Bon Healing

Bon healing principles honor the integral link between spirituality and health, and the improvement of well-being through mind-body approaches. A Bon practice awakens our natural healing energies in the mind and body. The techniques are designed to deepen the practitioner’s connection with the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space), which are the energetic undercurrent that form and affect the physical world, including our bodies. One must improve lifestyle and environmental factors that adversely impact health and make adjustments to relieve unnecessary physical, mental, or spiritual stress. In addition, while what is digested in the physical body is important, what we digest in our psyches on the mental and emotional levels is equally important. True healing requires that we also locate these more subtle, though potent, mental and emotional patterns that may be at the root of a specific health condition. Hence, the therapeutic value of meditation and chanting practices is highly regarded in Bon healing modalities. As the world faces many modern challenges and fears, including epidemics and new diseases, a daily prayer and mantra recitation are among many ways we can awaken our innate healing powers and contribute to the healing of ourselves, humanity, and the planet earth.

The Drala Principle

We may have been interested in our world when we were little children, but then we were taught how to handle it by our parents who had already developed a system to deal with the world and to shield themselves from it at the same time. As we accepted that system, we lost contact with the freshness and curiosity of experience. — Chögyam Trungpa

Introduction to the Drala Principle

by Bill Scheffel

The “drala principle” refers to a body of teachings the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Chögyam Trungpa presented in the last decade of his life, from 1978 to 1986. The roots of the drala principle precede the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet and are found in the indigenous traditions of that country - as they are in all countries. The drala principle is applicable, not to Buddhist practitioners alone, but to anyone. These teachings speak to the heart, whether one is, so to speak, religiously, artistically or politically motivated.

Drala is the elemental presence of the world that is available to us through sense perceptions. When we open to trees, flowers, a creek or clouds we encounter an actual wisdom, though one that is not separate from our own. Beholding a river is much more than merely looking at a river; potentially, we are meeting the dralas. A friend of mine was once with her family in upstate New York. It was winter and they had hiked into a forest. The landscape was one of cold and snow, whiteness and silence, birch trees. Astonished by the pristine beauty, my friend realized it was her duty - not just to notice this beauty - but to stop and linger with it. To let it penetrate her. To listen. We have failed to see our first responsibility to the world is an aesthetic one.

In the drala teachings, each of the senses is considered an “unlimited field of perception” in which there are sights, sounds and feelings “we have never experienced before” – no one has ever experienced! Each sense moment, if we are present for it, is a gate into the elemental wisdom of the world, even a cold sip of coffee could ignite the experience of Yeats: “While on the shop and street I gazed / My body of a sudden blazed.” Every perception is a pure perception; from the feel of a meager pebble stuck in our shoe to the meow of a house cat. Through this kind of perception we discover that we live in a vast, singular and unexplored world.

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How to Begin Meditation from In TRAINING by Erik Pema Kunsang

Most of us have seen a picture of a meditator with the body placed nicely: straight back, legs loosely crossed, head balanced on the spine, palm on the knees or in the lap. The body is supposed to simply sit and keep on sitting. Imitate that, and your body is now in meditation posture. But you are not the body. You are in a body. It is not the body that meditates; it’s the mind. Meditation takes place in the realm of consciousness: that in you which is aware and thinks, feels and experiences.

The body is your vehicle, your temporary dwelling. Mind wills, body does.

My teacher, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, taught that meditation means to be unswayed when something happens. It means that your awareness is able to just be. In that continuous state of simple being, we can use techniques to allow transcendent wisdom and compassion to unfold.

Meditation for beginners.

Relax on your seat, with upright spine, and for a little while just sit. Then think: I’ll use this time to be the best I can be, the most aware, gentle and open-minded, to help myself and all others.

Breathe naturally, relax every muscle from deep within and just be.

Try this for some time and see what happens. Don’t bring in a lot of ideas, about meditating and meditation. Just allow yourself to be. That is the basis for a beginner.

Every time you forget what you are doing, just start from the beginning one more time. Stop after five minutes and make a wish: May the goodness of being present, gentle and open-minded, bring benefit for both myself and everyone else.

Slowly, you will get some personal experience about how it actually is to just be without doing anything, in a state of readiness.

This is a simple foundation, and it can be expanded endlessly.

—In TRAINING by Erik Pema Kunsang

What Science Is Telling Us About The Heart’s Intuitive Intelligence by Arjun Walia

The wonderful and brilliant scientists over at the Institute of HeartMath have done some amazing work in shedding light on some very significant findings regarding the science of the heart.

The Institute of HeartMath is an internationally recognized nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to helping people reduce stress, self-regulate emotions and build energy and resilience for healthy, happy lives. HeartMath tools, technology and training teach people to rely on the intelligence of their hearts in concert with their minds at home, school, work and play.

A large portion of their research has investigated heart and brain interaction. Researchers at the institute have examined how the heart and brain communicate with each other and how that affects our consciousness and the way in which we perceive our world.

Their research has shed light on a number of facts, one for example, is when a person is feeling really positive emotions like gratitude, love, or appreciation, that the heart beats out a very different message. They’ve been able to determine this by the fact that the heart beats out the largest electromagnetic field produced in the body, and they can gather data from it.

Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

What to do when you can’t stand your patterns another %&@#*! minute by Jennifer Louden

In life, there comes a time when you so sharply, so clearly, see your recurring patterns; you see the cost, feel the pain of doing the same thing yet again, that you can barely stand it.
You watch yourself (just for example) yet again:

• Make a snarky comment about summer tourists on the ferry slowing everything down.
• Self-righteously defend yourself when your beloved says, “I thought the clothes were clean because they were on the washer,” and you snap, “No, they were on the dryer!” and then realize they were on the washer, and even if they weren’t, why snap?
• Eat half the pint of Coconut Bliss knowing it isn’t really going to make you feel good.
• Check email right as your writing starts to flow even though you swore you wouldn’t ever again.

Sound Healing

Sound healing is the practice of using audio tones and vibrational frequencies to repair damaged tissue and cells within the body. It works on the basis that all matter is vibrating at specific frequencies, and sickness, disease, depression and stress causes human beings to vibrate at a lower frequency. Playing tones that promote healing, happiness and vitality will allow DNA strands to repair themselves, and several scientific studies have been conducted on the potential healing benefits of audio sound frequencies. Sound has been used as a healing tool for centuries, and is still regularly utilized by many different alternative healthcare centers. Tibetan singing bowels, tuning forks, drumming therapy, and even chanting are all used in sound therapy and many participants experience strong emotions during therapy sessions. Advocates of sound healing claim that it has the power to heal mental illness, arthritis, autoimmune disorders and can even shrink cancerous tumors. Learn about the different forms of sound healing and examine the evidence that supports its use as an alternative medical practice.