Oakville Zen Meditation
How to practice “R.A.I.N. “ to meditate on anxiety
The Buddha himself repeated many times that a worried, restless, excited mind is the common denominator for suffering coming from either from desire, hatred, ignorance, or delusion since most of them trigger positive or negative anxiety.
Stress and anxiety are our daily demons, and the #1 cause of medical consultation including in the pediatric group.
We talked about anxiety many times including how to relax faster using breathing techniques.
The US Navy Seals use one of the various breathing techniques as an immediate, optimal anti-stress relaxation technique during drills and covered missions.
It is on our website: 1) click on “Dharma lecture” in the main menu, 2) then enter “breathing” in search. It is Dharma talk # 480 presented on the week of Dec. 31st, 2023.
Besides psychotherapy, medication, and even the search for a new stressless lifestyle, I will elaborate more specifically this week on how to approach anxiety using a meditative approach. mindfulness-based meditation should be considered seriously. Here is the practice of “R.A.I.N meditation “.
RECOGNIZE:
The first step in the rain process is recognizing what is happening in our mind-body.
This is crucial and critical.
Anxiety has many vicious ways of hijacking, and absorbing our lives, thinking, feelings, and bodies.
The recognition of our anxiety that comes with mindfulness allows us to step out of our entanglement with this demon. Such recognition brings active awareness of what is happening i.e. “ I have anxiety”.
This step creates a small but significant separation /dichotomy between you and anxiety
Without recognition/awareness, we may even not know what’s wrong emotionally other than a vague sense of unease that’s hard to pin down.
ACCEPT:
Allowing anxiety is paramount since reacting, resisting, and struggling against anxiety will energize it. As you all know, acceptance is a critical Zen coping skill taught in any Dharma lecture dealing with suffering.
Allowing us to recognize that we are human beings, bound to encounter a wide range of emotions
that we cannot avoid.
INVESTIGATE:
It means: How do I experience mentally, emotionally, and physically my current anxiety
and not what triggers it since the reasons are usually well-known. The impacts of anxiety are many:
Cognitive such as poor concentration. memory lasps, even ADHD has been reported.
Emotionally: anxiety is master to generate anger, fear, guilt, shame, frustration, loneliness,
regrets, self-blame, doom-gloom behavior, etc…
Physically: our body is the perfect proxy of the mind, and will always react when anxiety to present
or even when still just at the subconscious level.
The physical manifestations have been described at length in previous Dharma talks such as
#553: Mind-body connection. Dec. 22th 2024.
Ask yourself this question: Where, in my body, does it feel difficult unpleasant, or painful?
Be mindful of it, accept it, and the familiar physical discomfort of anxiety will lose some of its strings.
NONIDENTIFICATION & NURTURING:
Nonidentification: It does not mean ignoring anxiety but simply not identifying yourself with anxiety
such as: “ I have anxiety, rather than saying I am anxious”.
I am adding here
Nurturing: that is expressing compassion, kindness, encouragement, and patience to yourself when
suffering from anxiety. Nurturing helps to soften our experience with anxiety by bringing some warmth
and gentleness to self-care.
The beauty of RAIN lies in its simplicity, accessibility everywhere, every time, and adaptability to any negative feeling that we are facing daily. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. Ounce an overwhelming adversary, anxiety becomes an opportunity for growth, self-discovery, and even liberation, besides being an opportunity to practice mind control. Thanks
