RAIN: A Mindfulness Practice for Welcoming Your Emotions & Feelings
This four-step practice helps you recognize your emotions so you can respond, not react, to challenging situations.
The truth is that meditation does not eradicate mental and emotional turmoil. Rather, it cultivates the space and gentleness that allow us connection with our experiences so that we can relate quite differently to our cascade of emotions, thoughts and feelings.
The RAIN Practice
RAIN is an acronym for a practice specifically geared to ease emotional confusion and emotional pain. When a negative or thorny feeling comes up, we pause, remember the four steps cued by the letters, and begin to pay attention in a new way.
R — Recognize: It is impossible to deal with an emotion—to be resilient in the face of difficulty—unless we acknowledge that we’re experiencing it. So the first step is simply to notice what is coming up. You don’t try to push away or ignore your discomfort. Instead, you look more closely.
A — Acknowledge: The second step is an extension of the first—you accept the feeling and allow it to be there. Put another way, you give yourself permission to feel it. Thoughts emotions and feelings are like visitors knocking at the door of your house. The thoughts don’t live there permanently; you can greet them, acknowledge them, and watch them go. Rather than trying to dismiss anger and self-judgment as “bad”, simply rename them as “painful.” This is the entry into self-compassion—you can see your thoughts and emotions arise and create space for them even if they are uncomfortable. You don’t take hold of your painful thoughts emotions and feelings and fixate on them, nor do you treat them as an enemy to be suppressed. The can simply be.
As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid. We focus less on labeling the discomfort and more on gaining insight.
I — Investigate: Now you begin to ask questions and explore your emotions with a sense of openness and curiosity. This feels quite different from when we are fuelled by obsessiveness or by a desire for answers. When we’re caught up in a reaction, it’s easy to fixate on the trigger, rather than examining the emotion itself. There is so much freedom in allowing ourselves to cultivate curiosity and move closer to a feeling, rather than away from it. We might explore how the feeling manifests itself in our bodies and also look at what the feeling contains. Many strong emotions are actually intricate tapestries woven of various strands. As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid. We focus less on labeling the discomfort and more on gaining insight. Again, we do not wallow, nor do we repress. Remember that progress doesn’t mean that the negative emotions don’t come up. It’s that instead of feeling hard as steel, they become gauzy, transparent, and available for investigation.
N — Non-identify: In the final step of RAIN, we consciously avoid being defined by (identified with) a particular feeling, even as we may engage with it. You permit yourself to see your own your own fear, —whatever is there—and instead of spiraling down into judgment, you make a gentle observation, something like, “Oh. This is a state of uncomfortable feeling.” This opens the door to a compassionate relationship with yourself.
it’s easy to fixate on the trigger, rather than examining the emotion itself. There is so much freedom in allowing ourselves to cultivate curiosity and move closer to a feeling, rather than away from it.
As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid. We focus less on labeling the discomfort and more on gaining insight.
By allowing ourselves the simple recognition of our painful feelings, we begin to accept that we will never be able to control our experiences, but that we can transform our relationship to them.
We cannot will what thoughts and feelings arise in us. But we can recognize them as they are—sometimes recurring, sometimes frustrating, and many times painful. By allowing ourselves this simple recognition, we begin to accept that we will never be able to control our experiences, but that we can transform our relationship to them.