Thursday, April 29, 2021

kegel exercises - can it lead to loss of internal energy (similar to how sexual activity and lustful thoughts do)?


I do kegel exercises everyday just for good general health, spending a few minutes to do a few sets.

Here's how I do mine.

I do it as part of my sleeping bag yoga sequence, so I'm lying down, totally relaxed.

I breathe naturally, relaxed.

In other words, I'm  not trying to coordinate breath and stretch it out to synchronize with the muscular contractions in any way.  If I'm inhaling or exhaling as I do the muscle contractions, I don't care, just focused on trying to be as relaxed as possible (passaddhi, pacification, kaya and citta body and mind). 

I'll at least 9 reps per set.

And I'll do at least two sets.

first set: I contract the muscles that would stop urination. I hold the contraction for a few seconds. The focus, like every other jhana and taiji or qigong practice as I do, is to be a relaxed as possible. The more relaxed you are, the smoother, more effortless the motion is, the more easy and smooth your breath is. 

second set: I contract that muscles that would stop defecation (excreting feces, taking a shit). Same process of relaxation as with stopping urination. 

I spend enough time on the exercise to feel like I'm improving, getting smoother, easier, or at the very least, just not getting worse (body getting tighter and more blocked up energetically).


Can this kegel exercise cause leaking of internal energy?

Not for me, and not the way I do it, with no breath coordination, totally smooth and relaxed. 

But someone with existing health problems, who knows? The body is resilient, but also fragile. Some energy channels getting blocked, and then with jhana charging up your battery to much higher power than you had before, weird things can happen. 

Some of the kegel exercises, and qigong in general that are IMO too finicky in trying to coordinate breath with movement, causes mental and physical tension, thus blocking jhana.

If you can maintain partial jhana (total passaddhi pacification of body and mind) while doing any qigong or kegel, or even western physical exercises like pushups and pullups and jogging, you'll pretty much be assured of minimizing internal energy expenditure or leakage.

Probably the biggest cause of internal energy loss is strong negative emotions like lust, anger, fear. Even if you don't masturbate, if you have lots of intense lustful thoughts, there will be internal energy loss, it will drain your jhana battery.

If you have no lustful thoughts, for example when I take a shower, I could rub my private parts as hard and as long as I want, there won't be any erection, no internal energy loss, no sexual fluids being generated because of the absence of lust.  

As a counter example, if you have strong enough lust, for example you're young, horny, not experienced at being celibate for long periods of time, say 3 months or 6 months, even a few seconds of exposure to very stimulating visual or even just thoughts of strong lustful intent can cause an ejaculation, without anything contacting your genitals at all. 



Saturday, April 10, 2021

vegan spaghetti and vegan 'parmesan' cashew powder, using coffee grinder

 



The main item I want to focus on is the vegan 'cheese'.

Rather than buy the nasty processed vegan cheeses that are typically sold in health food stores,

I prefer to make mine fresh. It's much faster, easier, healthier, and tastes better.


Top of picture is a black and decker coffee grinder, costs about 15$.

I bought it from amazon, I also bought a 4 year extended warranty for 4$.

These coffee blenders tend to break easily for no reason, so the warranty is worth it.


What I used above in the picture, is ground up organic raw cashew, unsalted. (costs about 10$/lb from costco).

Looks like parmesan cheese, has a similar consistency, and I use it in the way it's often used in the picture above, with spaghetti.

It doesn't taste like parmesan, but it has it's own distinct, delicious cashew nutty fatty satisfying flavor, goes great with spaghetti type dishes.

If you added some olive oil, salt, garlic, basil, it would probably taste like parmesan made pesto sauce.


The takeway from this article is the coffee grinder lets you make all kind of vegan 'cheeses' using various kinds of nuts.

I've also ground almonds, walnuts, black sesame seeds (toasted), to great effect.

You're probably going to get much more nutrient absorption by doing this, it's like getting machine assisted chewing breaking down roughage thousands of times more finely than you would ever have the time to do with your teeth. 

You can use it in your salad dressing, and I like to use this instead of nut butters.

And another thing is I like to do it fresh and eat it right away. Nut butters get rancid quickly, and they make you constipated.


Nut powders digest easily. 


coffee grinder cleaning tip:

coffee grinders can be serious pain to clean until you figure out a few tricks, since you can't just run it under the water in the sink.

I keep a toothbrush just for cleaning this device.

I brush up nut powder debris, takes about 1 minute.

With a damp slightly soapy dish sponge but with most of the water squeezed out so it doesn't damage the device, wipe down what I can. (about 20 seconds)

Then I rinse the soap out of the sponge, squeeze out as much water out of sponge as I can, then wipe down the device again trying to remove any soap residue.

Then I have a clean rag just for the device, and wipe up any dampness. (about a more minute for all of above),

Then I set it out in the sun for 5 minutes for the device and the rag to dry up, as I'm doing other kitchen cleanup.


It's a pain in the butt to clean at first, but once you get used to it, the 3 minutes or so it takes is well worth it to have the freshest vegan cheese possible.


Sometimes I'll make extra portion to last 1 or 2 more days, but generally I like to just make as much as I need for the day.