Do You
Experience a RAIN of Feelings?
An important first step in transforming emotional eating is to develop a caring, natural attention--a sense of just being with yourself as different feelings flow through you. Below is shared a practice that allows you to feel connected and intimate with yourself. Emotions are the willingness to be affected by life. I encourage you to look for the beauty and sorrows that are all around you and let them touch your heart so that you feel them. Be tender and gentle...allowing life to stir you and penetrate.
RAIN = Recognition, Acceptance, Interest & Non-identification
R: Recognition that a feeling has arisen. It is occurring. Just notice. What is it that you're really feeling?
A: Acceptance and welcoming of the feeling. You allow it to be. You allow the emotion to be a part of your aliveness. You leave it alone. You don't fight it. It's just like you have a house with two doors. You allow the visitors to enter and exit, just to pass through. Each have their own duration. What visits isn't under your control.
The feelings enter and leave, just as going through a door:
Every human being holds the full range of all human emotions. It is healthy emotional practice to let go of the experiences and emotions that arise in your life. Don't continually reflect on previous experiences. Be in the immediate now of your experience. Open to the experience and emotions completely, feel them, and when they change, let them go, just like a bird landing and taking flight.
I: Interest in the feeling. Be intimate with the feeling. Develop a caring acceptance of it. Then explore it. What is its message to you?
N: Non-identification with the feeling. Just experience the feeling. Don't make it "me." It's not your identity. It's only a movement of emotional energy, like a river flowing along. Feelings are always changing. The purpose of feelings is to be felt.
NOTICE the collection of thoughts (a story line) that gather around a feeling. I encourage you to be present with and just feel the inner energy. NOTICE what comes up. Notice what "the story" around it is. Watch the tendency of mind to get angry (to feel strong aversion) about what comes up. Notice if your mind "blames or attacks" you.
Additionally check out:
I summarized these ideas that were shared by Rodney Smith at a recent retreat. Check out:
Explore the book, Practicing The Power of Now, (1999), by Eckhart Tolle, New World Library Sounds True has audio and videotapes of this book, and many other titles. http://www.soundstrue.com/ 800-333-9185 Provides suggestions and insights to experience the joy of being, to enter the now, to accept whatever is happening (to see impermanence and the cycles of life), and to transform the "pain body" in us. This section is especially helpful when you find yourself triggered into a dark mood--it comes upon you-- and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is; you might feel depressed, despairing, and cynical and find yourself having a desire to hurt yourself or others, or find you become very angry or withdrawn. Notice, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body. See Chapter Six: Dissolving the Pain Body. I found it to be extremely helpful and very practical.
You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Five Principles for Keeping Life in Perspective, by Richard Carlson, Ph.D., (1997), New World Library. Richard shares PRINCIPLES ABOUT: of thoughts, about moods, of separate realities, of feelings, and of the present moment. He helps the reader create more effective relationships, understand stress, and solve problems in life to increase happiness and reduce addictive behaviors. Provides a "checklist for your life." |
Transform the RAIN into Growth and Well-Being!
