Tantra Meditation

Breathwork & Energy Practice

Your Personal Practice Guide About This Guide Before you can expand pleasure, energy, or presence — you need a body that feels safe to inhabit….

Your Personal Practice Guide

About This Guide

Before you can expand pleasure, energy, or presence — you need a body that feels safe to inhabit. These four practices are your foundation. They are simple, gentle, and enormously powerful when done consistently.

In the Taoist tradition, sexual and life-force energy (called chi) flows through the body along natural pathways. Most of us have never been taught to work with this energy consciously — so it either gets stuck, leaks out, or drives us in ways we don’t understand. These practices change that. Step by step, you’ll learn to breathe more fully, quiet your mind, and gently begin to move energy through your body with awareness and ease.

How to use this guide: Each practice builds on the one before it. Work with each one until it begins to feel familiar before layering in the next. Every practice includes a Minimum time — enough to receive real benefit on a busy day — and an Extended time for when you have more space to go deeper. There is no wrong way to begin. Only the next breath.

Practice One — Belly Breathing

Minimum: 5 minutes  |  Extended: 10–15 minutes

Most of us breathe from our chest — short, shallow breaths that keep the nervous system in a mild state of tension. Belly breathing is the breath you were born knowing how to do. Watch a sleeping baby and you’ll see it: the whole belly rises and falls like a soft wave. This is your body’s natural, deeply calming rhythm — and reclaiming it is the first and most important step in this practice.

As you breathe more deeply, your heart rate slows, your body relaxes, and energy begins to circulate more freely. This same breath will later become your most reliable tool for staying present, slowing arousal, and expanding sensation.

The Practice

  1. Find a comfortable seat with your back upright and your feet flat on the floor, roughly shoulder-width apart.
  2. Rest both hands over your navel. Close your eyes and take a moment to simply notice your natural breath.
  3. Inhale slowly through your nose. Let your lower belly soften and expand outward — feel your hands rise gently. Your chest stays relatively still.
  4. Exhale through your nose (or mouth if that feels easier). Gently draw your navel back toward your spine, as if giving your belly a soft, inward hug.
  5. Continue for 18 to 36 slow, complete breath cycles for the Minimum practice. For the Extended practice, continue for as long as feels nourishing — 10 to 15 minutes of steady, rhythmic belly breathing is deeply settling.

Helpful Hint: If belly breathing feels unfamiliar, try belly laughing instead — the big, genuine kind that shakes your whole stomach. This naturally relaxes the diaphragm and helps you find that deep, expansive breath.

Practice Two — Century Count Meditation

Minimum: 5 minutes (count to 50)  |  Extended: 10–15 minutes (full 100)

Sexual energy is intimately connected with mental focus. The Taoists taught that where the mind goes, the energy follows. A scattered mind means scattered energy. A focused mind can guide sensation, pleasure, and energy anywhere in the body.

The Century Count is one of the oldest tools for building this quiet, steady attention. It sounds simple — count one hundred breaths without your mind wandering. Each time you notice you’ve drifted and gently return, you are strengthening something profound. On a shorter day, counting to fifty is still genuinely valuable practice.

The Practice

  1. Begin with a few rounds of belly breathing from Practice One to settle into your body.
  2. Close your eyes. Begin counting your breaths — a full inhale and exhale together counts as one breath.
  3. Count silently to yourself, thinking of nothing but the breath. One… two… three…
  4. When your mind wanders — to a thought, a plan, a feeling — gently smile, release it, and return to one. The noticing is the practice.
  5. Minimum: count to 50, with full attention. Extended: work toward 100 uninterrupted breaths. Most beginners find even 10 genuinely challenging — that’s exactly right.

Helpful Hint: You can practise this anywhere — in a sauna, on a lunch break, or sitting quietly before your day begins. The goal is not to reach 100 perfectly. The goal is the returning, again and again, with patience.

Practice Three — Microcosmic Orbit Visualisation

Minimum: 5–7 minutes (9 rounds)  |  Extended: 15–20 minutes (18+ rounds)

In Chinese medicine, the body’s life-force energy (chi) travels along specific pathways called meridians — the same channels used in acupuncture. The most important of these is the Microcosmic Orbit: a complete loop of energy that flows up the spine and down the front of the body.

The Back Channel rises from the perineum, up through the spine and neck, over the crown of the head, ending just above the upper lip. The Front Channel begins at the tip of the tongue and flows down through the throat, chest, navel, and back to the perineum. Resting your tongue gently on the roof of your mouth closes the circuit, allowing the energy to flow continuously.

In this practice you are not forcing anything. You are simply learning to sense this circuit with awareness. Energy follows attention — the practice is already working, even before you can feel it clearly.

The Practice

  1. Begin with belly breathing. Take a full minute to arrive — feel your seat, your spine, your breath.
  2. Rest your tongue lightly on the roof of your mouth, just behind your upper front teeth where the palate curves gently down. This closes the energetic circuit.
  3. Bring your attention to your perineum — the soft area at the base of your pelvis. Simply notice it, with gentle curiosity.
  4. On your next inhale, imagine a warm golden light rising slowly from your perineum, up the back of your spine, and continuing all the way to the crown of your head.
  5. On your exhale, guide that light gently down the front of your body — throat, chest, navel — returning to the perineum.
  6. Minimum: complete 9 slow, full rounds. Extended: continue for 18 rounds or more, allowing the orbit to become increasingly effortless and alive.

What You Might Feel: Warmth, gentle tingling, a soft pulsing, or simply a quiet sense of aliveness — all are signs the energy is moving. Some people feel it strongly right away; for others it builds slowly over weeks. Both experiences are completely valid. The Taoists say: where your mind goes, your chi follows.

Practice Four — The Cool Draw

Minimum: 5–7 minutes  |  Extended: 15–20 minutes

The Cool Draw — also called testicle breathing in the Taoist tradition — is the first active energy cultivation technique. Everything practised so far has been preparation: the breath, the focused mind, the awareness of the Orbit. Now you begin to consciously move your sexual energy.

The testicles are the body’s primary generators of sexual energy. Rather than letting this energy pool and build pressure in the genitals, the Cool Draw teaches you to gently draw that energy upward through the spine, into the brain, and down through the front channel to be stored at the navel — your body’s natural energy reservoir.

With regular practice you will begin to notice a real shift: less sense of pressure or urgency, more steady aliveness and creative energy throughout the day. This is the beginning of working with your sexual energy rather than being driven by it.

The Practice

  1. Begin seated. Take several rounds of belly breathing to arrive fully in your body.
  2. Gently cup or rest a hand over your testicles to warm and awaken them. Or simply bring your attention there — or hold a mild, easy sexual thought. You are gently waking the energy, not arousing yourself.
  3. Inhale slowly, and as you inhale, gently draw up the muscles of your testicles, perineum, and anus — as if very gently lifting them inward.
  4. Imagine sipping the warm energy upward from your testicles, through your perineum, past your tailbone, and slowly up along the length of your spine — like drawing liquid up through a straw.
  5. Exhale and release all the muscles fully, while keeping your inner attention on the rising energy.
  6. Repeat this rhythm — inhale and lift, exhale and release — several times until you feel warmth or tingling travelling up your spine.
  7. Once the energy reaches the crown of your head, touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth and guide the energy down the front of your body — throat, chest, navel — completing the Microcosmic Orbit.
  8. Rest your attention at the navel for several breaths. Imagine the energy settling there like warm, golden light, stored and available to you.
  9. Minimum: 5–7 minutes — even a few complete cycles creates a noticeable effect. Extended: 15–20 minutes allows the energy to fully circulate and settle.

If You Don’t Feel the Energy Moving Yet: That is completely okay — and very common. Keep practising. The pathways open gradually with consistent, gentle attention. Try gently rocking your pelvis as you breathe, letting the spine move like a soft wave. This loosens the channels and invites the energy to flow.

These practices are a gift you give yourself — not a task to perfect. Come to them with curiosity, gentleness, and patience. The body responds to kindness. Trust the process, stay consistent, and bring what arises to your sessions. You are doing beautifully.

Olivia Jade · oliviajade.as.me

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