Sowa Rigpa [Tibetan medicine] consultations in their established and widespread form are substantially conditioned by spatial proximity, as diagnosis is highly dependent on the sensory and manual skills of the practitioner. Diagnostic techniques such as pulse reading, point pressing or urinalysis as well as the establishment of a compassionate and caring relationship are described in the classical texts as basic principles and means to create conditions for efficacious treatment processes.
Not initiated but intensified by the need for distancing during the Covid 19 pandemic, some Sowa Rigpa practitioners from Nepal and India began to offer extended telemedicine services. In addition to comprehensive consultations, the practitioners are also available to their patients online for follow-up, aftercare, or emergency consultations. While such virtual spaces of connectivity (Pordié 2013), initiated and sustained through social media, create new relationships and opportunities for disseminating Sowa Rigpa to a wider clientele, they also interfere with important basic principles of diagnostics, treatment procedures or doctor-patient relationalities. Thus, although online frameworks offer new and expanded futures, they also compromise the past in the form of highly valued fundamentals. In particular, the lack of 'touch' in consultation procedures leads to significant changes in diagnostic procedures and doctor-patient relationships.
This article seeks to explore the impact of physical distance, and in particular the absence of touch, on traditionally accepted consultation and treatment procedures in online settings and asks to what extent online relationships over long distances influence the building of trust, the experience of care, or even the commitment of patients to treatment regimes. The aim is to identify new possibilities but also limitations within "21st century Sowa-Rigpa practices."
