The Global Yogi Directory

Information about Specific teaching

Tummo

(inspired by Wikipedia)

Tummo is a Tibetan term for an advanced type of sadhana, 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).

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. 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. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is A famous Tibetan master living in the west (USA) and is a great master to learn Tummo from.

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