Let's begin by getting into our good meditation posture.
Feeling into the body,
Particularly the base,
Our legs,
Our sitz bones,
And extending upwards through the top of the spine,
Finding our own way of being in the body.
Let's take a moment here to connect with the breath,
Just feeling the in-breath and out-breath as it moves through us.
When we enter RAIN practice with the R,
Recognize.
So taking some time now to recognize whatever emotions might be present for you today.
As always,
If you have trouble finding them,
You could just ask yourself,
How am I feeling?
And seeing what emerges.
The more we look,
The more we might see that there are more emotions or more subtleties to an existent emotion.
We're learning to just shine a light on all of them.
The second step in our process is that we allow for the emotions or accept them.
So we embrace the emotion.
It's okay that we have this feeling or feelings.
So giving ourselves time,
Space,
And permission to feel what we feel without judgment.
Let the emotion itself be the object of your attention.
We are rigorously non-corrective.
We're not doing anything about the emotion.
We're just looking at it,
Being with it.
The I in RAIN is investigation.
So let's investigate the very nature of this emotion.
I'll ask a series of questions and just notice what arises for you.
When we look at the emotion,
Does the emotion have a shape?
Does it have a color?
If so,
What shade of that color exactly?
Is the emotion three-dimensional,
Two-dimensional?
Does it have a shape?
Does it have a weight?
A temperature?
How would we know?
Where did the emotion come from?
Where was it put together or born?
Where does the emotion go when you're not actively feeling it?
Where does it live then?
Having investigated the nature of the emotion,
We move to the N,
Which is non-attachment or non-identification.
So we've spent some time with this emotion,
And like any guest that we might invite to our home,
At a certain point,
That guest must part for now.
So we take some deep breaths together.
Having acknowledged,
Recognized the emotion,
Investigated,
We just let it go for now.
It may arise in a day or in a minute.
But for now,
Say thank you for the information,
And we move on.
So we'll take three deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth,
Breathing in,
Out through the mouth,
Bringing our focus there instead of to the emotion,
Letting the breath ground us,
Breathing in through the nose,
Out through the mouth,
Once more in.
We breathe out,
Remembering that we are not the emotion.
It is just part of our current experience.
It is something that is happening right now.
And we can re-enter the day and do the other N,
Which is do something nurturing for ourself.
