Mantak Chia has provided basic, well-founded ancient techniques and his presentation has always been clear and concise (to me). How the methodology can be construed to the degree that it can be conceived of in terms as a thing to be stolen is laughable. It always amazes me when shallow-minded, greedy, lazy and impatient people seem to coalesce ,intending harm on others who have worked to make the real (knowledge) safely available to the ignorant.
Such effective practices are nothing new. They are ANCIENT. Mantak's material aimed at femme practitioners is also very carefully laid out. For example, the microcosmic orbit practices are not the same for both sexes. Some of the Japanese Samurai-order influenced zen -style meditative practices paralleling the more ancient Chinese sources never made the distinction (regarding necessary adaptions to technique based on very real differences in physiology) for centuries, and many intrepid women have not been able to excel as a result due to a basic ignorance on everyone's part in the chain of transmission— even today. Accurate information is never to be discounted.
I can never understand how people's expressions of negativity toward Mantak's person or his teaching continues to circulate.
Even though a person's lifetime cannot be guaranteed in any way, shape or form, there are countless ways that people can harm themselves by acting. There are countless examples of malpractice by everyday ordinary people in the immense taoist canon in the fields of inner and outer alchemy— not to mention medicine. There are no guarantees when practicing such techniques in a dubious manner.
As for the seminal retention techniques, ALL are rubbish at best. It has been years since I have used the Chinese vernacular, so please correct my use of terminology (should I use it). In order to utilize sexual potential deliberately in the course of arousal for erotic or therapeutic objectives, vitality must be refined into energy. Energy is then refined into spirit. THERE IS NO RETENTION, manually or otherwise. Doing so is a filthy, harmful activity, undeserving of the word technique. I cannot imagine people who might have access to powers of concentration in effectively carrying out proscribed sexual-potential (energy-transformation) refinement in the course of dual-cultivation, much less working at the higher levels of potential in the course of completing the various practice cycles. Even highly skilled practitioners (solo or dual cultivation) would never dream of "putting the horse away wet."
At the highest levels (that I have experienced), womb-breathing spontaneously comes into play, and further utterly subtle "control "and spontaneous intent is accorded on the spot. Such is not to be found in any manual of any age or description. The only reason I mention it is because approaching the manipulation of plasmic energy and refining the various levels into higher (purer) potential is, after all, still working within the Creative.
Opening the microcosmic orbit and learning the basic subtleties in order to be able to widen one's scope of application by approaching study, experimentation and practice of the various related techniques is a matter of high discipline, neither difficult nor easy. What is easy is creating harm where there was none. The Basic Deer Exercise and the "advanced" Deer Exercise in Chang's book is recommended (by me) because it is an effective variation independent of the microcosmic orbit practices and their permutations, with different results and applications due to variances in the actual movement of energy in the passes, channels, glands, organs, chakras and extended parameters beyond the physical body. Even though these ancient practices are practically written in stone, the results experienced by any individual are unique due to multifarious influences and one's spiritual development over and according to the time.
There is so much one can explore and benefit by such discipline, simply by the practicalities of general single-minded concentration, using plasmic energy as one might use a barbell, I suppose. I do not understand how one might even have to time to gossip about this or that published, established teacher operating to the benefit of self and other in the spirit of service that keeps such knowledge alive.
As mentioned above, working with the Creative results in effects limited to the sphere of the Creative (not to mention that if you don't practice such, you will gradually lose those perceived benefits over time). In order to effect results by virtue of nonorigination (immortality), one must work directly with Essence without intermediary. The means of working with the essence of potential is not within the parameters of energy-work, inner or outer.— it is a matter of seeing alone. Such seeing is not by any organ or external stimulus. Nonorigination has no inside or outside, it is knowledge that is not relative to the person, but neither is it someone else. Such seeing is within the parameters of seeing itself.
In terms of authentic practice of immortalism, the world becomes the sage. And that, is the sphere that Jesus fulfilled; neither good nor bad, the scope of that kind of operational intention is ultimately known to be world-honored, no different than other currently and equally temporary world-honored prior illuminates this planet has known and forgotten through the ages. Should the world become oneself, this is spiritually (selflessly) accountable in terms of reality. By virtue of the Creative's selfless, spiritual, immaterial essence, such accounting is as natural as ascending into heaven in broad daylight— Jesus not being the only one purported to have done so. Ultimately though, no one has to know; we are inconceivable beings beyond any social or elemental sphere of validation.
