Mental health in Sowa Rigpa

For geographical and historical reasons Sowa Rigpa methods widely overlap with Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines with regards to contents, concepts and methodologies. However, its theory of three doṣas, going back to the Ayurvedic and Hippocrates theories of humors and respective exchange processes, was supplemented by Buddhist philosophical concepts and Vajrayāna practice, applying these doṣas to the channels and chakras of a subtle body. Drawing on Anu- and Atiyoga of Vajrayāna has particularly characterized its medical perspective on subtle energies, and energy-flow and -pathways, influencing various physiological and neuronal processes through a subtle energy structure of the body, and shaped its diagnostics as well as its treatment approach. Thus, before the background of the commonly known diagnostic concept of an imbalance of humors since the second byzantine tradition, its unique feature in approaching health and diseases refers to subtle energy dimensions that are assumed to impact on the doṣas and the physical body. It is this methodical approach to subtle energy structures and motions, that has formed over centuries of medical education bound to the monasteries in which the Vajrayāna was practiced, with which Sowa Rigpa may contribute to health care and complementary medicine.