The Meditation Pharmacy with Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa

Wynn: Can we describe you as a mystic as well as a medical doctor?

Khalsa: What is a mystic?

Wynn: I would define a mystic as someone who has a sense of the higher powers that are always involved in mundane life.

Khalsa: I would say okay.

I am basically someone who is on a path of self-development, and I do a lot of yoga, meditation, prayer, and spiritual practice. It all goes toward the final goal of liberation, which means that we are one with God when we're alive — we don't have to have a near-death experience to see the Light, and we're living as elevated as we can possibly be in the real world. This also means that we live a healthy life.

It's my belief and the belief of my teacher, Yogi Bhajan, that we're born as human beings to be healthy, happy, and holy. We can live all those three things with regular spiritual practice, and live in a way that also serves other people — and by doing so, we clean up our karma and we live our dharma, so that we liberate ourselves while we're alive. We're with God while we're alive. And when we die, there's no concept of worrying about coming back. We just merge with the Infinite.

If that's being a mystic, then okay.

Wynn: When you were a young man, before you met Yogi Bhajan, were you brought up with these kinds of concepts, or did they come to you later?

Khalsa: I wasn't brought up with it, but I remember being about eight or nine years old and standing on the corner at 75th and Collins in Miami Beach, Florida, watching the ocean. Then I looked up at a bank building, and became mesmerized for some reason by the clock on the bank. Maybe I went into a hypnotic trance. I remember thinking, ''What's this all about? Why am I here?''

So I guess I've had these mystical experiences — or whatever you want to call them. This incident was the first time I had thoughts like that.

When I was young I spent a lot of time alone because I was raised by a single mother who was often gone. In my solitude, I would have these meditative experiences where I felt there was something beyond life.

Wynn: How did you meet Yogi Bhajan?

Khalsa: I first met Yogi Bhajan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when I was taking yoga classes. Then later that year, in November, I attended a White Tantric yoga class which Yogi Bhajan was teaching — and for the first time, I put on a turban.

I then took one of his advanced classes, and met him personally during a break. He gave me my spiritual name then — and in that moment I had a realization. It's not as though I had a near-death experience or a past-life experience, but a future-life experience. I ''saw'' what I could do with my life. I realized that instead of using powerful anesthetic drugs to put people to sleep, I could use the new techniques I was learning to help people wake up — and heal in their body, mind, and spirit.

I decided, right at that moment, that I would make this change and would go on the meditative path. I would go into medicine and try to teach people about this path.

It took me about twenty years to get to the point where I could evolve and write a book like Meditation As Medicine, and put it all into practice. It didn't happen overnight. Everyone has their own healing path.

Wynn: Wasn't Meditation As Medicine actually your third book?

Khalsa: Yes. Brain Longevity, The Pain Cure, and Meditation As Medicine.

Wynn: Meditation As Medicine talks about using various mantras that can have an effect on the body and heal the body. Are these mantras ones that you learned from Yogi Bhajan? Do they come from a long Sikh or yogic tradition?

Khalsa: It's a yogic tradition. They have been passed down through a Golden Chain of teachers going back thousands of years. Yogi Bhajan is the latest manifestation of the teachings of those teachers. The tradition used to be taught secretly from master to student, and a master would have only two students. Yogi Bhajan's teacher here on the physical plane had two students: Yogi Bhajan, and a man called Lama Lidlan Po from Tibet. Lidlan Po died, and Yogi Bhajan became the Mahan Tantric, which is the highest living yoga master in the world, according to this concept.

Yogi Bhajan came to the United States in 1969 and decided to teach these secret things openly, which was totally unheard of at that time and violated the ancient tradition. His life was threatened for revealing these techniques openly, but he had a passion to contribute to mankind. He said that man was in a desert. ''Why shouldn't I give him a drink?'' So Yogi Bhajan changed the ancient tradition. You would no longer have to be your guru's servant for 20 years, or something like that. You could just come to a class, and he would teach it. And that's how I got introduced to it.

Wynn: Who threatened him?

Khalsa: It was people who were involved in these teachings in India, people who said that you just shouldn't share these teachings openly, especially to ''unworthy Americans.'' Americans didn't deserve to have these sacred teachings. It used to be called the Ancient Secret Sacred Science. And he broke that tradition; but obviously, he never was killed. I think they've gotten over it.

Wynn: So in your book Meditation as Medicine are you repeating what you've learned from Yogi Bhajan?

Khalsa: Yes. It's undiluted. As a doctor with a strong Western background, as well as having studied these Eastern perspectives, I learned that a body can heal itself if we give it a chance. We don't very often give it a chance. As a doctor I can say without hesitation that meditation is our most powerful form of healing medicine.

Everyone knows that TM, basic relaxation response, all kinds of meditation, are very useful. In fact, research has shown with every single illness that has been studied that meditation has a healing effect. Meditation has been shown to heal the body, mind, and spirit.

And meditation as medicine — or what I call Medical Meditation — goes up to another level. It's not one-size-fits-all. There are specific techniques for specific problems or ailments, such as aging, menopause, heart disease, high blood pressure, anxiety, heart problems, etc. For just about every ailment, there is a specific meditation as taught by Yogi Bhajan. And basically, what I've done is catalog them, and added my own experience. They are prescriptive in a similar way to drugs, because if you've got a heart problem, you're not going to be treated with a drug for your liver. If you have a liver problem, you're not going to be treated for something for your bladder, and vice versa.

Medical Meditations incorporate what I call the Five Unique Attributes. You mentioned one of these: the mantra. We also have breath, certain postures, mudras (fingertip or hand positions), and a special focus of concentration for each meditation. All of this acts on the physical body and the ethereal body to change the energy flows, get certain glandular systems secreting, and bring blood flow to certain areas.

Wynn: Could you explain why they work? Is there a scientific explanation?

Khalsa: Well, there are a lot of them. It's been studied to show that even after one session there is a condition created called ''self efficacy,'' which means that the person gets the feeling that something is working. So they stick with it — and that's important. Last week's Newsweek magazine had an article that described how, with meditation, various neural pathways are activated depending on the meditation that's done. Aspects and parts of the nervous system and brain are stimulated very specifically with Medical Meditation.

Another study that's been done recently shows that by using certain sounds from these teachings, not only can you globally activate the whole brain, but also you can direct energy to specific parts of the brain. For example when the hippocampus — the memory section of the brain, also known to be a relay station for spirituality — is stimulated, the various neural pathways activated give people the feeling of transcendence, oneness, or universality.

The sounds produced by the meditations have certain correlations to acupuncture. There are 84 meridians in the roof of the mouth which are touched by the tongue and vibrated by the sounds. Certain permutations send signals to the command centers of the brain — the hypothalamus, and the pituitary, primarily, and also to the pineal gland. These centers can then orchestrate a healing response and send out packets of information in the form of neurotransmitters and chemicals, in the brain and throughout the body.

This is well studied. For example, Dr. Candice Pert wrote a book called Molecules Of Emotion which explains this whole deal. These chemical packets of information travel through the body. So if there's a problem in the liver, somehow the information ends up there and reduces inflammation — or whatever the situation is. So that's the way it works with the mantras.

These techniques also change the ethereal system, the so-called chakras. The chakras are associated with psychological and physical correlates as well as glands and organs. So you're balancing the energy that way. Mantras are only one of the five meditative ''attributes.'' The yogic postures also work to increase blood flow to certain areas. The mudras — the fingertip positions — light up the motor sensory areas. When you touch your fingers in certain permutations or certain sequences, certain parts of the brain are stimulated, and this brings increased blood glucose and oxygen to the brain. This creates a healing mode, which then helps heal the body, because the body, the mind, and the spirit are all connected. They are all one.

Wynn: How long has Meditation As Medicine been out?

Khalsa: Since February of this year, 2001.

Wynn: Have you gotten any feedback yet from strangers who have successfully utilized the techniques in your book?

Khalsa: I just got one the other day. Someone who bought the book for their father reported that the father, using the techniques in the book, lowered his blood pressure down to normal and cut his medicines in half. The medications had been really bothering him, making him drowsy and dizzy, and causing inpotence. He's starting to get his energy back, and his blood pressure is staying down naturally.

We've had many other success stories. I came out of an airplane and a woman came up to me who read my book and heard me speak and said she was an ex fibromyalgia patient. She said she had used my meditation for it and now she was free of the pain.

I've gotten a lot of feedback and it's all been positive.

Wynn: What are some of the other kinds of conditions that Medical Meditation seems to work best for?

Khalsa: Everything that's been described in the book. The only prerequisite is that the person has to do it. I'm not saying that Medical Meditation cures cancer — but we've seen that people tolerate chemotherapy better, have less nausea, and are in a better mood. If it's possible to activate the innate healing powers of the body and stimulate the immune system, Medical Meditation will do that.

I have a patient right now, in New Mexico, who has metastatic melanoma, who's done much better than was expected, just by using a certain healing meditation.

Another man had positive results with polymyocitis, a muscle-wasting disease almost like muscular dystrophy. When I first met him, six years ago, he was supposed to be dead in six months, whether or not he stayed on the prednisone steroids. He chose to come off the steroids. He said, ''If I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die off these medications.'' I taught him a certain meditation from the book, called the Meditation to Heal Self and Others. He's been doing it every day since, and he's still around.

Wynn: So you're working actively with these techniques in your own practice.

Khalsa: Yes. I just did a workshop at a health spa this past weekend for people who had issues about cognitive problems. And I did one three weeks ago with people who had all types of problems — chronic fatigue, psychological problems, breast cancer, and the like.

Wynn: Didn't you found an Alzheimer's institute?

Khalsa: Yes, the Alzheimer's Prevention Foundation. It's primarily an educational organization, but I work with people all the time in a clinical setting who have cognitive decline of all types — subjective feelings that their brains are not working, AAMI (which is just getting older), mild cognitive impairment (which is dense, short-term memory loss), early Alzheimer's, and Alzheimer's. These people have been told by their conventional doctors that nothing can be done. But we've shown that there are things that can be done, by following what you might call a holistic approach.

Wynn: Are you using the techniques in Meditation As Medicine with these folks?

Khalsa: There are a couple of techniques for cognitive disabilities in that book, but the ones that are specific for the brain are in my earlier book Brain Longevity.

Wynn: If someone is seeing a medical doctor about some kind of condition, and they read your book, how should they relate to their medical doctor?

Khalsa: I'm not saying stop medicine. I wouldn't tell someone to go to their doctor and tell him they're not going to take the medicine that was recommended, I won't be coming to see you anymore because I'm doing meditation as medicine. I would just say that I had found this book, and there have been a lot of studies that show the benefits of meditation. Most doctors know about the benefits of meditation regarding stress reduction, which alone can reduce the negative effects of any illness. I would say, ''I found this book, and I'm going to add it to my program. I'm going to do these meditations, and I think it's going to help.'' That's all.

Wynn: Are you training any other doctors in these techniques?

Khalsa: I do lectures and meetings. I just gave a talk to the American Holistic Medical Association. We have trained some physicians. But I am not formally doing it right now.

Wynn: What's your next book going to be about?

Khalsa: Politics, the environment, and nutrition.

Wynn: That sounds interesting.

Khalsa: The original working title was Dangerous Departure: Politics, the Environment and Your Health. I like what I just said, that sounds interesting. I want to find out what the scientific information is that there is global warming, that there is pollution in the environment, that arsenic is bad, that inspection of meat is careless. I want to find out what the health risks are, and what a person can do right now to maintain their health in the face of a toxic environment. Because I think the environment is getting worse, not better. I don't think these recent proposals by the current president are going to do anything except make things worse.

I want to present the facts and let people know what they can do to detox themselves and build themselves up nutritionally.

Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa is both a Western medical doctor who specialized in anesthesiology, and a yogic adept tutored by the Indian master Yogi Bhajan. So he has both the scientific knowledge and the spiritual wisdom to merge Eastern healing modalities with allopathic medicine. He has researched the benefits of how meditation can assist the body in overcoming disease. In his recently-published book Meditation As Medicine, he gives instructions on how to utilize specific meditations for healing specific conditions. Dr. Khalsa resides in Tucson, Arizona.

Wynn Free, our writer/interviewer, is a Los Angeles based songwriter and poet.

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