Rain Mindfulness Worksheet
Help your client practice mindfulness and self-compassion with the help of our rain mindfulness worksheets. Click here for a free copy of our template!
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What is a Rain Mindfulness Worksheet?
Developed by Michele McDonald, RAIN mindfulness is a tool mental health practitioners and life coaches can use to teach their clients mindfulness and self-compassion. It especially comes in handy when clients feel overwhelmed by their thoughts and emotions.
According to McDonald, RAIN is an acronym for Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, and Non-Identification. Nonetheless, psychologist Tara Brach has introduced their own interpretation of the acronym, RAIN, which stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Natural Awareness. This revised version has been widely embraced and adopted by many practitioners.
Here’s how an individual can utilize RAIN:
- Recognize. During this step, clients are encouraged to recognize or acknowledge what they think, feel, or do that’s affecting them.
- Allow. In this step, the clients are given the time and space to allow the feeling or thought to flow and pass. They may give themself a word or two of encouragement to get through the uncomfortable sensations they may be feeling.
- Investigate. After going through the motions, they are asked to investigate the source of their feelings or thoughts with kindness and understanding.
- Natural Awareness. The final step of this process is to approach oneself with compassion for what happened before and after so that, should the client face future challenging situations, they know how to deal with them healthily.
Though the RAIN mindfulness method is usually done verbally or without paraphernalia, there also exists RAIN mindfulness worksheets for patients who find it soothing or helpful to write down their thoughts. And one of them is located within this article.
If you want a copy of our template, keep reading for more information on accessing and downloading the document.
Check out this video if you want to find out more about mindfulness activities:
Printable Rain Mindfulness Worksheet
Download this Rain Mindfulness Worksheet to help clients practice mindfulness.
How does it work?
Step One. Download the Template
You can access and download our printable RAIN mindfulness worksheet by doing either of the following:
- Clicking the “Use Template” or “Download Template” button above
- Searching “Rain Mindfulness Worksheet” in Carepatron’s template library on our app or website
Step Two (Optional). Explain and Fill Out the Worksheet
Since one can do the RAIN mindfulness exercise without paraphernalia, this step only applies to clients who find it helpful to write down their answers.
After you give your client a copy of the RAIN mindfulness worksheet, it’s best to explain how to fill it out. Here are some steps to help you:
- Recognize: Your client must sit down, be in the present and observe their thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. If they have any of the three, they may elaborate and describe it in the space provided under the letter. If it feels too overwhelming, you may ask your client to take deep breaths before or while doing this.
- Accept or Allow: Ask your client to allow the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations to flow within them so they may let it go. If writing down phrases or sentences of what they’re experiencing helps, they may also write it in the space provided.
- Investigate: When your client is ready, ask them to investigate what triggered them and what they need or want to feel.
- Nurture or Natural Awareness: Once they finish investigating, the final step is to be kind and compassionate to themselves after what they experienced. This may be awkward for some people. So, to encourage them, you may ask them what they want to hear from others or what they usually tell others to comfort them and replace the “you” in the messages with an “I.”
Step Three. Process the Answers and Experience
While the primary purpose of this exercise is to cultivate mindfulness, if the client is willing and desires to delve into the content they have written or seeks guidance on improving the effectiveness of the exercise, you can offer them suggestions.
Rain Mindfulness Worksheet Example (sample)
We created a RAIN Mindfulness Worksheet PDF sample wherein the fictional client just broke up with their partner. We’ve designed this example so you may provide phrase or sentence structures to your client in case they’re stuck.
View our example below or download the PDF version for free by clicking the “Download Example PDF” button above and use it as an offline reference or for educational purposes.
Download this Rain Mindfulness Worksheet Example:
When would you use this Template?
Mental health practitioners, such as therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, can use our RAIN Mindfulness Worksheets whenever they conduct sessions with their clients who:
- Are feeling overwhelmed by what’s happening in their surroundings or their life, such as an unexpected or huge change in their life
- Are constantly feeling anxious, lonely, sad, or any intense emotions that lead them to behaviors that negatively affect their physical and/or mental health
- Want to learn how to be more mindful or present
- Want to learn how to be kinder and more compassionate to themselves
- Are looking for coping strategies for emergencies that may affect their mental health
- Need a clearer or more systematic way to deal with the stress or uncontrollable emotions that result from that stress
Benefits
Simple to Use
Although the client must invest time and effort into following the steps, particularly considering that the mindfulness process can be challenging, the RAIN mindfulness worksheets are straightforward. They are user-friendly and require only writing answers to the guiding questions provided for each step.
Provides Structure and Guidance
n situations where the client is confronted with overwhelming emotions or thoughts, it is common for them to forget the mindfulness steps that can be beneficial. By having a template readily available, they are equipped with a guide that can assist them in staying focused on cultivating mindfulness and processing their experiences without being derailed by forgetfulness or stress.
Improved Self-Awareness
People who write down thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and behaviors can reflect and look over tangible evidence of who they are. If they’re willing to read and reflect on their writing, this can lead to improved self-awareness.
Positive Habit Forming
Since the RAIN mindfulness method isn’t a one-time activity, clients can use it until mindfulness becomes a habit whenever they’re intense emotions.
Why use Carepatron as your Rain Mindfulness Worksheets app?
By joining the community of Mental Health Practitioners who utilize the Carepatron app, you can go beyond simply accessing and downloading the RAIN mindfulness worksheet template.
In addition to editing and completing the template within Carepatron's software, mental health practitioners can streamline clinical processes and automate administrative tasks through our various features. Here are just a few examples of what you can accomplish by downloading Carepatron on your desktop or mobile device:
Control your Schedule
With Carepatron, you can integrate your work calendar with ours, approve/deny appointment requests your patients make, and send automated reminders to your clients via email and SMS to reduce no-shows.
Manage and Create Clinical Documents
On Carepatron, you can download and customize over 700 PDF templates of medical documents, scan/upload other clinical documents you can’t find in our library, create then share notes with a single click, and store all of these on secure HIPAA-compliant EHR.
Handle Online Therapy Payments
Using Carepatron, you can automate invoice creation, process payments online, and send automated reminders to improve cash flow to and from the hospital or your practice.
And these are only a few things you can do on Carepatron! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to improve the caliber of your practice. Sign up and create an account on Carepatron today!
References
Alvarado-García, P. A. A., Soto-Vásquez, M. R., & Rosales-Cerquín, L. E. (2022). Mindfulness-based online intervention for mental health during times of COVID-19. Indian journal of psychiatry, 64(3), 264–268. https://doi.org/10.4103/indianjpsychiatry.indianjpsychiatry_642_21
Hedderman, E., O'Doherty, V., & O'Connor, S. (2021). Mindfulness moments for clinicians in the midst of a pandemic. Irish journal of psychological medicine, 38(2), 154–157. https://doi.org/10.1017/ipm.2020.59
Commonly asked questions
Mental health practitioners and their clients experiencing overwhelming emotions are most likely to use and benefit from the rain mindfulness worksheets.
Clients, in particular, use the rain mindfulness worksheets whenever they need a clear structure, guide, or direction to be more present or handle their thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations during troubled times.
It’s meant to be a guide for practitioners who will guide their clients through the framework. Alternatively, it can be a document where clients can write down their thoughts or feelings as they go through their experience of mindfulness.
