I would say this is incomplete information considering you guys are searching into occult resources and just about anything. First of all it has relatively little to do with semen retention and minerals and vitamins. It is about chi/ki/electricity. Theres 2 c'his, yang and yin as John Chang has mentioned and many more, and in their own way. These are heaven and earth chi respectively. One comes from the sun and one from the planet/soil - earthing. Taoist sources tell us that we gather chi passively/automatically through breathing (yang chi) and food (yin and yang depending on the food). We can also superchage this with sungazing and earthing...as one method. You're supposed to gather lots of it and keep growing it. It is mainly yang chi that is sexual. Learn to feel it. While earthing in the evening and you are calm its good to just try and feel your chi, at least your wei qi (protective ki outside your skin/chi in the aura). You start with getting healthy...in the hinduist tradition they are a bit more scientific about how one can replicate this level of achivement. That is brahmacharya and healthy living. Hindu tradition also makes use of pranayama to open the nadis (meridians in taoism). This is done with alternate nostril breathing (called anulom vilom) for a while then slowly integrate retention of breath to do what is called nadi sodhana which purifies the meridians. Once this is done you are healthy. Now you can start building the 3 dan tiens in taoism or opening the chakras in hinduism and then working with shen/bindus. But here also, you do it order, starting with lower dan tien / muladhara chakra first, not ajna chakra like random google articles may say. You should not do other pranayamas before opening the nadis fully. Maybe correct your breathing to make it vase breathing or close to it as thats how one should breath. After this you may do other pranayama too, but again follow the teachings of old texts, theyre guidance everything. Also you should naturally advance in concentration. This is what the Gautama buddha did as well. He was celibate and mastered the 8 jhanas (milestones of concentration practice). This is a simplified version of it but all you need really. In hinduism they don't have jhanas but 3 different states, with samadhi being a state which you take deeper and deeper to jhana levels. And you also have samayama. The goal is to build the spiritual fetue not to keep channeling chi around and spend it on penetration. The spiritual fetus is the lower dan tien.
As for Brahmacharya it is more than just semen retention, because semen retention alone is not good. Lust is but the strongest desire in human, it is desire, a hindrance as they call it in buddhism. 'Semen retention' is the first step. Then you have mental celibacy, as in to complete nofap and take it to monk mode nofap level. Theres still things you can do. Plenty. Now you should develop yourself. As a spirit, a person. Seek to become liberated of all hindrances and poisons on the mind (I'm quiting these terms for a reason, yes). You do not look at women. You do not make sex jokes. You do not consider people who have sex lucky. You are not celibate in order to acquire powers and abilities like that of the sages and saints of all traditions. You are you. Here's buddha on it:
http://zugangzureinsicht.org/html/lib/authors/tanpiya/methuna_en.html . Theres also practices, but these are only and only tools like thinking of dead corpses or old women/men. I think it was one of the buddhas he gave this practice to his monks and they over did it and their minds become toxic from so much concentration on dead bodies that theyre very sunbconsciouss was filled with subtle thoughts about dead bodies making them see the world miserably, seeing only misery in the world. Thus they killed themselves by the time he returned back to the temple. This is taking the teaching wrong. It works something like this, you're celibate and in the beginning, youre REALLY horny. It helps to calm you down and make you mindfull, bring your focus back on the consciouss mind and its memories and away from some random impulse in your subconscious. You shouldn't over do it. Theres a sutra I think that also mentions how for example different types of things turn you on then you should think of different types of corpses such as rotten or cut in pieces corpses, or bug and bird eaten corpses, etc. Similarly you can remind yourself of the wreck that overindulgence in sex makes human!. Look at these psychopaths. Ted Bundy mentioned it in an interview. It starts with porn, and then more severe porn and then they go onto hardcore porn and then they want to actually rape and then.....well Ted Bundy may not know of it but if you read some more theres more levels of depravity. Theres then sniff porn where you make other person suffer. And canibalism and pedo and necrophilia and blood pool parties and other utherrly completly demended ideas such as this. As for these deeper levels it is the rich men of society that go this far. Because they can do it and get away with it as well. Ten Bundy got caught by the police and put in prison.
But also weakness, of kness, of mind, lethargy, retarded hairline which then is like close to impossible to remediate!, no drive, no spiritual urge to discover, to explore the meaning of the world, to discover YOURSELF!. THese are only but tools.
To expand more onto it, you do not allow yourself to have strong emotions of any kind as that disturbs the prana and so it disturbs your stillness/'emptiness'. For example you are incredibly, but very angry now. A couple hours later after you have calmed down your 'energy' is still excited and so it is MUCH easier for lust to rise and much stronger too. You do not allow yourself to overthink as that is attached to the 6th sense of mind. You do not allow yourself to overindulge in any of the 5 senses as that is attachment to the body. For example bitting your tongue and salivating from what you see visually is indulgence in the body, in the fiery senses. If you are used to listening to music and are very picky about it and cannot stand mental silence that is attachement to the mind sense, to thoughts. If you allow yourself to be so attached to these if you then see a nude by random it will be MUCH easier for lust/horniness to arise. Because you are not mindfull, fully. You are not grounded in .. .well you. So your impulses control you and lust arrises freely. Not good. Also if you have these kind of attachements they slow you down. They unground you emotionally and disembody you. Notice if you just watch porn and have full erection all turned on but keep your body and breathing relatively calm and do not edge at all you loose your embodiment. You will feel/be aware of your body less. This is a simple fact you can notice in your daily life. Desire/attachment into anything has a similar effect on you as well as engagin into other mental poisons / hindrances. Anger is somewhat the opposite of lust indeed, so it will quite the lust. But it still has a fiery, disturbing effect on your prana. That disturbed chi must then calmed down with lots of exercise, like horse stance, and deep meditation, etc. Water also disturbs the chi in the body, this is why shower before bed could be conductive to nocturnal fall. If you're low on chi, because youre low on your 'nofap strike' then likely a cold shower will benefit as it will shake you mentally and theres little chi to be disturbed and run wild/warm you up. But you know, if you are in a long strike of pure monk mode nofap, celibacy the proper way without cheating, and you haven't been working out enough or doing enough and deep enough meditation, etc water at night before bed will have the opposite effect you ask for. In time the sex force is calmed and eventually, but this is a VERY hard achievement to make, the sex pulse is eradicated. The vedic texts teach us that semen is actually in subtle form in all the cells of the body and sex thoughts (especially, but also disturbances as I mentioned previously) cause it to liquify, to become ejaculatory substance. So you see the body will produce spinal and brain fluid as it needs but once enough it will either keep refining that better, strenghening the potency of that fluid or maintain the 'semen' / vitality in harmonious (balanced) subtle form in the cells of the body and strengthening that thus strengthening the cells. It is a fact that sex thoughts actually cause sexual hormones to be realeased and the whole body made favourable to have sex (for example over stimulation of the SM system and no use of the PNS). So if you are an actual brahmachary you will not produce these sex hormones/substance / not conduct sexually favourable activity in the body. In the hindu science they have an actual name for this state, spelled like oordovheta? Anyway you do not practice semen retention alone. You do not practice brahmacharya alone. What OP is actually doing is keep throwing the extra chi he cannot take in away. Not allowing it to build properly. Although this can be another 'tool' if it becomes the central practice that is wrong. Incorrect.
