, his books are just written the way he talks. Mantak is a Taoist practitioner and teacher everybody. You might have heard Tahnee talk about him. Tahnee's gone and learned at his Tao Garden in Chiang Mai.   Taylor: (07:45) Chiang Mai.   Mason: (07:46) So she wrote the Chi Nei Tsang, the Daoist's abdominal massage and it's an absolute weapon. But his books are just like, "Okay, you're squeezing the PC muscle 500 times a day. Just when you're in the car, you just sit there and you're just squeezing them. Like that feeling when you're holding, and you need to wee really bad and you need to squeeze that muscle. Do that 500 times a day, and that's the first step." And you decide, "Okay, it's a bit ambiguous."   Taylor: (08:09) Yeah, very mechanical and very dry honestly. I didn't make it through his book in entirety. I've experienced great success without reading that entire book. So just for anyone out there, there are other ways to get there that might feel a little more heart centered or warm, or at least less mechanical and engineering like. [crosstalk 00:08:27]. Just speak to that one piece you said, the PC muscle thing. I think this is a really important thing to talk about. Because all over the internet right now if you look for how to last longer in bed, or how to overcome premature ejaculation, pretty much the majority of what's out there immediately is PC muscle exercises, "Squeeze this. Squeeze this. Strengthen that. Strengthen that."   Taylor: (08:48) But a big problem with that is, when's the last time you or anybody went to the gym for 40 days in a row and did 200 squats every day for 40 days without stretching or without taking a break, right? That would create a problem in your body, that would create a problem in my body. I wouldn't be able to walk well after that, maybe not even after day four. I need a rest day. I need to stretch and I would need to counterbalance that. So a problem a lot of guys run into when they start doing PC muscle exercises all the time is they actually put their pelvic floor into a state of tension. Tension often is what causes premature ejaculation. Relaxing that area and being able to relax that is huge. So instead of doing 100 PC muscles exercises every day, like there's some other things you can do like different yoga poses and different stretches and different breathing exercises to bring more spaciousness down there.   Mason: (09:45) Would you mind if we go into that a bit later.   Taylor: (09:48) Yeah, happy to. One other little anecdote. I went to a Tantra workshop in Thailand two years ago, and the instructor asked this room probably full of 100 people, I would say, asked the room to close their eyes and tune into their pelvic floor. For everybody listening, I'm going to invite you to do that too. As long as you're not driving, just close your eyes and notice your pelvic floor. Your pelvic floor is the area around your genitals, in between your genitals and your anus. This is your perineum. And see if there is any amount that you can relax that area of your body at all just even a little bit. Are you holding any little micro tension there, tension at all?   Taylor: (10:38) It was really interesting in this workshop. You can open your eyes now. Because the instructor asked us that question and 90 plus percent of the people raised their hand. I did too. We all had tension there and we could all consciously relax that area of our body. Then the instructor asked us again five minutes later, and still 90 plus percent of the people raised their hand. And so it was this really interesting learning process of "Oh, wow. We're all walking around with a lot of tension in that area of our body. So maybe doing kegel exercises all the time, isn't the only answer.   Mason: (11:10) That comes up in like, I feel like that's what the world's really wanting is in that releasing of tension, that relaxation. Everyone in the West is obviously so Yang. We talked about shiny things we need to strengthen. Even with eye exercises, no one's even getting the sense of like, hang on, there's musculature around there that is super tense and you need to relax. And then you look at the West, everyone's so uptight, especially around the anus, and so that muscle, that PC muscle coming from the pubic bone right around to the coccyx, is like literally tight.   Mason: (11:45) As you're saying, that constant squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, if you got a tight neck, you're going to go and get like ... I'll just be like, "You know what, I'm going to really strengthen my with that muscle right now. This is how ..." You get one of those iron neck things that put a [crosstalk 00:11:58] on your head, "This is going to fix me." It's super obvious, but we've been so ... we've gone down that route of programming ourselves. And of course we're impressionable, and so we take-   Taylor: (12:09) Totally.   Mason: (12:10) Yeah. So like then, what are we doing in ... Let's just go into it now. What is your recommendations rather than just squeezing, and then how do we get a little bit more colour to that conversation and bringing blood flow and Qi down to that pelvic floor?   Taylor: (12:28) Yeah. One of my favorite and most simple exercises to do is deep belly breathing. And you can breathe into your pelvic floor too, and it doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be this great, mysterious mystical thing. You can just take a deep breath down into your belly, into your lower belly, and it literally expands that region of your body. One of my favorite ways to have people do this for their first time, if they're not used to deep belly breathing, is to lay on their back on the ground. And then you can put one hand on your chest and one hand on your lower belly, and try to breathe into that hand that's on your lower belly.   Taylor: (13:11) You'll notice that when you really focus your breath there, and you focus on expanding that part of your body, you can feel expansion in your sacrum, in your lower spine, in your abdomen, in your pelvic floor, and that whole area of your body. If you just slowly breathe into there, it's not a forceful, like get it done sort of thing, but it's a slow, easeful deep breath. That is an amazing, amazing, simple practice.   Mason: (13:38) One thing that when I was first getting into these practices, with good intentions and in some direction just seeking and chasing something, one thing that kind of threw me off was, I was all about the deep breathing. I've grown up around martial arts, and so had that ability to breathe into my belly. And then once I was in the bedroom, once I was having sex and really releasing tension, not realizing how much tension I was actually holding within my PC muscle, in that area around my sexual organs. And naturally physiologically, you release tension, your breath and your fascia is going to be able to bring subtle movement, you're going to get a flow of Qi there.   Mason: (14:25) In the beginning, I became more sensitive. Because despite the fact that I'd had evidence that I didn't really have to worry so much around premature ejaculation, that was still my sexual baggage and story I had about myself. So I actually got a little bit thrown off around how additionally sensitive I was, in the beginning. I just wanted to kind of throw that out there, because that sensitivity is something you want, but then working through that, that kind of somewhat disassociating that just because you get that pleasurable feeling, doesn't mean you're just going to get out of control and come real quick.   Taylor: (15:07) Right.   Mason: (15:09) That was a huge insight for me. Then opening up from you, you were talking about particular stretches, poses. Are you particularly looking at the hip flexor muscle when you're stretching out in through that area? What would you be looking at?   Taylor: (15:31) Well, yes, so they are the more active things, active poses you could do to do active stretching, but one of the ones that I really like is bridge pose, and with your hips up in the air, and your shoulders back on the ground and your feet on the ground. It would be cool if we could flash a diagram of that onto the screen right now. But basically, in that pose, somehow ... I haven't fully studied anatomy and physiology, but somehow the musculature in that pose allows you to relax your pelvic floor, in a way that is really incredible. I haven't experienced that in pretty much any other yoga pose or position. It's like a deep just dropping, deep connection with gravity of your pelvic floor and to feel that ease, it's really remarkable there. That's one for sure.   Taylor: (16:20) And then, yeah, there are generally just stretching your muscles, and your legs, and your hips is also helpful. I'd say, this thing of premature ejaculation, it's more than just learning one technique, or one stretch, or three stretches. Sometimes you have to approach it from 15 different angles, because for a lot of people it's a lifestyle thing. And it's learning to switch over your entire sexual response system from what we've grown up with, and maybe what sort of habits we've built, to a new type of sexual response system. And that takes some time for a lot of people and that's normal.   Taylor: (16:53) I think it's really awesome that you spoke to the piece in the beginning, where you had increased sensitivity at first, because I did too. And I thought, Oh shit. What am I doing? No, no, no, go backwards, go backwards. And then I couldn't go back. But in retrospect, it totally makes sense. I had to deprogram myself from years of watching porn, years of habitual masturbation, years of habitual objectifying of women, and to open myself to those deeper realms of sensitivity. At first it was overwhelming, and eventually that overwhelm can turn into this greater realms of orgasm and pleasure, that don't end in ejaculation.   Mason: (17:38) Before we go into the benefits of that, and why someone would be wanting to bring that into your lives, I'm curious to hear your grounded take, is what's the piece around like, what would you say is something to be ... As you're working on this at the same time or a precursor, in terms of the sexual relationship that you have with yourself, you are cock around self love, all those kinds of things. I just like to hear your take on that.   Taylor: (18:09) Specifically you're asking me what is ... Can you say that again?   Mason: (18:14) Yeah. I'm sorry. Sometimes I do just like dance around a concept, and don't ask a very direct question. Going forth, because I kind of personally feel a huge part has been this like okay, genuine loving relationship with myself, genuine non-shame based sexual relationship with myself is necessary, and feeling this innate forgiveness, and very deep love and appreciation that I do have for myself. I get that that could become a little bit cliche when you're running around these circles. So for you who you're teaching these arts, you're teaching the retention of ejaculate and multiple orgasms, that's the shiny thing. I'm assuming that there is a substance of this, what I'm talking about of like of this self love and healthy relationship. I know, because I've seen it in your videos and you talk to it, but just I wanted to hear directly the fabric of that, of what's surrounding the shiny thing of these multiple orgasms in and around what I was just referring to.   Taylor: (19:20) Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. That makes total sense. Yeah, nobody's going to do a Google search for, "How to self love better." Very few people. But hundreds of thousands of people will search for, "How to overcome premature ejaculation." So it's like, what are people looking for? And how to have them find me or find whoever is going to help them with this issue. Yes, so I run this course called Orgasmic Mastery. It's for men, and a lot of the stuff we've already talked about is in there, and so is this piece of self love and it's really important. For me ... What would I want to say about this?   Taylor: (20:02) I have people approach self pleasuring from like as a practice, incorporating breath, incorporating some exercises, but really trying to be fully present with themselves, not fantasizing about porn, not fantasizing about any partner, but tuning into this sensations that are in their body, the feeling of sheets on their skin, the feeling of warmth or coldness of the air, everything in that present moment, just tuning into those sensations, because that's going to orient you to this deeper presence that's available to you at any given moment. When you start exploring that realm, it's possible that all sorts of stuff come up. You might realize like, Oh my God, when's the last time I took 20 minutes for myself just to give myself pleasure? That can be overwhelming and sad, or beautiful, or happy for some people. It's really sort of like opening Pandora's box of potential for energy there.   Taylor: (21:01) It translates to the rest of your life. It has translated to the rest of my life. The more time I spend in a self pleasure session, versus just like wanking it or trying to get off, the more I walk in the world with my shoulders back, the more I walk in the world with confidence and love, and I exude this deeper presence, and it's because I've been cultivating that. I don't want to come across as I have all this shit figured out and I'm a master of it. Certainly, I'm very much a work in progress still, but I do notice that the more I approach this from a grounded place of self love, the better every area of my life becomes.   Mason: (21:41) That's evident, man, and I like that you've added those caveats. However, the cultivation is evident and it comes from consistency, and the grounded place in which no one was watching all your videos and reading your articles. That's why I was super stoked to have you on the podcast, and there's not many people I'd really want to talk about this with. But I had to talk about, so I was really happy that Elena, ... So everyone like Elena, who is a mate of ours runs Instagram, who has been a family friend for many years, put us on to Taylor's work, and I was like, "Boom. Yeah." That was three days ago and here we are, just awesome, because we needed to get this in for Brovember ASAP. Get it. Yeah. Now, let's go to why we would want to retain come, sperm. Let's look at some of the nuts and bolts of it.   Taylor: (22:34) The nuts and bolts. Great. So why would you want to retain your semen? Why would you want to retain your ejaculate? The first example I'll give is just of long term relationship. Say you're in a long term relationship, and we'll just go ahead and say monogamous for this particular example. For everybody listening, imagine that you're an year and a half into this relationship, maybe two years. Now imagine that you have sex with your partner every day for six days straight and you ejaculate every day of those six days. Chances are you're not going to want to be intimate with them on the seventh day, maybe even the six or the fifth or the fourth day, depending on how old you are, depending on your lifestyle and all this stuff.   Taylor: (23:25) One of the most practical reasons you might want to retain your semen is because when you ejaculate, generally speaking, you are losing polarity. You're losing that charge in your life, but also with your partner. And if you do it over and over and over again, it can lead to a depolarization in your relationship. And then all of a sudden, you might be more reactive and you might get into a little tiff or argument about somebody who left a little bit extra on the dishes, or it opens up the possibility for discontent.   Mason: (23:55) Mm-hmm (affirmative). The hangover.   Taylor: (23:58) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Example number one. Yeah, the orgasm hangover or the ejaculation hangover is real, and it affects not only your physiology, but your neuro chemicals as well. And that's something I want to do more research on to understand what exactly it is I'm talking about, but it has an effect on your brain for I think it's up to seven to ten days or something like that, I just read recently.   Mason: (24:22) Yeah. I think that's kind of confronting when you start reading about this, it definitely was for me when I was in a position where it wasn't necessarily something, like the mastery of that skill wasn't something that I saw was really on the horizon, and I had to do some other work first. And so then what comes up is, figuratively speaking is the morality around the fact that you're leaking your Jing essence and getting into like, "Is it bad for me to be coming?" I think that's when I was just ... I remember doing this years ago that I was interested again, of going and reading the reviews and seeing the reactions to this kind of, and I imagine you get it a lot as well, about to both the book Sexual Mastery for Men and The Tao of Sex, Health and Longevity by Daniel Reid.   Mason: (25:16) I don't know if you know his work. He's just another ... He's American, I think he's in his 70s now. Lived in Byron Bay for a while so he has a bit of a name of himself around here for being the local Taoist but he teaches a lot of these sexual practices. And you read the reviews of people really reacting. They're like, "This isn't natural. This isn't something that I want to do." But from a charged place and .... What I'm liking is what's coming out now I feel in the health scene is a very non-charged, "Hey, let's just lay out some of the realities of it. Don't get into right or wrong." Even if you're not going to be retaining ejaculate and having multiple orgasms, you can still be very aware of the physiological and neuro chemical nature of what happens when you do come, and then manage your energy and yourself, and your lifestyle, and your nutrition, and hydration in order to prevent you going, exactly what you're saying, start getting to that point where you do react towards yourself and your partner when you lose your essence.   Mason: (26:27) If you're already tired, and you lose that much mineral Jing essence, that little ... Actually I've got a quote here that I think kind of like in terms of what it is. Do you know Nicolas Venette, a 17th century sexologist?   Taylor: (26:43) I don't.   Mason: (26:45) "Semen is the most refined and noblest part of the whole human frame, containing in itself the whole nature and complexion of every part of the body, or in other words being the very essence of man." And if you're losing that essence, naturally, it's just going to be like, "Well guys, like of course. That takes a lot to make it and you releasing it, maybe you're going to be a bit tired afterwards." Have you just got like, I don't know if there's anything else you want to say to that hangover?   Taylor: (27:11) Yeah. Well, something came up that I have not really thought about before, but I'm just going to go off the cuff here. You've talked about some of those people on the reviews saying, "Oh, this isn't natural. We're meant to come regularly." And it makes me think like, if we take an evolutionary perspective on how we came to be here today, like if you look back tens of thousands of years ago at our ancestors, it was a much different scenario then. Survival was top on the list. It was survival, survive, procreate, eat, fuck, sleep, repeat. The death rate was probably much higher than it is now. There were predators around, there were different people who might want to kill you everywhere, and so it was probably advantageous to be ejaculating regularly in people to help the species continue, as much as possible, right?   Taylor: (28:03) And yes, we're factories for that. We could do that as men, and some of the research points to that. They've done studies on, there's one rat study in particular, where they looked at rats in captivity. They tried to have this one rat, mate with one mate over and over and over again, and the more times it ejaculated with this partner, the less it was interested and the less energy it had. But if you put in a bunch of new female rats, then this one male rat could have sex, sex, sex, sex, and would basically have sex until it died or got sick, with the introduction of new partners.   Taylor: (28:39) So if we fast forward today, we don't have to deal, we're not in that survival mindset in the same way that we were tens of thousands of years ago, yet our biology is generally the same by all intensive research purposes. So instead of being this factory for the production of more humans, like we could harness that energy and put it into our business, put it into our entrepreneurial pursuits, put it into our art, put it into our creativity. It's an option. That's just cool. It just occurred to me like, maybe it's not natural if we're trying to create as many humans as possible so we can survive, but we're not in that scenario anymore.   Mason: (29:19) Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. I think the other nice thing is we're in a scenario where this doesn't have to be a super taboo or some hippy bullshit or something only for Taoists. This seems to be coming a little bit more of a grounded and logical conversation, which I'm really appreciating. And in that, what are you looking at in terms of primary benefits to someone's physiology, and long term health, if you start delving into this area. You've already mentioned the rechanneling, maybe you can talk a little bit more about that.   Taylor: (29:56) Yeah. Well, I'll speak to my own just personal practice of semen retention for a moment. I have discovered that my ideal ejaculation frequency is somewhere between 10 and 14 days. I can have as much sex as I want during that period or as much self-pleasure. But if I ejaculate at that frequency, I noticed that I don't suffer any of the effects of repeat ejaculation hangover. And so for me, an ejaculation hangover would manifest in my body and in my mind, with brain fog, with lack of clarity, with lack of feeling of direction and on purpose, less confidence, less zest, and just less creative energy.   Taylor: (30:37) I've noticed that I can do manual labor over and over and over again in that space, but what's more challenging for me is using my mind in creative ways to solve problems in that period of ejaculation hangover. I'm less sociable, I'm less able to hold up conversation, all that stuff. Whereas if I retain my semen, a benefit of that is more clarity, more direction of my life purpose, more feelings of vitality inside, more feelings of power. I'm convinced that people in public look at me differently if I'm 14 days in. I've done experiments with that and I think there's an energetic radiance that can sort of happen with that, and that getting into woo-woo territory. But there's something very real about that, and maybe it's just body language, maybe it's just how your eyes operate. But you know what I mean?   Mason: (31:30) Well, I mean, absolutely. I feel like in terms of being woo-woo, I mean, everybody listening to this podcast would have heard us talk about the three treasures regularly.   Taylor: (31:41) Okay, cool. Great. Awesome.   Mason: (31:41) Jing, Qi, Shen is probably like a foundation. The foundation of why we practice tonic herbalism isn't to remedy what's wrong, it is to tonify and cultivate the three energies which are the source of our life, which is the Jing, the Qi, and the Shen. So they very much understand the nature of Jing been associated with our sexual fluids, with semen and without genetic potential being the wax of the candle, in the analogy. If we can build up that wax of the candle, because whether we like it or not, we're not saying it's not like a very moral or extreme statement, what I'm saying and coming from someone who is coming.   Mason: (32:24) I'm not saying that you if you come, you're just going to keep on depleting that wax and you're going to leak your Jing and that's it for you, you're not going to be able to do this. We're just talking about almost another tool or another practice, to possibly continue to very successfully manage the wax of your candle, your Jing and your physiology. I think what you're talking about is when you're retaining that essence, and you're using it consciously or conscientiously, and you're conscientiously coming, you are building up that wax so that the flame can be nice and bright. So your Qi is cultivating and flowing so that your Shen, your wisdom, your essence is shining bright. The light coming off your candle can be brighter.   Mason: (33:06) We know that when you've got that skip in your step and that twinkle in your eye, you can notice it in people. If you've felt it in yourself when you're exhausted and tapped out, like I feel invisible when I'm like that. Naturally, I can take on a bit of a gray demeanor, verse when I'm really pumping and hydrated and I'm feeling great, I'm expressing my emotions, and I'm being responsible sexually, and cultivating energy and really connecting, fuck, you feel incredible. Of course, not that it's about that, but people notice it. So yeah, man. I think I appreciate you saying that.   Taylor: (33:43) Yeah, and thank you for saying that too. It's just meeting you now for the first time and just learning about everything you're doing two days ago, I haven't had a chance to really dive in and understand what you're sharing, but I've made it a personal mission of mine to try to take how I talk about this and make it as accessible and approachable to the mainstream as I can, because I believe in these practices and the power there. I've been sort of training myself to say less things that could be construed as the derogatory word woo-woo, just because I want CEOs to find us. I want big business people to find this. I want people who work in banks to find this because I do believe that these practices really will change the way that, how you see the world, how you see life, how you walk in the world, and I want more people to be doing this. So thanks for saying that.   Mason: (34:33) Yeah. And I appreciate you saying that as well. I mean, there is a reality and it's a confronting reality around what it means, where we build something like semen and then we release it constantly, but there's no reason why this can be decharged around being considered woo-woo, and almost this is something that was talked about in men. You can almost see that the pub, I was like, "Oh gosh, you're a bit grouchy, are you? You're in the ejaculation hangover, are you Terry? Just something that's like, it is somewhat of a reality, which doesn't mean it needs to be moralized. So I've got another quote here if you don't mind. I've never had-   Taylor: (35:13) Yeah, please.   Mason: (35:14) I got a couple from Kim Anami, just like she was talking about semen. Especially, if people who have gone down that route of the Taoists, even in Tantra, it can be very colorful and poetic, this whole thing, which is amazing. I personally love that. I'm kind of like, I've become somewhat of a tragic ... Did I just say come what of a ...? I'm somewhat of a romantic, just like a tragic in that area when it comes to talking about these things, which if that's the only way you talk about these things, it can become a little bit difficult to approach these and land them in your life. However, that's the nature of it, and especially if you look at the nature of the White Tigress in Jade Dragon traditions when it comes to Taoism.   Mason: (36:05) I don't know if you've read a lot of those books. It's really beautiful and poetic in terms of talking about these lineages of Taoism where they really were focusing on that cultivation of sexual energy. When you look at the Jade Dragon, the men's sexual, the semen retention practices, multiple orgasms, as well as the Qigong and the consumption of Jing herbs, and all these kinds of things. All they are is they're seen as spiritual practices, cultivating energy that can be then funneled into your meditation, into the work that you're doing out there into the world, and very much youthening practices as well, which can ...   Mason: (36:47) You can just think about it. If it takes fluid and minerals, and stem cells, and power, like an ATP and mitochondrial energy in order to create semen, and if you continuously release it and you need to direct all that energy to go and then constantly build it up and create it again, it's just simple science. It's simple logic, you're not going to have the essence and the enzymatic power, and the energy, and the organ power to redirect into other places, which are going to be seen as like, youthening, vitality, cultivation of Qi in other areas. So, in saying that, here is that quote from Mantak Chia, I think it was the Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, 1984. What year were you born, man?   Taylor: (37:37) '85.   Mason: (37:38) Yeah. Me is about maybe six, so this is before our time. Look at us. A couple of experts on sexual practices and meanwhile these quotes. "When hormonal secretions of the sexual glands are regularly leached out, the body is sapped at its root without a period of time, that will range from months to decades depending on the endowment of the individual, creative and sexual abilities are halved, and the ability to withstand disease and the frailties of old age is diminished". Don't know if you want to elaborate on that in any way, I'll put your two cents in.   Taylor: (38:19) I don't know what else there is to say.   Mason: (38:22) It nails it, right?   Taylor: (38:24) It does. I guess the one other piece I want to say is, semen retention, it's not like the magic bullet. I do want to say it's amazing but, and if you're not also ensuring that you get a good night's sleep, if you're not also staying hydrated. If you're not taking care of all these other areas of your life, it doesn't matter how much semen retention you do, you're still going to lose energy in all these other ways. It's like one piece of the whole picture of being a holistically minded individual. That's really important, that doesn't get talked about enough, but it isn't the only thing.   Mason: (39:01) Awesome. Yeah. And that's something, try and talk about that a lot. If you have very, very, very realistic expectations on these practices, on the tonic herbs, on medicinal mushrooms, whatever it is, if you just get it off a pedestal and just sit in it's very real relevant place, that means because you're not going to have expectations shattered, because you had something on a fucking pedestal for so long, it means you're going to have the stamina to consistently do the practice. In saying that, we were talking about having particular teachers, Taoist teachers, whether it's Mantak up on these pedestals. It's something that I think we both wanted to talk about, in terms of when approaching these things. You just want to have a jam out about that now?   Taylor: (39:53) Yeah, let's go for it. Let's go for it. I've never personally studied with Mantak, but I studied a fair amount with Michael Winn, who co-wrote the Cultivating Male Sexual Energy. He's actually based a few miles from where I live right now in Asheville. And so, that's been really convenient. Another big teacher in my life has been this guy named David Deida. I'm sure you've probably heard of him, have you?   Mason: (40:15) I do.   Taylor: (40:15) Yeah. So I've read most of his books. I did a workshop with him. Earlier this year, I actually had an opportunity to sit down with him and have a beer at a table with some other people, because I worked security at an event of his and we went out afterwards, and we just hung out. It was this really interesting process for me to, A, I had never done security at an event before. That was a trip. But, B, the most fascinating thing was, I had sort of deified him. After reading his books, after going through his workshop, I put him up on this pedestal and thought, just like all the things associated with that, like, "He can do no wrong," or "He has all the answers," or "Oh he has something that I don't," or "I need him for this, X, Y and Z."   Taylor: (40:58) It took a good half hour of being at that table with him and a handful of other people, to just whittle those away and remember like, "Oh you're just a guy, who has invested a lot of time and energy in studying this stuff, but you're still very much a human, you still struggle with things. You still don't want to be in big crowds of people. You have your own quirks just like everybody else." And it was a very humbling experience for me and a useful experience to realise, all these teachers that I have deified, even Mantak, I don't necessarily have to study with them to get the value from their material, and I don't necessarily even have to read all the material. They're not gods. I'm not a god. I don't know what else to say about that. I think it's just important to realise, you know what I mean? We're all humans.   Mason: (41:52) I think what's ... Because I think we've all gone through that, maybe, maybe not. But I'll speak definitely speak for myself, and I've had those people I'd put on pedestals, and then I've had to come crashing down. For me, it was a pattern of looking for that place that I think is right or the authority, and then attaching myself to that authority, so that I can feel ... For me, it was dietarily and health wise, that I can feel like I'm in a superior place, and I'm actually in a safe place, where I'm actually doing everything right now. That's just the case when you go ... And I can see it, you read The Way of the Superior Man by David Deida, and you're doing the Taoist sexual practice, and you look at the rest of the society, what I see, what happens is we oppose ourselves.   Mason: (42:33) A lot of the time in the beginning, we need opposition. So we oppose ourselves against society, which has taught us that pornography is the standard, that your own sexuality is taboo. So we need to kick back against that, and when we kick back against that, we look at who's on the other side of that thing we're opposing. We're trying, and so we find the leaders that we then go and deify, because in order to stay opposed to the energy of what we're moving away from, we need a deity or we need a different pole in order to go towards. And of course, it's all our own identity building. And in the beginning that can be useful, but also being aware of that charge. Because quite often what people look for then, is when they realize, hang on, I've identified with this person and making this person the deity, or just putting them on a pedestal.   Mason: (43:27) If the person you're following is in a good position, I assume like David Deida, it's good to hear he was just someone that was down to earth and just via following him or just being in his presence, you came to that realization for yourself. I feel like that's what happens with Mantak, from hearing about Tahnee being the Tao Garden and talking to him. He just sits down and eats with everyone, has chats with everyone, and talks his shit and all his students are likewise they're just like you know what? He's got his own stuff going on, and he deals with it, but we've just got a like a healthy relationship. We just go to him for the teachings and we know where the line is.   Mason: (44:06) But then there's those times when your teacher doesn't have that groundedness to defuse it in themselves, and so they parasitically ... Like they live off that energy of people deifying them, and that suck it up. And so, what we get used to is needing to find something wrong with that deity, with that person, in order to escape from their claws. Again, it's external, and then the pendulum swings and people need to get into this resentment around people who are representing this health, and teaching these ancient lineages, where it's not about them. Some people are fucking awful, and they are preying on people and they're abusing their position. But that's their shit. You need to just like de-charge and come to that position, where you just realise everyone's a human. We're all bloody equal here and it's your shit that you deify that person, right?   Taylor: (45:02) Yeah. Wow. Very well said. I'm going to go back and listen to you say that whole thing again. Thanks.   Mason: (45:07) Well, just hearing your ... This is what always happens on the podcast. I mean, and I learn personally through talking things out, and I always appreciate this podcast. Hear you talking about all these things and then it brings up some shit in myself, and I go on my rants and that's how I kind of work out these concepts internally.   Taylor: (45:32) It's great.   Mason: (45:33) First of all, that's great to hear that about David Deida, because he's such a legend. I found that book exceptionally transformational, and again, everyone ... And he's got several, but The Way of the Superior Man is just ... Imagine just having a term studying that in year nine and ten of like middle school for you guys. And parents can just go that. Parents, that's what the beauty of it, we don't have to rely on the schooling system to do it.   Taylor: (46:03) Now that's a fantasy, is bringing all this stuff, bringing everything we're talking about right now into kids, into the teenagers. Wow. How different would our society be if we did that? That's a fantasy of mine, passion somehow, maybe hopefully one day.   Mason: (46:22) Well, it's happening, for sure. Like there's parents who are exposing their kids, just and they're very grounded people. Again, we don't need to make this trippy or woo-woo, when kids can still be heavily integrated into the community, and not be ostracized by knowing about these things which go against very traditional society, if we teach them how to not grab on to these ideas, and try and become superior in themselves because they know them. Parents, you just have these conversations each and every day, appropriately based on the age, but you can just have these very responsibly. Anyway, we're all here doing it together. I think it's happening man.   Mason: (47:02) So then going into some of the practicalities again, in terms of what steps that men can be taking along this journey, and I think I'm definitely going to jump onto your course as well, and just go a little bit deeper down that route as well, because having a structure really works for me. But, what are the steps? And then can you also talk about some of the fallacies that occur, just in case everyone's heard it before. Some of the examples I'm talking about are like edging in an incorrect way, coming, edging towards orgasm, and then what are some of the fallacies there, and some of the correct ways to do it. Also, that false ejaculate retention by pushing up into the peritoneum there, or if you learned your physiology from Jackass, the Gooch, and pushing the semen and back up into the bladder. I just like to get the world of these steps that you're taking over months for men to start retaining semen.   Taylor: (48:12) Yeah. Wow. How to condense all these into some useful ... Well, I'd say the first thing to start with, sounds like a lot of people listening to this already are kind of on board, but it's just the realisation that there is something else that's possible. There is another paradigm of sex, there's another paradigm of energy and relating, and consciousness that's available, that society doesn't talk about in the grand scheme of things. So that's step one, is just to know that there's something else out there that's possible, and I'm here to say and it sounds like you're here to say, that it can be way more pleasurable and connective than the typical sex that I grew up with, and that I learned from porn.   Taylor: (48:52) And then seeking out resources. Books are a great way to start. Mantak Chia's book can be a great way to start. That book, The Way of the Superior Man, it has some awesome insights into sex. I posted about that book on my Instagram yesterday, and immediately. I think it was like less than a minute later, somebody responded with a DM that said, "That book saved my marriage. It literally saved my marriage." And then it was one of the most responded to stories I've posted in a while, with all these people saying how much it's impacted them. So books, start with books, and then YouTube. There's a lot of free information out there. Just start researching.   Taylor: (49:28) And then I'd say, another huge thing that's really important for us as men specifically, is to talk to another brother about this stuff. Talk to another man about this stuff. Find a friend who's interested, find some sort of community who's also interested in this. We're programmed often as men to do everything by ourselves, to be the sort of like lone wolf. We have to be self sufficient, self empowered, do everything ourselves. That's a problem and it's a fallacy. Having community around this, is so amazing. That was one of my favorite things about the course that we just did, was seeing and hearing about all the experiences from the guys in the Facebook group, and talking about on the live calls, and seeing different people's wins, and having them ask questions and have each other answer their questions.   Taylor: (50:19) I say that community piece is really, really important. And I think it's something as men in general, we need to step more into men's groups, men's gatherings, men's workshops, spaces for us to reevaluate how we walk in the world and that sort of thing. And then I know this is a fair amount of a tangent, but I think it's really important that we do that. And then you could take a course. You could take my course, you could take somebody else's course, if you want to go have a deeper dive into it. Not everybody wants to. I think everybody should, of course. Yeah, I'll pause there.   Mason: (50:54) Well, at least arriving at a point where it's a choice. I've heard a lot of people go like, "I've kind of learned it and then played around with it, and then I just chose that I didn't really want to have that as a practice in my life," which is kind of a nice non-charged way to go about it. Can you talk about, around anything in terms of practices for strengthening the PC muscle just very quickly, that might just shine some light on it for guys that are already taking on this practice. Maybe they've read the 500 a day kind of squeeze thing.   Taylor: (51:25) Yeah. I will hit that, and then want to speak to the retrograde ejaculation thing that you talked about, just because you mentioned it earlier. So there is this whole other thing that can happen, where some guys think that they're having a non-ejaculatory orgasm. And often that happens by using the million dollar point technique right before an ejaculatory orgasm where-   Mason: (51:48) That was the gooch was talking about everybody, to put it as they say in Grey's Anatomy.   Taylor: (51:53) Yes, putting the fingers forcefully into the perennial, and what you're actually doing there, you're still having an ejaculatory orgasm, you're just diverting your ejaculate into your bladder, instead of out through your penis. So you still lose everything that you lose during your orgasm, you still go through that refractory period. It might seem like you're having a non-ejaculatory orgasm, but if you pee in a glass cup immediately afterwards, you will see ejaculate in that.   Mason: (52:22) Do you see this happening even if they're not hitting that point, which, everyone is between the anus and the testes? That's the point we're talking about.   Taylor: (52:29) Yeah. Technically, you can strengthen your PC muscles to be able to squeeze hard enough there, that you can squeeze and divert that flow without touching your fingers. You can do it with crossing your legs. Some people supposedly can do that with intention. I don't know them. I've just heard about that. I prefer to not do that practice. If I'm going to have an ejaculation, I would rather it leave my penis and go through the natural flow, than get diverted up into my bladder. I would either rather have a non-ejaculatory, energetic full body orgasm, or a full on ejaculatory orgasm and not this sort of weird false, non-ejaculatory orgasm.   Mason: (53:10) I'm just going to ask another question here. I just want everyone to know, I'm still aware we're going to talk about edging and we're still going to talk about PC, but now I feel like somewhat of a seminal elephant in the room is, what happens to the ejaculate when you don't come?   Taylor: (53:31) Just gets reabsorbed by your body. It doesn't build up. You don't get giant testicles. It just cycles naturally internally. That's my understanding.   Mason: (53:45) Yeah. When you're going through these practices, I've heard you talk about blue balls quite a bit. I mean, can you quickly share whether it's blue balls and you feel that concentration of sexual energy? A lot of guys might be familiar, we have a deer antler velvet product and sometimes guys will take it consistently, and build up a lot of Yang Jing. I mean, a lot of sexual energy and feel charged. A lot of, you can associate that with that like, "I've got too testosterone. I'm feeling that slight frustration and aggression." What are some practices we can do to re-divert that energy?   Taylor: (54:32) Yes, I will hit on that. And I just wanted to add one other piece of clarity about what I just said, is I'm remembering that there is some evidence to show that if you do retain your semen for months, like four, or five, six plus months, then your sperm count might drop. It might go lower, so then if you're wanting to have a child ... And I'm not an expert on this, but I remember hearing this at the tantric school where I studied, I think they recommended having an ejaculation or two, before you actually try to conceive, but that's ... Do more research on that for sure. But I just wanted to add that one piece in, to [crosstalk 00:55:09] mouthful. Yeah. Can you say the last thing you just did again?   Mason: (55:14) Yeah. How are we taking that build up of sexual energy, and taking it into different places in the body? Just very simple practice.   Taylor: (55:21) Yeah. Well, there's so many different ways to do that. One of them is the microcosmic orbit, which I'm sure a lot of you listening are familiar with. Another, which I learned earlier this year on a different podcast, Sean Wes. It's a different business podcast, but they did a whole review of this book. What was it? Think and Grow Rich, and on the chapter about sublimating your sexual energy, one of the guys on there said he tried this technique. He was really attracted to this woman and feeling sexually charged, and thinking about her all the time while he was at the office, and he got out a sheet of paper and wrote down, "I am transmuting my sexual energy from this woman, and from being aroused by her, and I'm putting into my work right now." And the act of writing it down for him, it changed something in his physiology, and the solidifying of his intention on paper just shifted something internally for him. That's a very practical way to do that, and I thought that was fascinating. I've tried it a few times since then in a variety of contexts, and it works surprisingly well.   Mason: (56:25) Yeah, where your attention goes, your energy flows, right?   Taylor: (56:28) Totally.   Mason: (56:31) Completely with that, I feel like that's something that's often ... It's a pretty obvious caveat. Over the next, say like decade, it's going to be a really great endeavor for everyone to really get in touch with their sexual energy, and get an understanding, come into a deeper relationship with the nature of your creation of come, and how you're releasing it, and just watching the patterns that arise afterwards, and when you're retaining, that might just come from celibacy. It might not just be the fact that you're doing multiple orgasms. Just watch yourself because it's a reality, and give yourself time. Don't be too harsh on yourself.   Mason: (57:10) But inside of that, you're going to have to take that sexual energy at some point, and realise that it's a part of you. It's not isolated into a box, and around your dick. As you were saying, like just say, "I'm going to go put that into my work." I know that can be something very different for men. Well, how can I take something that's just used for like attraction or fucking, and put that into two hours sitting at my desk? I think most people have heard it, but it's worth reiterating again, that sexual energy, it's just energy and it's your energy, and it's just you and it is your creativity.   Taylor: (57:52) Totally. Yeah. And if you want it, a simple, practical way to try this, if you have a partner right now that you're having sex with, and you've never tried this before, I recommend having sex with your partner before you go to work and don't ejaculate. And at the end of that, to make sure you don't get blue balls or to make sure you don't get stagnation, massage your testicles, massage your perineum, do some jumping jacks, do some push ups, just to move your energy throughout your whole body, maybe some Qigong if you know, some Qigong exercises, and then go to work. And just notice what happens. Notice your levels of attention, notice your levels of motivation, and your ability to focus and concentrate. I would imagine and I would bet, that it will be different.   Mason: (58:36) Yeah. I love it. Now, I've read a couple of your blogs, and with the just talking about the difference in the type of orgasm, and what you'd be expecting from a multiple orgasm. So we're getting to this point where we we're in website, we're consistent, we're months in, we begin to procure this ability to retain our semen. What kind of orgasm are you going to be looking at? What's occurring there?   Taylor: (59:05) Yes, very good question. And if you look on the back of Mantak Chia's book it says ... I actually have this book right here. It says specifically, "Learn to separate orgasm and ejaculation." The very top line on the back of this book. And I think that there's truth to that, but it can be misleading for a lot of people. Because the types of orgasms that are the more full body, you could call it tantric, you could call it energetic orgasms. You could call it cosmic orgasms, whatever you want to call it, they're different than the typical ejaculatory orgasm. They don't have the involuntary genital contractions. They're not focused all in your penis and your general region. They could flow through your body like heat waves.   Taylor: (59:50) They can happen in your fingertips, in your heart, in your face and your nipples. You could experience energy moving everywhere and you could feel more pleasure. You could feel like your arm is ejaculating, minus the actual loss of semen and energy. And so, it's a different thing. So instead of saying, "Learn how to separate your orgasm from ejaculation," I would say, "Learn how to experience a new kind of orgasm, that's different probably from what you've experienced growing up. And this other kind of orgasm can do wonders for your health, for your relationship, for basically every area of your life and it can actually feel more pleasurable too."   Mason: (01:00:32) I mean, basically what I'm thinking there, especially if you look at those, the Taoist sexual schools, if you look at the Jade Dragon Schools, it's about cultivating this energy and to refine, and bring forth the elixir of immortality. That can be very poetic, kind of well, what is that? Are we talking about real immortality? Are we're talking about a nice long life, a rich life? What is it? However, what you were just saying in terms of that whole body orgasm, I think a lot of ... especially people who have had, whether it's psychedelics or drugs in their past, and there's been times where you can almost sit there in that peak experience of having a whole body orgasm.   Mason: (01:01:19) During these times, and we might be doing plant medicine or whatever it is, but remembering that those peak experiences are something that is innate, we do have all the ingredients of that, for lack of a better unpoetic word, the elixir of immortality, to be able to have those kinds of experiences. I'm sure whether a lot of people listening have had those, you can have a sexual experience where it's just cut and dry, and you're in and out, all those times when you might not be retaining, though you're really connected with your heart and you can feel a differentiation in the type of orgasm, where it does become a little bit more whole body and you can almost start tripping out. Not almost, you do start tripping.   Taylor: (01:02:03) You do.   Mason: (01:02:04) For sure. And there's something nice and endogenous us in that. Sorry, man.   Taylor: (01:02:10) Sorry, I interrupted you.   Mason: (01:02:12) Go for it.   Taylor: (01:02:13) Yeah. Also, I just want to be clear and transparent, that I'm not having these full transcendental, psychedelic full body orgasms every time I have sex. Sometimes when I have sex, it's just a very pleasure filled experience, and I can have orgasmic type experiences, but I'm not having like the full on psychedelic thing happen every time I have sex. My directive or my goal in sex has shifted from when I was younger. It used to be ejaculation only. Now, its pleasure, and connection, and energy.   Taylor: (01:02:52) And so, if I happen to have one of these cosmic orgasms, that's beautiful, and that's awesome, and it's not necessarily my end goal. Like I'm not going into sex thinking, "I'm going to have the cosmic orgasm." I'm going into sex thinking like, wow, A, either, "I'm so horny and turned on by you. I want to make love." And, B, like, "And I want this experience to be really connective, and awesome, and beautiful, and without going to this goal." Because with that goal oriented mindset, it sort of shapes the way sex progresses. Without that, there's a lot more openness for ebb and flow, and creativity that I have experienced.   Mason: (01:03:33) Right on man, and that's why you're on the pod, because that creation of just an open, grounded, realistic expectation on the practice is something that's necessary to make this sustainable. Let's touch back. Just there are two things I want to do. I'm just a hit, so we don't want to leave everyone hanging. Can you just explain what edging is? And could you just give a very brief touching a base of the way edging can be done? Just like whether it's ineffective versus effective.   Taylor: (01:04:06) Yeah. So real quick, edging is this practice of, if you think of sexual arousal and ejaculation on a scale of one, or zero to 100, and 95 is the point of no return, and in between 95 and 100 is your ejaculatory orgasm. Edging is the process of getting your sexual response system up to 92, 93, 94. Like that point just before ejaculation, and then pressing pause, and then doing some breathing and coming back down to maybe like 50% 70% somewhere on that scale. And the idea is to practice reaching that point, and to build your capacity to get to this higher states of pleasure and come back down. For that, it can be very useful. A big pitfall though, and a big problem with this whole edging practice that's not often talked about is, rushing to edge and seeing that area of 90% to 94% as pleasure, versus seeing that, everywhere else on that scale is pleasurable to.   Taylor: (01:05:08) And so, one problem that I ran into a bit ago, when I was doing a lot of this edging practice, I would notice that when I would self pleasure, when I would masturbate, I would rush right up to my edge, because that's where I experience "the most sexual pleasure." I would get to that edge in like a minute and a half, usually or less, because that's what I was going for. What that was doing, was training my sexual response system to go from non-erection to almost ejaculation in a minute and a half, and that translates into every sexual experience you could have from there.   Taylor: (01:05:45) Sure enough, after doing a lot of the edging practice, I thought, "I'm getting really good at going up and coming back down." When I got into the sexual experience, it was like, "A minute in, holy shit, back off." That's a danger area, and I would say be very a

In this Episode of Qi With Eli I speak with Grand Master Mantak Chia about his favorite practices. This was recorded during a Five-Day workshop I attended in Foster City, CA where Mantak taught a plethora of practices. He has an amazing wealth of knowledge and is a powerful teacher that understands how to bring Qi Gong to life and fill your life with energy and healing! Enjoy this very special episode!

In this Episode of Qi With Eli I speak with Grand Master Mantak Chia about his favorite practices. This was recorded during a Five-Day workshop I attended in Foster City, CA where Mantak taught a plethora of practices. He has an amazing wealth of knowledge and is a powerful teacher that understands how to bring Qi Gong to life and fill your life with energy and healing! Enjoy this very special episode!

  If you have never heard about the jade egg, cosmic orbit, or that our organs communicate with us, then this conversation will open up your galactic portal so you can orbit around your new UNIverse! All the while upgrading your ascension tools. I mean doesn’t this already perk up your curiosity?      It was five years ago when I entered the "yoni" world, that’s vagina for those of you still living on planet earth. I first met Solla Pizzuto when she held a women’s group at her home in Santa Monica, California. We all gathered to learn how to connect with our yoni’s and do Kegels on steroids. This event was beyond what I expected and not your typical goddess sister gathering. We all tapped into the philosophy that to create a life that is happy, fulfilling, and full of blessings you need to take responsibility for yourself, on all levels, even your sensuality.   We are so conditioned in this pressurized time on the planet to source everything we need from the outside. This podcast conversation goes deep into the alchemy of finding your inner truth and connecting to the aspects of self that often go unrecognized and neglected. This conversation will have you loving your yoni and opening up to a new perspective on self-love, healing modalities, and your own inner technology.  As an educator and bodyworker in healing arts, Solla has the ability to skillfully mold you into your own work of art. She is truly a master of her own domain and the knowledge she shares is beneficial to all. It’s a lifestyle and a choice to treat not only one another with compassion but to treat every part of your body, mind, and spirit with the same love. The only prerequisite is to have an open and heart and mind! Hope you enjoy!   (Brief background) *25 years in Healing Arts Arena *Combat Medic Veteran with Merits from US Armed Forces Active Duty *Nurse in Cedars Sinai and West Century City Hospitals *Universal Healing  Certified Tao Instructor of nearly 8 years *Licensed Certified Bodywork and Healer for over 20 years *Certified Teacher of Advanced Internal Alchemy of Tao studies. *Masters in Psychology *Pre- Medical studies Gina & Solla Talk About:   Holistic practitioner Tantric teachings Self love self care Soul gazing Mantak chia Teachings of the Tao Smiling when you dont need to smile Preventative medicine Inner alchemy practices Qigong History of the Jade egg Yoni skills Benefits of jade egg Advanced practices of yoni/jade egg Benefits of breast massages Chi-nei-tsang Microcurrent treatment Role of the liver Cellular  memory Transformation of energy   Dig deeper   National Certification Board for Massage and Bodywork:(Provider #466) https://www.meetingofmasters.com/meet-the-masters Connect with Solla FACEBOOK  INSTAGRAM  WEBSITE

Adina Rivers and I speak openly about sexual vitality and relationships. 

Master Mantak Chia is Taoist Master, author, and healer who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. Watch the FULL EPISODE here: https://londonreal.tv/e/mantak-chia/

Master Mantak Chia is Taoist Master, author, and healer who teaches people how to empower themselves through the cultivation of their “chi” energy. Watch the FULL EPISODE here: https://londonreal.tv/e/mantak-chia/

Episode 17 is all about the prostate and solo prostate play (so of course DJ is doing this episode solo for all of the prostate-owners out there) and how it can benefit sexual performance, pleasure and overall health. Talk to your health care pro first and then … Fingers! Toys! Pushing on the perineum! Break some taboos and know more about your body so you can have more fun in your life!Email Us:intoyourbodypodcast@gmail.comFollow Us:Twitter / Tumblr / FacebookTAP TO SUBSCRIBE AND DOWNLOAD FROM:ApplePodcasts / Google Play / Google Podcasts / Spotify / Stitcher / TuneIn RSS-feed readers: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/199078.rss~ ON THE RADIO: ~Saturday nights at midnight on KEPW-LP, 97.3 fm in Eugene, ORand streaming at http://kepw.org (click the green "listen live")Works referenced:“Kegel Exercises for Men” - UCLA Urologyhttp://urology.ucla.edu/prostate-cancer/kegel-exercises-for-men“Prostate Milking” - Kinklyhttps://www.kinkly.com/definition/1459/prostate-milking“Ejaculation May Lower Prostate Cancer Risk” - Boston Univ. School of Public Healthhttp://www.bu.edu/sph/2016/04/05/ejaculation-may-lower-prostate-cancer-risk/Abrams, Douglas; Chia, Mantak. The Multi-Orgasmic Man. New York City: Harper-Collins, 1996 (first edition)

Today’s podcast – Dr. Angela Longo goes deeper in to using the principals of quantum theory to help patients find and reprogram negative self sabotaging beliefs and behaviors. Sarina LOVES this wacky, brilliant doctor and enjoys a chat with her in a village near Master Mantak Chia’s Tao Garden. http://angelalongo.com, https://www.sarinastone.com PRODUCT PAGE: https://sarinastone.com/science-of-getting-rich.html

Today’s podcast – Grandmaster Mantak Chia shares where he spent 2017 and what he taught students from around the world.  So many countries, so much QiGong to share.  Sarina Stone is in Master Chia’s beautiful home in Thailand for this amazing series of conversations. https://www.mantakchia.com, https://www.universal-tao.com, https://www.sarinastone.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about using Medical QiGong to improve spinal health, the aging process and mental health. Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

On today’s podcast, Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the emotion Fear and how Medical QiGong identifies and neutralizes irrational Fear.  Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://www.mantakchia.com/ For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://sarinastone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com

Sarina interviews Medical QiGong educator and White Tiger QiGong School master instructor, Tevia Feng, about the history of Medical QiGong.  Don’t miss this fascinating friend of Master Mantak Chia’s. Tevia discussed Mao Zedong, Tao Yin, Falun Gong, Baduanjin, Demystifying QiGong in relation to Medical QiGong. Download Transcript Here For more information on the White Tiger QiGong School, please visit: https://www.whitetigerqigong.com/ For more information on Master Mantak Chia, please visit: https://MantakChia.com For advanced learning materials, books, videos, and more, please visit: https://SarinaStone.com For more information on The Healing Tao, please visit: https://www.universal-tao.com/

Mantak Chia is a Taoist Master. He is best known for his teaching Taoist practices under the names of Healing Tao, Tao Yoga, Universal Healing Tao System and Chi Kung. Throughout decades of teaching, he has run numerous workshops, written a series of books, and published a number of training videos. For this reason, some people call him an author, a teacher or a healer. He views himself primarily as a teacher, who helps his students empower themselves through cultivation of their chi.   CHAPTERS 00:00 Trailer. 02:00 Brian’s thoughts on the episode. 04:50 Brian’s introduction. 05:28 World-wide teaching. 07:14 Growing up in Thailand and starting to teach in New York. 10:09 What Chi is and why you need Qigong. 12:59 The abdominal area is where you can store energy. 14.56 How our second brain affects the brain in our head. 21:02 Scientists increasingly believe in the concept of energy. 22:09 Taking care of the five major organs. 23:38 When you’ve put the organ in the right place then there are the five elements. 25:31 Simple exercises for creating fluid and energy flow. 44:23 Using your inner smile to arrive at arousal. 59:53 Whole key around sexual energy is arousal. 1:04:37 To be a great lover you have to practice on your penis and ladies practice for gate one. 1:18:36 Learn how to work with the lady, through gates one to three. 1:25:51 Lady’s exercise for gate three. 1:31:46 Love and compassion has to go together with arousal and orgasm. 1:33:01 Length of time it takes to learn these techniques. 1:36:49 Mantak’s new book EMDR and the Universal Healing Tao. 1:37:33 Where Mantak discovered all these techniques. 1:38:14 You have to put the work in to feel the benefits. 1:40:23 A non-stop world-wide teaching lifestyle. 1:42:31 Success secrets. 1:43:22 How technological progress is affecting people. 1:45:27 Progressing from the popular practice of meditation. 1:48:24 What keeps Master Chia awake at night? 1:51:17 Phone call to the 20 year Mantak Chia. 1:52:44 Best advice Mantak ever received. 1:57:01 Advice to the 20 year old watching who wants to grow up doing great things. 1:58:13 Brian’s summing up.   NOTES Master Mantak Chia website http://mantakchia.com/ Master Mantak Chia on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Master-Mantak-Chia-68129403912/ Master Mantak Chia on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantak_Chia   BOOKS: The Multi Orgasm Man https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-orgasmic-Man-Sexual-Secrets-Should/dp/072253325X The Multi Orgasm Woman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Multi-Orgasmic-Woman-Sexual-Secrets-Should/dp/0061898074 Awakening Healing Light https://www.amazon.co.uk/Awaken-Healing-Light-Mantak-Chia/dp/0935621466 EMDR and the Universal Healing Tao https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/cka/EMDR-Universal-Healing-Tao-Psychology-Overcoming-Emotional/1620555514 Other books by Mantak Chia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mantak-Chia/e/B000APK3LG   TOPICS DISCUSSED Qi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi Tao or Dao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao Mesentery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesentery The second brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enteric_nervous_system Yin and Yang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang Parasympathetic nervous system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasympathetic_nervous_system Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing EMDR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing

Exclusive Interview with Taoist Master Mantak Chia Taoist Master, Mantak Chia, is an inspiring teacher, founder of The Healing Tao system, and author of over twenty books including such best-sellers as Healing Love, Taoist Secrets of Love, Iron Shirt Chi Kung, Inner Structure of tai Chi, Awaken healing Light, Multi-Orgasmic Man, Multi-Orgasmic Couple, Sexual reflexology, Taoist Ways to transform Stress into Vitality, Chi Nei Tsang: organs Energy Massage and COSMIC HEALING. A Google search under his name yields more than 82,000 results! During his visit to London, which focused on Chinese Astrology; Master Mantak Chia found time away from his busy schedule to share his wit and wisdom in this exclusive (if not first podcast interview) interview; to which I am very grateful. In this podcast Mantak Chia candidly discusses various aspects of his work, experiences, and insights into Taoist practices, also explaining how Chinese Astrological offer insight into the direct relationship between our body organs and the universe. secrets of longevity and immortality, how the abdomen has a brain, as well as the heart; visits to sacred sites among other topics were also discussed. This interview is about Mantak Chia the man, as well as the Taoist master.

This vlog is about my blah day. I chat a little about that before going into the importance of finding whatever it takes to snap you out of the doldrums. Happy or sad, life is worth living...I'd just rather live it happy.

Vipassana Meditation (http://www.events.dhamma.org/) was a big part of my training and i am so grateful for learning this piece of peace. another thing that i am grateful for is my friendship with www.mary-jo.com and the intelligent information that i glean from her every time i see her!!! as well i am working on my belly button framework and i think you are going to love the routine that i am going to give to you to try out in your own bed, every morning...endocrine engage!!! Micro cosmic orbit is the work of mr. mantak chia...http://www.universal-tao.com/ www.empowernetwork.com/moneca is my newest business venture, please have a look at the platform and call me if you are interested!!! thanks moneca.

Mantak Chia is an author, teacher and self-described healer. He is best known for his books and teachings on Taoism and qigong. Mantak Chia is a controversial figure in Taoism, alternately praised for public disclosure of long-held secrets and criticised for such a heavy focus on Taoist sexual practices. Mantak Chia claims to make esoteric Taoist practices more accessible to a modern Western audience. What is taught is a variety of qigong and neigong practices. Fusion of the Five Elements is a central neidan practice that are intended to balance qi or chi, a universal energy that all humans can access. The microcosmic orbit, or "waterwheel" exercise, is a central technique used to channel and circulate qi in many other exercises. The principal aim of most practices Chia advocates is the balancing of energy and the creation of spiritual alchemical "inner elixirs. In a world that is increasingly challenged by ecological, financial and intensifying social forces, the imperative is to function at our highest level of health and wellbeing, both in our inner world and our outer world. By being acutely aware of our energy levels, as well as being present in the now, certain Taost practices as taught by Mantak Chia, can assist us as we both navigate life and instigate positive change in our community and our daily life. “A perfect blend of Western and Eastern fitness to jump-start your day and help you relax at night.”-Deepak Chopra