In our perpetually busy world, we often find ourselves caught in emotional storms of anxiety, self-judgment, or difficult memories that perpetuate our suffering. The practice of RAIN, developed by renowned psychologist, author, and meditation teacher Tara Brach, offers a powerful mindfulness-based process to navigate these turbulent emotional waters and come home to our innersense of presence, wisdom, and freedom.
What is the RAIN Practice? RAIN is an acronym that guides you through a four-step meditation for bringing compassionate awareness to intense emotional experiences:
R – Recognize what is happening A – Allow the experience to be there I – Investigate with gentle attention
N – Nurture with self-compassion
Rather than avoiding, suppressing, or indulging difficult feelings, RAIN teaches you how to turn toward them with an open, accepting, and nurturing presence. This act of unconditional friendliness can be immensely liberating and healing.
The Steps of RAIN The practice begins by Recognizing and clearly naming the emotional state you’re experiencing, whether anxiety, anger, sadness, or something else. There’s no need to justify or push the feeling away—simply acknowledge it.
From this accepting recognition, you then Allow the feeling to exist without judging it or yourself. You make space for the experience tobe as it is in that moment. Breath by breath, you build capacity to stay present.
The next step, Investigate, involves calling upon your natural curiosity to explore the felt-sense of the emotion arising in your body and heart-space. You witness its texture, energy, and message with caring attention.
Finally, you Nurture your being with a gesture of loving-kindness and self-compassion. You offer the warm embrace of compassion to whatever arises, as a mother would to a distressed child.
Befriending Your Inner Experience Through this meditation of mindful presence, you cultivate an unconditionally loving relationship with your inner experience—even the most difficult aspects. RAIN creates a gentle but powerful holding environment for the storms of emotion to be witnessed, understood, and allowed to pass in their own organic timing.
As you ride these waves of feeling with an openhearted embrace, you realize that you are not the emotion itself. You are the open, nurturing awareness that can hold it all. In this spacious yet grounded presence, the clouds clear and you experience profound freedom, wisdom, and love for your own precious being.
While skillfully guiding us into the tender landscape of our emotions can feel daunting, RAIN ensures that we never have to weather the storm alone. With this practice as our trusty friend and shelter, we can keep turning toward the difficult with care until it loses its squeezing grip, and our natural radiance shines through once again. Book your complimentary session on the contact page and see how we can work together