That's it. India adventure is officially over!

I just arrived in Delhi. Departure was a little sad but I think I was ready to return home. I arrived in Delhi at 6 am. I am currently hanging out a McDonald’s and waiting for the Air India Office to open near the airport so I can sort out my flight issues. Air India was definitely not a good idea. Air India was striking when I was leaving which caused me a lot of problems and they are still or again striking, which is causing me lots of problems again.

My flight got cancelled and it has not been rescheduled. After countless hours on the phone and day after day in the internet café I was able to find out that there is only one flight leaving from Delhi to Frankfurt per day and all of those flights are closed until September 11^th. This means I will either spend two uncomfortable weeks at the airport waiting for a flight or I go personally to the Air India Reservation Office and occupy the place until they give me another flight. This is what I was advised to do anyway. I can’t do anything over the phone, I have to physically show up there and beg. Obviously, if I would have been able to wait in Dharamschala until I am sure I can fly out, I would have done that. But no chance, I have to come to Delhi in person.

I am not entirely sure what exactly the conditions for Air India workers are and I am sure they have their reasons for those strikes. Therefore, at some level I do empathize but at the end I am screwed and because human beings are naturally selfish, I am pissed at Air India. Air India sucks.

Anyway, last days in Dharamshala were rainy like the other 30 days I was there. I probably should not have gone during monsoon season. At the Delhi Airport, I will have lots of time to hang out my stuff to have them dry. As a whole, the internship was a success. The Iyengar yoga course was awesome, I learned a lot at Tushita and I received an official certificate for my future massage profession, what else do I want?

Cheers

Tibetan Massage, what exaclty does it do?

Even though I have received my officially recognized Tibetan Massage certificate, I am not entirely sure yet when to use Tibetan massage on people and what it does. My teacher has taught me how to do the massage but I don't know too much about it. His teachings were very practical. There was a huge language barrier so he didn't explain a lot beyond the actual technique. Every time, I tried to ask about it in a more theoretical way he was unable to answer my questions. At some point, I decided to give up and just do the research myself in order to answer my questions. Now, since I know how to do the massage I just have to learn the theory myself and I am good to go.

I haven't done lots of research but here are some basics that I have gathered about Tibetan massage: Tibetan massage is a particular technique that can help many physical and psychological problems whether they are caused by humoral disturbances or daily stressful works. In Tibetan massage, specific acupressure points, meridians as well as therapeutic herbal oils are used to open up particular channels in the body to increase energy flow and vitality. The goal of the massage is to make energetic channels clear and open from stagnation. If the energy is not able to flow, it ultimately leads to blocks and difficulty controlling the mind, which then result in psychological and physical problems. If one is free of blocks and stagnant energy; naturally the flow of ones life-force increases, the mind is clearer and emotions are more stable.

Knowing all of this is very interesting but it does not entirely resonate with what I have learned. I have been taught a particular technique that is used on back, arms, legs, chest and head. I am also aware where the pressure points and meridians are but what I don't know is which meridians or pressure points are responsible for depression for example or anxiety. Do you have to vary the way you massage according to the individual person. How do you decide where to focus on, how do you know what to focus on in connection to the problems the person has?  

Many questions but no answers... Anyway, at least now I have some questions. Although I won't find all the answers I have opened up a field of interest that I might want to follow up on in the future.

What Next

I am trying to figure out how to best end this journey. My initially idea was to stay at Dharamshala until the last possible second and then get to Delhi last second to finish up things there to finally fly home.  Later, I started planning to go to Amritsar for a couple of days to see the Golden Temple and then go to Delhi last second. But now I was asked to come back earlier to spend some more days at the hospital. And I am increasingly thinking that this is a very good idea. After all, I have spent a lot of time at VIMHANS and it’s only fair to have some time to say “bye” instead of just running in and running back out, which is what I usually do. I want to keep doors open so I decided to dedicate some time to see my new friends in Delhi and say bye to the doctors properly. That’s the new plan.   

    

Tibetan Massage

I started the Tibetan Massage course two days ago and I am really glad/satisfied with the place that I chose to do the course at. I was looking at so many places but none of them was really appealing to me. The places didn’t feel right but at the end of my unsuccessful search I finally found exactly what I wanted. The people at the massage place are so warm and the teacher explains everything with so much detail and patients. I have no experience with massage or with acupressure so at the beginning I felt very lost. Most of the people who do those courses are massage therapists. They only take those courses to improve their own practice. They have a basis which I didn’t have. Having all of a sudden a naked Tibetan guy in front of me who I am supposed to massage was a little unexpected but after all this is what I signed up for. My train of thought when deciding to do this course was: “Oh, that’s cool. A massage technique influenced by reike and acupressure that can potentially heal depression and anxiety. Let’s look into this. But instead of doing more research, I thought learning by doing is more fun so here I am. 

Yesterday, we covered the back and today we covered the feet and the legs. So far, we have not talked about what massage can cure what disease, we are only massaging for now. I don’t want to be rude so I decided just to wait patiently until we get to the point where we will talk about the specific diseases. I am really not sure where this course will take me but I like it.

Tushita is over

The ten days are over. Tushita is over for me. At Tushita, besides working on my curiosity for meditation and whether or not it can be used as a way of treatment, I also wanted to find myself. Where else do you have so much time to reflect on your thought without any disturbances? Where else do you have everything else taking care of and your only task is to be occupied with yourself. I had no questions or expectations when I arrived at Tushita but while being at Tushita, a lot of questions came up which I was hoping to get answers for but I didn’t. I feel more confused coming out then when going in. I think I feel more disconnected with myself than ever before. However, I feel like being left with no answers at all, I still feel in a way more completed mentally because I was able to refine my thoughts into more meaningful questions. I know this probably doesn’t make any sense. I wish I could explain it better but I don’t think I know it any better. 

Enough of me, let’s talk about my plans for the last 2 weeks of my stay in India. I want to stay in Dharamshala because I feel comfortable here and because I can relax before I have to return to reality. Being at Dharamshala, I will continue attending the meditation courses at Tushita. In addition, I will also continue doing yoga. The last yoga course that I did was an Iyengar course which is a very particular form of yoga. This time, I will try Hatha yoga. Last but not least I will do a Tibetan massage course, which is a mixture of acupuncture and reike. Tibetan message is often used to cure all kinds of different illnesses as well as mental disorders such as depression. 

As a whole, I think the Tibetan course will be the most relevant for now. My new question is: “Is Tibetan massage capable of curing mental illness? I don’t think I will be able to answer this question but I will try to investigate.   

Remaining Days

Today we did a “Death Meditation,” which is a type of analytical meditation. It is probably one of the most powerful things I have ever experienced. However, I think I was only a passive observer than an active participant. Unfortunately, I have to say that most the analytical meditations don’t seem to work for me. It appears to me that I have some kind of blockage that doesn’t want allow me to experience the meditations in a way that I am supposed to. 

Death meditation is considered very important in Tibetan Buddhism. One of the first things that the teacher said before he started the meditation was that “real practice only starts when we think about death. “Thinking about death, in particular our own, helps us to really understand what it means when we say life is impermanent. Death meditation is a particular type of analytical meditation in which we visualize a story line of our own death. For example, we imagine that we are determinately ill and only have another 6 months to live. Then, we ask ourselves questions such as what we regret having done in our lives, how we want to spend our last 6 months, who we want to forgive and who do we want to ask for forgiveness. Towards the end of the meditation, the teacher also asked us to visualize the last couple of minutes of our life and who would come to tell you “goodbye.” At this point, I think, most people started crying. For me it was amazing to observe people’s ability to visualize so vividly that they were touched by it in such a way. Having done analytical meditation for a while now has helped us to get better at visualizing things, stories, feelings and emotions. People are being more and more able to visualize things in an increasingly more realistic way. There was so much energy in the room. Although I was still in my meditative state with my eyes closed, I could hear people from all kinds of corners crying. 

This experience made me realize that meditation can have a lot power and potential to help people get deep inside oneself in order to find the things that truly affect one. Let’s say people haven’t been asked to meditate on death and to think about the people who they would ask forgiveness for or who they would give forgiveness, maybe they would never know that this has such a strong effect on them. And in extreme circumstances when things are kept undiscovered, those unresolved issues might manifest in symptoms that would further lead to a mental illness such as depression I know that this is a very farfetched idea but I think it’s worth giving it a thought. 

On the other hand, this experience has also made me realize that meditation or this type of treatment possibility is not for everybody. I am the best living example for this. I really wanted to get deep into myself and follow the guidance of the meditation to the best of my abilities but for some reason I was not able to. There was a blockage, a dead end. Didn’t work for me; period. Even though I put a lot of thought, effort and willingness into this, it still did not work. For other people who might not be as dedicated this might even be less likely than for me to work. Therefore, I believe that this option of meditation as a form of treatment is extremely difficult to achieve and would for most people take a lot of time and effort and for others it might not work at all. 

After all, I have found a success story, in which depression was cured by meditation. Our monk teacher claimed that his depression was cured with meditation so I asked the teacher about his depression and how he was able to cure his illness with mediation. The teacher monk confessed to us that he suffered from severe depression in his early 30s and after he had gone to a 6 months meditation retreat, he was able to cure himself. He said that he was cured through gaining the understanding that his depression is nothing more than the mourning of memories of past experiences. At the retreat, he developed the inside of the impermanence of these past happy times and was able to meditate on those new insides which have further cured him from depression. 

My explanation is oversimplified but if it comes down to it this is what he says and what he believes. At the end though it is up to us to believe what has cured his depression.

The Fourth Day

Everybody is getting a bit frustrated because the meditation is more difficult than what people expected it would be. The main difficulty is to stay focused when we don’t experience success. A lot of people, I am one of them, have a lot of pain during the meditation sessions. The pain can have a lot of reasons such as back pain because we are not used to sitting up as straight as we have to during meditation. Another reason for the pain is because we are sitting on the floor for a prolonged period of time, our legs are not used to the floor and they start to hurt. Sitting for a long time and concentrating is really not what most of us have done so far. Meditation is not only mentally very challenging but also physically. On top of the pain, it also seems that we are not getting anything out of the meditation; most people including myself haven’t had a successful experience therefore I am wondering where my motivation to keep going should come from.

Our meditation teacher keeps emphasizing that we have to be patient. We will get there at some point. He barely answers any questions that we have because he doesn’t want to lose time. According to him, the more we practice the faster we will be able to enjoy the benefits of meditation. I am trying to truly understand his point but it is really hard to stick to something that is causing me pain, which I don’t understand and that doesn’t give me any benefit. However, since I am here I really can’t do anything else, I just try my best.

At the beginning of the course, all of us have received a little booklet with teachings of Buddhism as well as meditation guidelines. I just recently discovered them and I thought they are very helpful. Tibetan Buddhism differentiates between two types of meditation, one is a stabilizing meditation and the other one is an analytical meditation. A stabilizing meditation is what people usually associate with meditation, which is focusing on one object for as long as one wishes while experiencing bliss, clarity and peace.

The more interesting meditation is the analytical meditation because we meditate on our problems in order to truly understand them. On the root of our problems are mistaken concepts about reality. In order to free ourselves from them, we first have to identity them and transform them by using analytical meditation. Later, having developed those new insights we focus on them with single-pointedness, by using stabilizing meditation, to become thoroughly and deeply familiar with them. In other words, we use both meditation techniques to attain real, lasting transformation of the mind.

After having read about the difference of those two meditation types, I realized that maybe it is possible to treat mental illness with simply meditation after all. I am not saying it is easy but I am pretty sure that it is possible with lots and lots of effort, dedication and a strong belief in it.

And The Third Day

Today, I finally had my interview with the monk who teaches us. He mainly teaches us about Buddhism and Buddhist principles but because he worked in Australia as a Psychiatric nurse his teachings are influenced a lot by psychology and mental illness. The first question that I asked him was what he thought of meditation as a type of treatment. He very directly said that when he was working in the psychiatric hospital, patients were highly medicated and in some instances received shock treatment (ECT) and that it was thought back then that that was the only thing that could work in severe circumstances. This is when I thought to myself that nothing has really changed; at least not in India based on the experience I have made in Delhi. When I asked him what he thought theoretically about the idea of meditation as a form of treatment he said that there is no chance for psychotic patients to benefit from mediation. This is exactly what I was thinking all along. However, even though psychotic patients would not really benefit, he said that it might look different for people suffering from mild neuroses. He also told me that rather than meditation it is more realistic to help mentally ill people better understand their mind and help them find the nature of their mind so they know where their symptoms are coming from.

Lama Yeshe in the book “Becoming your own Therapist” says that “by knowing the nature of the mind, we can satisfy ourselves internally.” According to my understanding and what he is indicating is that a disturbed mind or in western terms a mental illness, can be cured by becoming aware of the nature of one’ s mind. This is easier said than done. On one side, there is the teacher monk who says that only people with slightly disturbed minds can be guided to gain the understanding of the nature of their minds and cure themselves from their disturbances. On the other side, there is Lama Yeshe who says that anybody regardless of their condition can be cured by gaining that understanding. Obviously, the greater disturbed a mind is, the more time it will take for people to reach that understanding. He also says that the understanding has to be reached by the people themselves, he can only guide. After what I have seen at VIMHANS, I examine this statement carefully because saying that EVERYBODY can get there is very brave. Theoretically, I really believe that even though it can be very difficult, this state can be reached by everybody. However, practically, the story might look a bit different for people suffering from psychosis.

Looking closer at the question what it means to learn the nature of one’s mind, I realized it is not meditation that will bring us that understanding. Lama Yeshe in his book as well as my monk teacher both said that in order to reach the understanding of the nature of one’s mind is through reflecting and analyzing one’s mind. The Analysis and reflection can be done with the support and understanding of Buddhist Principles. Questions that we would keep asking ourselves would be why we have those neurotic thoughts, where do they come from and when have they developed. After having done enough of analysis and reflection, we will hopefully understand the nature of those neurotic thoughts and they will disappear. This description is much easier said than done but if it comes down to an explanation then this is how you would put it.

In addition to helping mentally ill people understand the nature of their mind, meditation can at least help to relief those people from their symptoms temporarily. There are no studies that I am aware of but the monk teacher said that even though he doesn’t believe meditation would cure mentally ill people or diminish their disturbing thoughts but meditation has the potential to provide people with some relief from their symptoms.  In meditation, the goal is to control one’s mind. During meditation, we become aware of our thoughts, acknowledge them and push them away in order to focus/concentrate on one object. The object can be many different things depending on the meditation. Having the object to focus on keeps us simply concentrated on one individual thing instead of being subjected to our uncontrolled neurotic thoughts. After some practice when a neurotic person is capable to successfully meditate, the meditation might give that person a break from her or his neurotic thoughts for the duration of the meditation. This way, meditation can be used as a tool to release people from their symptoms rather than as treatment to cure their illness. 

The Second Day

I guess that’s the second day, not counting the first registration day, and I have become used to the teacher and his lectures. It is exaggerated when I would say that I like his teaching but I have learned to appreciate the good aspects of his lecturing style. I am also becoming aware of what meditation means. I am very far away from knowing what meditation is but occasionally I am getting a little glimpse of what it is supposed to be. Actually, up until now I only had one such a moment. For a few seconds, my body felt very light and it seemed like I was moving towards the ceiling and observing my own body from outside. This experience I only had once and for an extremely limited time. However, it has helped me to stay focused and to work hard for it to happen again. Being able to exit my body and separate my mind from the body, I thought was the realization that I am supposed to understand. But maybe I was simply hallucinating and this wasn’t a real meditative sate. Having said that, it is clear that I still have no clue how meditation works or could potentially cure mental illness. But I still have faith that I will get there. The book we are reading right now has a chapter called “Buddhist Approach to Mental Illness.” This tells me that there has been work done in that field I just have to understand it. Another thing I have discovered today which might help me find the answers to my questions is the fact that our teacher is a monk from the West who has worked at a Psychiatric Hospital after he came involved with Buddhism. I have not spoken to him yet on an individual basis but that is my next step.

Even though mental illness is defined a bit different in Buddhism from how the western world would define it, I still believe we can make inferences to the mental illnesses that we know. The book “Becoming your own Therapist” describes somebody with a mental illness as unable to see reality; “a mind that tends to either exaggerate or underestimate the qualities of the person or object it perceives.” (p.82). According to the author, Western psychology is too narrow and it would only include people who are obviously emotionally disturbed but it would not include people who have a fundamental inability to see reality. From his point of view, many people who are unaware of the nature of their dissatisfied minds, which is ‘reality,’ should be considered mentally ill as well. Following this definition, it includes far more people into the category of the mentally ill than Western standards would, it still includes the mentally ill. For the author of this book, the cure for all people who are mentally ill is to become aware of the “true” nature of their mind. One way of reaching this truth is by following Buddhist philosophy and meditating.

Now, Buddhist philosophy is very specific and I am not sure if I support everything that this religion represents. Being at Tushita and learning a lot of specifics about Buddhism made me realize (for now), it’s not so much about the religion but about the meditation which can help people out of their mental suffering. So even though, I am at Tushita my focus will still remain meditation rather than Buddhism as a whole. 

My Days at Tushita: The Beginning

This is my first day at Tushita. All of this has to be posted afterwards on the blog because I had to give them my computer so I had no internet access for the duration of the 10 day course.

Obviously, I had expectations even though I tried very hard not to have them. This is only the first day but I have to admit that I feel a little disappointed already. However, I am totally aware of the fact that it is way too soon to judge so I try not to. Yesterday at the registration, we were all given a book called “Becoming your own therapist” so this is when I knew I am at the right place and my disappointment vanished a bit. The only disappointment was the teacher. Having had many good and bad teachers and professors, I am very fast to judge whether or not the person who teaches is good or not. Maybe he will get better along the way or I will learn how to appreciate the aspects of his teaching style. For now, I felt like he is not very engaging and his voice is very monotone so my ability to focus and take everything in that he says is very limited. I had to attend many classes at the hospital and a lot of them weren’t very good. The experience at the hospital has drained my energy and my ability to focus. Otherwise, I think I would not be so hard on the teacher.

Being at Tushita, the connection between psychological wellbeing, the influence of the environment and the ability to meditate became clearer. I definitely still don’t know how a psychological treatment using meditation would look like but I am increasingly more convinced that mental patients can be treated with meditation and the right environment. Tushita is located on the top of Dharamshala and is probably the most peaceful place I have ever been to. Having this type of environment and the time and ability to work on mediation skills bring the prerequisites for a success story. At the same time, the environment alone or the meditation alone will not do it alone. It also takes a lot of effort and dedication from my personal side. Having said that, people who are not as fortunate to be here and don’t have the time to give meditation their entire effort are not even given a chance to cure themselves from their mental problem. The peaceful environment plus a person/a teacher who teaches you meditation are a necessity and a luxury which is not available for a lot of people.

Anyway, I am not trying to be too negative. I am simply exploring potential options that might help people cure their mental illness. One important thing that I learned in one of the classes is that the brain and the mind are totally separate entities. However, they are very closely related to each other. Treatments such as ECT or medication in case of depression have mostly effect on the brain. The medication and ECT try to fix the chemical imbalance in the brain but they don’t work on the mind. I believe that the mind has a much stronger influence on the brain than the brain has on the mind. Therefore, unless we don’t try to fix the mind, we will not find the solution to the problem. Fixing the physical part such as the chemical imbalance in the brain is only the beginning of starting to take care of the problem. The mind has to be taken at least as seriously. 

Hospital Connections enabled me to meet a person from the Tibetan government

Two weeks before I came to VIMHANS, a team of 12 Tibetan nurses, counselors and administrators who work for the Tibetan Department of Health, came for a training workshop to the hospital. The chair of that department lives in Dharamshala. This is where I am staying so one of the doctors suggested to get me in touch with him so he can show me around and tell me about his work. The doctor called him, told him about me and he was pleased to show me around. 

About two weeks ago, I finally met him for the first time. I found out that he is mainly responsible for Tibetan torture victims in exile. In his office, it is only him plus two other staff of who only one is a counselor. He and the other non-counselor lady take care of the administrative things because they don’t have any deeper knowledge of mental health. But because there are many people needing help and only one counselor is available, they often provide counseling without having any greater knowledge of mental health. Therefore, they mainly focus on well meant advice, which is better than nothing. People they deal with suffer from anxiety disorders, substance abuse issues and PTSD. Even though some counseling is provided, it is mostly money that the Tibetan Department of Health gives. If people want they can seek outside assistance and the Tibetan Department of Health reimburses them for it. 

 

Most people working for the Tibetans Government in general are Tibetans which makes a lot of sense but at the same time it is very different than what I saw at Don Bosco. Since Don Bosco serves refugees from many different countries it is often difficult to accommodate them with people from their own country. However, people working for Don Bosco told me that the refugees often prefer outsiders anyway because then they don’t have to be afraid of being stigmatized in their own community. Tibetans might be different in that sense.

Since the chair of that department is sometimes providing counseling himself to the Tibetans, I asked him what he thinks about meditation as a form of counseling. He said that he is so busy that he doesn’t have time for meditation himself so he really doesn’t know anything about it to use it as a tool. In addition, the counseling sessions are too short to really get into meditation. His answer made me think about who would use meditation as a therapeutic tool if not people here. Obviously, refugees or Tibetans in exile have undergone a lot of difficult life circumstances and they are still living a life in which receiving help and assistance is not always easy and meditation or yoga takes time, money and the right therapist. Those kinds of therapies seem to be fancy and only accessible to a few. This is the same I saw at VIMHANS. A lot of people, in particular the poor, come in for one consultation, get drugs prescribed and maybe never come back unless for more medication. It is not about getting healed but rather to suppress the symptoms to an extent to which they can function enough to make money and take care of their families. Things like meditation and yoga take time. They require a lot of support; one has to learn, progress and stick through it to see the benefits. Drugs show first effects every fast, meditation doesn’t.