Chapter 4: Yoga and Sex: What is the 										Purpose of <i>Vajrolīmudrā?</i>

Mallinson, James

doi:10.14220/9783737008624.181

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Neidan, therefore, is not as similar to the haṭhayogic practice of vajrolīmudrā as is sometimes suggested. Vajrolīmudrā, a seal that prevents the loss of 43 vital bindu through discharge, remains resolutely sexual and physical-not metaphorical (Mallinson 2018). It is thus more in line with earlier, pre-neidan, Nourishing Life understandings of "returning the essence to supplement the brain.…”

Section: Some Broader Parallels and Connectionsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Yoga? Indian Postural Therapies in Mediaeval China

Steavu¹

2023

JoYS

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China has an unbroken history of therapeutic stretches, gymnastics, and callisthenic practices—collectively known as daoyin—that date back to the 2nd century BCE. Yet, despite a robust indigenous tradition, an iconic and influential set of eighteen daoyin postures was originally labelled an “Indian massage method” or “Brahmanic callisthenics” when it first surfaced in Daoist texts and medical treatises around the 6th or 7th century. Indeed, those eighteen postures bear a striking resemblance to bodily disciplines associated with traditional physical practices in India. In the first part of the chapter, we examine the earliest Chinese sources of the so-called “Indian massage methods,” namely, the Daoist scripture known as Daolin’s Treatise on Maintaining Life and the physician Sun Simiao’s (d. 682) Essential Emergency Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold [Pieces]. In the second part of the paper, we turn to the question of how these foreign practices were “naturalised” and renegotiated as native therapies. In a third section, we will consider the further peregrinations of “Brahmanic callisthenics” by following their traces in European accounts of Chinese self-cultivation techniques. We will seek to untangle the threads connecting Jesuit accounts and mediaeval Sino-Indian methods. We will also succinctly reflect on the reception of biospiritual disciplines in early-modern Europe and their re-circulation in India.

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Section: Some Broader Parallels and Connectionsmentioning

confidence: 64%

Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Yoga? Indian Postural Therapies in Mediaeval China

Steavu¹

2023

JoYS

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“…For instance, James Mallinson mentions in passing in his Yoga and Sex: What is the Purpose of Vajrolımudra? [53] his role as an initiated ascetic within a specific lineage of Nath Yogis, while Karl Baier's and Jason Birch's biographical synoptics at the end of Yoga in Transformation [54]explicitly state that the former, "[b]esides his university employment. .…”

Section: Scholar-practitioners and Reflexivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“Scholar–Practitioners”, Reflexivity and the Illusio of the Field: Ethnography, Yoga Studies and the Social Scientific Study of Religion

Di Placido

2023

Societies

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This article dialogues with “yoga studies” and the social scientific study of religion (e.g., the sociology of religion and religious studies), arguing that both substantially neglect a thorough discussion of scholars’ engagement in the field despite being largely composed by “scholar–practitioners”. This is problematic from a methodological point of view as well as from an ethical perspective. Moving in the interstices between biographical reflections, critical social theory and methodological notes on embodied ethnographic research, I self-reflexively discuss my “shifting positionality” from devoted yoga practitioner to critical scholar, mapping the most significant turning points that I encountered during my research on the pedagogies of modern forms of yoga (2017–current). In so doing, I also discuss my overall positioning, participation and ethical reflections in relation to the main object of inquiry of my research. From this, I posit that the positions of scholar and practitioner are, at least in some cases, incommensurable, while the scholar–practitioner may also foster a unique way of knowing based on reflexivity as a living engagement and on the linkages between theory and practice from which there is much to gain.

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“…This kind of exploration of the humanly possible has apparently only been executed by Bengal yogins in Tārāpīṭh applying the vajrolī mudrā (lightning seal) for seminal retention and absorption of female fuids during sexual intercourse. They use rubber or silver catheters to train their uro-genital musculature in order to develop urethral suction (Roşu 2002;Darmon 2002;Mallinson 2018). It remains unclear what emic perspective then explains what should happen with the fuids once they arrive in the urinary bladder.…”

Section: General Aspects Of the Sexual Scenariomentioning

confidence: 99%

The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China – underlying emic theories and basic methods of a non-reproductive sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners

Pfister¹

2022

Routledge Handbook of Chinese Medicine

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The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China are treated heuristically to form a sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners that is discussed in (1) textual sources dating from approximately 200 BCE to 1000 CE. These texts were transmitted and reformulated throughout this period as part of the wider sexual knowledge culture of imperial China (Wells and Yao Ping 2015; Yao Ping 2018). Minimal referential series of short extracts taken from such primary sources will be presented in a historical order to illustrate some fairly consistent basic ideas, concepts, theories and practical advice documented therein.This concise review discusses (2) general aspects of the sexual scenario of early and medieval China in which gender-specifc roles during the sexual encounter must be emphasised. As 'essence' is considered to be the most precious generative fuid in the human body, men are advised to (3) deal with male essence as a scarce good, and thus learn to avoid emission and ejaculation during a sexual encounter. In stark contrast to this male preoccupation with containment, women are thought to be a superior source of nourishment. (4) Repeated female ejaculation provides the 'female essence' that can be absorbed by the man. (5) Performing a sexual encounter means mutual stimulation to this end during foreplay and onset phase, followed by a series of penetrative 'advances' with 'intermissions', and culminating in a 'grand fnale'. Textual sources to a sexual knowledge culture, 200 BCE to 1000 CETangible textual evidence for sexual body techniques comes early in China -about fve hundred years before the Indian Kāmasūtra, which is considered to date from circa 300 CE

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Chapter 4: Yoga and Sex: What is the Purpose of Vajrolīmudrā?

Cited by 14 publications

References 12 publications

Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Yoga? Indian Postural Therapies in Mediaeval China

Is There Such a Thing as Chinese Yoga? Indian Postural Therapies in Mediaeval China

“Scholar–Practitioners”, Reflexivity and the Illusio of the Field: Ethnography, Yoga Studies and the Social Scientific Study of Religion

The sexual body techniques of early and medieval China – underlying emic theories and basic methods of a non-reproductive sexual scenario for non-same-sex partners

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