Should You Have Sex With Your Qigong Teacher?

September being Yoga Month, I happened on an article yesterday in Common Ground called, "Should You Sleep With Your Yoga Teacher."  It's hardly worth linking too...and sorry it's not on-line yet.  In a few words; it was wishy-washy.  The majority of Yoga teachers quoted the precept, "Do no harm."  Which is of course a fantasy, not a precept.  But it makes an interesting contrast with the Martial Arts precept, "Do maximum harm."

Neither precept gives us much to go on.   The article retreated to the standard American office protocol; people in positions of power should not abuse their power.  Do not coerce your students to have sex with you.  Duh.

I was disappointed.  Had I been writing the article I might have said something about how Yoga classes generally have a hypnotic quality.  All the Yoga teachers they posed the question to talked about the importance of creating something elusive called "Sacred Space."  In a Yoga class the teacher will go through a series of requests.  Do this, now do that, now relax, now take a breath (as if you would forget) now do this progressively more difficult thing, now relax, now do this, now do abracadabra-vinyasa (half the class doesn't know what this means but they all pretend they do and just follow someone else).  In short suggestions followed by compliance followed by more difficult or unusual requests.  Hypnoses.

Until recently, perhaps because of  my contrary nature, I have had an aversion to thinking about hypnosis.   But no more.  I'm into it (more blog posts coming up!), and I think it's an important tool for learning.

In the context of Yoga as hypnosis, the question comes up, do Yoga students have conscious will?  If they have given over their conscious will to their teacher, then how can they consent?  Notice I didn't say "free will," I said "conscious will."  Hypnosis probably requires that the person being hypnotized freely give over control of their conscious will to the hypnotizer.

This is possible because conscious will is probably an illusion.  You can wiggle you foot four different ways--

1.  you can plan to wiggle it and then wiggle it,

2.  you can think "I'm wiggling my foot" while you are wiggling it,

3.  you can think, "wow, I just noticed that I was wiggling my foot unconsciously,"

4.  or you can wiggle your foot and not even know you wiggled it (but a machine can measure it).

We usually prefer to believe we are having sex because of a conscious decision, certainly that is the legal requirement, but in reality we may be acting on mostly unconscious "factors," like hormones and smells and conditioning.  We may be just telling ourselves that we are entirely free agents.  I don't know.

Daoism is clear about this.  Sex is OK if you are trying to have a baby.  Otherwise it's a really inefficient use of jing and qi.

Most martial arts classes are not too hypnotic, but there is a continuum on the one hand between;

•  classes where students independently run most of their own workout and come together to do two person routines or competitive activities and...

•  classes where a teacher guides the students through a slow series of suggestions, many of them about illusive qi flow and the visualization of colored clouds.

So my, my dear readers, I leave it in your hands to answer the question:  Should You Have Sex With Your Qigong Teacher?

UPDATE:  (I've decided I'm going to start teaching Taoist Yoga sometime this Fall.)

UPDATE:  Here is a weird blog on Sexy Yoga from China.