Semen Retention — How to Swiftly Recover after a Depressive Relapse
How to conquer your mind after a relapse
A semen retention practitioner and NoFap junkie’s worst nightmare is to fall prey to the seduction of a sexy female and let her drain you of your semen.
Weeks, months, if not years, of focused hard work on retaining your precious seed, is lost. Along with the loss of energy, intimacy, your emotional state (disappointment, shame, and guilty), and your woman losing trust in you because you cannot control yourself.
Thankfully, there are solutions for when you do relapse so you can bounce back quickly and in a way that is best for long-term success.
4 aspects of your personality will need to refocus to get you back on track.
#1. Physical
The next day after breaking my semen retention streak I would always wake up the next day with an erection. The sexual energy is still in the groin area.
It’s dangerous not to act as if left unattended to will no doubt lead to repeated relapses in the coming days.
When you don’t do anything, except worry and feel anxious, because you are feeling sexually charged, sexual desires will take hold of you. Your decision-making ability will be greatly diminished. Which may have you to continue to physically act on these sexual desires.
The next morning, after a relapse, various urges will surface:
- To watch perfectly stimulating porn clips.
- Text a random girl to engage her in sex talk and harvest naked pics of her.
- Organize for a sexy friend with benefits to come over.
What to do:
The standard things you would normally get told are to prevent any type of physical stimulation.
1. Don’t touch your penis.
2. Don’t lie on your stomach or lie too far on your side so that your body puts pressure on your penis.
3. Get immediately out of bed and do physical exercise outside the house.
While these will no doubt help, they will not move the sexual energy that is in and around your groin. Read on…
#2. Intellectual
The personal narrative immediately starts after you ejaculate.
You say to yourself,
“ok, I will start again tomorrow with getting back into my semen retention practice. I am feeling low on energy now that I have ejaculated. I know I shouldn’t have done it. There is no point in ejaculating. I know I always feel worse after it and get little benefit from it. So I will restart tomorrow.”
You know the self-talk.
On the surface level, you are a staunch believer in what you are telling yourself. But really, you know this self-talk has happened before and it never has an impact the next time you are horny and want to ejaculate.
Men are prone to use certain defensive mechanisms to manage their negative emotions. What is being applied here is rationalization.
You reason through, intellectually, why you will not do it again and how you will start again tomorrow.
The problem is that when you ejaculate again tomorrow because you wake up horny. Highly lightly, you masturbate again, and this is viewed at the subconscious level as another failure. This increases your self-doubt and erodes your confidence.
And not just in your sex life, but it bleeds out into other areas of your life.
There are more empowering ways to use the power of your intellect.
Use your intellect as a means of empowerment.
Engage your intellect for getting your whys in order, refocusing, and maintaining a (solid) commitment.
What to do:
1. Know why you are doing semen retention, including being clear on all the benefits. Write out your list or mentally note them now.
2. Know why negative effects of masturbating to internet pornography.
3. Commit to starting on a specific date. And do it (even if it is in 2 days, keep telling yourself you will start on this day.
4. When a sexualized thought comes up, drop the thought immediately and refocus on non-sexual thought (life purpose) or become aware of your breath.
5. Know your triggers. What ignites your sexual energy? Then avoid the triggers.
These actions will strengthen and sharpen your intellect. You can now wield your intellect like a light sabre to cut through negative self-talk.
#3 Emotional
This is the tricky part. The emotional charge that drives your thoughts then launches into masturbating or having ejaculatory sex.
Self-compassion is the way to view a relapse. It’s about mindset.
Do things that will make you feel good and will empower you emotionally. The focus is on your well-being.
Beating yourself up or setting yourself up to fail isn’t helpful.
Self-compassion isn’t about further sense indulgence. Masturbating more to porn will not help you feel better. More of this will lead to feelings of guilt and a continued loss of energy.
Which will make the situation worse.
Look to refocus on how far you have come into your non-ejaculation practice. Mentally congratulate yourself. Become your cheerleader.
Your body will have lost nutrients from ejaculating. Healthy food will help get you re-energized. Don’t force yourself to eat healthy food you don’t like to eat. Greasy junk food will make you feel lethargic and bloated.
Self-judgment leads to self-criticism. This generates feelings of guilt and shame. To escape feeling bad, you look for those little highs that masturbation provides. This is the ejaculation vicious cycle.
When your energy is low and you feel bad, you are more likely to whip out your mobile porn device (cell phone.)
Instead, do the things that make you feel emotionally nourished.
What to do:
- Stop self-judgment. It’s a decision on where you keep your focus from moment to moment.
- Take long hot showers. There is something very soothing about allowing the hot water to kiss your skin for a long time. It’s relaxing.
- If you wake up tired on the weekend, sleep for another hour until you’re fully rested.
- Eat healthy food. Choose the healthy food that you like to eat. Keep it organic and plant-based, if possible.
- Be in nature. Go to a nearby park and go for a walk.
- Dance and sing. Close the blinds and put on some loud dance music.
- Get 8 hours of sleep each night. Go to bed early and get up early.
- Catch up with some friends.
Self-compassion can be a hard one for us men, doing the opposite and softening into what feels good will decrease the sexual fire.
#4. Spiritual
Swami Shivanda wrote the bible on semen retention. If you haven’t read it, do it immediately.
I have seen that religions and philosophies that lack knowledge about managing and directing sexual energy can have a very dark past. Even if they do and their practitioners don’t have an understanding and implementation of dealing with their sexual energy they are bound to end up in a sexual scandal.
That you do or say sexually inappropriate things is more about a lack of understanding of the 4 pillars of a semen retention practice.
A spiritual journey takes you on an exploration into who you are at your essence and in the process yourself-created personalities and identities are seen as false and collapse.
Listed below are empowering spiritual practices. I have found them to be an integral part of a semen retention practice.
What to do:
1. Meditation
2. Self-inquiry
3. Yoga
4. Pranayama
Other Helpful Practices
Semen retention is part of a larger lifestyle.
How you live your life affects whether you get caught in the web of porn addiction and lose your energy through ejaculation.
Everything man requires is a life purpose. If you don’t, you will be like a boat lost at sea in a storm. You will get thrown around by external distractions and the demands of others.
Your life purpose can be made up of pursuing various smaller projects. I write 3 articles a week on Medium. Other things include writing a children’s book, running a men’s walk and talk group, and launching an online personal development course.
Engage with life.
Alternatively, during any downtime at work, become an expert in a particular area at work.
What to do:
- Follow your passions and interests with specific projects.
- Learn how to manage your sexual energy.
- Know your Point of No Return.
Don’t make a semen retention practice the center of your life. It’s an important part for me, but it’s not the most important.
Create and live a fulfilling lifestyle.
After a relapse, the next day is the hardest. Be gentle with yourself. Re-commitment and get back to living an energetic life.
