“First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.” -Anonymous

Yogis have different reputations in the general population. They are thought to be flexible, spiritual, skinny. Thanks to Sting, yogis are also known to have tremendous sexual prowess. Y’know what I mean: holding power. The great yogi Iyengar says that if you can take it one step further and actually retain your semen for prolonged periods of time (a.k.a. celibacy), you will develop a sweet scent.**

Well, I find this very interesting because having retired from Drakkar when I started teaching yoga and having retired from Patchouli essential oil when I started attracting very hairy women and having retired from One Man Show’s “after-shower” line of creams and sprays when I stopped attracting any women; I wanted to try Iyengar’s semen retention method to see if such a “sweet scent” was possible.

So I did and I did and I did some more.

Then: I needed to make a trip to urologist Dr. Robert Sholem who you could say was slightly less than spiritual. He begged to differ with the great Iyengar. Dr. Sholem said that semen retention is the cause of acute prostatitis and that one should “release oneself” once a day, everyday. “My oh my,” I thought. Was this really such bad news after all?! This Dr. Sholem was an animal.

But I was confused. The great Iyengar and none other than Sting himself certainly had better moves with the babes than Dr. Sholem of Scottsdale. What to do?! Modern medicine vs. yogic wisdom. For Iyengar’s sweet scent I was yearning, yet all the while my loins were burning.

While I endured the celibate journey for the mystical scent, I’d often dream of beautiful models slapping their hands against zip-lock bags filled with cinammon frosting winking at me as they said, “Blue and Purple make GREEN!” One night I woke up from such a dream and decided Iyengar must have been living in another world spending 5 years between loads and 5 hours on one pose. I tried but I just couldn’t be this Iyengar.

Such was my experiment with celibacy. While it may yield life-changing revelations for others, it just didn’t feel true for me.  And as Gandhi said, “There is no God higher than truth.”

**LIGHT ON YOGA by BKS Iyengar
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