Tonglen: The Tibetan Practice of Taking and Sending

Moving toward suffering on the breath — Tibetan Buddhism’s radical compassion practice

What is tonglen meditation and how do you practice 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.

Most meditation teaches moving away from discomfort or cultivating equanimity toward it. Tonglen inverts this: you breathe the suffering in and send the relief out. The Tibetan teacher Pema Chödrön describes the logic: the natural impulse is to protect yourself from pain and project your comfort outward; tonglen trains the reverse, and in doing so loosens the fundamental contraction of self-protection that generates so much unnecessary suffering. The practices below work with the four-part classical structure and its contemporary adaptations.