Customer Reviews

The Book of Tibetan Medicine: How to Use Tibetan Healing for Personal Wellbeing

5 star:		(3)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an excellent primer on Tibetan medicine and certainly will be of interest to anyone studying alternative healing methods. It's clear from the beginning that Tibetans do not separate science and spirituality, but see them as one. The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs and drawings. The book also has sections on yantra yoga, Chod, tonglen, and divination(working with intuition). The divination chapter reminded me of the Perelandra writings. Everything is clearly explained in written and beautifully illustrated form. This book is certainly well worth the money. From the photo on the flyleaf,the author appears to be quite young, and I expect at some future date we will hear from him in a more advanced work on this same subject.

A TREASURE - WELL WRITTEN AND BEAUTIFULLY PRESENTED

In this beautifully illustrated book, Forde begins by setting Tibetan Medicine within it's historic and spiritual context. He then goes on to give clear and concise explanations of it's principle aspects, including the Buddhist understanding of health and disease, the four medical Tantras, constitutional types, methods of diagnosis, anatomy (including mystical anatomy) and the role of diet and the environment. In addition to these, I was pleasantly surprised to find explorations of less well known topics, such as psychiatry, precious jewel pills and moxibustion.

There are a number of sections that allow the reader to put this knowledge into practice, such as dietary advice specific to each constitutional type, a rejuvenation program, meditation and yoga exercises. Here, Forde expertly translates the principles of Tibetan medicine to Western diet and lifestyle. Guidelines are easy to follow and well illustrated.

Throughout the book, Eastern and Western scientific viewpoints are discussed and modern research into Tibetan medical practices outlined. I particularly liked the ease with which the two medical paradigms are brought together, yet at the same time, Forde does not compromise the spiritual foundations of this ancient healing art.

A book like this could have been technical, but thankfully is written in an accessible style, resulting in an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. An excellent addition to the libraries of lay readers and medical practitioners alike.

Mary

This book is more of a history book than a health book. Good for general knowledge but not helpful if one wants to get even just a bit deeper into the practices of Tibetan medicine.

Three months later and your "Book on Tibetan Medicine" remains the gem that it appeared to be on the first browsing. For a partially sighted person like me , the gorgeously colored illustrations are scintillating and brimming with meaning from a newly rediscovered Ancient Tibetan Faith on the opposite side of our Planet Earth.

Its many Truths round out and supplement the wisdom of our three Western Abrahamic Faiths. That hope for our culture have has yet to be realized fully. The themes are clearly and succinctly outlined as well as illustrated in their original forms. More importantly they have also been sorted into Western categories by a contemporary biotechnologist become theologian. The author has clearly discerned the connection between Health and Wellness on the one hand ,and Spirituality , personal fulfillment and the longlasting happiness that we call Salvation , Nachas or Oneness with the Divine on the other hand.

The unfamiliar meanings are laid out in the practical, mundane frame of reference to Holistic Care. The author has courageously given us his concept directly after studying with the experts ; he did not wait to complete the decade of argument ,study and scholarship to familiarize , rationalize or try to prove some of the issues and doubts that crop up in the 'western mind that have their genesis in unfamiliarity. Instead he has given us a more useful book, for the vast majority of readers who are more intested in conclusions, botton lines and take home messages, than in the reasoning that got us there-- leaving that to the expert theologian and philosopher to brush up.

So we have a beatifully, authentically illustrated, well organized, cross-cultural gem of a volume that presents a leap of progess on one of the most important religious issues today, the Universalization of religious truths .

In addition the subject matter has passed the test of scientific critique. It will make more readily available to all of us a comprehension of an almost overlooked Faith and culture. This reviewer joins the author in his enthusiastic support of his inquiry and its progress report.

Saul Boyarsky,MD,JD

Author of Realizing God for the Future: A Personal Vision and Credo

Thids book is a catalog made of small articles without deepness and pretty images and photos.

Closely associated with Buddhism, Tibetan medicine attributes ill health to diet, behaviour, season and ... (would you believe it?) karma. Every living body has a certain "breath of life" called tsog lung. This breath has 3 main branches and a total of 72,000 minor channels, allowing tsog lung to pervade every part of the body. Within the body, there are 3 life forces namely "lung", "tripa" and "bekan". There are 7 bodily fluids recognised. They are saliva, blood, bone, marrow, flesh, fat, reproductive juices.

The body has ayurvedic chakras. There are 5 elements in the environment, namely earth, water, fire, air and space. Crystals are believed to contain all 5 elements and hence possess healing powers. Prayer and meditation also help. So does herbal therapy, moxibustion, cupping and massage. Diagnosis is often made by taking the patient's pulse or examining his tongue/urine.

Such is the basic paradigm or framework of Tibetan medicine. Anyone with enough knowledge of the exotic East to cease finding it exotic should be able to see that Tibetan medicine is by no means unique. And this is perhaps all the useful info that I managed to filter out from the book.

I'm curious about how Tibetan physicians would diagnose an illness from the patient's pulse. One can find detailed descriptions and explanations in any TCM book on pulse-taking, but Forde's book is rather vague on details except that an irregular pulse is caused by demonic possession!

There is likewise, scanty details on which kind of herb combination would treat common ailments. Forde's recommendations on herbal therapy and diet can be found in almost any book on wellness. In fact, his advice on healthy eating is most unTibetan. I wonder where he borrowed that from.

I'm disappointed that instead of going into details on herbs, yoga and meditation, Forde often digressed into history, politics, miracles and even advertising for Tibetan medical practitioners with dubious track records. As a healthcare practitioner in the 21st century, I can understand that an ancient philosophy in the remote Himalayas would include occult practices, but as Tibetan medicine goes global, writers like Forde needs to be very careful about including chapters on astrology and a whole illustrated section on divination with prayer beads! As open-minded individuals, we need not reject the occult claims outright. Instead, we can regard them as parables. This is probably the best way that an ancient art can coexist with modern science.

If I want to discover the secret of longevity, I would study the diet and habits of the longest-living and healthiest people in the world. In spite of James Hilton's virtually immortal Shangrilians, we know for a fact that Tibetans are not amongst the longest living and healtheist people in the world. The quality of life of the Tibetans have been tremendously improved with childhood vaccinations, vitamin supplements, sunblock for the ladies, cataract surgery for the elderly. So what does traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) have to offer? Is there something not already covered by TCM, ayurveda, Buddhist meditation, Indian yoga and Western medicine/nutritional science? Is the "preservation" of TTM and all its original tantras equivalent to a backtrack to Medieval science (TCM now uses xrays and ultrasound)? Why doesn't somebody write about the wisdom of the alchemists? Perhaps it's because our modern chemists have grown far wiser than their predecessors.