Tara Brach - Meditation: A Practice of RAIN

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Meditation: A Practice of RAIN - The acronym RAIN – Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture – guides us in bringing mindfulness and compassion to difficult emotions. With practice, we can find our way home to open-hearted presence in the midst of whatever arises. "Don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That's where the light enters you." ~ Rumi

The following meditation is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. This is a meditation using the acronym Rain. Recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture, bringing mindfulness and compassion to an area of difficulty in our life. So I invite you to begin by paying attention to the movement of the breath and sensing the possibility of relaxing with the breath.

You might sense the in-breath, being like a balloon that's inflating, just filling yourself, receiving, a healing, prana, life. And the out-breath are releasing, letting go. As you breathe you might sense that there are areas in your body that are wanting to let go that naturally can release right now. Perhaps letting go in the shoulders, softening the hands, relaxing the belly, relaxing the heart. Continuing to relax with the movement of the breath,

the mind drifts with thoughts and you notice that, and just relaxing open. Let your senses be awake and gently landing, resting again with the breath. It's from this wakeful presence that you can scan your life now and sense if there's a place of difficulty that's bringing up challenging emotions. may be an illness or something going on in a relationship, conflict, an addictive behavior, something going on at work, that is triggering feelings of fear or hurt, our shame, sadness. Bringing to mind a situation that in some way brings up reactive emotion,

that you'd like to find more balance in the midst of. It won't serve so well to bring up a situation if it feels like it evokes trauma. So picking something that, where there's a charged reaction, but not something that feels overwhelming. Let yourself bring to mind the situation that really exemplifies where this gets triggered. There might be a situation with somebody else where you're seeing what their face looks like and the words they're speaking right at the moment where you get triggered. There might be a situation where you're alone but in some way behaving in an addictive

way that is upsetting to you, sensing the room you're in. But like watching a movie, go to the frame where you feel most emotionally reactive, allowing yourself to freeze the frame, sense what's triggering you. And we begin rain, the r of rain is to recognize by recognizing whatever's most predominant that's going on inside you. It might be you're feeling anger or hurt or maybe you feel totally frozen with some sort of a stuck in tension, unable to do anything, filled with anxiety, just so. naming to yourself whatever it is you're most aware of and recognized goes with allow,

the A of Rain, which is just to let it be there right now. With allow we pause and we make space for what's here. Allow doesn't mean you like it. It means that you're acknowledging that this is the life of the moment. you're letting it be there. By allowing you're able to then begin to deepen your attention, the eye of rain is investigate. You might begin by asking what most wants attention?

What's the most difficult part of this? With investigate, you're feeling into your body, feeling into the place of failure or shame, or judgment or dislike or fear. It can sometimes help to ask yourself, well what am I believing when this is happening? Am I believing that somebody feels like that I'm not special? Do I feel or believe that I'm not understood? That I'm invisible?

that I'm a failure, that I'm unlovable. Sense if there's a belief going on. Do I believe that I'm disrespected? But most important, come into the body and sense how whatever you're believing is felt in the body. Pay attention to your throat, your heart, your belly. emotion might be there? What's the felt sense? Is there a feeling of clench or rawness or aching, squeezed? You can investigate more fully if you assume the facial expression of what you're

feeling. And don't be inhibited. Go ahead and just let your face take on the expression of whatever is really being triggered and you can even change your body body, You may end up feeling like you're going to raise or hunch your shoulders, maybe your hands want to come into fists, whatever it is, but allow your body and your face to express what might be going on inside you. That's a part of investigating and fully contacting the experience. What do you notice? feel most vulnerable in your body? Where does vulnerability live right now? And if that vulnerable

place in you could communicate, what would it want you to know? Maybe there's words, maybe there's a stronger feeling or an image. The investigate begins to move towards nurturing. When you ask that vulnerable place, how do you want me to be with you? You might ask, what is this place most need right now? What is it most need? Does it want to trust something or to feel something in particular or to know something? Asking, investigating and begin to sense now the possibility of responding to this place inside you from the most loving and wise part of you.

And as a way of getting in touch with that, you might take a few full breaths and maybe find yourself adjusting your posture a little, even assuming the facial expression that most allows you to inhabit your high self or what some people call their future self who were really evolving into, the most awakened heart, but staying in contact with the vulnerability, listening, feeling, what is this place most need? Calling on your wisdom and your love now sense that you can offer to this vulnerability. You can nurture this vulnerability by offering what's needed.

You might begin by sensing where it lives in your body and gently bringing a hand perhaps to your heart or your belly as if your most wise and loving part of your being could offer a tender touch, letting energy start flowing into the place of vulnerability. It's like if you haven't done this before, if you put your hand on your heart and vary the touch until it feels tender, that's the beginning of a radical shift where we start to regard with compassion our inner life.

What words or message does this part most need to hear? Can you offer that? It might be something as simple as I'm sorry and I love you or I care about this suffering or I'm not leaving. You belong. You're a part of this life.

If it feels difficult to offer compassion from your own high self, you might invoke or invite some being that represents compassion and love. Just call on that being. Could be a person, teacher, healer that you know someone living or dead, a relative, a child, It could be the Buddha or Jesus or Great Mother. It could be love and the wisdom that fills this universe and let it flow through your hands and flow into your heart and into where the vulnerability lives.

Rumi says, don't turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandage place. That's where the light enters you. Explore what it means to really let in love. but in healing. Being the holder and the held, we follow, rain, recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture with what's called after the rain. Some moments of resting in the heart space and presence that's here.

Just relax and let it fill you. So you can just dissolve into it and be aware of the core of the heart space and presence that's here. Be aware of the quality of presence that's here. What's it like? What's the sense of your own being of who you are right now? How is this shifted from when you began the meditation? Sensing the heart space that's here and trusting, this is more the truth of who you are than any story

you could ever tell about yourself. trusting in and resting in the presence that is your true home.