INTRODUCTION
Traditional Tibetan Medicine (TTM) draws on age-old knowledge of health defined in the broadest sense, i.e., to be understood as a comprehensive system of well-being characterized by harmony, both as regards the internal functioning of the body and as regards the interaction between the body and the remainder of the physical world (one is oneself of course part and parcel of the physical world), including all things on earth and in the universe beyond.
Balance - in all things - is the central theme of TTM, since from balance arises harmony. Another central and balance-related theme to TTM is the notion of maintaining the proper flow of all of life's forces, both physical and mental as well as spiritual. The spiritual dimension was deeply influenced by the Tibet an's pre-Buddhist religious belief system - widespread throughout the east - known as animism, or the belief that all things in nature, both inanimate as well animate, possess a spirit.
According to the ancient beliefs of the Tibetans, good health is the product of living in balance with the internal and external life-giving forces of nature. This is harmony defined, pure and simple. Where balance is maintained, illness cannot gain a foothold. But where imbalance occurs, this can quickly be detected through its effect on various vital bodily functions, long before the malady proper sets in. Therefore TTM focuses on reading the body's tea leaves, as it were, in order to take a measure of the state of health of the body in good time, so that corrective steps can be initiated at the first sign of imbalance.
HISTORY
The ancient Tibetans had over time acquired a cornucopia of medical, philosophical and spiritual knowledge about what constitutes a healthy mind, body and spirit, yet Tibetans were open to knowledge gained by others in such matters. With increased contact between China, Tibet and India (viz. the Ancient Tea & Horse Caravan Road, aka the Silk Road of Southwest China) - especially beginning in the early 4th century CE - new goods and new ideas arrived in Tibet. Among the new Indian ideas that took hold in Tibet were Buddhism and Ayurvedic Medicine, the latter being an extensive body of health-related knowledge that espoused balance as its core precept.
During the latter part of the 7th century and the early part of the 8th century, the Tibetans, being an open-minded people, invited other learned peoples to come and share with them their knowledge of health - how best to maintain it and which corrective action to take when things go wrong. Special meetings - what would commonly be called conferences today - were convened where medical (defined in the broadest sense) scholars from neighboring countries such as China and India, as well as from faraway places such as Persia, Arabia and Greece, came to Tibet to present their novel ideas and to debate and discuss these new ideas with the other assembled medical scholars.
Those medical scholars whose ideas and practices were the most appealing were invited to remain in Tibet and practice their methods as well as to teach them to Tibetan neophytes. In this way, Tibet profited greatly from its open policy toward the world around it. In turn, the TTM developed in Tibet came to wield great influence, especially on Tibet's closest neighbors, China and India.
The body of knowledge that would come to define TTM was eventually codified during the 11th century, having become a synthesis of elements of Tibetan, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arabian and Greek notions about health, notions that rested on a number of factors such as analyzing the pulse and urine samples ("reading the body's tea leaves"), the propitious use of certain herbs and minerals in order to counteract imbalances or restore balance where this had been perturbed, and the use of physical therapies such as acupuncture and moxibustion (the latter is a therapy in which the herb, mugwort, has been ground into a fluff, then typically burned directly on the skin, but without producing pain - i.e., moxibustion does not burn the skin, but only warms it, thus stimulating circulation).
The resulting synthesis of health concepts that formed the basis of TTM, like Buddhism itself, held that all illness stemmed from one of three "poisonous" imbalances: blind attachment (desire), blind aversion (hatred) and ignorance.
THE THREE CORNERSTONES OF TTM
As indicated, TTM holds that balance is the key to good health. To achieve overall balance, three specific categories of functions (formerly referred to as humors) must each be in balance. These three categories of functions are designated, in the Tibetan language (to be superficially clarified below - those interested in a more thorough description of TTM should consult a relevant text), as rLüng, nKhris-pa and Bad-kan.
rLüng - This refers to the uninhibited flow of life-giving processes, from the flow of blood to the flow of nerve impulses to the flow of thoughts. As in zone therapy, where specific locations on the body are massaged in order to bring relief to stress or pain in other parts of the body, there are five subcategories of rLüng with each its specific area of therapeutic influence. Without delving into the specific locations and particulars of these subcategories, they are called - in Tibetan - the Gyen-rGyu rLung, the Khyab-Byed rLung, the Me-mNyam rLung, the Srog-'Dzin rLung and the Thur-Sel rLung.
nKhris-pa - This refers to the proper thermoregulation of the above set of life-giving processes, specifically, the proper level of heat present in these processes. Just as the physical (often glandular) processes such as the digestion of food and the uptake of nutrients (metabolism) or the liver's cleansing of the blood depends on the proper temperature (a sufficient amount of heat), the nerve impulses as well as the thought processes require their own "heat" in order to function properly. For example, a "frigid" personality is a personality that is out of balance. As with rLüng, mKhris-pa consists of five subcategories with each its specific area of therapeutic influence: the 'Ju-Byed mKhris-pa, the sGrub-Byed mKhris-pa, the mDangs-sGyur mKhris-pa, the mThong-Byed mKhris-pa and the mDog-Sel mKhris-pa.
Bad-kan - This also refers to the proper thermoregulation of the above set of life-giving processes, but with an emphasis on the required degree of coolness present in these processes. On the physical side are processes such as metabolism (which requires heat, though not too much heat), the lubrication of the joints, etc., as well as the proper coolness of nerve synapses and thought processes. There are of course physical processes that require more heat than coolness (metabolism, for example) just as there are physical processes that require more coolness than heat (the synapses in the brain). Moreover, whenever any of these functions are out of balance, specific medicinal remedies (herbs) and/or therapeutic remedies (acupuncture, moxibustion, etc.)) may be prescribed in order to restore the proper balance, be it a remedy that induces more heat or more coolness, as the case may be. The five corresponding subcategories of Bad-kan are: the 'Byor-Byed Bad-kan, the Myag-byed Bad-kan, the Myong-Byed Bad-kan, the rTen-Byed Bad-kan and the Tsim-Byed Bad-kan.
TTM is an alternative medicine (to Western biomedicine) that is recognized and practiced not only in Tibet but in China and India as well as in Bhutan, Ladakh (a disputed (between China and India) region of Jammu and Kashmir), Nepal, Mongolia, Siberia and - increasingly - in parts of Europe and North America.
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