Breath and Wind in Tibetan Buddhism
Overview
This module discusses Tibetan Buddhist practices of working with the breath, “wind,” or “life force” (prāṇa in Sanskrit, qi in Chinese, rlung in Tibetan, etc.). The intentional manipulation of the breath has been central to Tibetan religious philosophical, medical, and religious theories and practices for millennia. Today, many of these practices are being popularized globally by those who understand their impact on health and wellbeing. This module includes presentations by three scholars of Tibetan religion and medicine, who introduce us to the connections between breath, physical health, mental health, and the environment.
Embodied Experience
Specialist in Tibetan Buddhism and medicine, Frances Garrett, introduces a breathing exercise that gives students a sense of the power of intentional breathing practice. We begin with a very simple breathing pattern called the 4-7-8 breath, which means breathing in for a count of four, holding your breath for a count of seven, and breathing out for a count of eight. This is described in the video above, and you can use an app to follow along as a guided practice.
Video Resources
In the first video, Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim introduces Tibetan ideas of wind beginning with Heinrich Jäschke, a nineteenth-century Moravian missionary to Ladakh, and moving forward to today’s interest in the use of intentional breathing in modern medicine. How can we make sense of this transformation? What might be some of the concrete implications for health care that these imply?
In this video lecture, Susannah Deane explores how Tibetan Buddhist and medical notions of the relationship between heart, wind and mind come together to explain the (dys)functioning of the mind, and how this is understood to lead to various forms of ‘mental illness’ through incorrect Tantric practice and other factors including an individual’s behaviors and/or emotional states.
Saskia Abrams-Kavunenko’s presentation will describe how urban Mongolians navigate the capital city Ulaanbaatar’s chronic air pollution in relation to breath, clarity, bodily winds and purification. It will describe how blockages in breath relate to other kinds of obscuration and stagnation in the post-socialist period. This talk will illustrate how air pollution and related phenomena exist in dynamic tension with Buddhist purification practices, along with ideas about the renewing energies of breath, wind and movement.
Reading Assignment
Discussion Questions
- Why is the concept of breath particularly interesting for inter-disciplinary and multi-cultural inquiries?
- What could be the potential benefits of such an inquiry?
- How can we understand the relationship between mind, heart, and ‘wind’ in Tibetan understanding?
- To what extent can we see the channels of the Tibetan medical and religious systems as equivalent to biomedical notions of the body?
- Why is the ‘life-holding wind’ so integral to mental health from a Tibetan medical perspective?
- Why is the ‘central channel’ so integral to Tantric Buddhist practice?
- How can we understand the relationship between ‘karmic’ wind and ‘wisdom’ wind?
- How do restrictions in breath relate to other kinds of obscuration and stagnation in the postsocialist period in Mongolia?
- Does the quality of the air that people breathe influence spiritual practices and/or perceptions of the efficacy of spiritual practices?
- Is air pollution and other kinds of pollution a spiritual problem?
Further Resources
The Buddhism and Breath Summit website includes more video presentations as well as questions for reflection and further reading lists. This event was co-hosted by Frances Garrett and Pierce Salguero and co-sponsored by the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto and Jivaka.net. See additional resources at the Windvane Project.
Cite This Module
Frances Garrett and C. Pierce Salguero. 2022. “Breath and Wind in Tibetan Buddhism.” In Stephanie Balkwill and Amy Langenberg (eds.), Buddhist Bodies Collective. https://buddhistbodies.com/378-2/practice-bodies/breath-and-wind-in-tibetan-buddhism/
Author Bio: Frances Garrett
Frances Garrett, PhD, is Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies in the Department for the Study of Religion, and she is Director of the Buddhism, Psychology and Mental Health Program at the University of Toronto. She studies intersections between Buddhist and medical histories with an interest in multi-epistemic and pluriversal modes of being and knowing. She has also worked in Eastern Tibet on how medical knowledge and practice is communicated through the Tibetan King Gesar epic, and recently she has worked with mountain communities in Sikkim. Frances has also published on language instruction, experiential learning, outdoor education, and teaching practices that promote student flourishing.
Author Bio: Pierce Salguero
I am an author, scholar, teacher, critic, and fan of Buddhism and Asian medicine. I come from a bilingual and transnational Latino family with roots in Colombia, Uruguay, Spain, England, and the US. Having spent my early childhood in Canada and Paraguay, and moving to the US during elementary school, my scholarly interests in crosscultural exchange, translation, and global movements of ideas came to me quite naturally. Recently, I have gotten into ethnography and documentary filmmaking as well, primarily as ways of promoting inclusivity and engagement in the classroom. I also regularly publish books, magazine articles, blog posts, and other works for broader audiences. When I’m not working, you might find me traveling the world with my wife and kids, making huge batches of homemade Sichuan chili sauce, or out on my back porch meditating on my cup of tippy Yunnan.