RAIN Meditation For Difficult Moments Of Stuckness

In this guided meditation, you’ll learn and experience the RAIN meditation practice, a powerful mindfulness technique for working with difficult emotions, stress, anxiety, and challenging life experiences. RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture, four gentle steps that support emotional regulation, self-compassion, and nervous system healing.

Together, we’ll slow down and mindfully recognize what is present, allow emotions to be here without judgment, investigate sensations, thoughts, and feelings with curiosity, and nurture yourself with kindness and care. You’ll be invited to reflect on a past or present challenge and move through the RAIN practice in a grounded, supportive way.

Perfect for daily mindfulness, emotional healing, inner reflection, or moments when you feel stuck, triggered, or disconnected. No prior meditation experience is needed—just a willingness to meet yourself with honesty and care.

Transcript

The RAIN meditation practice,

RAIN is an acronym that stands for Recognize,

Allow,

Investigate,

Nurture.

So we'd start with choosing something that feels like a stuck place or a challenging place and you can also do it on the spot if something challenging comes up on the spot or you can kind of do it by appointment and it works really well to bring something to mind like this.

And so I'll just describe a little bit what the process entails and then we'll do it.

So the R for Recognize is kind of a quick one that happens when you focus yourself on a thing as you've just done with your question and so that is recognizing that there's something there that has some difficulty around it for you or some kind of tension or some kind of discomfort.

So you're just recognizing it and then the A you very quickly go into Allow.

So Allowing is about non-resistance.

This is about asking yourself consciously to let this be here just as it is.

Let this quote-unquote problem be a problem and let me experience my experience of it as it is without trying to change it in any way,

Add anything to it,

Manipulate it.

Let me just allow this so it could be a physical pain and it would be just let me just let this hurt or an emotional pain.

We just let this discomfort be here.

Then we go into Investigate and with Investigate we are asking ourselves questions internally and there's a few that are really helpful that I'll say in just a second but the main thrust of the investigation is somatic.

So even though we might be asking ourselves questions internally we want to have the answer to the question come from the body.

We're looking for a felt sense rather than an idea about the thing and that's where we spend the most time in RAINN is just on Investigate and then we go to Nurture.

So with Investigate some of the questions that are really helpful I find are what is the worst part of this and if there's a body posture or a facial expression that goes along with it to really let yourself go into that and just to like explore the extent of it and then when we go into Nurture the question is really how does this want me to be with it?

So you're asking from inside the discomfort what do you need?

How do you want me to be here with you?

And you receive some answers from inside of that.

So that's the basic format.

So I invite you to close your eyes if you would like find a body posture that is comfortable and supportive balancing relaxation and alertness inviting a sense of dignity into your posture and also allowing yourself to offer your body any kind of comfort if you need to make any movements or adjustments.

So we'll begin with our Recognize bringing your area of focus into your mind and just recognizing wording of it the sensation of it the experience of it and allowing it to be here as it is and just try to soften as much as you can opening towards the discomfort or the question letting yourself kind of go slack towards it and just beginning to kind of walk around the periphery taking it in from all sides.

What is this experience of not knowing of wondering of wanting and then turning towards it with curiosity as you begin to investigate and get to know it.

What is this thing here to tell you?

Inviting this thing to let you see it and get to know it completely.

And you can ask yourself what is the worst part of this?

Maybe there's a body posture or movement or a facial expression that goes along with it.

And just noticing what you notice.

And when you're ready you can ask this thing how does it want you to be with it?

Bringing in the N of nurturing.

How can you care for this question in yourself?

Can you resource yourself with maybe touch?

Maybe rocking or movement.

Or maybe there's some action that it needs you to make on its behalf later.

Allowing yourself to offer nurturing compassion towards yourself,

Towards the question you're sitting with.

And when you have a sense of completeness with that you can let it go and just sit for a few moments in the spaciousness of after the rain.

And then preparing to bring the meditation to a close.

And offering yourself some appreciation for your efforts.

Thank you for listening to this guided meditation that was originally recorded in my Mindfulness and Creative Coworking Community Sacred Studio.

If you're interested in joining a session with us you can message me for more details.