RAIN Practice For Managing Stress

With so many challenges right now we need reliable ways to support our health. This 30 minute practice of RAIN- R-Recognize, A-Allow, I-Invesitgate and N-Nourish, will help you utilize the breath and the practice of RAIN to support you well-being and find calm amidst the challenges you may be facing now.

Transcript

As you hear the sound of the bowl,

You can allow yourself to find a comfortable posture.

Maybe that's seated or lying down.

You can gently close the eyes or find a gaze point somewhere out in front of you to let the eyes rest.

Just feeling into the arrival of choosing this time and choosing this practice for yourself.

That we can give ourselves to care for our inner landscape and attend to what might be here and need our attention.

So allow yourself to really feel as we settle into this practice what's here with you as we arrive to practice.

What's here in this inner landscape in the mind.

In the heart,

In the body.

Allowing yourself to really observe and connect to the way the mind might be moving.

Maybe charged and full and agitated.

Maybe the body fatigued,

Restless.

Maybe the heart aching.

Of course always the possibility of many other range of experiences to be here.

Just seeing if as we settle in you can welcome whatever's here.

Not pushing away.

Not resisting.

Not searching.

Really letting the awareness meet the conditions that are here.

And allowing now your attention to feel into the body,

To the posture that you've chosen.

Seeing all of the contact points that are here supporting,

Stabilizing.

Maybe this is beneath you,

Maybe this is behind you.

I invite you to really let your body receive this support.

What's it like to incline your awareness to allow,

Feel,

And connect to how the body can rest and solidity your groundedness.

And also feeling in your posture the way the spine is lengthened or engaged.

Realizing that alertness,

That sense of hereness,

Readiness,

Attentiveness.

And then let the attention sweep through the body to just see is there any part of your body that's tense or tight,

Holding on in some way.

And if you made an adjustment or shifted,

Moved,

You can let the body relax a little more in a little more space,

Ease.

And then can you let this body open?

You let it be receptive,

Present here.

As you feel this body and arrive into feeling the posture,

All of these supportive ingredients that allow us to practice.

Let your awareness begin to attune to what's around you.

Particularly in the environment that you're in,

Whether sitting indoors or outdoors.

Just beginning to allow yourself to bring in and attend to what's here supporting you,

Is with you as you take your seat in our practicing.

Maybe you feel into the containment of the things that are surrounding you.

Objects,

Nature,

Other beings.

Maybe you sense or feel into the solidity,

Stability of what you're sitting on or the earth beneath you.

How this earth has layers and layers and layers of solidity beneath us that's providing that anchoring of gravity,

Keeping us right here.

Maybe you feel into the natural environment or what is in your environment now that's allowing you to feel a sense of soothed or ease.

The sound,

The temperatures.

And then to feel into this connection,

Supportiveness that we have with what's around us.

Letting the heart and the mind and the body open to feel into this connectivity.

And here with you.

And now choosing to attend to the breath.

Letting yourself attend to how the breath feels in the body right now.

Noticing what it's like to experience an inhale.

Noticing what it's like to experience an exhale.

And just studying,

Feeling into the moment to moment experiences of breathing.

And be curious,

Investigate what it's like to feel all of the qualities and sensations of the mind.

And when the mind or the attention is pulled,

Jumps away from this moment,

Travels into some other experience,

The future of the past.

Other moments we recognize,

Oh,

Yes,

This is the mind,

This is the attention,

This is the heart,

The body being pulled in a particular way.

You can kindly meet that.

Recognize this is what's here and then return.

Just feeling the breath.

Maybe being curious how this breath studies us to meet whatever the conditions are that flicker in and out of our experience.

Realize here to accompany whatever is arising.

And no matter what arises,

Maybe it's an achy moment of an emotion,

A charge of a difficult thought,

Challenge of a difficult sensation in the body.

In those moments where that arises into awareness,

Can you allow it to be here just for that moment?

Come into arrival and then choose to come back and just feel into the breath.

Exploring this breath in your body,

Really feeling what it's like to tend to breathing.

Anne,

Please go general.

And as we sit and practice attending to the breath,

It's very likely that patterns of wanting to move away,

Chasing,

Resisting,

Or ignoring,

Checking out arise in the way we experience the mind or the heart.

So if you find some movement that is here within,

Can you for a moment investigate what that's like to feel that pattern of resisting or chasing?

What's that feel like in your mind or in your body or in your heart?

Is there a sense that you can investigate about how you're allowing these experiences to be met as they enter and pass through the awareness?

Find yourself trying to problem solve,

Analyze,

Rehearse,

Review,

And investigate what it's like to feel those movements arising.

And as you become curious in this way,

Nothing to do with it,

Just return back to the breath.

Just feeling this moment of breathing.

The movement,

The space,

The letting go,

The sensations,

Whatever's here as you breathe.

So feeling into that capacity of the breath to study it,

To nourish,

To care moment to moment of what's here that needs our attention in a particular way.

So now I'm going to invite us to shift our focus from attention to the breath.

Remember,

You can always choose to return to the breath.

This shift is to allow whatever expressions or feelings or climate of the heart here that needs your attention.

So allowing yourself to attend to the heart,

To the emotions that may be traveling with you,

Might be somewhat in the background,

But allowing them to come foreground.

Just really feeling and sensing and attuning to what emotion might be here with you.

You've been carrying your sadness.

Greet,

Despair.

Maybe the conditions of the heart are more inclined at this moment to restlessness,

Fear,

Worry.

Maybe the climate is more hot,

Anger,

Frustration,

Aggravation.

Or maybe it's been an overwhelm.

And this practice is to welcome in these more challenging emotions and to allow them to have our attention.

Just recognizing what are the emotions that are being carried or held or present in the heart.

If they're light or subtle,

That's okay.

Or if they're intense or big,

That's okay too.

Can you recognize what's here?

Remember you can return to the breath to anchor you back into this moment.

Beginning to feel and sense the feelings and tones of your heart.

And as you recognize our tendency often is to begin to wrestle with in some way,

Fix or move away from.

Can you invite and allow awareness to hold what's here?

Maybe allowing the sense of opening one's arms,

Mind,

Body to welcome in,

Hold and allow whatever these feelings are to be here.

You need to push them away or do anything.

Just like we can allow the breath to come and go,

Let this emotion be allowed to be here to come and go.

And if you start to get lost,

You pull down in some particular pattern in the mind,

Wanting to figure this out and make it go away and change it.

Can you instead bring the lens of investigation into that pattern?

Feeling how we might contract against the feeling or grab onto it in a particular way.

Feeling what that's like in your body.

Does your body become tense?

Does the mind contract?

So investigation,

Presence,

Feeling to be with,

Studying the awareness into,

Curiously being in a new way,

In a moment to moment way with whatever this feeling is that's here.

Of course it's here.

Of course it's supposed to be here in this moment like this.

Can you let that be true?

Can you get what that feels like in the body,

The mind?

Maybe how it gives more space to the heart into this feeling.

As you continue to hold and allow,

Investigate whatever these feelings are,

Feeling the tears,

How are you meeting and caring for it?

Are you nourishing it?

Are you offering it a kind and gentle,

Compassionate attention?

Like a seed that needs a gentle dose of water to be nourished,

To be held.

Seeing equality,

Care,

Tenderness.

Seeing what arises from that space.

Is the body,

Mind and the heart feeling more spacious,

Contained,

Grounded,

Relaxed?

Maybe some flickering of how to really care for this tenderness,

This feltness of the heart and how to take that into life.

As we arrive into the last few minutes of our practice,

I want to invite any who can choose to return to the breath,

Anchoring there.

Or you can continue to just attend to the heart in this way.

Meeting the movement,

The conditions,

The tones,

The climate,

All of the feelings,

Allowing them,

Really inhabiting and investigating them to care for them.

Just appreciating the goodness of your practice to care for your inner heart landscape in this way.

Thank you.

And as we arrive to close,

Allowing yourself a moment of gratitude.

To practice,

To experience whatever has been cultivated,

Supported,

Cared for.

Your experience of practice.

And then closing also with a moment of gratitude to all of the supportive experiences that have been with you as you practiced.

Gratitude for how all of this provides ways we can care for ourselves and be fully present in our lives.

Reviews

I love the practice of RAIN, so tender and compassion ❤️. This is delivered with such a consistent embodiment of these qualities, really beautiful, thank you 🙏🏻

Very nice. Spacious, doesn't really mention Rain directly, but the structure is there. Doesn't prompt to bring up a difficult situation.

Exactly what I needed