Your Feelings Are a Navigation System You Can Trust: Soul PracticeYour Feelings Are a Navigation System You Can Trust: Soul Practice
Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life
Rev. Rachel Harrison shares how the RAIN method can help people in recovery trust their feelings as an inner guidance system. The conversation links spiritual practice, 12-step ideas and self-compassion to create more conscious responses to life’s challenges.
18:34•5 Oct 2026
Trusting Your Feelings: Using RAIN as a Soul Practice in Recovery
Episode Overview
- Feelings are a reliable guidance system and cannot be controlled or defined by other people.
- The RAIN method (Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) offers a practical structure for working with emotions.
- Pausing before reacting creates space for the higher self to respond instead of old defence patterns.
- Physical sensations like knots in the stomach or a lump in the throat can signal situations that need re-evaluating.
- Turning attention inward and practising self-compassion can shift both personal experience and relationships over time.
“Feelings are our navigation system. They are a navigation system that cannot be affected by anyone else.”
What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? This bonus instalment of *Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life* focuses on something many people in addiction recovery have struggled with: trusting their own feelings. Rev. Rachel Harrison talks about how those who grew up pushing emotions away often learn to “react, worry, control, fix” instead of listening to what’s actually going on inside.
Drawing on Tara Brach’s Buddhist-inspired RAIN method — Recognise, Allow, Investigate, Nurture — she offers a simple soul practice for anyone wanting a calmer, more conscious response to life.
You’ll hear Rachel share how feelings act as an inner compass: “Feelings are our navigation system… that cannot be affected by anyone else.” Rather than labelling emotions as good or bad, she invites you to pause in moments of chaos, notice the urge to defend or control, and gently ask what fear or belief is really sitting underneath.
For her, that often looks like seeing how a fear of being judged links to a deeper belief about abandonment and being unloved. The episode speaks directly to people in recovery from alcoholism, codependency and control addiction, as well as anyone who feels they’ve been handing their power over to others. Rachel weaves in references to 12-step teachings like taking a pause and “think the drink,” and extends that idea to worry, control and other habitual reactions.
You’ll get a sense of her warm, spiritual coaching style as she reminds the audience that they are “safe within yourself always,” and that no feeling is useless; it’s information from a higher self that can guide cleaner, kinder choices. Alongside this, she mentions group support options and shared community work, emphasising that personal healing can ripple out to families and the wider world.
If you’re curious about turning emotional chaos into meaningful guidance on your sobriety or healing path, this conversation might be the next gentle step you’ve been waiting for.
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