Mindfulness and Compassion Grand Rounds at Harvard Medical School will be held about twice monthly, live online via Zoom, and is open to those within Harvard Medical School, Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), and members of the CMC community, for free. Our Grand Rounds series has 3 main aims:

• Disseminate information about new cutting edge science and impactful clinical research findings

• Highlight best practices for enhancing the efficacy, accessibility, and safety of mindfulness and compassion delivery and applications for population mental health

• Provide opportunities for healthcare provider self-care and burnout prevention

Not able to attend live over Zoom? All registrants will recieve a link to the recording.

2025/26 Academic Year

Subject of Lecture - Life in Suspension with Death: Investigating Mind, Body and Consciousness in Tibetan Tukdam Mediation

Date: Monday, January 12, 2026
Time: 1-2pm (ET)
Presenter: Tawni Tidwell, PhD, TMD

Topic Description: Tukdam (Tib., thugs dam) is a meditative state achieved at death in which practitioners exhibit

an attenuated and altered morphochronology in the postmortem period among other signs, and a persistence of subtle consciousness from the Tibetan Buddhist perspective

In the current investigation through the Tukdam Project guided by His Holiness the Dalai Lama since 2013, an international collaboration of neuroscientists, anthropologists and forensic specialists from University of Wisconsin-Madison and Russian Academy of Sciences; Tibetan medical and biomedical physicians; and Tibetan Buddhist monastics document tukdam states among Tibetan communities in India often extending for weeks. The study has provided a collaborative context to link biomarkers and perceptual cues from these two distinct intellectual traditions—the Euroamerican biomedical and scientific tradition on one hand, and the Tibetan Buddhist and medical tradition on the other. Through the investigation, the traditions enact two paradigms of the body at the time of death alongside attendant conceptualizations of what constitutes life itself.

This talk explores: (1) how these two intellectual traditions might answer how the time course and characteristics of physiological changes during the postmortem period exhibits variation across individuals; (2) how this state might exemplify the life course of practices engaged by the practitioners including potential phenomenological implications and signs of the distinct practice styles and techniques used to enter tukdam; and (3) in what ways, and with which correlated indicators of evidence, this state probes a biocultural nexus of life suspended in death.

Presenter Bio: Tawni Tidwell, PhD, TMD Research Assistant Professor, Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Tawni Tidwell is a biological anthropologist and doctor of Tibetan medicine (Kachupa degree, Men-Tsee-Khang, India; Sorig Loling, eastern Tibet), the first non-Asian to have formally completed her Tibetan medical education in a Tibetan institution in Tibetan language alongside Tibetan peers. Her doctoral work combined insights from contemporary neuroscience, Buddhist epistemology, and biocultural anthropology to understand how Tibetan physicians learn to embody diagnostic practices, particularly for cancer and metabolic disorders. Currently, she serves as Research Assistant Professor at the Center for Healthy Minds of University of Wisconsin-Madison where her work facilitates bridges across the Western scientific tradition and Tibetan medical and contemplative traditions along with their attendant epistemologies andontologies. She is Principal Investigator for the Field Study of the Physiology of Meditation Practitioners and the Tukdam Meditative State (Tukdam Study), and sees patients privately in Madison, Wisconsin.

Learning Objectives:

1. Reflect on the current definition of death applied legally and practically in biomedical clinical contexts and how distinct cultural approaches might affect such applications.

2. Consider how the arc of an individual’s life behaviors, practices and socioenvironmental engagements might shape the arc of their death.

3. Explore how clinicians and palliative health care teams can better support those in transition from this life cross-culturally and cross-traditionally in ways meaningful to the decedent and their near and dear.

4. Compare the biomedical/scientific and Tibetan Buddhist/medical frameworks for understanding physiological changes and conceptualizations of life and death, including how these two intellectual traditions document and interpret tukdam states.

Continuing Education Information -

• For those seeking CE credit, the link to a feedback form will be sent during the live lecture in the Zoom chat. This must be filled out to receive CE; credits are processed at the end of the academic year in June 2024 for the entire Grand Rounds series. CE certificates are issued after that time.

• Although these sessions are recorded, we can only offer CE to those who attend live.

• The Harvard Medical School is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The Harvard Medical School designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

• Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This program offers 1.0 continuing education credits.

• Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 5444. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Cambridge Health Alliance, Division of Continuing Education in Psychiatry is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs. This program offers 1.0 continuing education credits and is also applicable for Commonwealth of Massachusetts Counseling/Allied Mental Health accreditation for 1.0 credits.

• As a Jointly Accredited Organization, Harvard Medical School is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved under this program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. Social workers completing this course receive 1 clinical continuing education credit.

• An attendance attestation form will be shared during each event.

Further Reading -

• Xu, G., Mihaylova, T., Li, D., Tian, F., Farrehi, P.M., Parent, J.M., Mashour, G.A., Wang, M.A., Borjigin, J. (2023). Surge of neurophysiological coupling and connectivity of gamma oscillations in the dying human brain. PNAS 120(19): e2216268120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.221626812

• Lott, D. T., Yeshi, T., Dolma, S., Tsering, N., Jinpa, N., Woser, T., Dorjee, K., Desel, T., Fitch, D., Finley, A. J., Goldman, R., Ortiz Bernal, A. M., Ragazzi, R., Aroor, K., Koger, J., Francis, A., Perlman, D. M., Wielgosz, J., Bachhuber, D. R. W., Tamdin, T., Sadutshang, T. D., Dunne, J. D., Lutz, A., & Davidson, R. J. (2021). No Detectable Electroencephalographic Activity 24-hours After Clinical Declaration of Death among Tibetan Buddhist Meditators in apparent tukdam, a putative postmortem meditation state. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 3873. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.599190.

• Tidwell, T., Eisenberg, L. E., Fedotov, A., Kokurina, E., Boytsova, J., Desel, T., Sangpo, L., Norbu, N., Chokdrup, J., Tsering, D., Sherap, T., Chhonden, T., Dorje, Y., Lama, C., Lhundup, K., Jamyang, Lharkyab, Phuntsok, L., Wangchuk, T., Lhakpa, S., Namgyal, L., Dorjee, Y., Lobsang, T., Zhironkina, Y., Goldman, R. I., Namdul, T., Blake, K. E., Tesch, E., Sangmo, R., Dunne, J. D., Nagendra, R. P., Kutty, B. M., Rinpoche, T. T., Tamdin, T., Sadutshang, T. D., Davidson, R. J., & Medvedev, S. (2024). Delayed decompositional changes in indoor settings among Tibetan monastic communities in India: A case report. Forensic Science International: Reports, 9, 100370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsir.2024.100370

• Tidwell, T. (2024). Life in Suspension with Death: Biocultural Ontologies, Perceptual Cues, and Biomarkers for Tibetan Tukdam Postmortem Meditative State. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 49, 434-464. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-023-09844-2

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