The R.A.I.N. practice ☔

A simple method from Tara Brach to notice your emotions and care for yourself

Does this match any of your feelings today?

What do you do when an unpleasant emotion rushes through you?

When you feel hurt, scared, stressed, or angry?

Few of us get structured lessons in the science and management of emotions, yet we all experience them every day. Emotions shape how we act, how we respond to others, how we feel as we move into later, unrelated phases of our day.

One tool I wish I had been taught decades ago is RAIN — a framework for noticing and caring for yourself as emotions flood your body each day.

In her wonderful book Radical Compassion, Buddhist teacher and mindfulness expert Tara Brach teaches the practice of RAIN.

“As you’ll see,” she writes, “these steps are easy to learn, and they can be a lifeline in moments when you feel stressed, fearful, reactive, and confused. These same steps, revisited again and again, build internal resilience and trust in your own wise, awakening heart.”

RAIN stands for:

R — Recognize your emotions

A — Accept them

I — Investigate them

N — Nurture them

When you feel a surge of emotion today, notice it, and follow the steps:

Recognize — Notice and name your feeling. Brené Brown has written that most people can only name 3 emotions. But there are so many emotions, and so many nuances. You might have to dig deep to figure out what you are really feeling. Is it frustration or indignation? Sadness or disappointment? Shame or embarrassment or guilt? If looking through a list might help, check out this PDF from Brené of 87 emotion she identified during esearch for her book Atlas of the Heart.

Accept — Rather than discounting or invalidating your emotion, accept that it exists. It’s not good or bad — though it may be pleasant or unpleasant. Let it be, without judgment and without trying to change it, Tara explains.

Investigate — Once you are in a no-judgment zone, you can get curious about the emotion. Where in your body is it manifesting? How do you feel it? Where is this emotion coming from? Why is it coming up now? What’s really underneath it all?

Nurture — This last one was added by Tara (the framework was created in the 1990s by Buddhist teacher Michele McDonald and used by many mindfulness teachers since) — and I think “nurture” makes all the difference. This is where you think about what you need in this moment, and you care for yourself as you would a friend. As Tara describes it, you send a “gentle message inward.” You share comforting words and thoughts.

I think this last step is essential and transformative, because it has the power to shift your thoughts.

With the first three steps, you may notice your anger or sorrow or shame, you may be able to accept it, you may investigate it and figure out where it is coming from — but then what? Are you simply stuck with this emotion and now more aware of it and all its thorny causes?

Nurturing gives you the guidance to realize what you need to hear and to talk to yourself, to comfort yourself, to be the voice of a friend. And that can lift you from this singular morass into a new level of observation, kindness, and hope. I think talking to yourself in this way is also making it possible to see yourself at a distance, as if there were two versions of you: the you who felt this emotion, and the you talking gently to yourself, loving yourself.

Tara has many more resources on RAIN, and her book dives much deeper into the process, with examples, stories, and more. But I hope this gives you enough to try it, maybe even later today. I hope it helps. It’s never too late to learn something new that can change your life for the better.

To our journeys,

Brianne