April showers bring May flowers.

When it started pouring rain in the middle of my tennis match last week, I tried to remind myself of that saying, “April showers bring May flowers.”  Truth be told, that noble quote came only as an afterthought to my initial reactions—annoyance and disappointment.  I had been stuck in my office all day, just itching to get outside and enjoy the warm sunshine and my first match of spring.  No sooner had I put on my tennis skirt and arrived at the court, it started pouring.  I ran back to my car, now soaking wet and a little miffed.  As I sat in my car, hoping it would pass, I thought about that other little rhyme about rain, “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day.” 

 When the ‘rain’ comes in our lives we certainly don’t want it to come again another day; we just want it to go away.  This is how many of us deal with the painful things in our life and understandably so.  When we are confronted with something that annoys us or disappoints us or in general just makes us feel downright crappy, we usually just want for it to go away.   Sure, it makes logical sense; why wouldn’t I wish for the rain to go away during my tennis match?  But, it doesn’t acknowledge the simple fact that no matter what I wished for, it is not what IS right now.  What “is” right now is that it’s raining and I am annoyed.  Any amount of pushing those feelings away isn’t going to work.  It’s tricky because sometimes it may seem like it did work, but really anytime you push something down without addressing it, it just reappears later in a new form.

I had a friend once who hated her job, I mean REALLY hated her job.  She told me she could not deal with how crappy it was making her feel.  She frequently told me how miserable the job made her and how she fantasized about quitting.  Then one day, in a triumphant door slamming tirade that went something like, “find someone else to do this &*!&@ job for squat!”  She quit.  I remember when she called me that day, ecstatic about her new freedom.  “I never have to deal with those miserable people again!” she squealed with delight.  It wasn’t until about three weeks later, when still hadn’t been hired for a new job that those familiar feelings she felt at work resurfaced. 

All this talk of rain reminded me of the exercise I did with her when it was raining on her parade.  The purpose of the exercise is to heal your emotional suffering, no matter how big or small.  I learned this exercise from my meditation teacher, the amazing and wonderful, Tara Brach. 

 I am providing an account of how the “RAIN” technique worked with her issue, but let’s make this more fun!  Follow along with me and try to use this powerful technique for your own healing.  Read the exercise first once through to get a feel for how it works.  Then think about a situation in your life that really brought up negative or uncomfortable feelings that you really didn’t want to deal with.  Really think about the situation.  Close your eyes.  Let all of your emotions and thoughts about your painful situation rise to the surface.  Then do this….

RAIN—an acronym for healing emotional suffering

R- Recognize- notice what you are REALLY feeling, all of it.  In my friend’s example the strongest feeling she ha was that of feeling like a failure.  Just recognize what your strongest feeling is at its root.

A- Allow- give yourself permission to feel whatever is coming up from you without judgment.  We have a tendency to rationalize our feelings away.  Know this: feelings cannot be rationalized away; they are there to be felt. 

When I had my friend do this exercise she recognized that on some level she felt like she was a failure for quitting. Even though she realized this mentally she never let herself experience the feeling of failure because she kept rationalizing with herself that she shouldn’t feel that way.  “I chose to quit so I shouldn’t feel like a failure.”   It doesn’t matter what you “should or shouldn’t feel”.  That is a judgment.  In fact, if you even think “I should or shouldn’t feel ______” take it as a sign that you are rationalizing your emotions and not allowing what is to just be.  In this stage of allowing, do only this: allow. 

I- Intimacy/Investigate- now that you are allowing your feelings to be whatever they are, get really intimate with them.   Getting intimate means getting out of your head and instead getting into your heart.  To do this you must investigate what the emotion feels like in a very physical way in your body.  It means asking questions like, “What is happening?  What in me needs attention or acceptance? Where do I feel the tightness in my body?”

For my friend it went something like, “Okay I accept that I am feeling like a failure.  In my body I feel this as tightness in my chest.  My throat feels like it is closing and I can feel tears filling up in my eyes.  I also feel my stomach turning.  I have felt this way before.  Actually, come to think about it, I felt this way with my parents as a child.  I remember I hated this feeling and I did everything I could to avoid it.  Which I guess didn’t work because the feeling is still here.”

This is a perfect example of something changing form.  The feelings of failure she didn’t deal with from the past are still asking to be felt and are now popping up in whatever situation provides the fertile soil. First it came as a child and wasn’t felt, then in her job, now in her quitting of the job.   

You may be thinking, Laura, this exercise does NOT sound fun.  I can’t argue.  It is never fun to deal with the crap we don’t want to deal with.  But I can promise you that this ancient Zen saying is true, “with emotions, suppression leads to momentary relief and permanent pain while expression leads to temporary pain but permanent relief.” Trust that if you actually feel these things they will eventually stop returning.

N- Non-identification- this basically means not taking your emotions too seriously. 

By now you have gotten pretty deep into your feelings.  Sometimes we get so deep that we forget that we are anything BUT that feeling.  It is easy to feel consumed by negative emotions and that is often one of our main fears in experiencing them.  But as long as you remember “this FEELING is not me, it is just a feeling that will pass,” you will be well on the road to healing. 

For my friend, she went through several boxes of tissues during steps one through three.  As we got to the N of RAIN, I gently reminded her that she was more than just her feelings.  So I will now remind you: Never take yourself or your feelings too seriously.  Buddha believed that life was suffering.  You’d think that he would be a pretty bummed out kind of dude, yet in every depiction of the Buddha, he is smiling.  This is because he also believed that life was also in many ways illusory and therefore not that serious.   The mantra of this stage is “It’s not that serious.”

If you followed along you are probably feeling pretty run through the ringer right now and that is okay.   I have used this technique many times to move through my own emotions and I have never regretted it.  Staying with your emotions with a compassionate and open heart, full of awareness, is what heals.

When you go into healing your emotions, go in with a compassionate heart.  Love yourself and allow whatever comes up to be.  Even if you happen to be standing in a tennis skirt in the pouring rain cursing at the sky, just let it be.  Know that you are more than that one feeling in that one moment.  Know that your true essence is loving awareness and that healing is always possible.

I hope that by allowing these “showers” your flowers will bloom!

Love and Light!

Tags: healing techniques

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