Coaching practices for Zen Practice Zazen and Beyond After a Loss
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Zen Practice Zazen and Beyond After a Loss, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- Something I built my life around has ended
- On the cushion I can find that open, present quality, but the instant I stand up it evaporates
- My calm only lasts as long as the cushion
- Every time I sit, the whole session turns into a fight with my back and knees
- Every time I try to sit I end up fidgeting and aching, or I lock myself rigid and grit through it
Practices that may help
- Reframing loss as transformation
When something ends or is lost, practise asking what it is becoming rather than only mourning what it was.
Zhuangzi and the Practice of Perspective Shift - Zen Practice (Zazen and Beyond)
Zen centers on zazen — seated meditation — in two main forms: shikantaza ("just sitting" in open awareness) and koan practice (sustained inquiry into a paradoxical question). Alongside these sits "beginner’s mind," the attitude of meeting experience without preconception. These are traditional contemplative practices; some mechanisms overlap with studied attention training, but Zen’s specific aims and claims are largely experiential rather than clinically validated. - Extending shikantaza to daily activity
Bring the same non-grasping, present awareness from formal sitting into ordinary tasks.
Shikantaza: Just Sitting - Work as practice (samu)
Bring full, wholehearted attention to ordinary tasks, treating activity itself as meditation.
Zen Practice (Zazen and Beyond) - Grounding in posture: zazen as the foundation
Let the body be upright, stable, and settled before everything else.
Shikantaza: Just Sitting - Zazen posture and breath
Establish a stable, upright seated posture and let the breath settle as the ground of practice.
Zen Practice (Zazen and Beyond) - Zhuangzi and the Practice of Perspective Shift
Zhuangzi uses humour, paradox, and vivid thought experiments to loosen the grip of fixed viewpoints — arguing that most suffering comes from rigidly inhabiting a single perspective. The practical work is developing the capacity to step back into a larger frame, hold multiple views simultaneously, and respond to circumstances with flexibility rather than attachment to how things "should" be. - Shikantaza (just sitting)
Sit in open, objectless awareness — not focusing on anything, not following anything.
Zen Practice (Zazen and Beyond) - Practicing with a sangha (community sitting)
Sit with others regularly — group practice stabilizes individual practice in ways solitude cannot.
Shikantaza: Just Sitting - Non-grasping awareness: letting arise and pass
Watch thoughts, sensations, and emotions arise and dissolve without grabbing or pushing.
Shikantaza: Just Sitting
Related concerns
- Zen Practice Zazen And Beyond During A Big Change
Zen centers on zazen — seated meditation — in two main forms: shikantaza ("just sitting" in open awareness) and koan practice (sustained inquiry into a paradoxical question). Alongside these sits "beginner’s mind," the attitude of meeting experience without preconception. These are traditional contemplative practices; some mechanisms overlap with studied attention training, but Zen’s specific aims and claims are largely experiential rather than clinically validated.
- Zen Practice Zazen And Beyond During Conflict
Zen centers on zazen — seated meditation — in two main forms: shikantaza ("just sitting" in open awareness) and koan practice (sustained inquiry into a paradoxical question). Alongside these sits "beginner’s mind," the attitude of meeting experience without preconception. These are traditional contemplative practices; some mechanisms overlap with studied attention training, but Zen’s specific aims and claims are largely experiential rather than clinically validated.
- Zen Practice Zazen And Beyond With Friends
Zen centers on zazen — seated meditation — in two main forms: shikantaza ("just sitting" in open awareness) and koan practice (sustained inquiry into a paradoxical question). Alongside these sits "beginner’s mind," the attitude of meeting experience without preconception. These are traditional contemplative practices; some mechanisms overlap with studied attention training, but Zen’s specific aims and claims are largely experiential rather than clinically validated.
- Zen Practice Zazen And Beyond With My Partner
Zen centers on zazen — seated meditation — in two main forms: shikantaza ("just sitting" in open awareness) and koan practice (sustained inquiry into a paradoxical question). Alongside these sits "beginner’s mind," the attitude of meeting experience without preconception. These are traditional contemplative practices; some mechanisms overlap with studied attention training, but Zen’s specific aims and claims are largely experiential rather than clinically validated.
- Moving Samadhi Zen
Bring full, wholehearted attention to ordinary tasks, treating activity itself as meditation.
Work as practice (samu)
- Samu Zen Practice
Bring full, wholehearted attention to ordinary tasks, treating activity itself as meditation.
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