Tara Brach - Reflection: RAIN - A Guide for Embodied Presence (2013-03-23)

Episode Date: March 30, 2016

Reflection: RAIN - A Guide for Embodied Presence (from 2013-03-23) - We have deep conditioning to disconnect from our body’s awareness and, in so doing, leave the site of our creativity, love and vitality. This short meditation uses the acronym RAIN as a guide in re-inhabiting our bodies and our full aliveness.   Free download of Tara’s new 10 min meditation: “Mindful Breathing: Finding Calm and Ease” when you join her email list.

The following reflection is led by Tara Brock. To access more of my meditations or reflections or to join my email list, please visit tarabrock.com. We practice and when thinking sticky, which it often is, you keep getting sucked back into the same narrative, your top ten hits, you know how it goes. When it's sticky, how we can use the acronym rain to re-establish an embodied presence.

And as a reminder, that means you just recognize what's going on. Okay, worrying, worrying. Allow. Give space for the life that's here. Just give space. Don't judge yourself for thinking. Then investigate, R-A-I, investigate in the body. And just to say again, I like to keep repeating this,

investigate for some people means think about it. That's not what it means in this. In rain, it means investigate in an embodied way. Find out where do you feel it in your body? Is it pressure? Is there a sense of squeeze? Is there a sense of flow? What is it like in your body?

Investigate. The end of rain and the version that I've been teaching much more recently is to nourish with kindness, with compassion, which means whatever you find. and often it's vulnerable or raw to bring a quality of kindness to that. After you've done the steps of rain, recognizing and allowing and investigating, which means really contacting and nourishing, then just to rest in your immediate experience,

and there's in that resting, you'll notice what's called non-identification, that after doing rain you're not so identified with what's going on, more there's a resting in an awakefulness and openness that's free. It can be a matter of degree, but that's the fruit of rain. So don't just do rain and miss out on the fruit. Like if the rain falls and new plants come up, just rest and discover the new growth, the flowering. So we practice for a moment.

just let's try it out and sense how we can become more embodied with rain and then we'll move on. As you pause right now to practice, I'd like you to bring up something that happened today or yesterday or within the last few days that was slightly stressful that got you thinking, got you activated, but not something supercharged. It won't be useful right now to do something super charged. Something that brought up sticky thinking, irritation, anxiety. It might be something in a conversation with somebody, something at work, something going on with your health, something that's around the corner that you're anxious about. Any situation that's a little sticky or tense will do, take a moment to again reflect on it, think about it, remember it.

The R is just to recognize, okay, this is what's going on. Stressful situation, thinking about it. The A is to allow, just to create some space that you're not trying to fix anything. You're not trying to make the stress go away. You're just allowing the situation to be there in your heart, body, mind. And then to investigate is to deepen your attention and just notice, well, how's it living in my body? with some curiosity. I'm in this situation.

When I'm activated, what's it like in my body? Scan, the throat, the chest, the belly. Just come into your body. It helps to use a breath, kind of a slow, longer breath, breathing in and out and feeling the breath that in your body, just to stabilize your attention in your body, then use your breath.

Investigate. What's it like? And even if you're not sure of how it feels right now is related to the situation, what matters is investigating how is your body right now? What's going on right here? The end of rain to nurture is just to regard with kindness. Whatever you're noticing you might nurture just with a sense of acceptance, warm, gentle, some gesture of kindness.

And then we pause after the active steps of rain. It's just to sense the fruit, whatever it is, without expectation, just to sense the quality of presence that's here, just to notice what it's like, to rest in it. So sometimes when we're lost in thought or in a virtual reality, the coming home into the body is simple. We just go, oh, okay, I'm out there, out there and just feel your breath and you come back in.

And sometimes if it's stickier, as we just did, you'll recognize and allow what's going on and then investigate on purpose. Really bring your attention to scan down through your body and feel from the inside out. And on purpose, offer a gesture of kindness and discover how much more awake and present you are when you've taken those steps. and deepened your attention. Namaste and thank you.