Our Trip to India: Dharamsala Day 16
by Siegfried Othmer | November 7th, 2014by Siegfried Othmer, PhD
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Day 16
October 1 (Wednesday)
This day marked the beginning of the 2nd International Conference on Body, Mind, and Life. Experts had been drawn together from all of the schools of medical practice that bore a kinship or compatibility with Tibetan Medicine. Since neither Kara nor I were involved in the clinical work, we were both given courtesy admittance to the first day of the conference. The conference opened with an invitation to all of the attendees to a welcome from the Dalai Lama at his personal compound. The appointment was for nine o’clock.
Instead of waiting in the line for security, Kara and I participated in the ceremony at the monastery, circumambulating while listening to the chanting. The entire grounds, inside and outside of the sanctuary, were occupied by seated participants. Later, as all the conference speakers and guests were gathered in the antechamber, I met an acupuncturist from Germany. Upon hearing about the neurofeedback, he told me that the Chinese have been doing acupuncture on the scalp since the sixties.
At Men-Tsee-Khang they have been doing acupuncture on the scalp as well. One focus is on the crown chakra, which gave rise to the question at the course about whether that was also an important locus for us in neurofeedback. I responded that historically perhaps more neurofeedback has been done at Cz than anywhere else, since it is a part of a number of principal protocol schema. The Chinese work focused among other things on the point in the parietal region where the plates join. Yes, apparently they drive the needle right in there. Acupuncture comes closest to what we do among the skills cultivated at Men-Tsee-Khang. Consequently, it is the acupuncturists who will be most directly challenged by what we have brought, and perhaps intrigued. We’ll see how it goes.
We were ushered into a large but warmly decorated meeting room, and all of the dignitaries were seated along the sides. Then the student attendees were brought in to sit on the floor. This makes dense packing possible. When the Dalai Lama entered the room, his first impulse was to get acquainted with the visitors from various countries. Among the assembled there happened to be one person from Israel, and there was one person from Dubai. The latter then went on to say, that though she had indeed come from Dubai, she was really a Palestinian. The Dalai Lama picked up on this immediately. “You two should sit together,” he said, to the great amusement of the assembled. Logistically this was quite impossible, however, as the room was packed.
And then the Dalai Lama got right into the topics of the day: the importance of mental health to our lives as social animals, and the importance of mental processes for physical health. A healthy mind was necessary for a healthy body, but unfortunately the conditions of modern life were not favorable to the cause. It has led to the neglect of the “inner way.” He noted that ancient India gave us our gurus, not modern India.
He spoke to the issue of fear and suspicion as a disruptor, and that the cultivation of compassion was the appropriate antidote. He acknowledged that the goal of compassion indeed set a high bar. At several points, he came back to his own personal emphasis on the training of the mind. Modern neuroscience now supports the view that we can affect the brain with mere thought processes, which now placed mind-body relationships in the forefront.
Going back into history he said that early society had no concept of leadership, and then came the beginning of male dominance. Education is the means, he asserted, that will lead to a restoration of the balance. The emergence of an informed secular ethics is required as well. It is interesting to observe, in that regard, that gender equality (along with women’s suffrage in an earlier day) has been a substantially secular movement in the United States and elsewhere, in contrast to black liberation, which really arose out of the black church. With respect to gender equality, there remains an issue within the Tibetan Buddhist community as well. Nuns do not get to participate on equal terms with monks in the life of the monastery. Once practices have been sanctified by tradition, they are difficult to change.
After the Dalai Lama’s extended remarks, the audience all had to get down the hill to Men-Tsee-Khang, and by now it was pouring rain. The taxi drivers threw up their hands and eventually just refused to accept rides. It was an impossible situation, and the day’s program ended up having to be crowded into the afternoon. We heard from representatives of the principal medical disciplines that were represented. And then we also heard from Thaddeus Pace, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona, to cover Modern Psychology. His talk was mostly standard neurophysiology, with little tie-in to psychology. It could be readily agreed with and safely ignored for purposes of this conference. The talk did not eventuate in an agenda for action.
All of the speakers faced a daunting challenge: How does one speak across professional boundaries when the foundational assumptions of each discipline are so disparate? The challenges notwithstanding, the speakers left no doubt that they saw themselves at the forefront of the modern healthcare in its confrontation with chronic diseases. The advantages of Western methods when it comes to emergency medicine and the control of infection are readily granted, and these methods are propagating everywhere. Chronic degenerative conditions and diseases are quite another matter. This is where cross-disciplinary perspectives are most relevant, and where the skills of observation matter the most. These are not the strengths of Western medicine.
By the time I left the conference at a late hour, the neurofeedback systems had been deployed to their new homes within the Institute, one clinic where we were, and another clinic up at McLeod Ganj. Right in the middle of the day during the monsoon-grade rain, Sue and Barbara took two systems up the hill and had the ride of their life, including going the wrong way up a one-way street. It was nightmarish.
The placement of these four neurofeedback systems into these offices requires some description. The examination rooms sit adjacent to waiting rooms that are not regulated by appointments but by a first-come, first-served schedule. Each exam room held a desk, a file cabinet and an exam table that was petite without all the padding and adjustable settings we are accustomed to. Each room had a Tibetan thanka, a form of devotional art, but otherwise was bare of decoration and certainly had nothing that we know as routine equipment in an exam room, like a blood pressure cuff or a thermometer. Enter into these rooms a beautiful monitor and sleek laptop with amplifier and electrodes attached and it was quite a scene.
The doctors beamed with pride as the equipment was moved into their offices and everyone rallied round to admire, check the signal and polish the new goods.
In the meantime, the rest of the staff had to contend with our autistic girl by themselves when she arrived for her final session during our stay. Somehow or other, continuing progress was made with her. It strains credulity that so much could be accomplished over so little time.
So what happened with the other patients that were trained? There was one young woman in her early twenties who was unable to work due to intense headaches because of an inoperable brain growth. She had come up from New Delhi for the neurofeedback. Her training was a challenge to get right because of a susceptibility to nausea. The immediate objective was to eliminate a persistent headache without stirring up the nausea. The nausea was the first to respond, and then the headache. She felt a lot better by the end of the training. There was one torture victim from Tibet in the group, and she also felt considerably calmer and less reactive by the end. In addition, we had several cases of migraine, and these tend to respond well. No surprise there.
The gratitude from the patients was palpable. There were heartfelt goodbyes and a moving gesture on the part of one woman whose insomnia was considerably relieved. She presented each of the trainers with the graceful Tibetan honorific of laying a white scarf around the neck. So, our merry and rugged band of neurofeedback warriors, who had flown 20-plus hours, schlepped equipment through security, wrangled taxis in Delhi, trekked over goat-paths, fought off stomach bugs and worked long days, now were moved to tears…. relieved, exhausted, hopeful and deeply touched by the gesture.
In retrospect, if the attendees had only their own experience with the training to go on, they would not have been impressed. None of them had reacted particularly strongly, or disclosed any reaction. It took the observation of their own patients responding to the training to convince them of the significance of what we had brought. This opportunity does not exist in our regular courses, nor have we previously ever trained a roomful of colleagues who work with each other on a regular basis. Attendees tend to respond more strongly in our experience, not only in the US but also in Europe. This either reflects negatively on the state of disregulation that prevails in our Western societies, or it reflects positively on the lifestyles and health practices of our attendees at this course. Alternatively, it could also reflect cultural differences regarding self-disclosure. Probably all of those issues are involved—and more.
We closed out our stay with a festive evening at Serkong House. As had become customary, our group took over the kitchen and dining area. This displaced an American couple that had just arrived. The husband had just retired from a career at Wells Fargo. Both were on their way to offer their teaching services at the Tibetan Children’s Village. Just what was the occasion, they wanted to know, of their displacement from the dining room. As teachers, they were eager to learn about neurofeedback.
Yet another Vietnamese meal was served; each had been more elaborate than the one before. On this occasion, the doctors had come up from Men-Tsee-Khang to participate. Some final remarks were called for. I briefly retraced the path that led to our undertaking. All the various strands that needed to come together actually did so, and we are most grateful for all the many hearts and hands that were involved in making this happen. Looking back on the experience, it is hard to imagine anything like the success – and the enjoyment – we had without the great team that had come together for this venture. This training experience required the close one-on-one support that only a larger team could provide. And each of the four clinicians made her unique contribution. Barbara saw clearly the need to bridge the gap in how both healing communities framed the various categories of dysfunction, and we spent time defining our categories. Virginia was so stoked that she was ready to sign on for another month. She had come with the youngest constitution. Virginia also signed up to take the lead on supporting the team there with clinical consultation going forward. Evvy worked with several practitioners in her usual, quiet way, and Sue was mostly her unperturbable self throughout, bearing the ultimate responsibility for what transpired.
The meeting with the Dalai Lama was in some ways the high point of our adventure, both moving and elevating. It was a grace note on our experience. It was not in itself the most compelling moment. My brief description could not begin to inform the Dalai Lama of the larger implications of this work for our collective future. So in his response to us he was still speaking out of his existing worldview, one that had not yet shifted. And yet I believe that he is fully prepared for such a shift and would welcome it. That remains for the future.
The most satisfying aspect of our trip was the work with difficult patients under challenging conditions. With that progress, mere hope became the expectation that our work might indeed take root here within this caring community. Additionally, we had made some incredible new friends, and we expressed the hope that there might be a reunion the following year. The Research Director then spoke as well, with kindness and gratitude, qualities that seem to be in abundance in the Tibetan Buddhist community. The orientation was now to the future.
Our Trip to India Continues