Feeling Fully Alive: An Introduction to Tibetan Yoga, by Bruce Alderman (Dharma Publishing 2026), introduces Kum Nye as a practice of embodiment, attention and renewed intimacy with life, a system that has drawn from practices that have existed in various forms in India, Tibet, and elsewhere for hundreds of years.
A line early in the book reminded me of something all too familiar—that relentless noise of the modern world and the perpetual agitation in which even moments of quiet do not feel quiet, in which the mind is constantly escaping toward some other moment, some other distraction. Indeed, we have become so used to being anywhere else but here and now that even stillness can feel like something that needs to be filled.
In all of this business of getting on with it, pulling our socks up, keeping a stiff upper lip, telling ourselves to stop being such a drama queen, or simply seeking out the next diversion, we gradually alienate ourselves from the body and its innate wisdom. We may take considerable care over the body’s appearance. We may fix our hair, go for facials and manicures, eat healthily and take supplements, while remaining almost entirely outside the in-ness of the body—observing it, feeding it, and decorating it without necessarily inhabiting it. We may still cognize an enormous amount of information, but when we are distracted, the knowing-ness never becomes the being-ness. Kum Nye is presented as a way of closing that distance.
Alderman received his master’s degree in Integral Psychology, with an emphasis on transpersonal counseling psychology, from John F. Kennedy University in 2005. He took Buddhist refuge with a Theravada teacher in Java in 1994 and has practiced in the Nyingma and Bon traditions since 2003, giving him the academic grounding and the long personal engagement with Buddhist practice from which to introduce Kum Nye to contemporary readers.
Kum Nye is a way of waking our bodies, our senses, and our awareness until practice infuses daily life. In that infusion, we can fall in love with the miracle of existence and with the minutiae of simply being alive.
Tarthang Tulku, the Nyingma lama who brought Kum Nye to the West and formulated it for Western students, describes the practice as creating an “inner sun;” a warmth radiating from our center, touching every cell and extending into the space around us. It is a beautiful thing to imagine ourselves capable of generating. As Alderman points out, it is something we give ourselves while also receiving it.
Because Kum Nye is a holistic practice, it asks us to become aware of every moment—to awaken the cells in the body and experience that awakening both cognitively and somatically. Then we begin to hear once more the messages our bodies have been communicating all along. In doing so, we may also become better able to encounter psychological material that has been buried deeply within our system. This isn’t simply releasing muscular tension or working with fascia, but allowing the body itself to awaken.
The body is extraordinary. We are simply too distracted to notice that every twitch of an arm involves electrical impulses passing along the neck and shoulder, through nerves, muscles, fascia, bone, and cartilage. We don’t notice blood moving through the heart and veins, or oxygen entering through the lungs and carbon dioxide being released. All of these processes continue in constant, unspoken relationship with one another, and we remain essentially unaware.
Historically, Kum Nye is associated with the Nyingma school, the oldest lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, although the practices draw on a wider family of Tibetan, Indian, and Chinese traditions. Alderman briefly acknowledges Bon, Tibet’s indigenous spiritual tradition, and the Aro tradition. These are mentioned rather than pored over, but their inclusion gives the reader some sense of the wider landscape of subtle energy practices.
Kum Nye was never a single formal system in Tibet. Rather, it consisted of collections of yogic, medicinal, and energetic techniques intended to support health and spiritual development. Tarthang Tulku first encountered some of these practices in Tibet when he was young, apparently through his father, who was both a physician and a lama. When Tarthang Tulku came to the West, he recognized that Western practitioners were living with particular forms of stress, fragmentation, and disconnection. He drew on Tibetan Buddhist teachings, Chinese energy practices, and other traditional methods, presenting them in a form congruent with Western mindsets and modern ways of life.
What would eventually become a globally recognized practice had humble beginnings at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, California. Tarthang Tulku’s Kum Nye Relaxation, published in the mid-1970s, helped establish the practice for Western students. It was described in some respects as a form of self-massage, as much internal as external. Kum Nye would also develop into forms of mindful dance, practices of embodied movement that help the practitioner become fully present, expansive, and less confined by the ordinary habits of ego.
Alderman divides his book into three parts. “Part One: An Invitation to Feeling,” is divided into five chapters and introduces Kum Nye, its history, and why such practices may be valuable. “Part Two: The Practice of Kum Nye,” forms the practical heart of the book and includes simple diagrams that many readers will find useful. “Part Three: The Integration and Expression of the Practice,” considers how Kum Nye may become part of daily life. For newcomers, Part One offers useful context, particularly for readers curious about what the practice is, where it comes from, why it may be worth taking on and what its benefits might be. Part Three explores how these practice can be integrated into life and may also serve as a reminder for those who have already practiced. For most readers, however, Part Two will probably be the section returned to most frequently as a manual.
Tarthang Tulku is quoted as saying, “Kum Nye is life.” Alderman explains that Kum Nye is not simply a practice undertaken in a meditation setting and then left behind when we stand up. It has to be brought into everyday life. An analogy I have used many times is the practical implication of breathing rather than the academic understanding. When it comes to a practice like Kum Nye, it’s implied that, like breathing, where we can understand the mechanism of the lungs, the exchange of oxygen, even a fastidious weekly practice wouldn’t be enough.
Kum Nye may not carry the same biological necessity as the breath, but the analogy remains significant: an intellectual understanding of awareness is not the same as practicing awareness. The practice has to move from knowingness into being-ness, from something understood in theory into something lived through the body.
Alderman is correct to point out that modern terminology can establish mindsets antithetical to healing; we battle, fight, and aim to beat illness. Yet while such language may feel motivating, it can also estrange us from the body by turning it into an adversary or a malfunctioning object that has somehow betrayed us. Kum Nye is about meeting what the body is telling us and engaging more deeply with our own system, rather than repressing what we may feel, running away from difficult material, or using spirituality to bypass what the body and psyche are attempting to communicate.
The point is not to place a pleasant spiritual gloss over pain or difficulty. It is to meet the body more fully, recognize the emotional language that may be buried within, and stop repressing its message simply because modern life has trained us to keep moving.
It would, however, be remiss of me not to caveat the proposition of this healing modality as a replacement for anything that may need clinical diagnosis or treatment.
Alderman speaks persuasively of the ripple effect. When we take on autonomous responsibility and no longer grab from the outside world, or allow ourselves to be disproportionately affected by it, we become better able to show up with greater ease in ourselves, physically and energetically, which inevitably affects those around us. Kum Nye is very much the art of coming home. We reunite mind and body and begin to recognize an other-than-conscious intelligence that lies beneath deliberate thought. It is not that the body suddenly begins speaking; it has been speaking all along, we have simply become too distracted to hear it.
I will say this: the book is not without some repetition, with certain points revisited relatively frequently and some words occurring often enough that they begin to lose potency. But we can also feel Alderman’s enthusiasm and passion for a practice that has enormous value for the reader—the benefits of Kum Nye cannot be overstated.
Ultimately, the teachings remain the book’s central strength. Kum Nye is a practice I cannot advocate highly enough. It helps us quiet the noise, reunite mind with body, and recognize the intelligence already operating beneath conscious thought. It asks us to stop living as though the body were simply carrying the mind from one task to the next, and invites us to come home.
Perhaps Kum Nye’s greatest value is in reminding us that awareness is not merely something we understand. It is something we inhabit. It is the difference between knowing what it means to be alive and appreciating the aliveness of being alive.
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