Information about Tummo

Tummo (gTum mo in Wylie transliteration, also spelled Tumo, or Tum-mo; Sanskrit caṇḍālī) is a Tibetan term for an advanced type of contemplative practice, or meditation. The most common usage of the term is however related to the description of intense sensations of body heat, that are said to be a partial effect of the practice of Tummo-meditation. Tummo is taught as one part of the six yogas of Naropa. Stories and eyewitness accounts abound of yogi practitioners being able to generate sufficient heat to dry wet sheets draped around their naked bodies while sitting outside in the freezing cold, not just once, but multiple times. These observations have also been discussed in medical articles (Ding-E Young and Taylor, 1998).

Overview

The Tummo practices were first described in writing by the Indian yogi and Buddhist scholar Naropa, though the Buddhist tradition holds that the practice was actually taught by Shakyamuni Buddha and passed down orally until the time of Naropa. The Tummo practice is also found in the Tibetan Bön lineage. One of the most famous practitioners of Tummo was perhaps the Tibetan Buddhist Yogi, Milarepa [1]. The biography of Milarepa is one of the most popular among the Tibetan people (Evans-Wentz, 2001). Modern western witnesses of this practice include the adventurer Alexandra David-Neel (David-Neel, 1971), Lama Anagarika Govinda (Govinda, 1988), and anthropologist Dr. John Crook.

An attempt to study the physiological effects of Tummo has been made by Benson and colleagues (Benson et al., 1982; Cromie, 2002) who studied Indo-Tibetan Yogis in the Himalayas and in India in the 1980s. In the first experiment, in Upper Dharamsala (India), Benson et al. (1982) found that these subjects exhibited the capacity to increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3°C. In the most recent experiment, which was conducted in Normandy (France), two monks from the Buddhist tradition wore sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism (Cromie, 2002).

While the physiological effects of Tummo of well known, they are not the primary purpose of the meditation practice. Tummo is a tantric meditation practice that transforms and evolves the consciousness of the practitioner so that wisdom and compassion are manifested in the individual.

It is not considered wise to engage in the practice of Tummo, or any other intense form of meditation, without the supervision of a credible teacher or guide, or without thorough psychological and physiological preparation. Intense, or unsupervised forms of meditation, might sometimes lead to substantial meditation-related problems. See Lukoff, Lu & Turner (1998) for more details on these problems.

Tummo is taught currently in both Asia and the West by a few qualified Tibetan lamas, typically to students who have mastered other preliminary meditation practices. There are also several books now published in English that describe the practices in some detail.

See also

• Reiki#Reiki Tummo
• chakra
• kundalini
• kundalini yoga
• meditation
• Cold-water dousing also elevates body-temperature.
• Temperature Biofeedback teaches the manipulation of circulation and elevation of temperature.

References

• Benson, Herbert; Lehmann, John W.; Malhotra, M. S., Goldman, Ralph F.; Hopkins, Jeffrey; Epstein, Mark D. (1982) Body temperature changes during the practice of g Tum-mo yoga. Letter to Nature Magazine, 21 January 1982. Nature 295, 234 - 236
• Cromie, William J. (2002) Research: Meditation changes temperatures: Mind controls body in extreme experiments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Gazette, 18 April 2002
• David-Neel, Alexandra (1971) Magic and Mystery in Tibet. Dover Publications
• Ding-E Young, John and Taylor, Eugene (1998) Meditation as a Voluntary Hypometabolic State of Biological Estivation . News in Physiological Sciences, Vol. 13, No. 3, 149-153, June 1998
• Evans-Wentz, W. Y. Editor (2000) Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa: A Biography from the Tibetan being the Jetsün-Kabbum or Biographical History of Jetsün-Milarepa, According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering. USA:Oxford University Press
• Govinda, Lama Anagarika (1988) Way Of White Clouds. Shambhala Publications
• Lukoff, David; Lu Francis G. & Turner, Robert P. (1998) From Spiritual Emergency to Spiritual Problem: The Transpersonal Roots of the New DSM-IV Category. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 38(2), 21-50,
• Mullen, Glen H. (2006) The Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa, Snow Lion Publications.
• Mullen, Glen H. (2005) The Six Yogas of Naropa: Tsongkhapa's Commentary, Snow Lion Publications.
• Yeshe, Lama Thubten (1995) The Bliss of Inner Fire: Heart Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa, Wisdom Publications.

External links

• Harvard University Gazette - Meditation Changes Temperature