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The Lung-Gom-Pa Runners of Tibet

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Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet .  New York: Dover, 1971.  (Translation of the 1929 publication, Mystiques et magiciens du Thebet.) Lama Anagarika Govinda, Way of the White Clouds .  New York: Overlook Press, 2005.   The first references in the West to the lung-gom-pa runners of Tibet are the eyewitness accounts of Alexandra David-Neel, published in 1929, and the spiritual autobiography of Lama Anagarika Govinda, recorded a decade or so later.   Born in Germany in 1998 as Ernst Lothar Hoffman,  Lama Govinda describes in some detail the range of practices that are grouped under the umbrella of lung gom pa.  Multi-day cross-country "tramps," as David-Neel calls them, were just one manifestation.    The related practice of tumo , for example, involved the control of body temperature and the ability to produce internal heat, allowing the adept to walk about in the coldest weather with nothing but a light toga.   Lung , says Lama Govinda, refers to