Skip to content
Kum Nyé: healing yoga?
At a time when chaos and confusion reign in daily activity, we are often too tense or saturated to enjoy life. Kum Nye will open our senses and our hearts to contentment and fulfilment and enable us to fully appreciate all aspects of our lives.
Kum refers to the body, to existence, to "taking shape". It is the space that our consciousness takes up. The greater the Kum, the greater our awareness. Nye means massage or interaction, the vital energies circulating through our body and beyond, interacting with each other.
The practice of Kum Nyé consists of stimulating the Kum through the Nyé. This means activating the self-massage of these internal energies so that they massage the experience of the body, the senses, the organs, the energies and the functioning of the mind.
Kum Nyé restores the fullness of being by integrating vibrant vitality into the body, senses and mind. This yoga is not just a set of techniques, but emerges from a global vision of the human condition.
Through Kum Nyé, we use the experience of the body to achieve perfect balance. We learn to transform one form of energy, negative, anxious, fearful, heavy, lazy, etc. into another form of energy, one of openness, fullness, confidence and vitality
This ancient mindfulness technique places particular emphasis on feeling in order to awaken the mind beyond thoughts.
It helps everyone to stop the incessant whirlwind of thoughts and emotions, and to develop inner serenity. The immune system is strengthened, emotions are calmed and the mind is calmed.
Where does Kum Nye come from?
Kum Nye Tibetan yoga is part of the lineage of spiritual and medical theory and practice linked to Tibetan medicine.
It was adapted for Westerners by Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche, head Lama of the Nyingmapa Tibetan meditation centre he founded in 1973 in Berkeley, California, to introduce and perfect the techniques of Kum Nye meditative yoga.
Tarthang Tulku Rinpoche was born in 1935 in eastern Tibet where, recognised early on as a reincarnated lama (tulku), he studied with several of the greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters of the 20th century.
The first lama of the Nyingma lineage to settle in the United States, Rinpoche has created a mandala of organisations to realise his long-term vision of preserving the Buddha's ancient teachings and transmitting them to the modern world.
He is the author of the Kum Nye bible: Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga.
But first calm
Each of the 115 Kum Nyé meditative yoga exercises begins by establishing mental calm and developing inner well-being. The aim is constantly to relax and loosen each part of the body, paying attention first to surface sensations and then to more subtle ones.
The aim is to open up to pleasant sensations and spread them throughout the body. Because feelings are not emotions, they appear before thought and are beyond thought.
This takes time because we have become accustomed to developing our intellectual capacities and cutting ourselves off from our bodies. Our task is therefore first to learn to listen, to recognise and then to decipher this body language.
The exercises are carried out quite slowly, alternating with meditations. The second stage involves integrating internal and external energies and bringing out a feeling of bliss and inner joy.
3 levels of progression
This yoga facilitates deeper and deeper degrees of relaxation and offers 3 levels of progression:
- Pacification : This is the 1st level of relaxation, when the body awakens and communicates with the mind.
- Transformation : This involves a gradual unblocking of the recurring mental patterns in our structure. These blocked energies regenerate and flow again. We feel lighter and freer inside.
- Liberation : This occurs when our true potential expresses itself freely. All residues of conditioning are transcended. There is no longer any separation or identification.
When we practise Kum Nyé, we activate the subtle body by stimulating sensations in the physical body. This bath of sensations acts like an internal massage, inducing deep physical, emotional and psychic relaxation.
Kum Nyé is a therapeutic yoga that promotes greater self-awareness. Based on gentle mobilisation exercises, it is accessible to everyone.
