Tibetan Medicine is one of the world's oldest surviving medical traditions.

By finding out what your personal energetic makeup is in Tibetan Medicine, you can take steps to keep yourself in balance with appropriate behaviors, diet, and medicinal herbs. Of course, we make no guarantees about the state of your karma!

Centuries ago, before Buddhism entered Tibet, Tibetans already had a significant amount of medical information built upon thousands of years of empirical knowledge of the human body.

Around the 4th century, it is believed that Tibetan medicine began to be influenced by the Indian Ayurvedic medical tradition; and between the 7th and 8th centuries, the Tibetan government sponsored conferences that allowed some of the most skilled physicians in China, Persia, Greece, and India to affect Tibetan medical practices. By the 11th century Tibetan Medicine had become heavily influenced by Buddhism, and many of its key principles and treatments have remained virtually unchanged since then through a tradition of oral and textual teachings.

Today’s Tibetan medical practices, like those of a thousand years ago, are based not only on concepts of physical health, but are also heavily influenced by Buddhism’s emphasis on spiritual well-being. Tibetan Medicine acknowledges that health, as well as illness, results from the relationship between the mind and the body, and from people's degree of spirituality and connectedness to the natural world.

Physical illness is said to be the outward evidence of a deeper spiritual problem. A given physical illness will be analyzed for both its local (physical) and non-local (spiritual) causes. The local causes correspond to what we in the West might call the physical symptoms, while the non-local causes are said to be the true bases of illness in most cases. Non-local issues relate almost exclusively to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs in past lives and the ways in which your behavior in past lives may be affecting you today. The weight of your past actions, even those in previous lifetimes, is called your karma.

In order to properly diagnose an illness’s cause in Tibetan Medicine, a properly trained practitioner will observe the patient, palpate various areas (including taking the pulse at the wrists), and ask questions until the diagnosis is clear. Both physical and spiritual cures will be prescribed in order to remedy the local and non-local causes of the illness.

While Tibetan notions of the law of karma imply infinitely linked causes for any single event, three emotions, known as the "Three Interior Poisons", are considered to be at the root of all illness.

The physical manifestations of the Three Poisons assume the forms of three different kinds of energy: Lung (“wind”), Tripa (“bile”), and Bekan (“phlegm”). These energies have a dual function in the body: When they are in balance, they maintain well -being; but when they are disturbed or out of harmony, they cause illness and may be considered poisonous. Beyond the karmic reasons for an imbalance of these three primary energies, psychological stressors, bad diet, and lack of exercise are seen as the top causes of physical illness.

While all of us have a certain amount of Lung, Tripa, and Bekan energy in us, it is said that one of these energies is our primary constitution, another is secondary, and the third is usually the least prominent.