3M Meditation 2-26-24

The speaker introduces a meditation called RAIN, which stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. They guide listeners through each stage of the meditation, encouraging them to recognize and acknowledge their emotions, investigate where those emotions are felt in the body, and nurture themselves by finding ways to care for their emotions. The speaker suggests journaling about the experience and invites listeners to practice the meditation throughout the week. They end the meditation by wishing listeners a blissful week. Good morning to our magic Monday morning meditation and I hope this finds you well. Today we wanted to talk a little bit about a meditation that is really near and dear to my heart it's called a RAIN meditation and that is a an acronym for four words that help us really connect a little more with ourselves with our authentic selves with our emotions where they are in the body and recognizing them and then working with them and sometimes that's a really helpful practice if we feel very strongly about things and it's hard for us to come back and be centered again so the acronym stands for recognize, allow, investigate and nurture and in today's meditation we will go through these four stages and really allow ourselves to recognize these emotions, feelings and then move through them so let's go ahead and get started you can close your eyes and as always just arrive within yourself through a nice deep breath in, pause a little and then just release everything with the out-breath and allow yourself to do that a few times so you're entering yourself within yourself pull all of yourself into your meditation space notice how your body starts to slow down how you arrive more in present time by just focusing on your breath for a moment I also would invite you to create a grounding for yourself a way to anchor your body and connect it with the earth give it a space to release give it a visual to be able to release and you can attach that to the very end of your spine and all the way down into the center of the earth and it's almost like you can flip a switch and let everything that has been collecting over the past week out and down your grounding and be playful as you're creating that visual for your body how bodies like to freely thrive in this lighter amused playful energy and just take a moment to enjoy that sense that quietness as you settle into your meditation space you also become comfortable or accustomed or just notice wherever you're at in your meditation practice just sitting in quiet in silence for a moment just being you and as you're sitting in quiet in this beautiful quiet space you may notice that there is actually maybe not so quiet maybe there is a lot going on in our space and it's almost like the moment we try to calm ourselves down bring ourselves into present time and just want to be sitting in silence everything becomes so loud within ourselves and that's okay it is what it is so the first the first word in the RAIN meditation is recognize so allow yourself to just recognize what is happening in your space what sorts of feelings and emotions are present in your space there might be fear there might be anger there might be anything on the whole spectrum of feelings or emotions resentment shame guilt and to be actually a bit more specific to narrow it down a little bit from all these bigger feelings that can be present i want you to imagine a situation that has been a bit challenging and don't pick one that has been traumatic as this is a shorter meditation but go ahead and just find a situation that has been challenging for you where you may have some feelings around you something that might trigger you and just recognize what is there you may also recognize there might be shame around feeling angry or there might be guilt around feeling a certain way and also bring it on to a somatic level look in your body where in your body do you feel tension maybe you pull up your shoulders when you feel bad or maybe you have a pit in your stomach pull up your shoulders when you feel bad or maybe you have a pit in your stomach just recognize where you are which brings me right into the next word which is allow allowing to let it be how it is give yourself permission to have those feelings to sit with them that they're there that part of you might be really angry for instance or really fearful that there might be shame around some things that you may have said or done and just allow your breath to anchor you you're grounding connecting you as you're allowing yourself to just sit with these feelings so as we're moving into the next word which is investigate i would invite you to take a deeper look take a deeper look on a somatic level where it sits in your body what information does that give you maybe you have a lot of tension and tightness in your throat and it's really hard to speak your truth to set a boundary recognizing that fear of doing that maybe you recognize that in regards to that situation that i asked you to visualize earlier maybe you realize a lot of heat when you're angry around something and maybe there is tension in your shoulders or in your jaw or you have your hands and fists maybe you would like to crawl into a hole because you feel ashamed or guilty about something so just allow yourself to dig a little deeper seeing where it's coming from noticing what led up to it at the same time grounding out any judgment that you may have around that good people don't have anger if you really had it together you wouldn't be so fearful maybe you notice something like that popping up in your head you can just let that go and if you're noticing you're getting way too deep into things you can just take a step back and pretend you're in a movie theater watching something play out on the big screen you're just observing and you may notice how it becomes much easier in an instant if you take a little bit of a step back it gives you a little bit more space okay and as we're coming to the last word in this rainy meditation the last word stands for nurture so allow yourself to nurture that part of yourself that struggles with these emotions you can ask your higher self you can ask the universe what would be really nurturing for your body and for your spirit and for your human experience right now and maybe it might just be sitting and extending grace and love to yourself so nurturing can take on a really helpful role in allowing yourself to really just accept the fact that you have those feelings nurturing yourself despite feeling angry nurturing can mean to take a walk in the woods connect with nature nurture your body by giving it oxygen and connecting with the earth and nature and immerse yourself in the green colors well if you're in place where it's green at the moment maybe nurturing means to just sit more often with yourself and allowing yourself to have some space so as you sit and connect to your higher self you may get a very clear answer on what nurturing means for you you may just notice a feeling in your body you may notice a sense of calm that washes over you over the course of this coming week i am inviting you to sit with this a few times and journal about the feelings you notice journal what it does in your body journal around where you see this coming from connecting to and also how you can nurture yourself and moving forward and with that i invite you to come back to your breath for three more deep breaths to come back into present time and notice where your in-breath comes in through your nose giving your body oxygen being connected to present time and on your exhale just releasing anything and everything that is not serving your highest purpose in this very moment may you have a blissful week and deeply enjoy this experience Namaste you that's here very welcome