Hi,
This is Beck and this is a practice called RAIN.
And it's one we can reach for when we're going through a challenging situation,
When we're feeling some kind of struggle,
Some kind of emotional intensity.
And it's a way we can honour all of the emotions that exist,
That are part of the human experience,
To become more skillful,
More skillful with accepting and dealing with what can sometimes be very difficult emotions.
So wherever it is that you are,
Get yourself into a comfortable position,
Whether that's sitting or laying down,
Or perhaps you're on the go at this point in time.
And for this practice,
You can close or open your eyes,
That part doesn't matter.
Sometimes it does help to close the eyes to enable yourself to go within.
But a feeling of safety is also really important.
So if it feels better to keep them open,
Then that's definitely a great option.
Just take a moment to breathe,
Finding that breath in the place that feels most prominent in your body.
Finding that in-breath,
Enter the body,
And the out-breath,
Escaping the body.
And the practice of RAIN has become a well-known mindfulness practice,
And it's particularly useful for working with our emotions.
And it's an acronym,
RAIN.
R stands for recognize,
A is for allow or accept,
I stands for investigate,
And N.
N is quite versatile.
We can nurture,
Bring some self-compassion to our experience.
We can note,
Use a labeling or mental noting technique.
And we can also remind ourselves that this emotion is not me.
It's not me,
And it's not just me.
So let's get started.
The first step of the RAIN technique is to recognize your experience and what emotions might be accompanying that experience.
Perhaps this is an immediate experience,
Something that you're feeling in this moment,
Something that's happened quite recently,
Something where thoughts are quite intrusive about a challenge or a problem in your life where you're feeling stuck.
Or perhaps there's a past experience that's a little way behind you now that you know was quite a struggle and you could have used some support with.
Maybe now is the time you feel a little comfortable to revisit that experience and work with the emotions that went with that experience.
And so we're recognizing,
We're identifying,
Ah yes,
This is what happened,
This is what's happening,
And this is the emotion that goes with it.
Anger,
Sadness,
Fear,
Jealousy,
Maybe even some hatred.
What is the emotion that's accompanying this experience and this storyline?
And so once you've identified this,
You've recognized it,
And you've got an example,
Either recent or sometime in the past,
To work with.
The next part of the practice is to allow,
Is to accept.
And this sometimes goes against what our inclination is to do with difficult experiences and difficult emotions,
Which is to repress on one hand,
Bury it under the rug,
Deny,
Pretend it didn't happen,
And on the other hand express,
To act out the emotion without any pause,
Without any gap that informs us what a skillful response might be.
So at this particular stage of the technique we're just accepting,
Allowing this emotion to be there.
And seeing if we can dip our toe into the felt experience of this emotion.
And if it feels tolerable,
Then to wade a little deeper into that felt experience.
Knowing that there's nothing we need to do at this point about anything.
It's just to sit and accept,
To stand and allow,
As best we can anyway in this moment.
And the third stage of RAIN is to get a little bit curious as we start to investigate.
And at this point we take our attention into the body.
And if you can imagine a heat map,
Where is the part in the body where this emotion is being experienced,
Where it might reveal itself as a glowing red dot or a pain point.
Where is the place in the body that this emotion has currently taken up home?
It might be experienced as tightness,
Heat,
Prickling,
Maybe a nauseous feeling,
An ache or a sharp pain.
Or perhaps it's much subtler than that,
Maybe a low grade feeling of unease or something that's just out of kilter.
Where is it in the body?
Is it in the tummy?
Is it in the chest?
Is it in the shoulders or down the arms?
Or perhaps up in the head,
Across the forehead or in the temples or hiding somewhere in the jaw?
Where are your feelings being felt and what do they feel like?
And for the final stage of RAIN we can try out a few different things.
One of those is to nurture.
And this is where we try to offer ourselves a little bit of friendliness,
A bit of warmth,
A bit of compassion for whatever the situation is that's causing us this suffering.
We can place a hand on our chest if that feels supportive or perhaps on the place in the body where you identified this emotion is hanging out for the time being.
And quite literally connecting with this emotion.
And in nurturing we can try some reassuring self talk.
It's going to be okay.
Whatever the situation is we can get through this.
As well as this intense emotion I know there are other places in me that are strong and brave and supportive that I can draw on to move through this challenging experience.
Another way to approach the final step of RAIN is to realize that this emotion,
This situation is not me.
It's not me and it's not unique to me.
Somewhere out in the world at this very moment someone else is experiencing the same emotion that I am right at this time and going through a similar experience that I am at this time.
And finally in the last stage of RAIN another option is to note.
To simply keep bringing your attention back to the felt experience in the body and noting what this emotion is.
Giving your experience a somewhat objective label.
So well done.
Well done for having the courage to sit and work with this challenging experience.
It does take courage not to repress,
Not to express but to sit with uncomfortable situations.
We can take comfort in the fact as Thich Nhat Hanh so famously says,
This too shall pass.
Nothing is fixed,
Everything changes and with time this situation too will change.
Take care.
