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Kum Nye

There is a system of movement, both emotional and physical, that has long been a part of the Tibetan system of ritual practice, and which was codified in a usable form for Americans by Tarthang Tulku. The books I have are out of print, but I think this is the reprint here.

It’s not really yoga. You get to move around, and rather than emptying your mind, you focus on your body, and the sensations you are feeling. I seem to be a kinesthetic person, on balance, and this system works for me.

Structurally, I see it as the antidote to the false dichotomy people draw between a life of passion and life of duty. I used the metaphor earlier of living between two goal posts. This helps you float up, emotionally, and spiritually. It is the antidote to feeling trapped. It helps you draw nurturing feelings from even the most common experiences.

I would go so far as to say that if one truly “gets” what is possible here, you don’t really need to travel, to roam the world, or to live an exciting life. If you can make ALL experiences larger, then the small becomes large, larger even than the exotic is for those with neither a talent nor training for experience.

Kum Nye is a way of engendering individually useful emotional movement, in socially useful and constructive ways. This is absolutely not an athletic system. It is a system for unlocking emotions that have been trapped somewhere.

It has been immensely useful for me, so I thought I would pass this along. I feel I have mentioned it before, but who knows where or how long ago. As a general rule, I try never to discuss problems for which I have no solution. This is my recommended solution to the Romantic impulse.