This is the RAIN meditation.
A meditation to help you move through difficult emotion,
Difficult feelings,
A difficult situation you may be experiencing right now.
You may have come to this meditation to soothe yourself,
To process what and how you're feeling and move through it.
We're gonna be labeling your emotion and bringing awareness to your body and how you feel.
Bring compassion and kindness to this.
So you may be experiencing a difficult emotion right now.
This is intense.
You may feel caught up in a storm of thoughts or feelings and all that's happening.
Right now,
Rather than try to create solutions,
This meditation looks to create some space,
Just a little bit of space in the storm,
Maybe even a little bit of freedom.
And what we'll do is go through a four-stage mindfulness practice to get you there,
To get you to that freedom and that space.
The first stage is recognizing.
Recognizing what's happening in your mind right now and trying to label it,
Name it,
Whatever emotion or feeling it is.
Anxiety,
Overwhelm,
Sadness,
Fear,
Anger,
Frustration.
Whatever you recognize to be happening right now in this moment,
Give it a name,
Acknowledge it is here,
Recognize it is here.
This is anxiety.
This is overwhelm.
This is sadness.
This is loneliness.
This is happening and I am recognizing it.
Take a moment now to recognize if there are any physical sensations that go along with this emotion.
This may be hard.
Most likely there'll be some sort of unpleasant sensation in the body.
Maybe there's a tightness in the chest where your heart rate is speeding up.
Maybe there's an area of tension and heat.
Just recognizing what's present in the body and naming it.
This is tightness.
This is heat.
This is pulsing.
This is neutral.
Just recognizing what's present and whatever you recognize to be here,
Give it a name.
And label it.
Now after recognizing,
The next stage is allowing.
When having a difficult experience,
It's very common to push it away.
Thinking I don't want this.
Or we can use this difficulty as an opportunity to criticize ourselves.
I shouldn't be feeling like this.
I should be stronger than this.
I'm useless.
And by adding this second layer of negativity to an already difficult experience,
We're just adding more fuel to that fire.
We're giving the anxiety or the fear or the difficult emotion more fuel.
So it then has more power over us.
So considering whatever is happening right now is happening and that's okay.
If it's anxiety,
Then there's anxiety.
If it's fear,
Then there's fear.
If it's sadness,
Then it's sadness.
Allowing ourselves to just feel those emotions and the physical sensations that come with them as they are and not pushing them away.
Not adding more layers of judgment or story to them.
And it's not easy.
The judgment and the self-criticism can be powerful and very believable,
But we'll just give it a try.
You're trying to experience what is here right now on its own terms.
Allowing what is here to be here,
Even if it's difficult.
And seeing if it's possible to bring some interest in,
Interest and curiosity to help steady you in what is happening.
Allowing it,
Allowing,
Allowing.
And if it really is too difficult to allow what is happening,
Then try to allow that difficulty.
There are times when things are too intense and that's okay too.
So after allowing and recognizing comes investigation.
Again,
Bringing that interest and curiosity to the front of your experience and letting the kindness of your attention investigate the experience just as it is in this present moment right now.
Noticing,
Noticing,
Investigating.
What's calling for your attention?
Gently noticing what is dominant in your experience and not pushing it away.
Gently noticing what stands out.
How does your body feel right now?
Are there areas of that heat and tension or movement?
Is that tension the same throughout or different?
Are the sensations changing as you move through this?
And even investigating how you are seeing things right now.
Are you able to just allow what is happening?
Are you able to look through a filter or a lens?
Are you able to even ask and be curious?
What is this emotion trying to tell me?
Bring kindness and gentleness to this.
Just investigating what views or opinions you're seeing right now.
Remembering it's just through a lens.
What is this emotion or difficult feeling or sensation trying to tell you?
And can you bring kindness and compassion to that?
So after recognizing,
Allowing,
And investigating,
The fourth stage of this mindfulness practice is called non-identifying.
If we consider whatever difficult thing we're experiencing as 100% a part of us,
Then we're less likely to find any space or freedom from it.
At this stage is where we observe our experience with balance,
With slight separation and sensitivity.
And we look at our experience from a distance and we remind ourselves that this is just energy passing through us.
This is not who we are.
Just here to observe our experience,
Whether that's in the mind or the body.
It is separate to us.
And in the final stage of non-identifying,
Just relaxing the mind and consider the metaphor,
You are the sky and everything else is just the weather.
So whatever weather pattern passes through your sky,
However stormy or clear,
The sky doesn't change.
The sky is in a container for the weather,
For the clouds passing through.
And it sticks around for a bit,
But then it passes on by.
And the sky knows the weather,
But knows it is not the weather,
It's the sky.
Spacious,
Open,
Separate.
This is non-identifying.
Your mind is your mind,
A space for thoughts and feelings to come and go,
To pass by like clouds and to bring difficult weather which will pass.
Just take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
And move into the rest of your day with kindness and come back to this whenever you need it.
