What is RAIN?

RAIN is a mindfulness and compassion meditation that consists of 4 steps:

⬩Recognize

⬩Allow

⬩Investigate

⬩Nurture

It’s a way to approach, understand, and work through difficult emotions by calling upon the power and healing energy of your highest self or other divine beings.

It combines mindfulness – nonjudgmental observation and awareness of thoughts, feelings, and sensations – and compassion – the understanding of and joining with the true breadth of experience of living and emotional beings.

It was originally created by meditation teacher Michele McDonald, then modified and adapted most popularly by clinical psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach.

Discovering this practice changed my life, and was instrumental in my healing from my deepest heartbreak, depression and self-abandonment, mother wounds, and food and cigarette addictions.

I want to walk you through each step, including the post step, After the RAIN, and then I’ll lead you through a guided practice so you can experience it for yourself.

Recognize invites you to notice a feeling, a conflict, or a difficult situation that is asking for some loving attention.

It’s the first step because so often we gloss over, distract from, or flat out reject certain feelings and experiences when they’re uncomfortable, or when we sense that they’ll require a lot of energy to tend to.

Sometimes this is necessary, but the longer we neglect them, the heavier and more tangled up they get. And they don’t just go away on their own.

Once you’ve recognized the feeling or situation, the next step is to Allow.

This might feel counterintuitive at first, because we’re conditioned to associate unpleasant or negative experiences with being wrong or bad.

Unpleasant and negative describe the quality of something, and wrong and bad judge it. Do you see the difference?  

Okay, so allowing means to let the negative feeling or situation be here, just for the moment.

It doesn’t mean you’re going to force yourself to like it, and it doesn’t mean finding the bright side.

This is important – because finding the bright side is actually NOT allowing it to be what it is, which is painful and unpleasant.

So allow it to be here. You might do this by saying things like “Sadness is here. Anger is here. Of course I feel upset about this. This belongs in my experience. This belongs in my story.”

Then we move into Investigate. This is an opening into curiosity about the feeling or situation.

Try not to go into explaining or storytelling, especially about another person if the situation involves someone else.

Here you’re investigating the part of you that feels upset or hurt, so that you can find out what painful belief or experience or unmet need is being revealed.

Sometimes this will invite you to scan back into your mind and body’s memory of experiences to find a common thread between the past and present. What deeper wound does the feeling or situation of today dig back up?

And you might need to keep digging, much like an actual investigation.

You uncover information, look at it, get curious about a piece of it, and uncover more and more until you get to the crux – the answer you’re really looking for.

And oftentimes that answer hurts, it’s something you almost cringe at. It’s the OUCH.

And that’s okay. We all have deep ouches that get covered up by lots of other things – it’s a survival mechanism.  

But we want to move out of survival mode, through healing, and into deep, wholehearted living. And that starts with finding the big OUCH.

Then comes Nurture. Once you’ve uncovered the OUCH, you begin to offer it the compassionate nurturing and healing that it deeply needs.

This can be unfamiliar and difficult if you’re new to this, but trust me… you can do it. Parts of you already know how – this will get you acquainted with those parts so they can really come out and lead the way.

One way to do it is to imagine a different being –

an actual person in your life who tends to embody nurturing energy, like a friend or mentor or therapist,

someone who’s no longer with you, like a grandparent,

or even a divine being or archetype, like an angel or god or goddess.

How would they comfort and nurture this tender, wounded part of you?

Imagine them in your presence and offering it to you, then give some attention to what it feels like to be nurtured and held in this way.

The post step, after Nurture, is After the RAIN. This is where you stop all the digging and doing, and just rest in all of the emotions and sensations that are now present, staying mindful and observing them.

What does it feel like to have touched a deeply hidden part of you, and then nurtured it? And how does that part of you feel now?

It’s important to note that After the RAIN does not always feel blissful, or peaceful, or even all that great.

You might notice that the primary feeling is relief or exhaustion. That’s completely fine… let yourself feel relieved or exhausted.  

You’ve just done incredible work connecting with your vulnerability, honoring your tenderness, and closing the loop of seeking and providing love and comfort.

Some true healing has happened, and it came completely from you.

You have the power to heal yourself by calling on the pure, divine energies of compassion, mercy, and love that already exist through and within you. That is the practice of RAIN.