Tara Brach is an American psychologist and Buddhist teacher who has brought self-compassion into the language of personal change. Let’s explore the RAIN meditation that we can use when we turn against ourselves.

RAIN is a process I introduce in some way to most clients. In her book Radical Compassion, Tara informs us that any shift towards mindfulness (compassionate witnessing) reduces the intensity of emotion, down-regulating our often hyper-vigilant nervous systems.

In Radical Compassion, Tara introduces the image of tea with Mara – sitting down and engaging with our suffering with kindness and curiosity. Why befriend our suffering when it causes pain? Don’t we want the pain to stop? Shouldn’t we fight our way out of it? No! is my answer, and I stand with Tara. I’ve told clients that feelings are messengers. When we invite our suffering into the seat of our consciousness, we are able to know ourselves more deeply and offer the comfort and experience of ‘being seen’ that we often crave from others that leads to addictive and codependent patterns.

In fact, the entire practice of RAIN teaches us to meet our own needs – for validation, comfort, acceptance, grace, forgiveness, love…

So how do we start? How do we shift from viewing our struggles as our enemies, fixating on what’s wrong with us in a never-ending battle?

Tara lays it out:

The first step of RAIN, the R, is recognize. It’s as simple as saying hello anxiety – I see you. Here is anxiety. Here is fear. Greetings, feelings of dread.

Tara asks us to call up a situation in life that is triggering emotional reactivity. Something you’re going through that could be a portal to growth, but that feels really hard right now (hint: everything?). She calls this way of engaging with our suffering gaining access to the gold, because it’s getting close in to our experience that leads us to evolve.

Sure it’s hard, and doesn’t often feel good – diving deeply into something that we want to avoid, that’s causing pain. Would you rather act blindly on emotion – lashing out, bingeing, cutting – or turn towards it?

The R of recognize (I see you, shame) leads us to A – allowing. We move from naming the emotion to allowing it to be present with us. This shift towards presence creates space for the emotion to be as it is. As intense as it is. If you’re not sure what Allow looks like, think of it as saying Yes to your experience.

After A is I, for investigate. We’ve recognized (welcome, anger), allowed (yes, abandonment, you are welcome here), and we’re ready to go deep down in there. Into the body, where everything is held. When you feel fear, where and how do you experience it in your body? Get curious. When you feel fear in your gut, what are you believing? That you’re not safe? Allow your body to speak. Maybe your shoulders hunch in defeat and despair. Maybe your hands ball into angry fists.

Now that we’re deep down in there, what next? N is for Nourish, or Nurture. We ask that scared part, “how do you want me to be with you right now”? It knows, as Tara says. At times I’ve gotten a need for forgiveness, or a plea not to be left alone. And then we go one step further – the step so many of us missed in childhood – and offer what is needed to alleviate the suffering. When I can’t – when I don’t have it in me to forgive myself – I stay with “please forgive me” until something shifts. Tara asks us to visualize love like the inside of an atom, “the space between the molecules”. A hand on the heart also helps. It’s almost impossible not to feel care coming from within when we touch our own hearts, especially that tender spot that’s speaking its pain to you.