Legends On 9 Foot Tall Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa Runners Jumping And Levitating In The Air And Himalayan Yetis
When I was a young kid in elementary school, and even a little in middle school I was fascinated by the occult and the paranormal. I’d try to read all the books I could in the local library about strange and supernatural phenomena.
One of the places in the world that really fascinated me was the closed off land of Tibet and Nepal. I heard so many crazy legends of how Tibet was the spiritual center of this world and about the amazing abilities that the Tibetan Yogis supposedly possessed.
There was also myths and stories about this secret Spiritual place called Shamballa or Hsi Wang Mu, or Olmolungring. There is a book called The Return of the Wisdom of the Serpents which I read a decade ago which introduced me to this alternative interpretation of historical events. Obviously most of the stories in this “paranormal” based book is completely made up in the imagination of the author, but there are some information and facts about the story which can be validated by historical facts (like dates, names, and events). It is just that the way the authors of these types of books try to connect the various events of history cause them to weave the type of story to explain everything from a mystical/occult perspective, which is not helpful for a person who was trained in the sciences.
One story which I remember quite vividly was from a unique paranormal book series. I read a very short excerpt on legends of extraordinary beings which moved around in the Himalayan Mountains. The story goes that there was a group of Western (European, British, or American) mountain hikers who were trekking through the Himalayan mountains. I would assume that maybe they were explorers from back in the late 19th century or early 20th century. They were probably part of a mountain exploration expedition.
They suddenly noticed that below where they stood, high above a mountain ledge, there seemed to be this very tall man jumping across the himalayan fields. The man who they estimated to be maybe 9 feet tall was jumping across through the himalayan mountains while gazing forward or upwards, never changing his gaze. He was described to have been jumping extremely high up in the air, and seemed to be landing slowly. It was said that this man was supposed to be levitating (or gliding) through the air. He was described to have been wearing wearing thin robes, as opposed to the thick covering most normal people would be wearing walking through the insanely freezing element of the mountains. It seemed that he did not feel the cold.
I am reminded of the ability of the Late Dr. Murdo Macdonald Bayne, who also trekked through the Himalayan in the early 20th century and claimed that he had the ability to levitate slightly, due to childhood experiences. The most famous Tibetan yogi, Milarepa was said to have learned how to perform Lung-Gom-Pa and found that he was able to cover amazing distances after he achieved a high level of spirituality.
I did not believe in that story until years later when I found out that there seems to be indeed a group of Tibetan monk runners who did this exact thing, as a form of spiritual practice. They are known as the Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa Runners. They practice what I believe is probably the most extreme form of long distance running in the world, beyond anything that should be possible for humans. The most commonly referenced similar practice has been the Japanese Monk Marathon Runners (called Kaihogyo) of Mt. Hiei, but these Japanese Monks seem to cover only 1/10th of the distance that these Tibetan Runners cover. For further reading on these guys, read the Biography on the Monk Yusai Sakai who only recently died back in Octover of 2013. Even the newspaper The Guardian did a piece on these Japanese runners who walk around Mount Hiei. (Available Here)
It is really hard to separate the real from the fiction, the actual from the supernatural, especially in a place like Tibet, Nepal, and the Himalayan mountains since humans after thousands of years still haven’t been able to take over this most extreme of environments. Legends like Shamballa and Shangri-La have developed in the minds of the Westerners, who just a century ago thought that these remote cultures who lived tens of thousands of feet above normal sea level in the freezing Himalaya Mountain was some sort of secret location which represented some type of occult hidden dimension.
From the writings of Alexandra…
The student must sit cross-legged on a large cushion. He inhales and allows his body to fill with air. Then holding his breath, he jumps up with legs still crossed using no hands to support him. He repeats this always remaining in the same position. This method enables them to become extremely light, almost weightless. “The lung-gom method does not aim at training the disciple by strengthening his muscles, but by developing in him psychic states that make these extraordinary marches possible.”
Only after years of drilling oneself with different types of breathing exercises are they permitted to attempt the actual racing performance itself. When he finally reaches this point in time, he must completely concentrate on the walk, the in and out breathing rhythm, always looking ahead, never speaking. He can not be distracted by anything and must keep his eyes fixed on a single object.
The best conditions for their runs are flat plains, desert spaces, and evening twilight. Even after walking for miles or days, when the evening has been reached, the tiredness of the run subsides and the lung-gom-pa runner and continue on for miles more. During their runs, they are continually told to keep their eyes fixed on a particular star. Some float through the air so much, that they wear heavy chains around their bodies so that he is not in danger of floating in the air.
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At this point, it is probably very important that we as scientific research take great effort in being able to separate the real from the crazy, the possible from the impossible, and somehow try to make a real effort to not turn this type of extreme event and reframe it into some type of mystical or spiritual thing. We have to be aware that there is going to be some things which will sound too fantastic to believe.
While our effort is to figure out how does the body increase in height, it is also interesting to look at the phenomena of levitation, which many people have claimed these Tibetan Yogis can perform.
We refer to the picture to the right, which was taken from the 14th page of the website/magazine TrailRunnerMag.com Oct 2011 Issue. The 1 page excerpt talks about these tibetan runners.
Apparently before the Chinese Occupation of Tibet, the Lung-Gom-Pa Runners were only trained in two Buddhist Monestaries…
- Nyang-To Kyi Phug Monestary – this is supposed to be near a place called Shigatse)
- Samding Monestary –
Two Westerns have documented this meditation practice. They are…
- Lama Anagarika Govinda, a German-born Buddhist monk (traveled through Tibet in 1947) – wrote about it in his memoir The Way of the White Clouds (Full Text Available Here)
- Alexandra David-Neel, an early 20th-century French explorer, was the first European woman to reach Lhasa, Tibet’s remote and forbidden capital. The surreal encounter is recounted in her memoir Magic and Mystery in Tibet. She managed to stumble across a working lung-gom-pa while crossing a remote Tibetan plateau in 1924
The claim is that these runners are supposed to be able to cover 200 miles within a span of 48 hours within rest. The training is supposed to take on average 3-7 years. You give up your previous life completely (including one’s name) and go into a cave to do meditations, visualizations, and breathing patterns. Over time, you are supposed to leap into the air in the lotus position, and when the tibetan yogi is supposed to drop back down, the descent is slowed down. That is the phenomena known as levitation.
It is very similar to what we see in the early levels of Transcendental Meditation taught by Maharishi Ramana back in the 60s and 70s where the Indian Spiritual Guru claimed that after one reaches a certain level, one would be able to levitate.
To get more information on the exact way that these TIbetan Yogis learn this skill, refer to the article entitled “Lung-gom-pa Runners of Tibet“
Interpretation
If these claims about how a fellow human is able to run for days without any food or water covering hundreds of miles is indeed valid, human nutritionists would need to reconsider their previous judgements on the limits of the human body.
It is my personal belief that although there might some level of superstition that has permiated completely though the Tibetan culture, some of the claims made by this yogis that reside in the Himalayas may be true. We saw a few years ago about a Boy who called himself a student of the Dharma who showed that he could fast for weeks on end without eating or drinking anything. People around the world called himself the Buddha boy (Wikipedia article on him here) but that would be extremely inaccurate since to label a person a buddha is to say that they have reached the end of their samsaric existence, which is not true.
I have never been able to find the source of where it was said that these Lung-Gom-Pa runners were supposed to be 9 feet tall however it might be that Alexandra’s writings had became re-written many times over throughout the centuries. Is it possible that somehow these Tibetan Monks figured out a way to increase their size as well as learn the skill of levitation? It seems possible, since one of the earliest posts I ever wrote for the website was about the claims of how certain mystic yogis in ancient india was able to perform what are known as Siddhis or super-natural feats. It was entitled “Growing Taller By Using Yogic Siddhis“. In traditional Hindu Yoga legend, Patanjali was said to have claimed that the spiritual seeker can perform either 8 or 9 main siddhis. One of them is called MADALASA VIDYA or Mahima Siddhi. This power allows for the person to increase their size to be as large as possible.
I had claimed back then that if there is any validity to this claim, then we the person who is performing yoga could at a high enough spiritual attainment and level be able to increase the size of their body. That would explain why the source I remember had the writer say that these Tibetan Lung-Gom-Pa runners seemed to be gigantic in size.
The Yeti
The other most common legend on the Himalayan Mountains about some type of abnormally tall humanoid creatures is the Yeti aka Abdominal Snowman. Is it real or a type of hallucination due maybe from lack of oxygen by climbers? The last I checked after reading over the real scientific research, the best explanation is that the Himalayan Brown Bear, which has a brown coat of fur, is the real culprit for the yeti sightings. What the western mountain climbers actually saw was not some 8 feet tall ancient, hidden ape as some cryptozoologists believe, but actually a bear. For proof on this claim that the Yeti is the Himalayan Bear, refer to the book “Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids“.
We do note that one of the authors of this “scientific” book on mythical creatures is Michael Shermer, who has been the leader and main writer for the Magazine Sceptic for the last few decades. His campaign along with the illusionist James Randi has been to debunk all claims about the supernatural, paranormal ,and the occult, so there is some level of bias in the book to try to explain away all legends as tricks of the mind (as fellow non-believer Derren Brown likes to put it).