Mantak Chia

How did you get the rage out though?

Well, life is funny, right? And because I'd said yes to my mystic path, and I'd studied with a teacher called Mantak Chia, who was an incredible Taoist master, still alive, and written loads of books.

And I was studying with him.

I was one of his early students.

And this one guy came to find me.

He was another roaming shaman and he was in his 40s and he took me under his wing.

He heard that there was a Mantak Chia student living in the Highlands at this place and I've been doing my practice and he came and found me.

And he helped me.

Interesting question, and yes.

Um, the darkroom I was on wasn't being shut in a room, which is one of the things I loved about, uh, the, the darkroom and Mantak Chia's place in North Thailand because he purpose-built a meditation hall in all the rooms around.

So when you move in, so to speak, you're in the light, you find your way around your room and you also map how many steps it is to get to-- into the meditation hall and to your mat.

So every now and then the gong goes and maybe there's a lecture, maybe there's sacred music playing.

And just healing energy.

And as Mantak Chia, one of the living grandmasters of Qigong, says, I love what he says about all this.

He says, don't just visualize, actualize.

So in this practice, because we're used to visualizing externally or fantasizing or dreaming or whatever, but this is literally doing the self-healing work of visualizing the knotted energy loosened.

Each movement corresponds to one of the eight forces of the I Ching, water, fire, thunder, rain, earth, mountain, wind, and sky, which are also the sacred sequence of the Taoist fusion of the five elements meditation.

As you've described the impetus, quote, the fusion of the five elements, a Taoist meditation originally taught by Hikong Master Mantak Chia, is what prompted me to write Listen to the Rain.

In this practice, the cyclical equilibrium between our organs, our senses, colors, emotions, elements of nature, seasons, and planetary movement, all are expressed through the eight forces or eight trigrams, which are variations of yin and yang combination, a powerful paradox of polarity transcending itself as its dynamic agents constantly change, end quote.

This, of course, is a collaboration with the string quartet, The Rhythm Method, and you've spoken about how deeply that relationship shaped the work.

But humans have been fascinated with making sex more pleasurable throughout different cultures.

So I have borrowed sex techniques from Tantra to Tao sex technique that I just went to one in Thailand to get the training from Mantak Chia to the BDSM community, which teach a lot of different techniques about play.

And to emphasize the BDSM community, it's all about focus, right? Because you have to pay attention to your experience.

So a lot of techniques like listen to my voice.

So it's considered to be normal, you know, that couples who've been together a long time are gonna have sex, you know, once a week or once a month or something, you know.

But one of the things that Taoism brings, and particularly that Mantak Chia brings, and it's the primary focus of my work, anyway, the way that I choose to work, is a complete reinvention, a complete reboot on what sexuality is, okay? So sex has the potential, if we learn to go about it in a different way, and this requires learning new skills, to take what we've talked about so far.

We talked about appreciation, leaning in with curiosity, taking responsibility, you know, commitment.

You can take those qualities and you can shift them from like functional relationship to ecstatic devotion when you add sex, right? So sex...

These tools have been proven over thousands of years to be undeniably effective in changing the health of the organs.

And in the last 30 or 40 years, under Mantak Chia's guidance, he's a Taoist teacher, they've been proven to be indisputably effective for changing your emotional state, right? Feeling less sad, feeling less angry.

What has not been done yet, which I've kind of stepped into the vacuum because it hasn't been done yet, so I wrote this book, is to apply these tools relationally, right? So you can actually use these tools, instead of using them alone, you can use them with your partner.

So can I briefly explain what that would look like? Yeah, that's

I'm just talking about one area of life, which is quite significant.

Well, and if you look at like sort of the work of Mantak Chia and the Taoist traditions and this idea that the sexual energy is actually, it travels along a microcosmic orbit along the body and it moves up the chakras.

And this also, you know, works in conjunction with the Kundalini, you know, bringing energy up the spine.

We touched on a

Right.

Or, you know, so, so learning to learning to at least channel that energy.

And even when you're, even when you're having sex with a woman or making love to a woman, there is, again, this Mantak Chia talks about that is that it's like a, you don't ejaculate you just you you cycle the energy and it's a different type of orgasm that sort of happens right happens in the mind so it's like retaining this chi um which can be very powerful if you if you learn how to cycle it through

through breath work

It's an awesome question.

And most certainly, even my Qigong Grandmaster, Mantak Chia, has said this, and I'm going to paraphrase it.

You have all the chakras.

You have all the meridians.

Yeah, breath.

Or you could even, like, breathe this, um, Mantak Chia is an amazing...

She wrote the book The Multi-Orgasmic Woman, which I highly recommend.

She's fantastic.