Dear list members,
Our next seminar will be at 6:00-7:30pm on Thursday May
10 in Lecture Theater S325 of the John Woolley Building,
University of Sydney.
We hope you can attend.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
Unbalanced Flows in the Subtle Body: Tibetan
Understandings of Psychiatric Illness and How to Deal With it
Disorders caused by imbalance of rlung
(wind, breath) form one of the main Tibetan explanatory
categories for what Western medical science classes as psychiatric
illness. How might we relate Tibetan ideas of rlung to Western
ideas of the emotions and the autonomic nervous system? Could such a
relationship lead to a productive encounter between Tibetan and Western
modes of understanding and treating psychiatric illness?
Geoffrey Samuel is an Honorary
Associate at the University of Sydney, where he directs the Body,
Health and Religion (BAHAR) Research Group, and Emeritus Professor at
Cardiff University, Wales, U.K. His academic career has been in social
anthropology and religious studies, his books include Mind, Body and Culture
(1990), Civilized
Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (1993), Tantric Revisionings
(2005), The Origins
of Yoga and Tantra (2008) and Introducing Tibetan Buddhism (2012).
His current research interests include Tibetan yogic health practices,
Tibetan medicine, and the dialogue between Buddhism and science.
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