The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author.

There's a paradox to mindfulness, and some of you might know the word satti, the polyward satti, means remembering presence,

being aware of what's going on in the moment. And as most of us know, when we most need it, you know,

when we're in traffic or when we're in some engaged with our child and there's a lot of tension or when

there's an argument with a partner or anxious about performance, what we're overeating, you know, a bag of trail mix,

those are the times we most need mindfulness and those are the times that's absolutely like a million miles away, right?

So the big question is, in this practice of remembrance, is how to remember to remember, right? I mean, we know that.

I was reflecting on this, and I remember one of my father's favorite little stories of an elderly couple

and they're having an amiable conversation, one says to the other, hey Fred, so how was your experience

with the memory clinic? And Fred said, oh, it's great. They taught us all sorts of cool tricks, you know,

association and visualization. And Fred says, that's great. What's the name of the clinic?

Fred goes blank and he's thinking and thinking and finally this broad smile across his face and goes, what's that,

that flower with a long stem and the thorns and his frances rose? He goes, hey, rose, what was the name of that clinic?

I heard that one a lot growing up. So we need a way to remember, to remember. I mean, we need a certain amount of mindfulness to be mindful.

And many of you are familiar with the acronym RAIN, RAIN. And it's a strategy for cultivating and applying mindfulness

that's really easy to remember to kind of, okay, let's just reign. Teachers have been sharing this now for probably over 20 years.

And I find that this acronym is so helpful. I've ended up sharing it so regularly.

But I really wanted to dedicate a talk to, to diving in some more and looking at the elements of it and some

of the challenges that come up and having, have a little time so that we can do a full guided RAIN

meditation together, apply it. I'll be asking you to pick something, someplace you get stuck that you'd like to have a little more

mindfulness holding. So a little bit of background on RAIN. The acronym was first coined by a senior of

aposina teacher Michelle McDonald. Again, I think it was about 20 years ago. The version that I've been teaching for

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