Coaching practices for Tonglen the Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending After a Setback
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Tonglen the Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending After a Setback, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I pass real suffering all day
- Every time I get near a certain kind of suffering in this practice I notice myself flinch and want to stop or look away
- 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’ve been fighting and trying to push away my own pain and it only tightens its grip
- When I try to breathe in suffering from a raw, already-shaky place it just pulls me under rather than opening me
Practices that may help
- 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. - 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 - 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 - Tonglen: sending and taking
Breathe in suffering (yours and others’); breathe out relief and well-being.
Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training - 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 - Prepare for tonglen with a brief equanimity grounding
Entering tonglen from a grounded, spacious state makes the practice sustainable rather than destabilising.
Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending - Expand tonglen to include all beings who share this suffering
Whatever you are suffering, countless others feel it too — breathe in the shared pain, breathe out shared relief.
Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending - 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. - Negative visualization (premeditatio malorum)
Briefly imagine losing what you have, so you stop taking it for granted and brace for setbacks.
Stoicism, as a Set of Practices - 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
Related concerns
- Flash Tonglen
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
- Taking And Sending Tibetan Buddhism
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.
- Tonglen For Beginners
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.
- Tonglen For Self
Use your own current pain as the object before extending the practice to others.
Practice tonglen for your own suffering first
- Tonglen For Someone Else
A single in-breath of someone’s pain and an out-breath of goodwill is a complete act of tonglen.
- 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.
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