The Dalai Lama was asked, "What surprises you most about humanity?" He replied, “Men. They lose health to accumulate money, then they lose money to regain health. Thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present in such a way that they end up not living the present and the future… They live as if they were never going to die and die as if they had never lived” .
For about thirty years, methods such as MBSR and MBCT have been supporting people who are likely to experience a relapse of depression or to see their pathological stress lead them to burn-out. Inspired by certain secularized forms of Buddhist meditation, they allow those who practice them to obtain, within a codified framework, real well-being in a significant number of cases. However, their success is never guaranteed. If this fails, the therapist suggests other methods. Hence the importance of choosing it well.
“Men lose their health to accumulate money, then they lose money to regain their health. Thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present in such a way that they end up not living the present and the future… They live as if they were never going to die and die as if they had never lived” . The Dalai Lama
Globalization allows free circulation of sometimes ancient knowledge and practices. As far as Buddhism is concerned, this dissemination of data no longer being supervised as it used to be in the monasteries, it is advisable to remain circumspect about the theories and exercises which reach us. This is the case of the 5 Tibetan yogas, in fashion at the moment, and whose known information requires to be taken with caution, depending on what you want to do with it. The working methods of the energies and the nadis (1), which are taught during long retreats to the practitioners, being and still remaining hidden even today. Contrary to their legend, the 5 Tibetan yogas do not take this into account.
A little bit of history
When we talk about yoga, we generally think in a caricatural way: India, work on the breath, incense and complex postures. Hindu yoga is much more than that, because it is inspired by the wisdom of the traditional sacred texts of India, just as Tibetan yoga is directly linked to Buddhism and the culture of the Roof of the World. As a Buddhist teaching, the goal of Tibetan yoga is therefore to help the disciple on the path to awaken to the reality transmitted by the Buddha. In this context, the body – its energy channels, nadis, etc. – is a tool at the service of the mind. Thanks to precise and secret practices carried out under the direction of a qualified master, step by step, the student "works" on subtle energies, breaths, etc., with the objective of awakening. What differs from the 5 Tibetan yogas learned by the general public in the West.
What we know in the West about Tibetan yoga
According to the story, it was the American Peter Kelder who offered the world these five rites hidden for centuries in the monasteries of Tibet. Legend ? Reality ? This mythical origin has largely contributed to the success of this author's books. The fact remains that in all objectivity, the works which describe these rites by explaining that they relieve stress, anxiety, fatigue and muscular tension, and improve breathing, digestion, blood circulation, etc., speak more of the physiology of organisms than of paths leading to awakening
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