← Rena Malik, MD Podcast
Rena Malik, MD Podcast
Moment: Soft Penis Penetration? The Taoist Sex Secret No One Talks About
00:17:49
In this episode, Dr. Rena Malik, MD and Dr. Seema Anand discuss the origins and modern misconceptions of semen retention and sexual energy in tantric traditions. They share insights on channeling passion, the benefits of mindful intimacy, and offer practical tips for deepening connection and pleasure in relationships.
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- [00:00]
Dr. Seema Anand
Una silla de masajes puede pares er extravagante Ocho configuraciones differentes intensidada justable. Como los hacientos de lanteros con masaje disponibles solo parece extravagante.
- [00:31]
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- [00:58]
Reena Malik, M.D.
A lot of people will sort of refer to semen retention as coming from Taoist literature. And I think, you know, we've talked about it before on my podcast. But essentially how it's evolved into this modern day thing, which is not the intention of what it was in the ancient literature. So maybe you could touch a little bit on that.
- [01:17]
Dr. Seema Anand
Okay, so it really comes down to, you know, when you go back into Taoist practice, into Tantric practice and so on. And also in ancient Hindu practice, they believe that your sexual energy is the most powerful energy of all. Now what that meant is that when you have sex, when you're aroused, every single part of your body goes into activity. There is metabolism happening through your entire body. Every organ organism secreting its own hormones, every hormone is doing it its bit. Every like your. Your breathing changes, your heartbeat changes, your blood flow changes. Everything has come into play over here. And the kind of energy that that denotes is more than you could get from anything else. Even if you were running a marathon, you don't get every single part of you to activate in this way. So the idea was that your sexual energy is the highest form of energy. But number one is how do you raise it? Easy enough. But what they believed in tantra, in Taoist practice, is that it's not enough to just raise an energy. You have to then have the knowledge on how to channel it, because energy that is not in control is. Is destructive. If you can't do anything with this energy, then it's no point actually raising it. You were supposed to raise this energy inside you and then not just expend it, but understand how to channel that energy inside you to power different parts of you. That's where it comes from. Now, of course, people will listen to half a sentence, come up with their own idea of what it's supposed to mean, and they've decided that it's all about semen retention. And semen retention means that you don't masturbate and so on. And it actually doesn't have anything to do with that. This is about a huge amount of discipline and understanding and self control. But, you know, like, for instance, we have these amazing temples in India. There's the Konark temple in Orissa on the eastern side, which has the outside. The temple is covered in erotic sculpture. There is, in the center of India, there is the Kajuraho temples. Again, lots and lot of. Lots of erotic sculptures on the outside. And people always say, oh, they're on the outside because you're supposed to experience all this materialism and all your bodily desires outside and leave it behind and then go into the temple. And that's not it. This was supposed to raise your energies. This was supposed to raise your passion. Because you cannot approach God from a clinical, dead, passionless perspective. In order to reach God, in order to aspire to the divine, you need so much passion inside you. So this was about raising that passion and understanding how to then use it to channel the different parts of you that you want to wake up. So that's where it comes from. Where it's gotten to now, as you know, is just, well, everybody's decided that they. They know what it's about. They can interpret it, and everybody's reaching moksha through proxy. You know, they listen to somebody else talk about it and they're like, yeah, I know that too. I don't need to experience it. I know what I'm talking about now.
- [05:05]
Reena Malik, M.D.
Right? It's a spiritual thing. It's a way to be one with God. It's not necessarily to become this manly vision of masculinity and power.
- [05:17]
Dr. Seema Anand
A lot of men on social media will now say, I stopped masturbating and I've become so successful and I'm going to do better. That wasn't it at all. It was about getting to a higher consciousness, about being able to energize your mind so much to be able to shed that stagnation that pushes you down. Because the opposite of pleasure is not displeasure. The opposite of pleasure in ancient India was stagnation. It was numbness. It was death. Because pleasure was seen as a shakti. It's an energy. Yes. It was about awakening and energizing the mind so that you could become so much more aware of everything around you. We, like I said, unfortunately, we have headlines today that we learn from so we. Nobody reads. Everybody reads a headline and they know everything, right?
- [06:11]
Reena Malik, M.D.
You're Right. I mean, you've described how much effort it took for you to really understand the Kama Sutra and to take those prescriptive lessons and, you know, analyze them. I mean, that's years and years and years of work. And you can't get that from simple sentence, you know, a simple headline or even a quick podcast or anything like that. Do they talk about in these. In these cultures, how do they discuss orgasming without ejaculation?
- [06:39]
Dr. Seema Anand
So the Kab Sutra does not talk about that, but there are lots of other texts that talk about the orgasm without ejaculation. And again, the approach it slightly differently. So, for instance, in the tantric text, they will talk about the circulation of energy, or they will talk about how there is a certain awakeness or aliveness that comes to you. It's also interesting because in a lot of the tantric practices, you have what they call the sex or yogic positions. So some of it, there's sexual positions that are performed together in the form of yoga in order to raise that energy. And the idea of this was that it's. It's a circuit that has to be completed. So the sex or yogic positions for tantric practice, for instance, are extremely slow. They're very, very mindful. So it's not about, you know, and just keep going. I'm going for nine hours, I'm going for nine days. It's nothing like that. They even have positions where they will say that each partner will mirror the other person's movements. So if one partner has one hand up, the other partner will put their hand up. So you literally mirror each other's movements in order to create complete balance. Because if there's even slight imbalance, it becomes dynamic. And the idea is to create complete balance where there is absolutely nothing that upsets the balance, that you can actually start from here. So it's a meditative pose, really, but the idea is that the connection of the yin and yang, the connection of the penis and the vagina, the yoni and the lingam, is supposed to. That's one part of the circuit, and then the other is your mouth, you know, where you come together again. And more importantly than the mouth actually is the eyes. The real connect was supposed to be made with both people looking into each other's eyes. So with a lot of these positions, that's how they're actually performed. And it's done extremely slowly. So, you know, you count your breath as you do this, then you sort of come apart, then the next rest, then there's the counting of the breath. And it's generally in multiples of nine that you would do this, the in and out. So, yeah, it's. It's quite a. There's a. There's quite a lot of discipline and learning that actually goes into this.
- [09:21]
Reena Malik, M.D.
So fascinating. I mean, I think it's. It's amazing. It's beautiful. And. And there's so much to be learned from it. And I think that if people took the time to learn these things the way they were intended, we'd be a much happier and more pleasurable society and.
- [09:36]
Dr. Seema Anand
I think just a less angry society. Right?
- [09:39]
Reena Malik, M.D.
Absolutely. Think if you were. Had all that sexual energy in a positive way, it would be great.
- [09:45]
Dr. Seema Anand
It would. There was this guy called Wilhelm Reich and he died sometime in the 50s in America. So he. He, I think was Austrian by birth, if I'm not mistaken. And he has a really funny life because he kind of starts off in Austria and he's like, I'm going to be a Marxist. And he goes along to the Marxist Marxists and he says to them, I think your philosophy is great. I really like what you're saying. The thing is, I don't think that you guys are having enough sex. I really think you need more pleasurable sex. So they throw him out and then he goes to Germany and he joins the Nazis and he's like, I love your philosophy. I think you guys are great. The only problem is you're not having enough sex. And I think if you had more sex, you'd be in a much better place. And so they throw him out anyway. He then ends up in America and he started this idea of the pods where he. Because he said that the negative energy that's hanging over the earth and the break in the atmosphere that's coming is because there aren't enough orgasms going out into the atmosphere. So did you ever see this Woody Allen film, I can't remember the name of the film, but he creates these orgasmotrons. So they're these pods in which you sit and you have the orgasm and then it's filtered out into the atmosphere. So he takes that from Wilhelm Reich. So he created these pods where people would come and then they would orgasm. And then there was a little funnel and that energy was supposed to go up through that and so on. And a lot of very famous people who had bought these pods and they were his followers. And then he got into trouble with the US authorities because he said that enough orgasms can cure cancer and so on. And they were like, this means that people Won't buy our medication. So put him into prison now. And he died really young in prison. So. Yeah. Wow, that's.
- [11:38]
Reena Malik, M.D.
That's so interesting. The last thing I wanted to touch on is you've talked about using a soft penis so pre. Before it gets firm to penetrate. And I. And that comes from Taoist literature, so why would people do that? What's the benefit of that?
- [11:53]
Dr. Seema Anand
One is that it makes things different. So it's really important to always try something different. But also it takes away the pressure of thinking that, oh, my God, I'm not getting hard enough to penetrate. And it also helps to build up foreplay in a way that you're almost forced to do it. So if you penetrate soft and then you go through all of the motions to. To arouse each other in order for you to get hard enough and to be able to finish hard, you actually go through all of the arousal, the foreplay that you might otherwise have had. Because for a lot of people, they get hard. A lot of penis owners, they get hard, and then they feel that if they wait, they might lose the erection, and if they lose the erection, then it won't come back, and then they won't be able to do it. So a lot of them will actually cut short the foreplay because they're nervous of, you know, feeling that they won't be able to make it. I also think it's a great thing for a lot of people who have erectile dysfunction in some way, because this just takes the pressure off them to know that they have to be hard. So by the end of it, even if it is not a hard penis that's doing the. Whatever it's doing, you're still having a great deal of the pleasure that would have come from penetration and going through all the motions in a way that satisfy both of you. Because if he needs that penetration to feel happier, if she needs that foreplay to feel happier, you're both getting that. The only problem, of course, is that you can't use a condom for this. We have been advising people to try using a female condom for this, because that you can, of course, put beforehand. It's just that I know female condoms are so fiddly. I find it really hard to use. So I can totally understand why people wouldn't want to, and they're not terribly comfortable. But then again, when male condoms first started out, they were not all that wonderful, and they've gotten better over time. So I just think that if we use them more, hopefully better ones will come.
- [14:08]
Reena Malik, M.D.
Yeah, that's a great point. I want to leave our audience with your. I think your top tip, like what is the best thing they can do to have a better sex life?
- [14:17]
Dr. Seema Anand
So the best thing that they should not do is fighting or shouting or demanding is not going to work. So don't go down that path. I think I started by saying this. I'm going to actually finish by elaborating on it a little bit. We call these no pressure days where you literally decide that you're taking sex off the table. Penetration is off the table. Because for you to have a good sex life, you need to have that closeness, that bond, that desire to be with each other. That desire to be with each other can only come from, you know, that connection, that feeling of enjoying the feel of each other's bodies, enjoying the, the feel of each other's skin next to yours. I know a lot of people who would love to have that cuddle but are nervous to initiate that because the moment they get to that point, the partner is like, okay, now let's do this. And they don't want to, they don't want to have sex, they don't want to have penetrative sex. And so they then just don't initiate it. And that's what's causing the rift to get bigger and bigger, wider and wider into everybody's life. You should have scheduled at least 3 to 4 non pressure days. No pressure days. If not in a week, at least in two weeks. Absolutely. Days which are just for skin to skin, cuddling, as much, kissing as you want, playing with each other, having foot play, whatever you want to do, but without the pressure of knowing that this has to end in penetration. Because that is what's going to build up that desire to be with each other. And that then will lead to the desire to have sex.
- [16:04]
Reena Malik, M.D.
I love that. And I think, you know, the hard part is men, often they only know intimacy in one way. Sex, right? They are not taught that cuddling or intimacy is, is from touching or from not having sex, right? And I think that that's their expression of sex. So I think if you can rebrand it in a way like this is still all going to lead to better sex. At the end of the day, if you want sex like do this one because you're going to be really excited about sex. Like we were when we were younger and dating, right? You had all this time where you couldn't have sex. You have a bedroom where you could hide away from people or you know what I mean, like you, a car or some other place to have sex. And so, you know, I think there was so much desire. Yeah, of course, hormones were higher, but at the end of the day, there was also this desire that's been cultivated over multiple dates, which we're missing as.
- [16:54]
Dr. Seema Anand
Far as I'm concerned. It's one of the. It's probably the one that will work the most. It'll probably the one that'll take the most amount of time, and hence it is probably the one that people won't follow. But I can tell you that it has a higher success rate than anything else you might want to try.
- [17:11]
Reena Malik, M.D.
If you enjoyed that clip with Dr. Seema Anand on the Reena Malik, M.D. podcast, make sure you check out the full video right here.