Processing Emotions Using RAIN

A tool for emotion recognition and integration is called RAIN was added to dharma practice over 20 years ago by Michele McDonald & popularized by Tara Brach. It's is an excellent approach to developing mindfulness and healing.

Transcript

If we don't allow ourselves to feel emotions,

They'll come out very often in extremely dysregulated ways.

Anger at a boss or at a relative will come out at a loved one.

Blocked guilt turns into feelings of low self-worth and shame.

Blocked fear that we don't process comes and appears as panic attacks,

An overwhelming anxiety disorder.

So it's important to learn how to work with and open to emotions as they appear in feelings in the body and moods in the mind.

The process is outlined as RAIN,

Which is an acronym,

And RAIN is an elegant approach.

So the R of RAIN means to recognize what is going on internally.

It's embodied with the simple question,

What am I feeling right now?

That question pulls us away from the story,

The thought,

The figuring it out,

The rationalization,

The justification,

The trying to solve life,

The trying to turn life into a narrative,

The thoughts,

All of the words and chatter in the mind.

The counter question of R and recognize is what am I feeling right now?

What am I feeling right now?

Any situation in life when I am caught up in the dizzying,

Spiraling,

Obsessively repeating thoughts,

I know that that means there's something beneath it waiting for my attention.

And the question,

What am I feeling right now is the key to the beginning of this process.

Very often if the emotion that's beneath all the thinking is easy to label,

I'll label it.

I'll simply say,

Oh,

I can tell by the tightness in the stomach and the mind wanting to get away that I'm in fear.

Or I can tell by the wince feeling that I'm in shame and guilt.

Or I can tell from the feeling of just shaking and resentment stories that I'm in anger.

So A is to allow and accept all of the feelings and moods that are occurring beneath the thinking.

Most of the time in life what happens is we try to instead of allow and accept,

We go back up into the story once again when we see that there's an emotion present and we try to figure out our life.

I'm going to tell that person this or I'm going to do that.

Or we might seek a distraction in the world.

We might seek a laptop,

A phone,

A TV,

Food,

Shopping,

Drugs,

Alcohol.

So instead of trying to remove,

Get rid of,

Distract,

Run away from what's happening beneath the thinking,

All of the nonverbal parts of our experience allow is to stay with and open to the feelings that are occurring.

The tightness and the contraction in the front of the body,

The jumpiness in the mind,

The heaviness in the mind,

The feeling of anxiety in the mind.

I use one word which is welcome.

This allows me to change my natural approach to how I greet emotional experience.

My normal way again is to,

My innate way is to flee back up into the thinking mind.

So I have to say something like yes or welcome,

I see you.

The Buddha with his own shadow self,

Mara,

Said I see you Mara instead of go away Mara,

Leave Mara,

When the Buddha's desire to quit,

To run away,

To give up,

To seek out the easy life would come up,

He'd say I see you Mara.

And I just go welcome,

Welcome.

So the third part I is to investigate,

To really look at and really explore how these feelings if we don't push away or run away or abandon these emotions,

How do they unfold and how does each state play out across the body,

The mind,

Even know all the thoughts that get generated as a way to pull away from the emotion.

Investigation can also be to see how parts of the body can be at war with themselves.

When I feel fear in my stomach and it starts to arise,

Very often there's this counter clenching in the jaw,

My jaw locks,

I don't want to feel fear and I feel my shoulders tighten.

It's like the upper part of my body is trying to contain fear from expressing itself.

Or if there's loneliness,

Sadness and there's this feeling of hollowness in the chest that I've experienced loss,

I can often feel the rest of the body sort of tightening against that loneliness,

That sadness in the chest as a way to like contain it.

So the body can be at war with itself and I investigate that.

Now the last letter in Reim originally was not identified,

Which means explore everything that's going on beneath our thoughts but don't take it as self.

And I don't use that because I find it more useful to use the letter N to mean nurture.

When I experience something difficult,

When I experience something painful,

A difficult emotion,

A difficult state,

I try to send it thoughts of kindness.

I try to re-parent these emotions because so many of my emotions have been pushed away since childhood.

Anger doesn't believe that I'll be able to take care of it and stay safe and meet its needs.

So I'll nurture the anger by saying,

It's okay.

I'll make sure they don't hurt us again.

I'll stand up from us.

I'll take care of you.

So I don't need to let you out but I can hold you.

There's a big difference between shouting and trying to get the anger out of us onto other people.

Acting out doesn't generally placate or release the anger as much as giving the anger a safe container to be felt,

To arise,

To be nurtured and then to unfold and to be released.

That's how I do emotion integration and processing.

So Reign,

Recognize,

Ask,

What am I feeling?

Allow,

Don't resist.

I investigate and then finally nurture.

Allow the emotion to know that we're no longer children but that we have grown into adult bodies and we can take care of ourselves and be with these states.

So let's practice.

For this meditation I'm going to ask you to bring about an emotional experience.

So closing the eyes,

Coming into the body,

Long inhalation through the nose,

Lift your shoulders up towards your ears,

Trying to touch your ears with your shoulders,

Holding,

Holding,

Holding,

Breathe out through the mouth and just relax the shoulders all the way down.

And if it feels good,

Pull the shoulders slightly back to open up the chest,

Just to make the chest a little bit more open.

And then for the second breath,

Pull in the stomach as tight as you can while breathing in through the nose and hold,

Hold,

Hold,

A bit longer,

Breathe out,

Soft belly,

Really soft belly.

And then the third breath in,

Tighten all the muscles in the face,

The arms,

The legs,

Buttocks,

Any other muscle you want,

Tighten,

Tighten,

Tighten,

And then release.

So that's one way to very simply use the breath to relax the body.

And then for the very beginning,

Using the breath,

We can also continue to relax.

If you're feeling really tired,

Hold the in-breath for a few beats longer than you normally do before releasing them.

And if you're really tired,

Open up one eye as you breathe in,

Then as you breathe out,

Close it.

Then as you breathe in again,

Open up the other eye,

And as you breathe out,

Close it.

On the other hand,

If you feel anxious,

A lot of energy,

A good technique is to extend the out-breath as long as you can,

Smooth like a long thin thread of breath going out,

And then extend the pause between the out-breath and the next in-breath.

Now,

As we do this RAIN practice,

Part of working with emotional content is the.

.

.

The twin practices of bearing down,

Which means really moving towards an emotion that we might normally run away from.

But then the other part is backing off when the content feels too intense.

One way we can back out is to become aware of sensations that are going on that are pleasant.

I'd like to suggest that the sound of the birds outside,

Just the sensation of contact with the ground.

And if you'd like another sensation,

You might want to visualize somebody or some place that you feel really safe with.

So whenever you feel,

In any meditation,

Whether now or throughout the week,

That you need a little more of a safe container to hold your experience,

Just go to the sounds,

Which make the mind and your experience more spacious.

Go to the contact sensations with the ground,

Your clothes,

Or visualize the person or place you feel safe.

Or even add the phrase,

I love you,

Keep going.

I love you,

Keep going.

So I'd like you to bring to mind an image you associate with a difficult experience you had or something you fear,

Something you've struggled with.

A common theme is loneliness,

Lack of connection with a partner,

A feeling of disconnection,

A feeling of lack of fulfillment,

Even financial fear or any kind of topic that when it comes to mind creates obsession or the desire to immediately get rid of that topic because it's so difficult.

And rather than go into the story,

Into a narrative,

Just hold some image,

Some very basic representation.

For instance,

If there's a feeling of loneliness,

Hold the image of an empty apartment,

No one there,

Financial fear,

An image of not being able to purchase something we want or feeling vulnerable.

Loss might be associated with the place that we normally saw that person and now we no longer have access to them.

Shame could be just the simplest image that represents the action that we now regret.

And the question I ask is what needs to be felt?

What do I need to feel?

And if nothing comes up in the body,

Then prime it a bit.

What does it feel like to feel lonely?

What does it feel like to feel frightened?

What does it feel like to feel guilt,

Disconnection,

Not being with the loved,

Not finding someone to love me?

What does it feel like?

Sometimes something small or large will appear in the body,

Maybe a feeling of nauseousness in the throat or tightness in the chest or constriction in the shoulders or maybe there'll be a jumpiness in the mind and you'll feel the desire of a thought mind to pull you away but just stay with it.

Just welcome whatever needs to be felt.

Just welcome it.

[(sh cloud DUO.

) You're allowed.

I won't run away from you.

I can be with my sadness,

My fear,

My loneliness,

My grief,

My anger,

My rage.

Depending on how long we've been busily scheduling our lives not to feel these feelings,

These emotions,

They may have so many different sides to be explored.

Sadness,

Loss.

It has a feeling,

A tone.

It has a breath to it.

It has a heaviness.

It has a body state.

Sadness has a feeling in the chest and throat and it has a mood to it,

A heaviness in the mind.

It has a feeling of cloudiness in the mind.

Anger has a feeling of just this energy that wants to get out,

That wants to push its way out of the body.

It feels like it wants to explode out of the mouth and out of the eyes.

And it just wants to create so much,

Invictive and judgment,

It wants to shout.

And just create that container for it if you need.

Keep the sound of the birds present just to be with,

To create that container to be with.

Just investigate.

Just investigate.

What does this emotion want us to know?

Emotions don't express themselves through words,

They express themselves through the body and the breath,

The mood of the mind,

Feelings.

We've been running from some of our experience for so long,

Can we now turn and befriend even the most painful and difficult of our experience?

Can we stop running?

Can we stop running?

Hmm.

So the final stage of RAINN,

After recognizing through asking the question what needs to be felt,

Allowing through welcoming our experience,

Investigating an emotion through giving it space to express itself through all the different corners of experience,

Is finally to nurture,

To provide this part of our experience with love and compassion and care,

Tenderness.

Can I find that guilt and shame in the body?

And can we assure it,

It's okay.

I see you.

I know now how you feel.

I care about you.

I care about this feeling.

I'll take care of you.

I care about my fear.

I'll take care of you.

I won't put you in those situations again.

I care about my anger.

I'll take care of you.

I won't put you there again.

I hear what you need.

I care about my loneliness.

I'll take care of you.

I'll reach out.

I'll connect.

I care about my lack of self-care,

How little I've taken care of my heart and my needs.

I care about my loneliness.

I'll take care of you.

I'll take care of you.

I care about these feelings.

I won't run anymore.

I care about these feelings.

The fear of pushing people away,

Of being left,

I care about these feelings.

I care about the feelings of fear of disappointing.

So at no point as we move towards the end of the meditation do we ever push away or close the door on our feelings,

Our emotions.

We leave them open and exposed,

But we simply add in to the mind all the other sensations to provide warmth,

To provide a home for these emotions to grow,

To unfold,

To heal.

The sound of the birds,

The feel of the floor,

The feel of the breath,

The feel of being in a body.

The lights flickering behind the eyelids and eventually as we open our eyes the sights around us,

But at no point do we allow all the sights and all the thoughts to become so great that they bury the feelings,

That they bury the emotions once again.

Leave enough space when it's time to open your eyes.

For these feelings to have access to the sun and to the light and to the feel of all the senses around you so that they can breathe and they can be part of our experience.

At no point do we run away from or bury these emotions.

We leave them open so that life will heal them.

The sound of the birds,

The feel of the floor,

The feel of being in a body.

So,

Shortly I'm going to ring the bowl.

See if you can use the entire length of the sound to slowly open up the eyes so that we don't allow the sights of the room around us to push away whatever we've experienced,

No matter how small or big.

Just even awareness of the body and the breath.

Just keep all of our experience available.

Reviews

Helpful and transformative. Lots of directions to take this core practice in.

Really beautiful practice. Thank you. The snorting took me out several times tho. Maybe consider a dairy free diet, friend. Otherwise so helpful and beautiful 🙏💗🌹

Thank you.
I listened initially to learn it before trying this method as a meditation to process. Now for the next step, listening again while practicing it. I welcome the experience and the your guidances. 🙏

Thank you for your guidance through reclusive feeling of unworthiness. Sigh… very helpful.

I always appreciate Josh’s approach to integrating psycho education, mindfulness and Buddhism.

So very helpful! What a great blessing to have this work available
. Thank you.

Recognize
Allow and Welcome
Investigate
Nurture

Namaste 🙏🏼

That was truly a beautiful experience- it reminds me a lot of the welcoming practice- but you were able to help me truly allow all my emotions to be acknowledged and welcome and cared for. Thank you 🙏🙏🙏

A good look at and acceptance of the daunting emotion.

It was really very useful to face a difficult situation I’m experiencing in this period of my life.
Thanks for this

Thank you! Great explanation of RAIN and guided meditation!

Just right for me this vulnerable morning, thanks

This is such a life-changing meditation. Thank you so much!!!

That was intense. But so needed.

Excellent teaching on RAIN.

An excellent process/meditation for working with difficult/unwanted emotions.

A practice that has helped me through many difficult times in my life.

absolutely wonderful. The best RAIN guided meditation I have heard. Thank you!

This meditation is a treasure. Thank you.

Love this guy. RAIN is helping me a lot right now. Thank you...