Recognize, allow, investigate, nurture

Tara Brach is a psychologist and meditation teacher in Washington, D.C., who in 2003 wrote Radical Acceptance, a book about what she calls the trance of unworthiness: the quiet, constant belief most of us carry that something is wrong with us, and the lifelong effort to fix it or hide it. Her teaching is that the way out isn't to fix it. It's to accept it, fully, which is the opposite of giving up.

The tool she's best known for is four steps, with an easy name: RAIN. Recognize what's happening: name the feeling. Allow it to be there: don't fight it or flee. Investigate with kindness: where is it in the body, what does it want, what does it believe? Nurture: offer yourself what you'd offer a hurting friend. A hand on the heart. A word. "This is hard. I'm here."

That's the whole thing, and it takes five minutes, and it's one of the most useful tools in the chamber because it can be done in the middle of a day, at a desk, with nobody knowing.

Here's why I think it works, and it's the same reason the self-compassion key worked on day sixty-seven. We have two moves available when something painful shows up: resist it or be with it. Resisting takes enormous energy and never ends. Being with it, kindly, lets it move through. Brach's four steps are a reliable way to choose the second move when every instinct says the first.

It's in Awareness because the first step is the hardest and it's pure noticing. Most of the time we're already three thoughts into the story before we realize we're in pain at all. Recognize means catching it earlier.

Vault Human points to Brach's free guided practices online, which are generous and good.