Dr. Tenzin Namdul, TMD, PhD

Dr. Tenzin Namdul, an Assistant Professor and Director of Tibetan Healing Initiative of the Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, is a medical anthropologist and a Tibetan Medicine doctor, driven to understand mind-body relationship in studying healthy aging and memory, cognitive resilience, and end-of-life care through the lens of biocultural and Tibetan medical paradigms. He incorporates his wide array of training into translational science to examine how cultural values and practices shape the ways in which individuals age and die and care for others who are dying. His doctoral research examines how Tibetan medical doctors, Buddhist practitioners, and lay people’s perspectives about death and dying translate into their care for dying individuals and their own dying process. Specifically, he explores the Tibetan Buddhist contemplative practice called tukdam—a meditation an adept practitioner indulges in after a clinical death—through ethnographic study and shows how it informs and shapes both the sociomoral fabric of life and the sense of wellbeing at the time of dying among Tibetan refugees in southern India.

Dr. Namdul’s current research investigates factors associated with cognitive and physical resilience and how they influence aging and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among Tibetan Buddhist monks in southern India.