Okay,
Welcome to your mindfulness practice for today.
This mindfulness practice I learnt from an extraordinary woman in America called Tara Brack.
I speak of her quite often.
She is Buddhist and she is a psychologist and so she combines those two concepts and practices together.
If you haven't heard of Tara Brack before,
Her teachings are life changing to be honest.
She produces podcasts every week.
A live talk is published as well as a guided meditation practice and they're all by donation on her podcast literally called Tara Brack.
I learnt this mindfulness practice from her.
This is a practice that's designed for people who experience overwhelm or who tend to be real warriors or people who have anxiety.
As I have experienced anxiety all of my life at some level,
I found this practice to be quite extraordinary and I found that it really helped me.
This mindfulness practice is called RAIN.
It's an acronym,
R A I N.
It's a mindfulness technique that is designed to be a standalone practice in the moments of overwhelm or moments where you just feel really disconnected or highly anxious and you can't think,
Can't process.
There's just too much going on internally to even decipher any sense of clarity.
The R of RAIN is associated with the word to recognise.
The A is for allow and the I is to investigate and the N is to nurture.
Tara Brack says that the fruit of RAIN is realising that you are no longer imprisoned in the trance of unworthiness or in any limiting sense of self.
Give yourself the gift of becoming familiar with the truth and natural freedom of your being.
It is mysterious and precious.
We're going to go through RAIN together,
Break it down and hopefully by the end of this mindfulness practice you'll have a technique that will support you in those moments of fear,
Overwhelm,
Angst.
Let's begin.
RAIN is about identifying what is here in this moment.
Are you able to catch yourself in that moment of anxiety or overwhelm?
Pause for long enough to ask yourself what's actually happening in this moment because if we don't find that pause we get sucked down the rabbit hole,
We feel completely lost and then the bridge across into the world of panic is a really short walk.
So are we first able to recognise what we are feeling,
Where we are feeling it in our body,
What emotions are here,
What thought patterns are here?
Can we create the space just to simply acknowledge our current thoughts and our thought processes?
RAIN is really about that opportunity to fully recognise what you're feeling,
How you're feeling it,
What has brought it on and it allows your mind to start to move into the A of RAIN which is to allow.
This literally means that once you've recognised what you're feeling as you're feeling it,
You allow yourself to.
I think this is the greatest challenge with overwhelm and anxiety.
We instantly feel that there's something wrong with us so we do everything in our power to not allow ourselves to feel what we're feeling because we would rather be feeling something else other than what we're feeling because it's somehow wrong.
So with this mindfulness technique you're encouraged to actually allow yourself to feel what you're feeling,
Allow yourself the space that once you've recognised what you're feeling you give it the space.
You let it just be there,
You let it be just as it is,
You don't judge it,
You're not impatient with what's coming up,
You don't want to change anything about what's coming up or anyone.
It means a real sense of honesty and that honesty gives you the permission to let your feelings be just as they are and start to become the observer of what it is that you are allowing to be.
So when we allow this to occur,
Once we allow what we recognise to just be in a mindful way this is where we can create even more of a space to just pause and start to accept the reality of what is presently arising.
So it means that this allowing almost is an opportunity for us to give ourselves permission to just be and it takes some time to relearn this way but the more you do it,
The more you allow RAIN to be your go-to practice in those moments of anxiety,
The more you will lean into the acceptance of the allowance and you'll want to because the alternative is quite frankly horrendous.
You wouldn't want to go the other way which is creating even more resistance to what you're feeling and when you're resisting what you're feeling you're just taking yourself into a greater and deeper depths of suffering which is really harder to come out of and this is why anxiety is so physically exhausting because we resist what we're feeling rather than allowing.
So at first it can feel completely opposite how we usually respond in this way.
So allowing really is that awareness of the emotion so that it doesn't overtake you and cause even more anxiety or even more panic.
So in this instance we actually want to start to face and welcome in what we're feeling and not try to self-denigrate or suppress what it is that is coming up.
The eye of RAIN is to then investigate.
So once you've recognised what you're feeling and you're recognising that you're feeling something and then you're allowing yourself to explore more into what you're feeling that it really is okay you start to investigate it.
So once we become aware of the allowing of our inner reactions to exist we can begin to start to investigate what we're feeling and why we're feeling what we're feeling.
So it's a further opportunity to go into the pause and the investigation is also underpinned by a non-judgmental sense of self.
We try to observe this aspect of investigation again with the same amount of honesty as we are in the recognition and the allowing phase.
So the investigation is again that invitation to and a permission to go deeper into our sense of awareness even further.
And this is also where we start to investigate our inner dialogue and the quality of that inner dialogue.
Once we move through the allowing phase there is a little bit more gentleness with ourselves,
There's a bit more softness with ourselves,
The inner voice is less harsh,
Less critical because you've already given your permission to allow it to be what it is.
So when we learn to become the witness even more this is where we can start to delve into a greater space of questioning.
And so when we do investigate we learn to establish a connection to the self with a deeper level of self-care and move into a place of safety that's within ourselves.
So when there's anxiety there is a deep sense of being unsafe.
Or even feeling unsafe in your bones and in your own skin and that you can't even escape yourself,
Let alone your external environment.
And when we allow our anxiety to take us down the rabbit hole we can't even recognize ourselves what we're feeling let alone be able to communicate that with somebody else.
So once we move through the R and the A and the I we self-nurture,
We create a relationship with self that is far healthier,
Far more self-accepting.
And then in that landscape we have a real terrain to navigate our way through to have a level of observation and this observation removes the fast growing confusion of the time or the moment or the experience that we are currently having.
And the more we do this the more the cultivation of an inner place of refuge and retreat comes in because we find a place where we can just go and reflect and take a moment to investigate this even more.
So the more we repeat investigate it starts to become ingrained and an automatic response.
Neural pathways get recreated,
The brain will start to adjust to this new way.
So again practices like these as with all mindfulness practices are not just one hit wonders when you do it once and that's it.
And for those of you who have anxiety like me that you all know that this is something you have to work on all the time.
For the worry warts of the world this is something that is constantly present just to be a form of support so that we don't get lost into that constant state of worry and self-strangulation.
So some of the inner questions that we can ask ourselves when we are investigating further is what is it exactly that I'm feeling mentally,
Physically,
Emotionally?
What is the whole body mind communicating back as a feedback system?
What was the seed of this reaction?
So what is it that actually caused that reaction in the first place?
And is it something that cyclical?
Is it a place?
Is it a person?
Is it an experience?
Is it a sound?
And then what your belief systems that you have created around this feeling and is there judgment to it or is there impatience or is there that desire or want to be slightly different than how you are and that sense of repression is causing the angst and overwhelmed to be even greater or is it that you don't trust yourself to handle what it is that is going on and as a result of that you shut down to all experiences even if it was an experience that you could handle because the overwhelm is indicating that enough is enough?
And are you allowing yourself to soften into your vulnerability to experience your experience or is there a harshness there that has always been there that may not even be of your own making that is reinforcing that same inner battle and inner fight?
And what's feeling so anxiety ridden?
What is the pressure?
What is causing this feeling that is now coursing through your body?
And so of course as we investigate this sometimes this is quite quick sometimes it takes time sometimes we need to let our investigation process cook for a little while sometimes people around us are really great feedback mechanisms as to why we have reacted the way that we have and why we have responded to those reactions the way that we have.
And then once you've moved through the recognition the allowance the investigation we move into the N of RAIN which means to nurture and Hara Brack talks about nurturing with compassion and so here what we try to do while moving through the recognition allowing an investigation phase we then hold space for ourself with kindness we actually nurture ourselves through the process we begin to bring some empathy some compassion some kind heartedness maybe even humor if you feel that that's what needs to come up in the way of nurture particularly if you tend to take yourself really seriously and so this is a really great opportunity to be able to establish yourself in a new way of being where we learn to reinforce that the one that we go to for that sense of nurture and compassion and comfort and support is actually ourselves and that when we go inwards with that relationship with self that what we hear back is that whatever it is that you are feeling it is okay and that sense of being okay helps you feel like you're not on your own that you're not alone and that you learn to be there for yourself rather than find ways to escape yourself and so often in in a meditation practice particularly if we are physically alone we sometimes hold our own hand and whenever we have comfort like that we release oxytocin into the bloodstream which is the love hormone so we actually start to feel already a deeper sense of nurture when we hold on to our own hand or just sit with self in that way and that's why sometimes we work with the Ani Mudra which is where the dominant hand sits underneath the opposing into the lap with the tips of the thumbs touching we already have a sense of self-nurture by being in that space and the mantra often or affirmation for that mudra is commonly thy will be done and so interestingly it again is a reinforcement of our ability to self nurture and particularly if this is a really new way of being particularly if you're very harsh with yourself this can really take time to step into and the great thing about this mindfulness practice is that you can do it anywhere and no one knows that you're doing it and you can just for a little while just lose yourself into your own self-coping strategy in overwhelm and anxiety and know that you can build a strong muscle within to be able to cope in those moments of overwhelm so as we go through this practice again and whenever you're feeling into anxiety or overwhelm just simply remember RAIN recognize that you are feeling what you are feeling and give yourself time to pause fully let yourself be in from the moment into the present recognize that you're feeling what you're feeling instantly and the inner critic will disembark the conversation and then move into the a of RAIN allow yourself to just feel what you're feeling take the pressure off and then investigate what you're feeling why you're feeling what you're feeling what's triggered and then nurture yourself and just ask what it is that you need to do for yourself in order to awaken that sense of compassion again it might even be a very quick response to something you need to do to nurture yourself sometimes it's just simply the allowance that is enough and so try this mindfulness practice and try to practice this consistently as and when you need it and do so so that this is instantly a practice that you can go to and support you and then you can find another way because the truth is is that our anxiety is never going to go away but we can learn to master it to a certain extent and we can learn to be able to put practices in place so that it doesn't eat us alive every single time it rises and then as you work with RAIN more and more you will find this to be a real go-to practice it might also be really valuable for you to journal the investigation phases of anxiety and overwhelm so that you can start to reflect back and start to maybe see some patterns occurring and provide yourself with an opportunity for a deeper level of clarity because in the moment of overwhelm we do get lost and then when it passes and we carry on our lives with the next commitment the next conversation the next email the next text the next social media platform whatever that is it's lost the teaching is lost and then we find ourselves on a merry-go-round of being in this cyclical process of repeating patterns that are just reinforcing a deeper challenge when it rises rather than an opportunity to put something in place as an anchor and as a support structure and a support system so enjoy this practice of RAIN see how this shifts your landscape somewhat keep coming back to this acronym maybe even write it down on your bathroom window with a chalk pen or in your journal or in your diary or on a post-it note at work wherever it is that you need this reminder just let RAIN come in and hopefully it will be a support for you as it has proven to be for me thank you for listening
