Exercises From the Book, The Divine Within

RAIN is an acronym first coined by Michele McDonald to describe a mindfulness practice where we recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture our inner experience. This practice can help you find some calm when you notice you are triggered. It can also help you deepen your self-awareness.

This exercise is designed to help you be in the present moment by being with an activity in a mindful manner. Learning to be in the present moment can help us experience less suffering and can help us embody the inner compass. This is a deepening of the mindfulness practices as now you are practicing focusing on a task, while observing what arises internally, and then attempting to bring your awareness back to the activity when you are distracted by something happening internally.

Being in nature can be deeply healing and being in nature while being in the present moment can help you connect deeply with the inner compass. This next exercise is designed to help you be fully present with mindfully walking in either your neighborhood or somewhere else in nature.

With this mindfulness practice we deepen our experimentation with being the present moment by focusing on an object. This exercise will also help us play with our active imagination to sense the energy of the object. This can help us sense the energy inside us, which is another form of self-awareness.