tonglen meditation

every meditation app on the planet tells you to breathe in calm and breathe out tension. tonglen does the opposite. and it might be the most transformative practice you've never tried.

what is tonglen

tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice. the word literally means "giving and taking." here's how it works:

breathe in the suffering. yours, someone else's, the world's. visualize it as heavy, dark, hot smoke entering you.

breathe out compassion, relief, and peace. visualize it as cool, bright, soothing light radiating outward.

that's it. breathe in pain. breathe out love. repeat.

why it works (even though it sounds insane)

your instinct is to push away suffering — your own and others'. tonglen deliberately reverses that impulse. and something remarkable happens when you stop running from pain: it loses its power over you.

by breathing in suffering, you're training yourself to face discomfort directly instead of avoiding it. by breathing out compassion, you're building the habit of responding to difficulty with openness instead of contraction.

it's the opposite of what every self-help guru tells you. and it works because avoidance is the root of most psychological suffering, not the cure for it.

how to practice

sit comfortably. start with your own suffering — whatever's bothering you right now. breathe it in fully. don't resist it. then breathe out relief and spaciousness.

once that feels natural, extend it to someone you know who's struggling. breathe in their pain. breathe out peace toward them.

eventually, extend it to strangers. to people you dislike. to the whole world.

the shift

tonglen dissolves the boundary between "my suffering" and "their suffering." it builds a kind of emotional courage that makes you less fragile and more capable of genuine empathy.

start with 5 minutes. it might feel uncomfortable. that's the point.

if this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it.