A reading guide by Frances Garrett for the article, “Reciting, Chanting, and Singing: The Codification of Music in Buddhist Canon Law", by Cuilan Liu, published in 2018 in the Journal of Indian Philosophy, 46, 4, Pp. 713-752. This episode of Footnotes was produced by Frances Garrett, with sound editing by Jesse Whitty.

An interview by Tony Scott with Dr Catherine Hartmann about her 2020 doctoral dissertation, "To See a Mountain: Writing, Place, and Vision in Tibetan Pilgrimage Literature," Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. This episode of Footnotes was produced by Tony Scott with sound editing by Jesse Whitty. The show’s music consists of three different Tibetan songs performed in the nomad style by a woman named Buti from a village in the Mak Township of Tibet. They were recorded...

A reading guide by Tony Scott for the article, "Buddhist Walking Meditations and Contemporary Art of Southeast Asia" by Boreth Ly, published in 2012 in the journal, positions, 1 February 2012; 20 (1): 267–285, available at https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article/20/1/267/21605/Buddhist-Walking-Meditations-and-Contemporary-Art. This episode of Footnotes was created by Tony Scott, with sound editing by Jesse Whitty. The show’s music is “The Academic (Life & Afterlife)” by Nic...

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for the article, "What Bodies Know About Religion and the Study of It" by K.L. LaMothe, published in 2008 in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 76(3), 573–601. This episode of Footnotes was produced by Frances Garrett, with sound editing by Jesse Whitty. The show’s music is “Folk Psychology” by Nic Bommarito and “Bells in the Wind” by Daniel Birch. The Footnotes series is created at the University of Toronto, in Canada, with support from...

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for the article, “Decolonizing the Study of Religion”, by Malory Nye, published in 2019 in the Open Library of Humanities 5(1). p.43. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.421 This episode of Footnotes was produced by Frances Garrett, with sound editing by Jesse Whitty. The show’s music is “The Academic (Life & Afterlife)” by Nic Bommarito and “Monday Morning Wake Up Call” by Daniel Birch. The Footnotes series is created at the University of Toronto, in...

The contemplative technique of tummo (gtum mo, caṇḍālī) – literally, the “fierce lady” – is a consummate practice of Vajrayāna Tibetan Buddhist yoga. To understand this somatic yoga and breathwork practice, this presentation discusses (a) tummo in the context of a Buddhist tantric practice curriculum; (b) the philosophy and practice of inducing yogic heat and rapturous bliss described in classical Tibetan yoga manuals, including a discussion of subtle body physiology, thermogenesis, and the...

In Vipassana meditation practice, the first common object is the breath. By allowing the breath to be the focus of your awareness, one lets the social world full of discursive thought, self-reflexivity and judgement move into the background. Yet, we know that as intimate and solitary as this breath practice is, many individuals turn to communities of solitary practice such as sitting groups and retreat spaces, as safe grounds or anchors to turn their gaze inward and attend to the tacit,...

This presentation explores how Tibetan Buddhist and medical notions of the relationship between heart, wind and mind come together to explain the (dys)functioning of the mind, and how this is understood to lead to various forms of ‘mental illness’ through incorrect Tantric practice and other factors including an individual’s behaviors and/or emotional states. Dr Deane uses examples from interview material with lay Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhist and Sowa Rigpa medical specialists, alongside...

Breath and wind concepts are widespread in Asia, and the Tibetans inherited both Yogic and Tantric prāṇa and Ayurvedic vāta, both translated into Tibetan as rlung. This proved a constructive confluence for Tibetan Tantra and Tibetan medicine, and may be suggestive too for modern Western understandings of consciousness and its physiological correlates. This presentation is part of the Buddhism and Breath Summit, which took place online in 2021, with a group of researchers exploring Buddhist...

Anne Klein starts with a few phenomenological reflections on how easeful attention to breath resolves structures that constrict our experience of being. What does breath feel like, and what does it bring us? What changes when we direct breath to different parts of the body, or different parts of the environment? Breath is air. Air is movement, and thus breath is connected with everything that moves. She points to several such connections, the movement of wind currents inside the body and out...

Preached by the Buddha, prescribed by psychologists, and practiced by people from all faiths and walks of life, breath meditation is one of the most popular meditation practices to have emerged from Buddhism. In this video we will look at how people in the country of Myanmar practice breath meditation and how some, known as “wizards,” use the breath to gain supernatural powers. This presentation is part of the Buddhism and Breath Summit, which took place online in 2021, with a group of...

This presentation will describe how urban Mongolians navigate the capital city Ulaanbaatar’s chronic air pollution in relation to breath, clarity, bodily winds and purification. It will describe how blockages in breath relate to other kinds of obscuration and stagnation in the post-socialist period. In Ulaanbaatar the murky and obscuring nature of air pollution has become an active part of Mongolian religious and ritual life. This talk will illustrate how air pollution and related phenomena...

This presentation briefly introduces the Japanese Vajrayana tradition of Shingon Buddhism and a few of its fundamental breathing techniques. It then summarizes some of the ways such meditative practices in the tradition have been used historically and in contemporary times. This presentation is part of the Buddhism and Breath Summit, which took place online in 2021, with a group of researchers exploring Buddhist practices of working with the breath or the “winds” of the body. The event was...

This conversation will consider Seng Kan Cheung, a contemporary Chinese American religious healer who uses qigong, reiki, and Buddhist spells. He shares these practices and exchanges healing with a community of relatives, friends, students, and patients in the New York City area. Breathing is involuntary, yet can also be voluntarily controlled. Agency in his healing is difficult to determine because he experiences involuntary movements that trigger during the practice of qigong, application...

In this presentation, the place of the Old School Buddhist form jhāna absorptions within Theravādin meditation practice is outlined, with a note on the modern history of their practice. The heart of the presentation is a first-hand account of what the experience of jhāna through the breath entails. Brief reflections are offered on implications of such experience for our constructions of “religion,” and “philosophy,” and “psychology.” This presentation is part of the Buddhism and Breath...

David Wells introduces Thai Yoga, “Reusi Dat Ton,” and its place within the traditions of Buddhist Yoga and Mahasiddhas. Tracing its development from India into Nepal, Tibet and the Ancient Lanna Kingdom of Southeast Asia, he discusses how wind is managed in “Reusi Dat Ton” from breathing techniques and visualization to self-massage, joint mobilization and full body exercises. The video presentation features images of techniques as depicted in traditional artwork including: statues, murals,...

Heinrich Jäschke, a nineteenth-century Moravian missionary to Ladakh, is mostly known amongst scholars of Tibet for his pioneering 1881 Tibetan–English Dictionary. In his entry on ‘rlung’—a fundamental concept of Tibetan medicine and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, commonly translated into English as ‘wind’, ‘breath’ or ‘vital energy’—following his definition of the term, he added: ‘These notions concerning rlung are one of the weakest points of Tibetan physiology and pathology’. Strong words for a...

This presentation by Napakadol Kittisenee offers two insightful accounts of the (former) prisoners on the brink of their death sentence. This illuminates how both of them went through self-transformation process in the context of Buddhist meditation. The sharing is based on the reflection of a memoir by a Thai man on his last moment at San Quentin in 1999 along with an ethnographic account Napakadol Kittisenee conducted over the last ten years with a Cambodian woman who witnessed the...

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for an article by Gideon Enz, "Qi cultivation in qigong and taiji quan," in Energy Medicine East and West, Edited by David Mayor, Marc S. Micozzi, Churchill Livingstone, 2011, Pages 73-83. This episode of Footnotes was a lecture produced by Frances Garrett for a 2019 University of Toronto undergraduate course called Biohacking Breath.

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for an article by Shigehisa Kuriyama, "Pneuma, Qi, and the Problematic of Breath," in The Comparison Between Concepts of Life-Breath in East and West (Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine - East and West, August 26-September 3, 1990), Edited by Yosio Kawakita, Shizu Sakai, and Yasuo Otsuka. Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, Inc, 1995, Pages 1-32. This episode of Footnotes was a lecture produced by Frances Garrett for a...

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for an article by Nancy N. Chen, "Qi in Asian medicine," in Energy Medicine East and West, Edited by David Mayor, Marc S. Micozzi, Churchill Livingstone, 2011, Pages 3-10. This episode of Footnotes was a lecture produced by Frances Garrett for a 2019 University of Toronto undergraduate course called Biohacking Breath.

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for an article by Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, "Tibetan ‘wind’ and ‘wind’ illnesses: towards a multicultural approach to health and illness," Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Volume 41, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 318-324. This episode of Footnotes was a lecture produced by Frances Garrett for a 2019 University of Toronto undergraduate course called Biohacking Breath.

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for an article by Geoffrey Samuel, "Unbalanced Flows in the Subtle Body: Tibetan Understandings of Psychiatric Illness and How to Deal With It" in the Journal of Religion and Health (2019), 58(3), 770–794. This episode of Footnotes is a lecture produced by Frances Garrett for a 2019 University of Toronto undergraduate course called Biohacking Breath.

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for a chapter by Tamara Ditrich, “Mindfulness of Breathing in Early Buddhism” in Atmospheres of Breathing, edited by Lenart Škof and Petri Berndtson. SUNY Press, 2018. This episode of Footnotes was a lecture produced by Frances Garrett for a 2019 University of Toronto undergraduate course called Biohacking Breath.

A reading guide by Frances Garrett for an article by Kenneth Zysk, "Vital Breath (prāṇa) in Ancient Indian Medicine and Religion," in The Comparison Between Concepts of Life-Breath in East and West (Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on the Comparative History of Medicine - East and West, August 26-September 3, 1990), edited by Yosio Kawakita, Shizu Sakai, and Yasuo Otsuka. Ishiyaku EuroAmerica, Inc, 1995, Pages 33-66. This episode of Footnotes was a lecture produced by Frances...