Guided RAIN Practice

When we experience difficult emotions, our natural tendency is to clench up, close down, or turn away. RAIN is a practice that helps us meet our emotions in a skillful and loving way, so that they can move through and, eventually, release. This track walks you through each step of the practice in a supportive way. We start with the "R" of recognizing our experience, and then we soften into the "A" of allowing. We then open into the "I" of investigation, and finally we close with the "N" of non-identification/nurturing.

Transcript

Welcome to this guided meditation.

We're going to be doing some RAIN practice.

RAIN is an acronym.

The R stands for recognize.

The A is allow.

The I is investigate.

And the N kind of depends who you ask.

Sometimes it's non-identification.

Sometimes it's nurture.

But I'll walk us through that when we get there.

But to begin with,

You can just go ahead and start settling in.

Find a posture that's comfortable.

Gently close your eyes if that feels supportive.

Feeling a sense of your body.

The breath rising and falling.

And coming into presence.

So RAIN is a practice that we can use to meet challenging experiences,

Challenging emotions.

And it works by kind of opening us into a process that makes space for our experience.

And that allows us to become intimate with it and to know it as it is.

And this is a process that is healing.

A word of advice if this is your first time trying RAIN practice.

I recommend that you don't kind of jump into the deep end right away and choose an emotion or an experience that's really,

Really challenging or traumatic.

So on a scale of 1 to 10,

I'd say probably don't go higher than a 7.

And it can actually be really beneficial to choose a range of emotions.

You can choose something that is a little easier to work with just while you're getting familiar with the practice.

But as you sit there,

As a kind of first step,

Allow yourself to bring to mind some emotion or some event or some story that is there for you.

Could be something that happened recently,

A difficult situation.

Could be just a general feeling of some sort that's been with you today or past few days.

And whenever you choose,

This will be the kind of object of our focus as we begin the meditation.

And you want to start by just recognizing what's coming up for you,

What's actually present in your experience right now.

Sense into it.

It's not an intellectual exercise of analysis or explanation,

But exercise of analysis or explanation.

But in terms of your direct experience,

What you feel in your body and your heart,

What are you noticing?

Where are you noticing it?

What's there?

It might be a sense of just tension,

Clenching of some kind,

Maybe clenching in the face or just a general feeling of flinching,

Not wanting,

Unpleasant,

Just sense of something's being unpleasant,

Not what I want.

Maybe sinking,

Dullness,

Sleepiness,

What's there?

Recognizing.

And notice if the mind feels unsettled,

If it's kind of darting around,

Looking for something else,

Not wanting to do the meditation.

Restlessness,

Recognizing that if it's present.

Maybe numbness,

Maybe you just think,

I don't know,

I'm not not really recognizing much of anything.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to recognize.

Sometimes there can be a kind of numbness,

Blankness.

You ask the question,

What's there?

What's coming up?

And you think,

Not sure,

I don't know.

And then we recognize numbness,

Uncertainty,

Doubt.

Recognizing.

Just starting to open to the contents of our experience,

Our experience as it is,

Not trying to improve upon it.

And sometimes it can help to kind of just flash through the mind as a kind of reminder that event or experience or feeling that we want to focus on in this RAIN process,

Whatever that is.

You might just remind yourself and then see what bubbles up.

How does the mind respond when you recall that object?

How does the body respond?

Recognizing.

And the next step is,

It's not really a separate step so much as it is a softening of that first step of recognizing.

As you recognize,

See if you can soften that first step of recognizing.

As you recognize,

See if you can soften your awareness into that sense of allowing.

Whatever's there,

Can you make space for it?

We spend so much of our time pushing,

Running,

Fixing,

Adjusting.

Can we just,

For a moment,

Just allow things to be as they are?

For a moment,

Just allow things to be as they are.

This too.

Space.

Space for this.

Recognizing what's there,

Allowing it to be as it is.

Whether it's unpleasant,

Pleasant,

Painful,

Perhaps.

Allowing.

Softening,

Giving permission.

It's okay.

It's okay.

It's okay.

You can be with this.

And if at any point in this meditation,

It starts to feel like too much,

You start to feel overwhelmed,

You can always return to some anchor that you find steady and comforting.

Often,

For me,

It's just the feeling of my feet.

It's not a lot of drama for me in the sensations of the feet.

It might be different for you.

Maybe it's tuning into the sounds.

Yeah,

So you have that anchor as a kind of option,

As a support.

And then you come back into the meditation as you can,

As you're able.

But it's often a process.

What's present?

Can you not be present?

What's present?

Can you name it?

Tightness,

Or tension,

Or fear?

Distraction?

Whatever's there,

Can you name it?

And can you allow it?

And as that process unfolds,

The next step,

The eye of inquiry,

We want to kind of awaken the natural curiosity of the mind.

That desire to really know and understand.

What's here?

And it's most helpful if we think of this as a really experiential form of inquiry,

Of investigation,

So that we don't get lost in all kinds of stories,

And analysis,

And explanation.

And keeping it rooted in the felt quality of our experience,

And bringing an attitude of curious investigation to our experience.

What does it feel like?

What does it feel like being curious about the texture of your experience?

Still leaving that space of allowing,

Of permission,

But bringing a little more discernment into the meditation.

A question you might ask,

What's needed right now?

What would be helpful right now?

What feels like it most needs your attention?

If there's some difficult emotion present,

What does it want to say?

If it could speak,

If it could tell you,

What would it say?

It doesn't have to be something elaborate,

Maybe just,

I'm sad,

Or I need a hug,

Or maybe just thank you.

Thank you for seeing me,

Thank you for listening,

For opening.

So just tuning in to the texture of your inner experience,

And letting it unfold,

And being attentive,

And caring,

Really taking care.

For the next part,

The N of RAIN,

What resonates most with me is the non-identification,

So I'm going to start there.

And it's a kind of subtle shift in the way you frame your experience,

Shift in the way you perceive it.

So as you mindfully attend to what's present,

What's there for you,

Just noticing the quality of independence,

You could say,

That you don't necessarily decide what feelings are going to be present.

What feelings are going to be present?

Yeah,

They come about through causes and conditions,

Some of which you may have influenced in the past,

But most of which are out of our control.

Even things we did in the past are now out of our control in the present,

And what's happening is a kind of ripening of past conditions.

It's not you.

It's not the essence of who you are.

It might feel that way sometimes.

Sometimes you might feel I'm a sad person,

An angry person,

A fearful person,

Because that's how these experiences work.

They kind of draw us in,

And we start to feel that we are identified with our emotions.

Our experiences.

But can you,

Almost like you're lifting very lightly your awareness,

Just lifting ever so slightly so that you're not in that storm.

You're aware,

You're mindful,

You're present,

But it's not you.

The emotion is not you.

The thoughts,

The stories,

The commentary,

The familiar patterns.

Just patterns.

Just patterns.

They arise,

They stay for a while,

And then they fizzle out,

They cease.

What's left?

What's left?

And as we prepare to wrap up this meditation,

I'll just say a little bit about the other way of thinking about the end,

Which is to nourish.

Some people find that the shift towards non-identification can lead to a kind of detachment.

A sense of pushing away your experience.

And if you feel any of that,

It can be very helpful to notice even that as just a pattern.

A pattern of disconnection,

A pattern of dissociation,

And really bring a lot of care into this space that's created through this process.

Nurturing yourself.

Again,

That question,

What's needed right now?

Maybe it's just a little word of support or encouragement.

You can do this.

Good job taking this time.

Acknowledging the good in what we've just done,

Taking this time for ourselves.

And acknowledging the good in what we've just done,

Taking this time for ourselves.

And acknowledging the good in what we've just done,

Taking this time for ourselves.

Acknowledging the power of this heart,

This mind.

The power of awareness.

Of receiving the difficult,

The unpleasant with love.

The possibility of healing,

Of integrating.

Of riding the waves,

The ups and downs,

The good and the bad.

The good and the bad.

May you find some measure of peace and ease and freedom in your life as you go through your day.

And may this practice serve to be of some benefit to you.

May it bear fruit.

Reviews

This is such a compassionate and healing meditation. Beautifully paced and sympathetically executed.