Sowa Rigpa — the Tibetan system translated as 'the science of healing' — integrates elements of Indian Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, and indigenous Tibetan healing within a distinctly Buddhist framework that treats body, mind, and spirit as inseparable. Its diagnostic methods (pulse reading, urine analysis, and detailed questioning) and its herbal pharmacopeia are sophisticated systems developed over a millennium and still practiced by trained physicians. What distinguishes Sowa Rigpa is its explicit attention to the role of mental afflictions — desire, aversion, and delusion — as root causes of physical disease.
Each step builds on the last.