18/05/2026
TGSS speaker for this Thursday 21st of May @ 5pm BST is
Tawni Tidwell PhD TMD, Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison : "Investigating the Embodiment of Liberation: Transdisciplinary Research of the Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditation"
The seminar will take place on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87019084905?pwd=RfZnkzsNN2yglT5Aot9fu9RlF4qzhw.1
This event is open to all. Please do forward this email to anyone who you think may be interested.
Abstract: Tukdam (Tib. thugs dam) is a meditative state achieved at death in which practitioners exhibit a persistence of subtle consciousness from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective and an attenuated and altered morphochronology in the postmortem period among other signs. In the current investigation through the Tukdam Project guided by His Holiness the Dalai Lama since 2013, an international collaboration of neuroscientists, anthropologists and forensic specialists from University of Wisconsin-Madison and Russian Academy of Sciences, Tibetan medical and biomedical physicians, and Tibetan Buddhist monastics document tukdam states among Tibetan communities in India often extending for weeks. The study has provided a collaborative context to link biomarkers and perceptual cues from these two distinct intellectual traditions—the Euroamerican biomedical and scientific tradition on one hand and the Tibetan Buddhist and medical tradition on the other—to investigate the materialities of consciousness and the processes of life in suspension with death. Individuals in such states are most often practitioners of the major Vajrayana Buddhist deity practice cycles with both extended and abbreviated tukdam states reported across all schools for a wide variety of practice styles and approaches. This talk will explore general elements of the practices and qualities of the tukdam state through the lens of embodiment and the “marks” of consciousness from these two distinct intellectual traditions. The talk will explore potential implications of the epistemological approaches to the signs and expressions of consciousness, tukdam, and other remarkable expressions of dying, transcendence and realization.
Bio: Dr. Tawni Tidwell is a biocultural anthropologist and doctor of Tibetan medicine (Kachupa degree), the first non-Asian to have formally completed her Tibetan medical education in a Tibetan institution in Tibetan language alongside Tibetan peers. Dr. Tidwell trained at Men- Tsee-Khang in north India and at Sorig Loling Tibetan Medical College of Qinghai University in eastern Tibet. Her doctoral work combined insights from contemporary neuroscience, Buddhist epistemology, and biocultural anthropology to understand how Tibetan physicians learn to embody diagnostic practices, particularly for cancer and metabolic disorders. Currently, she serves as Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Healthy Minds of University of Wisconsin-Madison where her work facilitates bridges across the Western scientific tradition and Tibetan medical and contemplative traditions along with their attendant epistemologies and ontologies. She is one of three Principal Investigators for the Tukdam Project, also known as the Field Study of the Physiology of Meditation Practitioners and the Tukdam Meditative State, guided by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in collaboration with Tibetan Buddhist monastic and Tibetan medical colleagues in India as well as the Russian Academy of Sciences and India’s National Institute for Mental Health and Neuro Science (NIMHANS) with over 65 team members. Dr. Tidwell is also Principal Investigator for North American Covid-19 Tibetan Medicine Observational Study (NACTMOS) that tracked outcomes for mild- and medium- severity patients with Covid-19 treated exclusively with Tibetan medicine; and for the Mind & Life Institute Varela Grant-funded Study on Examining Individual Differences in Contemplative Practice Response (ExamID-Biome), which assessed variation in meditation outcomes as it relates to gut microbiome profiles and Tibetan medical constitutional characteristics. She maintains a private clinical practice in Madison, Wisconsin.
