Working With Difficult Emotions: RAIN Practice

Guided practice for working with strong or difficult emotions. RAIN is an acronym that stands for Recognizing, Allowing, Investigating, and Nurturing. The end of the practice includes 'after the rain,' which invites you to rest in the stillness after the storm.

Transcript

Today we'll be practicing a RAIN meditation which is an acronym that allows us to work with heavy or difficult emotions and it stands for recognizing,

Allowing,

Investigating,

And nurturing.

We'll begin our practice with just settling into a comfortable seat wherever you may find yourself today.

It can be helpful to place either the feet on the floor or if you're sitting in a cross-legged or kneeling position making contact between the knees and the floor.

And just feeling your body being supported by whatever seat you're on today.

We spend so much of our time holding our body upright it can be helpful to just notice any sense of holding or tension or effort just allowing ourselves to feel held.

You can close the eyes if it's comfortable or just soften the gaze down to the ground as well.

Just noticing how gravity is pulling your body closer to the earth feeling that intimacy with the earth.

A sense of groundedness.

We'll check in briefly with the breath just to create another sense of stability in the body so you might like to explore a few sensations of the breath and see which one feels most intuitively accessible for you today.

So checking in with rise and fall of the belly or the chest.

Maybe noticing air coming in and out of the nostrils.

Just scanning those different sensations and settling your awareness on whichever one feels most nourishing.

And noticing where the mind has gone as you've settled your awareness and if it's drifted into thought knowing that's completely normal and just bringing your awareness back to resting on that sensation of the breath.

No need to judge where the mind is gone and at any point during this practice if you notice the mind has wandered into thoughts again just gently inviting it back to the breath to whatever reflection we're on.

And we'll begin our RAIN practice with just inviting a strong or difficult or sticky emotion that's been present throughout your life recently or maybe it's been on your mind on your heart and if there's a bunch of stuff that arises again just see if you can intuitively choose one and it can be helpful to intuitively label it as well.

So maybe it's anger or fear or joy or sadness.

Just allowing that feeling that emotion to just kind of exist in the body.

And this is the first part of our RAIN practice.

The R of recognizing what is happening.

So as that emotion arises just inviting you to recognize this is joy.

This is fear.

Watering these roots of understanding.

Once we have a sense of what emotion is present we've let the other emotions kind of fade into the background.

We move into the second part of our RAIN practice which is allowing this emotion to be just as it is.

There's no need to force it to be different to be stronger to go away or accepting this emotion is present right now.

These feelings,

These thoughts,

These physical sensations that exist with this emotion are present and it's okay that they're here.

If you notice any hesitancy or resistance to this acceptance or this allowing just noting that again also allowing or accepting that resistance or hesitancy to be there.

Not trying to wrestle with it or make it go away.

Maybe sound like say to yourself this too is welcome.

This resistance,

This hesitancy.

And then we'll move into the third part of our RAIN practice which is investigating or inquiring about this emotion with a sense of kindness or gentleness.

We're just inviting ourselves to become genuinely curious of our experience.

We might contemplate what is this emotion like in my body right now?

What is it like to feel this in this moment?

Maybe a sensation in the chest,

The face,

The throat,

The stomach.

You might investigate how frequently do we feel this emotion?

Does this emotion tend to come up in certain situations with certain people,

In certain environments?

Do we have a sense of when this emotion started to become so present in our lives?

Was there an experience that happened at some point that they created this strong emotion that we're so familiar with today?

Again just becoming curious to whatever your lived experience with this emotion is.

If at any point it feels too heavy or too intense knowing you can pull back from this inquiry and just resting in that acceptance.

Maybe resting in the breath and the feeling of your feet on the ground,

Your body on the seat,

Knowing there's no need to push ourselves as we investigate.

Again just inviting this emotion to be present and seeing what intuitively arises when you give it space and a little curiosity.

We'll begin to transition into the last part of our RAIN practice which is this sense of nourishing.

So you might like to place a hand on the heart or a hand on whatever part of the body you're feeling this emotion in.

There's this sense of gentleness and compassion that we're naturally inviting towards this emotion.

Whatever it feels like this emotion needs or this part of ourselves needs,

Noticing how we can offer that exactly mirroring it right back to it.

So if there's fear maybe we can place this sense of courage or just a sense of stability whether placing a hand on this part of the body or just inviting a sense of maybe light or warmth or embrace.

Just nourishing,

Nurturing the part of ourself that's feeling this emotion.

Just allowing the softening to happen.

And for the last minute of our practice we'll release any effort of focusing on one emotion or on this RAIN practice.

Focusing on anything and just inviting all that.

Imagining it just falling down with gravity down into the earth and this is what we call after the RAIN.

So it's like after a thunderstorm passes in a summer evening and there's this clarity in the air.

It's cooler,

It's more vibrant.

There's a sense of spaciousness.

Just inviting you to rest and this openness,

This spaciousness that comes from taking care of our emotions.

Maybe inviting a smile to arise on the face if it feels right.

Knowing there's nowhere to go or nothing to do in these moments.

Staying here for as long as you like or as long as you're able to today in your own time.

Just beginning to bring awareness back to the body.

Moving the hands,

Maybe stretching,

Blinking the eyes open.

As you move about your day just inviting this practice to marinate in these daily moments when these emotions arise again.

Maybe briefly going through this practice or just resting in this after the RAIN sense of spaciousness and clarity.

Knowing you can come back to this practice whenever this emotion arises again.

Reviews

Very good guided practice.