Maurice Daubard

Voluntary exposure to cold and Tummo

MD suffered from tuberculosis from his early teens until his early adulthood. He spent 5 years in a sanatorium. Medicine condemned him either to death or to undergo a mutilating operation (thoracotomy).

In the sanatorium where he was staying, a Christian seminarian who had just returned from India came to teach the patients breathing and meditation techniques based mainly on healing visualisations. Thanks to these meditations, MD began to show a slight improvement and thus escaped the accursed operation he had so dreaded.

When he was discharged from hospital in 1953, he discovered not only the Toumo of the Tibetans but also the history and work of Abbé Knepp, who had cured himself of the same illness by taking cold baths, drawing his inspiration from a book (dating from the 18th century) written by a German (HAHN) on the virtues of cold water.

So it wasn’t just Tibetans who influenced him, but also Western authors. And it was mainly through the works of Alexandra David-Néel that he discovered the Toumo. He was immediately and completely seduced; he retained this enthusiasm for the rest of his life.

The first time MD exposed himself to the cold was in the winter of 1956, when he took a bath in the Allier, that magnificent river in the centre of France. It was some 25 years after his first bath in the Allier (in 1980), on the strength of an enormous personal experience, that he began to teach the techniques of exposure to the cold.

He never claimed to practise Toumo like the Tibetans (who are capable of exposing themselves to the cold for weeks at a time), which is why he always specified that we practise a Tibetan-inspired Toumo.

MAURICE DAUBARD

Voluntary exposure to cold and Tummo
Sand marathon
Ice immersion
Mountain biking in the Himalayas
High-flying diving
Tummo
Yoga Asanas
Tibet September 2006
Tummo in Pirolin January 2007
Expedition to Finland March 2007