Page 581 - Total War on PTSD

they still come away more aware and with healthy lifestyle tools that bring them closer to themselves, their inner self, their constitutional type, and ultimately, more confident and stronger when facing their fears.
While the United States has mostly focused on making technological advances, such as electricity, the telephone, nuclear weapons, computers, and cell phones in the last hundred years, Tibetan Buddhist scholars have concentrated on making inner developmental advances for the last thousand years. Tibetan Buddhist monks have mapped out an inner psychology or roadmap of the mind and the way in which it is intertwined with the body. This mind/body connection also shows us how to prevent mental instability as well as how to heal ourselves when we do become mentally imbalanced. This has been the foundation for great advances in our understanding of both consciousness and psychology—knowledge we are only now beginning to appreciate in the West. Tibetan Medicine provides a more holistic approach to healing the cause of the symptoms, not just the symptoms themselves. What is unique about Tibetan Medicine is that its roots are in Buddhism. Buddhist monks found that by directing the flow of their rLung, or their vital force, they were able to feel calmer. Their minds were more at peace. It has been over two thousand years since Buddha walked the earth. The religious documents of those times describe his concrete practices for a calmer mind, which later grew into larger tractates that became recipes for treating mental health. Buddhist monks often acted as the doctors in their communities, and thus evolved one of the greatest medical systems in the
581 of 1042