Coaching practices for Can T Hurt Me Practices
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Can T Hurt Me Practices, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Every time I get near a certain kind of suffering in this practice I notice myself flinch and want to stop or look away
- The second someone gets close to a tender spot I feel myself slam shut and go cold or pull back
- I understand exactly why I feel this way and I’ve looked at it honestly, but understanding it hasn’t made it hurt any less
- There’s one moment when I needed them and they weren’t there, and even though it was a while ago it still sits between us
- I can feel the wound I want to get to, but every time I reach toward it something in me slams up a wall
Practices that may help
- Investigate resistance to the practice honestly
The impulse not to breathe in suffering is information about where your self-protective contraction lives.
Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending - Keeping your inner gate open
Choose to stay open and present rather than closing down when life pushes on your sensitivities.
The Untethered Soul, In Practice - RAIN — Nurture (offer what is needed)
Give the hurting part the care it actually needs — a phrase, a hand on the heart, a kind tone.
Radical Acceptance, Made Practical - Revisit a hurtful moment -- and repair it
Going back to a painful past moment together, with new understanding, is how attachment injuries heal.
Hold Me Tight: Sue Johnson's Seven Conversations for Lasting Love - Prepare the ground: get protectors on board first
Before approaching any exiled part, get explicit permission from the protectors guarding it.
IFS Unburdening, Made Practical - Be Gentle: no attacks, threats, or expressions of contempt
Say what you need to say without aggression, sarcasm, or contempt — even when you are hurt or angry.
GIVE: DBT’s Skill for Preserving Relationships During Difficult Conversations - Always abide by the three principles
Maintain your vow, don’t show off, and practise impartially with everyone — not just the people you like.
Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training - Relax and release stuck energy
When emotion grips, consciously relax and let the energy move through instead of clamping down.
The Untethered Soul, In Practice - Practice tonglen for your own suffering first
Use your own current pain as the object before extending the practice to others.
Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending - Identifying and challenging interpersonal myths
Surface and test the beliefs that prevent you from asking for what you need or saying no.
DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness: Getting What You Need Without Destroying the Relationship
Related concerns
- Brief Tonglen Daily Life
A single in-breath of someone’s pain and an out-breath of goodwill is a complete act of tonglen.
Use flash tonglen in the moment of encountering suffering
- Directed Tonglen Practice
Tonglen ("taking and sending") is a Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice in which the practitioner breathes in suffering — their own or another’s — and breathes out relief, ease, and goodwill. It works by deliberately moving toward pain rather than away from it, which gradually reduces the fear of suffering and expands the capacity for compassion. Evidence is largely clinical and mechanistic; direct RCTs on tonglen specifically are sparse, though compassion training more broadly shows meaningful effects.
- Equanimity Before Tonglen
Entering tonglen from a grounded, spacious state makes the practice sustainable rather than destabilising.
Prepare for tonglen with a brief equanimity grounding
- Hot Dark Heavy Tonglen
Breathe in something hot, dark, and heavy; breathe out something cool, bright, and spacious.
Work with the classical two-breath texture
- How To Practice Tonglen Meditation
Tonglen ("taking and sending") is a Tibetan Buddhist compassion practice in which the practitioner breathes in suffering — their own or another’s — and breathes out relief, ease, and goodwill. It works by deliberately moving toward pain rather than away from it, which gradually reduces the fear of suffering and expands the capacity for compassion. Evidence is largely clinical and mechanistic; direct RCTs on tonglen specifically are sparse, though compassion training more broadly shows meaningful effects.
- Informal Tonglen Practice
A single in-breath of someone’s pain and an out-breath of goodwill is a complete act of tonglen.
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