“in our body we have negative air (neun mong lung, absence of clarity air) and positive air (yeshe lung, wisdom air)….. What I’m talking about, negative, means absent from clarity. “
– Kalu Rinpoche
According to Tibetan medicine illness is caused by an imbalance of vital energies. Loong energy imbalance in particular can be problematic.
Loong and other vital energies can destabilize becoming stagnant, blocked or go in the wrong direction. Why does it destabilize?
“Energy follows mind, obsessive thoughts or too many thoughts can create interrupted dysfunctional movement” - Dr. Nida Chenagtsang
What this means is that many illnesses are related to the mind and how we relate to our mind. The Four Medical Tantras identify three mental states that are considered the primary causes of all disease.
Five Elemental Energies
There are five elemental energies: earth, water, fire, wind and space. These five elemental energies form three humors or nyepas. Beken is formed from earth and water, tripa is formed from fire, and loong is formed from wind. Every person has each of the three humors, but each person also tends to be dominated by one or two humors.
Each humor is also associated with a psychological imbalance. Loong is imbalanced by desire, tripa by anger and beken by ignorance or confusion. The basic principle of Tibetan medicine is to create balance in the nyepas.
Tripa is hot energy, beken is cold and loong is neutral. However, loong has a distinctive trait of movement and strength which can affect tripa and beken. For this reason, loong is considered the most important and also the most difficult to work with.
Loong Imbalances
There are five types of karmic loong and these are the ones that cause imbalance. Yeshe loong is wisdom wind, wisdom air, or vast wisdom
Kalu Rinpoche says this about karmic and yeshe loong:
“in our body we have negative air (neun mong lung, absence of clarity air) and positive air (yeshe lung, wisdom air)….. What I’m talking about, negative, means absent from clarity. That is a definition of negative. Okay? Make that very clear understanding.
So, our purpose is that as we do the yoga, is to untie ourselves from the negative air, transform it into the positive air, so that we can go to the higher level of recognizing the nature of mind, or the possibility to recognize the nature of the mind.”
Yeshe Loong
Yeshe loong is always healthy, actually beyond illness or health altogether. So, it is possible to cultivate and develop Yeshe loong to access that part of ourselves that is healthy and well.
The yoga work can be breath work (pranayama), mantra or meditation. With these practices we bring the karmic loong into the central channel where is combines with and is transformed into yeshe loong.
It is best to work with a Tibetan Medicine doctor or qualified Lama to assess your nyepa. Once you know your type, specific practices can be tailored for you.
There are some general practices that are useful for all types that can help bring balance.
Breath
Pranayama works because Yeshe loong rides the breath. The trick with breath work is to extract the Yeshe loong from the coarse wind.
One way to do that is with a long exhale. Take a deep belly breath and breathe out slowly making the out breath twice as long as the in breath. With this method one is able to slowly retract or hold onto the Yeshe loong while releasing the coarse wind. For more on healing breath check this blog.
Mantra
Mantra can be a very powerful way to re-balance the energies and harness the Yeshe loong. This is known as ngakchö tuhp སྔགས་བཅོས་ཐབས་.
There are many mantras and many are specific for specific imbalances and diseases. The Five Elements Purification mantra cleanses all negative energies and diseases connected with the 5 elements and negative environmental influences. The mantra can be done by anyone.
OM A HUNG E YAM KAM RAM LAM SHUDDE SHUDDE A AH
Common pronunciation: Om Ah Hung Ay Yam Kam Ram Lam Shudey Shudey Ah Ha
E is space connected to the heart, Yam is air connected to the lungs, Kam is water connected to the kidneys, Ram is fire connected to the liver and Lam is earth connected to the stomach and spleen. Shudde means to purify. This mantra purifies and balances the five elements in our body and clears the channels connected to the organs and elements.
Singing this mantra is the most powerful method and I recommend listening to or singing along with Drukmo Gyal which can be found on her album Tibetan Healing Mantras or on YouTube here .
Meditation
There are many meditations for addressing specific imbalances. But at the most important, especially for disturbed loong, is to use meditations that helps you settle the mind and that help you to ground yourself. Shamatha is a very effective method for this and so is body scan meditation.
This blog is a very brief description of vital energy and healing. There is far more to this topic than discussed in this blog. For more detailed information on this topic, I recommend Dr. Nida Chenagtsang’s book, The Tibetan Book of Health. More on healing meditations can be found here.
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