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Integrating Modern Neuroscience and Physiology with Indo-Tibetan Yogic Science

William C. Bushell

Although modern science and the Buddhist contemplative tradition arose out of quite different historical, cultural, and intellectual circumstances, I have found that they have a great deal in common . . . Buddhist practitioners familiar with the workings of the mind have long been aware that it can be transformed through training. What is exciting and new is that scientists have now shown that such mental training can also change the brain . . . so that in a real sense the brain we develop reflects the life we lead.¹

—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

One of the most important initial steps in the program of Indo-Tibetan Highest Yoga Tantra is what is referred to as “overthrowing the tyranny of ordinary appearances,” which are a major barrier to obtaining the achievements sought in this yogic system. Normally, all sentient beings are epistemologically—and, consequently, as will be seen, ontologically—bound by their erroneous but nevertheless deep-seated convictions of the limited nature of themselves and of reality in general. The antidote to the tyranny of ordinary appearances consists of the initial analytical introduction to their existence and nature, followed by the use of the Highest Yoga Tantra generation stage techniques—i.e., programmatically cultivated, developed, and enhanced multisensory, multimodal imaginational faculties—to override, “overthrow” such ordinary appearances. First is the utilization of analytic meditation to “deconstruct” the apparent independent existence, “reality,” solidity, etc., of the appearances of the phenomenal world, primarily on an abstract level, followed by the attempt to dissolve, and then finally actually to replace ordinary appearances with divine ones, on a more concrete, visceral, experiential level.

In the following analysis we can see that a disparate, somewhat widely distributed, nonunified collection of experimental studies in several subdomains of Western psychology and neuroscience provides us with one kind of basis for understanding the Indo-Tibetan yogic accounts. These studies provide empirical, experimental evidence that individuals may in fact learn, through cognitive-behavioral means involving developed use of multimodal mental imagery and other faculties, to significantly influence neural processes and functions, both of an afferent and efferent nature, in order to transform their experience of the reality of themselves and the world.² My own sense is that the Indo-Tibetan tradition has profoundly and radically developed latent faculties, such as those that can be glimpsed in the studies to be described, into a sophisticated and profound system, the components of which are articulated, integrated, unified, and highly developed into a kind of “neurotechnology” or “wetware system,” to build on Thurman’s heuristic (as presented in Thurman 1991), which has powerful transformative potential, as will be described. One analogy that comes to mind—with perhaps some irony—is to the Oriental “invention” (discovery) of gunpowder, which was not exploited, developed, and channeled into the foundation of a world-transformative military machine in the East, as it was in the West. Similarly, although many, but clearly not all, of the properties of mind cultivated in Asian yogic systems have been independently discovered in Western psychology and neuroscience, these have rarely been assembled, integrated, unified, or cultivated into the kinds of yogic systems found in the East, of which the Indo-Tibetan is one of the most advanced.

The common denominator of these studies, which have been conducted in different labs over decades and which involve the full range of sensory modalities, is the demonstration that sensory perceptual functions can be significantly, even dramatically, altered on a fundamental neurophysiological level through cognitivebehavioral means, including the use of mental imagery and induction of highly absorbed states (i.e. “altered states of consciousness” induced through meditation and hypnosis/self-hypnosis). In the present context, Western experimental psychology and neuroscientific studies of meditation and hypnosis/self-hypnosis are considered under one rubric, owing to important neurophysiological, neuroanatomical, and phenomenological similarities between them, the full discussion of which is outside the scope of this essay.³ Some of the studies to be described have looked explicitly at practitioners of Indo-Tibetan and other forms of Asian meditation techniques, while others have looked at the use of mental imagery and/or hypnotic/self-hypnotic phenomena in Western experimental subjects possessing various levels of ability with respect to these phenomena (e.g., excellent versus ordinary imagers; high versus low hypnotizable subjects).

This analysis focuses on certain key aspects of three phases of Highest Yoga Tantra practice relevant to the overthrowing of ordinary appearances: the voluntary use of meditative techniques to “dissolve” the ordinary sense of self; the substitution of divine for ordinary appearances of self and other (world); and the beginnings of transformation to the “divine” (if nevertheless metaphysically contingent) sense of self, through the further practice of deity yoga and gtummo yoga meditation, with these terms to be described.⁴ While there is an appreciable number of variations in these meditations according to different lineages and teachers, and because of a number of other factors, the primary contours of the present description are relevant to many if not most forms of tantric meditation, including the Kālacakra.⁵ In the first phase, the practitioner employs analytic meditation on emptiness of self and other to form the foundation for the more experientially-oriented meditation to follow; here one seeks to obtain a raw feel sense of selflessness as well as an experience of the dissolution of the solidity of the outside world. In the next phase, one attempts to utilize multimodal mental imagery in close conjunction with states of absorption induced through meditation to create the experience of the reconstitution of self and world (deity yoga, maṇḍala yoga) as divine. In the third phase, the yoga known as gtummo or “inner fire” is practiced, in order to further transform the practitioner on a fundamental level into one who is more capable of achieving the higher goals of the yogic program (see Note 5).

Dissolution of Ordinary Self

Two recent neuroimaging studies of Tibetan meditators specifically engaging in self-dissolution meditation provide neurophysiological results which are consistent with the phenomenological claims of the tradition. In the first study, a single-case electroencephalographic (EEG) study of an advanced, long-term meditator recorded brain activity during four meditation forms, including self-dissolution. According to the investigators:

Involvement of the right prefrontal cortex in the meditative state of self-dissolution is intriguing in light of recent evidence from functional neuroimaging and human lesion studies indicating an important role of this region in self-consciousness. . . . Right prefrontal activation has been reported during tasks involving self-recognition, autobiographical retrieval, and self-evaluation. . . . Also, lesions to the right fronto-temporal cortex have led in some cases to the experience of cognitive detachment from self . . . , cannabinol-induced depersonalization has been found to be associated with right anterior frontal activation . . . , and comparable results have been reported in psychiatric depersonalization experiences. . . .⁶

In the other study, eight experienced practitioners of Tibetan Buddhist meditation performed similar self-dissolution-style meditation while assayed for brain activity with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), demonstrating similar results. In particular, the SPECT revealed alterations in areas of the brain important for the spatial orientation of the self, within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. This region is of particular significance in terms of the integration of sensory data into the sense of self and its actual physical sense of “substance” and boundaries with the outside world.⁷

Clearly, these two studies provide neurobiological data which is consistent with the accounts of the phenomenological characterizations of these practices of the Highest Yoga Tantra traditions. Not only is the general sense of self apparently affected by the meditation practice, but in particular the spatial sense of self, in some ways perhaps the most visceral dimension of the experience of self, also appears to be profoundly affected. Moreover, some of the key meditational instructions focus explicitly on the spatial component of the self. According to one translated account of the writings on this topic by Tsongkhapa, one of the major figures in the history of Tibetan Buddhism:

The special application [in this meditation] is to concentrate on the body from the tip of the head to the soles of the feet, as being utterly empty of material substance, like an empty transparent balloon filled with light. Place the mind firmly and clearly on this image. . . . Here the body is to be envisioned as being entirely without substance. . . .⁸

Substitution of Divine for Ordinary Appearances, Self and Other (Deity and Mandala)

The research to be reviewed here includes studies conducted primarily on the neurophysiological dimension of mental imagery in two main types of subjects, those with unusual abilities to generate vivid mental images (eidetic imagers), and those high in hypnotizability. In fact, it is frequently the case that superior imagers are also high in hypnotizability. Nevertheless, in the present context it is important to point out that, through training and practice, it is possible for individuals to increase both their imagery ability and their hypnotizability—that is, their ability to enter, deepen, and otherwise enhance states of altered consciousness which are often referred to in psychology, neurology, anthropology, and religious studies as trance states.⁹ It is for this reason that the Indo-Tibetan yoga tradition emphasizes training and practice in imagery and trance-based, or samādhi, meditation. These studies will, in toto, demonstrate in empirical and experimental terms how, through the utilization of techniques to enhance imagery and trance ability, individuals may actually control sensory-perceptual functioning, and override¹⁰ sensations and percepts with voluntary, self-induced mental images, by substituting the latter for the former, in a process consistent with the claims of Indo-Tibetan deity and maṇḍala yoga meditation.

In one of the most impressive of these studies, subjects who were highly proficient in mental imagery or visualization (eidetic imagers) were actually able to control, to a large degree, the most fundamental level of neurosensory response to sensory stimuli (within the experimental setting). Specifically, eidetic imagers instructed “to see” red while viewing green light flashes, were able to see red despite the presence of green light flashed directly onto the retina, according to electroretinogram (ERG) recordings. The ERG records the light wave form on the retina itself, and each color possesses its own particular wave form. Eidetic imagers were able to transform the actual retinal response to light, both in trials to see red when green light was flashed on the retina, and, conversely, in trials to see green when red light was flashed on the retina! Control subjects, individuals not proficient in mental imagery, were not able to do so.¹¹

In related studies, the hypnosis researcher David Spiegel of Stanford University instructed highly hypnotizable subjects to perceive an obstruction in the front of the visual stimulus (an object) presented to their eyes. Electrophysiological recordings of the sensory cortex of these highly hypnotizable subjects demonstrated reduction in the fundamental sensory perceptual process when the hypnotically hallucinated obstruction was viewed. In these experiments, it was as if the visual stimulus had disappeared, as in a so-called “negative hallucination.” Moreover, the design of the study excluded the possibility that subjects closed or otherwise averted their eyes; control subjects, low hypnotizable subjects, were unable to allow the instructions to cause an obstruction in their visual processing.¹² In another related study conducted by a team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell, highly hypnotizable subjects were instructed “to see” gray when color was presented to their eyes, and to see color when gray was presented, in separate trials, along with normal trials (i.e., see gray during presentation of gray, see color during presentation of color), during positron emission tomography (PET) scanning. The results of this study were in line with the results of these other studies: instructions to see color resulted in activation in the classic color area of the brain (the fusiform area) regardless of the visual stimulus, while conversely, instructions to perceive gray during the presentation of color resulted in decreased activation in the fusiform color area of the visual cortex.¹³

Similar results have been found in experimental psychology studies involving the other sensory modalities. A recent study of the sense of hearing found that highly hypnotizable subjects (nonschizophrenic) who reported possessing the ability to hallucinate sounds during hypnosis/self-hypnosis did in fact demonstrate patterns of brain area activation identical to those associated with actual hearing, as assessed by positron emission tomography. When the subjects simply imagined hearing, there was no activation of the central nervous system (CNS) auditory center, nor was there activation in control subjects who did not possess the hypnotic hallucination capacity but who attempted to hallucinate while hypnotized.¹⁴

Somatosensory modalities, or tactile sensation, may also be significantly influenced by imaginational functioning enhanced through cognitive behavioral techniques such as hypnosis and guided imagery. Again, the hypnosis researcher Spiegel demonstrated that highly hypnotizable subjects could block bodily sensations through somatosensory hallucinations as measured by electroencephalographic (event-related potential) means, which control subjects were unable to do. Conversely, these subjects were also capable of intensifying their attention to the somatosensory stimuli, thereby increasing somatic sensation (hyperesthesia), as reflected in brain electrophysiological recordings (and see below).¹⁵ More recently, other researchers replicated the results of Spiegel’s study, demonstrating that good hypnotic subjects, but not control subjects, could block the effects of painful stimulation to the body by focusing intently on an obstructive image during hypnosis, as measured by the same basic electroencephalographic means.¹⁶ While these two studies focused on cutaneous sensory and nociceptive stimulation, other research has demonstrated that hypnosis and imagery could block visceral sensation, such as in the case of pediatric cancer patients who successfully prevented nausea in response to chemotherapy (and see below).¹⁷

And finally, hypnosis and imagery have been found to produce similar effects with the other sense modalities, both gustatory and olfactory. Good hypnotic subjects have claimed that they could substitute enjoyable tastes for unpleasant ones (e.g., the taste of water for tart or sour flavors), and these claims have in fact been supported by interview data, salivation measures, and other data from experimental psychology studies.¹⁸ Similarly, results of a study investigating the widely claimed hypnotic anosmia phenomenon—exemplified in such stage hypnosis demonstrations as, for example, the hypnotic suggestion to perceive the odor of ammonia as that of a rose—produced electroencephalographic results that were interpreted by investigators as consistent with such claims.¹⁹

In summary, it can be seen that cognitive-behavioral techniques, based on heightened imagery and absorption ability, can actually override—which includes negating and substituting—sensory-perceptual functioning on a fundamental neurophysiological level across sensory modalities, in line with the claims of Indo-Tibetan Highest Yoga Tantra. While inherent abilities were important in these studies—conducted with excellent hypnotic subjects and excellent, including eidetic, imagers, in comparison to control groups which were not composed of individuals with such inherent abilities—the literature on enhancing hypnotic and imagery ability provides evidence that individuals may nevertheless significantly improve these abilities (see note 9). It can be extrapolated from this data that it would be possible to utilize the abilities revealed by these studies to mobilize them more comprehensively, forcefully, and systematically in order to accomplish the goals of deity and maṇḍala yoga meditation, i.e., to substitute “divine” for ordinary appearances, as one could substitute the imagined sensation and perception of green for red, or color for gray, or an absence for a presence (in visual as well as somatosensory terms), etc., as demonstrated in these experimental studies. The texts on these yogas point out that such techniques initially produce effects that may seem artificial but are nevertheless to be considered, to be experienced as, the similitude or approximation of the sensation, perception, and consciousness of a Buddha. In other words, through imaginational faculties that are highly developed through integrating them with the faculty of intense absorption (trance or samadhi) during repeated meditational practice, one may begin to get a visceral, tangible sense, on a fundamental sensory-perceptual level, of how a Buddha experiences the same phenomenal ground of existence in completely opposite ways as do unenlightened beings.

Moreover, these studies suggest that the entire sensorium of humans is amenable to neurosensory modification, which is potentially profound and which may offer—viscerally, palpably, and fundamentally—a sense of the potential for transformation which is compatible with, yet phenomenologically beyond, abstraction and philosophy. In addition, the nature of such meditative states allows for the simultaneous apperception of phenomena as imbued with sensory qualities, whether these are voluntarily or involuntarily “fabricated,” while the notion of their ultimate emptiness —the Whiteheadian “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” in Western philosophy of science terms—is maintained.²⁰ In the next and final section of this essay we shall briefly consider how such neurophysiological potentials for transformation of afferent processes may be relevant for transformation of efferent neurophysiological potentials as well.

gTummo Yoga and Transformation in Highest Yoga Tantra

In the previous section, evidence was reviewed concerning the use of cognitivebehavioral means (mental imagery, trance induction techniques) to influence the fundamental functioning of afferent neurosensory circuits across sensory modalities, which in turn influence the phenomenological state of the individual. In this section we briefly consider²¹ the possibility that individuals may also influence efferent neural functions to create desired changes in the body, centrally and peripherally, specifically in the Highest Yoga Tantra context. In fact, the research team of Benson and colleagues from Harvard found that through the multisensory imagination of warmth in tissues of the body during gtummo meditation, warmth in fact was measurably produced in those tissues (up to 8.3 degrees C in peripheral skin temperature) in three experienced Tibetan gtummo practitioners.²² This experimental data is consistent with a body of studies demonstrating that subjects in Western experimental research may also increase (and decrease) tissue temperature through the use of hypnosis and mental imagery.²³ Preliminary data suggest that states of focused absorption on multisensory mental images of heat localized to areas of the body influence efferent nerves to dilate the blood vessels to which they are connected, thereby increasing local tissue temperature through increased blood flow.

In fact, one of the phenomena recorded by several observers of gtummo practice is the dramatic demonstration of heat production, as allegedly manifested by the drying of ice-cold wet sheets draped over the body, complete with the rapid, visible evaporation of water vapor (“steaming”) from the sheets,²⁴ as well as the melting of snow around the practitioner.²⁵ While gtummo meditation texts mention the benefit of this warmth for practitioners living in the cold Himalayan climate, as Thurman points out,²⁶ this is really a subsidiary purpose of the meditation; the more important function of the meditation is to learn how to control this heat and to direct it into the central channel of the body in order to induce the experience of bliss.

One way to interpret this proposed phenomenon in terms of the present explanatory framework is to understand the heat in the Indo-Tibetan model as, among other things, the heat associated with increased blood flow. In general, increased blood flow leads to increased local tissue temperature, and increased blood flow to the brain, in fact, can be produced through mental imagery of increased warmth directed to the brain. In fact, the same is true for mental imagery which is directed to other tissues and organs of the body, including the deep tissues which have been investigated.²⁷ In particular, mental imagery of warmth has been found to increase blood flow to the gonads, the spinal column, and abdominal structures, as well as the brain (see Note 27): in short, in the present context, to structures which are found along the axis of the central channel.

Since the winds described in the Highest Yoga Tantra systems can be understood as constructs which include blood flow, metabolically generated heat, and similar physiological processes,²⁸ the directing of these winds into the central channel and particularly the highest station along the central channel, the crown (sahasrāra) cakra, can also be potentially understood in terms of the directing of blood flow, and hence of local, metabolically based activation, to organs located along the central axis of the body, including the brain.

Meditation in general is also associated with increased blood flow to the brain, and euphoric or euphoria-like meditation, in particular, is associated with further increased cortical blood flow, as reflected in increased cortical electrical activity.²⁹ In fact, the study of Benson et al. on the gtummo meditators found fast or beta EEG in both the yogis tested electroencephalographically during the gtummo state, which the yogis claimed to be euphoric or “blissful.” In one case, the yogis’ metabolism increased during the gtummo state; and in the other, the yogi’s metabolism decreased profoundly during the gtummo state, by 45-64%, which is actually within the range of hibernating animals.³⁰ Both of these metabolic changes may be consistent with the Tibetan yogic claims for the gtummo meditation, however. In the case of the latter yogi, his overall metabolism was reduced while his cerebral metabolism, as reflected in the EEG activation, was increased. This could be the case if the winds (or metabolic activation, in one sense) had been withdrawn from the periphery—which would result in reduced metabolism in the peripheral tissues—and directed to the central channel, where they would then, according to the system, be directed upwards to the sahasrāra cakra and activate a blissful state, associated with increased cerebral metabolism. In the case of the other yogi, according to the detailed description of the gtummo process given in the texts, the withdrawal of winds and the directing of them into and up the central channel may also be accompanied by the repeated production and release of heat back into the body. Both phenomena, reduced and increased heat (as in metabolic activation) in the body outside of the central channel, are described as occurring during the course of gtummo practice (such as, for example, in Mullin 1996, pp. 68 and 158). And while several different forms of meditation produce electrocortical activation characterized by euphoric or euphoria-like affective states, it is extremely intriguing to consider that gtummo meditation may represent the voluntary ability to control efferent neural functions in order to produce certain metabolic and psychological effects in the body, as they are described in Highest Yoga Tantra. Future collaborative research, as has been advocated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and others, might provide further insight into these and other important subjects, including even the subject of the highest goals of Indo-Tibetan yogic practice.

Endnotes

1. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, from the foreword of Begley, Sharon. 2006. Train Your Mind Change Your Brain. New York: Ballantine Books.

2. This analysis is offered in the context of the Dalai Lama’s suggestion of collaborative endeavors between Indo-Tibetan yogic science and Western neuroscience and physiology, as represented by His comments offered at the recent Society for Neuroscience Meetings in Washington, DC (2005), for example. Afferent functions are those sensory processes that relay incoming information to central processing brain centers, while efferent processes produce behavioral and physiological responses to the incoming stimulation.

3. In-depth discussions of these similarities are found in Grant and Rainville 2005; Cahn and Polich 2006; Bushell 1995: 563ff.; Bushell 2005.

4. The discussion is based primarily on the following sources for the Indo-Tibetan practices: Thurman 1984, 1991, 1995; Cozort 1986; Yeshe, T. 1987, 1998; Gyatso and Hopkins 1989; Powers 1995; Gyatso, T. 1992; Gyatso, K. 1991; Mullin 1991, 1996; Sopa et al. 1985.

5. Although not all forms of meditation and practice for all traditions and lineages are described in the present essay; see sources in note 4 for more comprehensive descriptions.

6. Lehmann et al. 2001: 119. The psychiatric term “depersonalization” refers to an acute experiential sense of the unreality of self. In the present context, I do not believe that the Buddhist sense of unreality of self is psychopathological; however, I believe that the neuroanatomical data is significant in terms of what brain locations are involved with the fundamental sense of self, in an important sense perhaps independently of issues of psychopathology.

7. Newberg et al. 2001; on the neurophysiological basis of the sense of “substance” or “physical presence” of the sense of self, see the most impressive analyses of Antonio Damasio, in particular, for example, Damasio 2003.

8. Mullin 1996: 136.

9. On the association of imagery (including eidetic imagery) with hypnotizability, see Kosslyn et al. 2000; Crawford et al. 1986, and Lynn and Rhue 1986. On the improvability of hypnosis and imagery abilities, see LaBaw 1969; Gfeller et al. 1987; Kunzendorf 1984, and references therein. Some techniques of imagery enhancement are based on hypnotic age-regression techniques, in which aspects of childhood psychology are putatively restored, including eidetic imagery (which is actually found more in children than adults), enhanced suggestibility, enhanced learning ability, as well as the enhanced ability to enter trance-like states of absorption. I believe it is this set of proclivities that is sought in the Kalacakra initiations that are focused on childhood; see Gyatso and Hopkins 1989: 68ff., “Seven initiations in the pattern of childhood.” In addition, “sensory deprivation”—or what has now come to be referred to as “restricted environmental stimulation” (REST) has been found to enhance one’s ability to experience trance-like states of absorption, as well as vivid imagery (e.g., see Barabasz 1982), and I also believe that this inherent relationship between absorption, imagery, and “REST” is one of the major reasons for an emphasis on solitary retreat in Tibetan yogic practice, including, in particular, its emphasis in Kālacakra practice (for emphasis on “dark retreat” in Kālacakra practice, see Cozort 1986: 124ff.; also on REST in the ascetico-meditational context in general, see Bushell 1995).

10. Kosslyn et al.’s (2000) term.

11. Kunzendorf 1984.

12. Spiegel 1985, 2003; and see also Lamas and Valle-Inclan 1998.

13. Kosslyn et al. 2000.

14. Szechtman et al. 1998.

15. Spiegel et al. 1989; and see Spiegel 2003.

16. DePascalis and Cacace 2005.

17. Redd and Andrykowski 1982; Dadds et al. 1997.

18. Anbar 2002; Barber et al. 1964; London and Cooper 1969.

19. Barabasz and Lonesdale 1983.

20. In Bushell, in preparation, I review the data on “trance logic”—a kind of logic discovered serendipitously in experimental studies of hypnosis/self-hypnosis, in which subjects in trance can simultaneously maintain two or more disparate positions, without cognitive dissonance, and other relevant topics, including the complementary practices of dream yoga. In this context, in dream yoga, the “phenomenal ground” of the dream world is initially experienced as involuntarily fabricated, while after some practice and proficiency, one begins to experience some control over these fabrications. Hence, deity/mandala meditation, and dream yoga, act then in complementary fashion, coming from “opposite” directions on the consciousness continuum from the poles of waking and dreaming, to demonstrate to the practitioner the constructedness and absence of actual solidity, of the referents of perception, whether in dreaming or waking consciousness. Not so incidentally, it should be noted that, based on decades of intensive research, one of the major figures in modern/postmodern neuroscience, Rodolfo Llinas, has concluded that the neurophysiology of waking and dreaming states of consciousness is essentially identical, with the sole exception being that the source of stimulation during dreaming is essentially internal, while the source of stimulation during waking consciousness is essentially external (e.g., Llinas and Ribary 1993; see also LaBerge et al. 1986). On Tibetan dream yoga see Varela et al. 1997; Wangyal 1998. .

21. This subject is also discussed in greater detail in Bushell, in preparation.

22. Benson et al. 1982.

23. E.g., see references in Kunzendorf 1984; Barabasz 1982.

24. Benson et al. 1982; David-Neel 1989. Benson et al. filmed the sheet-drying exercise, in which the gtummo-induced evaporation of water vapor was visible.

25. See White 1979.

26. Thurman 1991: 72.

27. See Luthe 1971; Ulrich et al. 1987; Muck-Weymann et al. 1998; review of these and other studies in Bushell, in preparation.

28. E.g.: “The yogas of . . . Highest Yoga Tantra are performed in order to control ‘winds,’ or vital energies. In Buddhist physiology, the winds are not merely moving air, but are the vital energies that cause all movement by and within the body, such as muscular movement, the circulation of blood and lymph, . . . and so forth,” Cozort 1986: 42.

29. See studies in Das and Gastaut 1955; Banquet 1973; Lutz et al. 2004.

30. Which provides support for the claims emanating from South and Central Asia for centuries, of the ability of advanced yogis to enter hibernation-like states in which bodily functions appear to be profoundly suppressed. A new model assembles considerable physiological data consistent with these accounts, which also have important implications for related claims of the potential for extended longevity in such practitioners; see Bushell and Olivo, in press.

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