Bathing in Herbs
Tibetan medicinal bath treatment makes it to UNESCO’S World Intangible Cultural Heritage list
Padma Yangdron’s 2019 New Year’s wish has been refined from her 2018 one. Her wish for 2018 was to have the Lum medicinal bathing of Sowa Rigpa, traditional Tibetan medicine, included in UNESCO’S World Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
This became a reality on November 28, 2018, at the 13th session of UNESCO’S Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage i n Port Louis, Mauritius, where the decision to inscribe it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity was announced.
As director of the Tibetan Medicine Hospital in Lhasa, southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, and one of the members of the application team, Padma saw the event via live broadcast and was thrilled. “It is a milestone in promoting Tibetan medicine to the world,” she told Beijing Review at a forum at the Beijing Hospital of Tibetan Medicine. “In 2019, I will work hard to protect it and promote it in various ways.”
Healing baths
Lum medicinal bath is a knowledge and practice concerning life, health, and illness prevention and treatment among the Tibetan ethnic people in China, as the application text describes.
Padma explained that in Tibetan, Lum means traditional knowledge and the practices of bathing in either natural hot springs or herbal water, or sitting in steam to adjust mind and body balance, ensure health and treat illnesses. Sowa Rigpa, the Tibetan name of the medicinal practice,