More information on the practise of Tummo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo
Tummo (gTum mo in Wylie transliteration, also spelled Tumo, or
Tum-mo; Sanskrit caṇḍālī
is a
Tibetan term for an advanced type of contemplative practice, or
meditation. The most common usage of the term is however related to
the description of intense sensations of body heat, that are said
to be a partial effect of the practice of Tummo-meditation. Tummo
is taught as one part of the six yogas of Naropa. Stories and
eyewitness accounts abound of yogi practitioners being able to
generate sufficient heat to dry wet sheets draped around their
naked bodies while sitting outside in the freezing cold, not just
once, but multiple times. These observations have also been
discussed in medical articles (Ding-E Young and Taylor,
199
.
...........................
One of the most famous practitioners of Tummo was perhaps the
Tibetan Buddhist saint, Milarepa [1]. The biography of Milarepa is
one of the most popular among the Tibetan people (Evans-Wentz,
2001). Modern western witnesses of this practice include the
adventurer Alexandra David-Neel (David-Neel, 1971), and Lama
Anagarika Govinda (Govinda, 198.
While the practice could be said to have some practical benefit in
the frigid climate of Tibet, it cannot be said to be cultivated
merely for the sake of keeping warm, but is rather a side-effect of
a religiously oriented intensive meditation practice, and is
understood to be the outward manifestation of an inward state of
religious ecstasy or Yogic Enlightenment. Similar experiences of a
mystic fire have also been described among practitioners of other
contemplative paths, such as the Sufi Irina Tweedie, and among
practitioners of Kundalini Yoga.
An attempt to study the physiological effects of Tummo has been
made by Benson and colleagues (Benson et.al, 1982; Cromie, 2002)
who studied Indo-Tibetan Yogis in the Himalayas and in India in the
1980s. In the first experiment, in Upper Dharamsala (India), Benson
et. al (1982) found that these subjects exhibited the capacity to
increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as
8.3°C. In the most recent experiment, which was conducted in
Normandy (France), two monks from the Buddhist tradition wore
sensors that recorded changes in heat production and metabolism
(Cromie, 2002).
It is not considered wise to engage in the practice of Tummo, or
any other intense form of meditation, without the supervision of a
credible teacher or guide, or without thorough psychological and
physiological preparation. Intense, or unsupervised forms of
meditation, might sometimes lead to substantial meditation-related
problems. See Lukoff, Lu & Turner (199 for more
details on these problems.
