Health Through Balance: An Introduction to Tibetan Medicine

Health Through Balance is an account of Tibetan medicine, Sowa Rigpa, by Dr. Yeshi Dhonden, a senior Tibetan physician who served as personal physician to the Dalai Lama, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins, a recognized academic scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. As a practitioner's own explanation of the system's core framework, including the three nyepa, lung, tripa and beken, presented through a competent academic translator, it carries strong authority as a primary account of how Tibetan medicine understands itself. Its limit is that it is an explanatory introduction by a practicing physician rather than an independent historical or clinical evaluation of Sowa Rigpa's efficacy, so a claim about the tradition's own conceptual framework is well supported here while a claim about clinical outcomes needs a source that actually tests them.