Coaching practices for Satchin Panda Research
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Satchin Panda Research, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Sitting alone, every single day becomes a negotiation over whether to skip it, and my practice keeps collapsing
- I go looking for the solid "me" at the center of all this
- Even in meditation I’m secretly grading myself, chasing some better state, treating sitting as a means to an end
- I walk into the same meetings and conversations already certain how they’ll go, running on a script I wrote long ago
- The harder I push to investigate, the more strained and effortful it all becomes
Practices that may help
- Practicing with a sangha (community sitting)
Sit with others regularly — group practice stabilizes individual practice in ways solitude cannot.
Shikantaza: Just Sitting - Investigating the five aggregates
Examine whether any of the five skandhas — form, sensation, perception, formations, consciousness — is the fixed "self" you take yourself to be.
Anatta: The Buddhist Teaching of No-Self in Practice - Shikantaza — "just sitting" in the Soto Zen tradition
Sit with complete presence and nothing to achieve — no goal, no technique, no observer separate from sitting.
Open Monitoring Meditation, Made Practical - Somatic Tracking, Made Practical
Somatic tracking, developed by Alan Gordon as the central technique of Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), involves observing bodily sensations — especially pain — with open, curious, non-fearful attention. The goal is to change the brain’s interpretation of safe signals from dangerous to neutral, which can reduce or eliminate neuroplastic pain. A 2021 randomized controlled trial (the BOULDER study) found PRT produced significant pain reduction vs placebo and usual care for chronic back pain, with 66% of PRT participants reporting being pain-free or nearly pain-free. - Approaching a familiar situation with fresh eyes
Before entering a recurring conversation or task, set aside your established conclusions and look again.
Pu: Taoist Simplicity and the Uncarved Block - Svadhyaya: Self-Study as a Daily Practice
Svadhyaya is one of the five niyamas in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras — a sustained practice of turning attention inward to observe your own patterns, motives, and conditioning. It pairs honest self-examination with the study of wisdom texts, and centuries of contemplative tradition treat the combination as the foundation of genuine self-knowledge. - Santosha: The Practice of Contentment
Santosha is Patanjali’s second niyama — a deliberate orientation toward sufficiency and equanimity with what is present, as distinct from passive resignation or forced positivity. The practice is not about suppressing desire but about training the mind to rest in the present rather than habitually chasing a future state that will satisfy. - Use surrender as a complement to inquiry
When inquiry feels effortful, Ramana offered surrender — complete releasing of the I’s agenda — as an equally valid path.
Self-Inquiry: Ramana Maharshi’s Path of Direct Investigation - Extending shikantaza to daily activity
Bring the same non-grasping, present awareness from formal sitting into ordinary tasks.
Shikantaza: Just Sitting - Test branches by forming specific, falsifiable hypotheses
Turn each branch into a testable hypothesis before gathering data.
Issue Tree Analysis
Related concerns
- Shunryu Suzuki Shoshin
Beginner's mind (shoshin in Japanese) is the Zen practice of approaching experience — including familiar tasks, relationships, and ideas — as if for the first time, free of the assumptions expertise accumulates. Shunryu Suzuki articulated it as the foundation of Zen practice; in contemporary psychology it overlaps with research on actively open thinking, curiosity, and the documented cognitive costs of expert blindness.
- Caodong Soto Meditation Quality
Cultivate a stillness that is lit from inside — quiet and alert, not blank and dull.
Silent illumination: the quality of awake stillness
- How To Practice Shikantaza
Shikantaza ("just this sitting") is the central meditation practice of Soto Zen, formulated by Dogen Zenji (1200–1253). It is objectless, open-awareness meditation: you sit with alert presence, not focusing on any particular object and not trying to achieve any state. Dogen taught that shikantaza is not a means to enlightenment but the expression of it — sitting is itself the practice. Benefits overlap with studied open-monitoring meditation, though shikantaza’s specific claims are experiential rather than clinically validated.
- How To Sit Shikantaza
Let the body be upright, stable, and settled before everything else.
Grounding in posture: zazen as the foundation
- Just Sitting Meditation
Shikantaza ("just this sitting") is the central meditation practice of Soto Zen, formulated by Dogen Zenji (1200–1253). It is objectless, open-awareness meditation: you sit with alert presence, not focusing on any particular object and not trying to achieve any state. Dogen taught that shikantaza is not a means to enlightenment but the expression of it — sitting is itself the practice. Benefits overlap with studied open-monitoring meditation, though shikantaza’s specific claims are experiential rather than clinically validated.
- Moving Samadhi Zen
Bring full, wholehearted attention to ordinary tasks, treating activity itself as meditation.
Work as practice (samu)
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