Perspectives on Mental Health: Sowa Rigpa and Modern Western Psychiatry

Dr. Nida Chenagtsang and Dr. Caroline Van Damme

This course consists of eight approximately 2.5-hour videos lessons co-taught by Dr. Nida Chenagtsang & Dr. Caroline Van Damme in a cross-cultural interdisciplinary dialogue on important topics in the field of mental health.

See specific topics below by expanding the "VIDEO LESSONS" section of the curriculum below.

Participants in tis course will have access to the videos for one year.

These lectures were part of the larger certificate course, Sowa Rigpa: The Foundations (Part Three), and are now available to all to audit. Some knowledge of Sowa Rigpa concepts and terminology is beneficial, but not required to watch this course.

Registration

Course curriculum

Live Online Course. Course Content Coming Soon

  • 1

    GETTING STARTED

    • Course Overview, Classroom Etiquette & Technical Requirements

    • Navigating this Online Learning Platform (Video)

    • Navigating this Online Learning Platform (PDF)
  • 2

    LIBRARY

    • Daily Medicine Buddha and Yuthok Prayers

    • Lecture Terminology and Notes

    • Slides by SRI: Psychology and Sowa Rigpa
  • 3

    VIDEO LESSONS: SOWA RIGPA AND WESTERN PSYCHIATRY

    • Class One: Attachment & Trauma

    • Class Two: Anxiety Disorders

    • Class Three: Mood Disorders

    • Class Four: Psychosis & Possession

    • Class Five: Addiction

    • Class Six: Personality Problems

    • Class Seven: Including the Family & Community

    • Class Eight: Dharma & Mental Balance

    • Open-book quiz

Instructors

Dr. Nida Chenagtsang

Dr. Nida Chenagtsang is a traditional Tibetan physician and lineage holder of the Yuthok Nyingthig, the unique Vajrayana Buddhist spiritual healing tradition of Tibetan Medicine. Born in Amdo, in North Eastern Tibet, he began his early medical studies at the local Tibetan Medicine hospital and later was awarded scholarship to enter the Lhasa Tibetan Medical University where he completed his medical education in 1996, with practical training at the Tibetan Medicine hospitals in Lhasa and Lhoka. Dr. Nida has published several books and articles on Tibetan medicine, meditation, and yoga, and his extensive research and revival of ancient Tibetan healing methods has earned him great acclaim in both East and West. Founder of the Sowa Rigpa Institute, Dr. Nida trains students in Sowa Rigpa and the Yuthok Nyingthig in over forty countries internationally.

Dr. Caroline Van Damme

Caroline Van Damme is an adult psychiatrist and family and systemic psychotherapist. In 1995, she started to study neuroscience at Brandeis University, USA, where she discovered a passion for the human mind and its relationship to the brain. She transferred to the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium to get a medical degree. She became a psychiatrist in 2008. Since then, she has been working at the “Brussels Night Hospital”, specialized in the psychosocial rehabilitation for patients suffering from chronic psychotic disorders. She shares the vision that human beings should be regarded in all their dimensions (biological, psychosocial, spiritual and ecological), rather than a purely medical dimension. In her continuous quest to better understand mental illness and the human mind in general, she met Dr Nida Chenagstang in 2019, and became very inspired by his teachings in Sowa Rigpa but in the Yuthok Nyingtik as well and decided learn those with him. She hopes to be able to include traditional, nature-based and spiritual knowledge on mental health in a modern-day medical practice.