Coaching practices for Lojong Tibetan Mind Training as a Caregiver

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Lojong Tibetan Mind Training as a Caregiver, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• My whole instinct is to push pain away and grab at anything that feels good, and I’m tired of how walled-off that makes me
• I’m kind and openhearted with the people I already love and quietly closed off to the ones who get under my skin, and I’m realizing that warmth that only flows toward easy people isn’t really the practice
• I pass real suffering all day
• I’ve started catching a smugness in myself
• I’ve been fighting and trying to push away my own pain and it only tightens its grip

Practices that may help

1. Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
   Lojong is a Tibetan Buddhist mind-training system, codified by Atisha and later Chekawa, built around 59 slogans that train the mind to transform adversity into awakening and to cultivate compassion for all beings including oneself. Evidence is primarily contemplative-clinical; some practices (loving-kindness, tonglen-adjacent exercises) have been studied, but the full system is practitioner tradition rather than a clinical protocol.
2. Tonglen: sending and taking
   Breathe in suffering (yours and others’); breathe out relief and well-being.
   Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
3. 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
4. Use flash tonglen in the moment of encountering suffering
   A single in-breath of someone’s pain and an out-breath of goodwill is a complete act of tonglen.
   Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending
5. Don’t make gods into demons
   Don’t let spiritual practice become a source of pride, judgment, or superiority over others.
   Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
6. 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
7. Practise with the unexpected
   When things go wrong unexpectedly, use that moment as the actual practice rather than a break from it.
   Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
8. Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending
   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.
9. Train in the three difficulties
   Notice the habitual pattern, decide to interrupt it, and then work on making the interruption automatic.
   Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
10. Direct tonglen toward a specific suffering person
    Bring a person who is suffering to mind and breathe in their pain; breathe out whatever would give them relief.
    Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending

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