Feel Your Feelings, Drop the Story | Sebene Selassie

What It Covers

Meditation teacher Sebene Selassie joins Dan Harris for a live Q&A with app subscribers, covering breath meditation alternatives, working with shame using the RAIN framework, the Pema Chödrön "feel your feelings, drop the story" approach to rumination, and the four-element Buddhist body awareness practice.

Key Questions Answered

• •Breath Meditation Alternatives: Breath meditation is not mandatory. If focusing on breath creates restriction or feels unnatural, shifting attention to hands, feet, or heartbeat is equally valid. Lying-down meditation often makes breath awareness easier because the body is more relaxed, reducing the self-monitoring tension that makes seated breath observation feel forced or manipulated.
• •RAIN Framework for Shame: The RAIN technique — Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture — developed by Michelle McDonald and popularized by Tara Brach, works for shame as it does any strong emotion. The "nurture" step replaces the original "non-identification" because non-identification can pull practitioners into conceptual thinking rather than direct felt experience of the emotion.
• •Rumination Remedy — Feel the Feeling, Drop the Story: Pema Chödrön's directive to feel feelings without engaging the narrative is the core remedy for looping regret. Rather than analyzing or categorizing the emotion, returning attention to the body interrupts the storytelling loop. The body serves as a present-moment anchor that naturally dissolves the mental replay cycle.
• •Grammatical Reframe for Shame: Shifting from "I am feeling shame" to "there is shame" creates psychological distance without requiring deep philosophical understanding of not-self. A further step moves to "shame is being known," which then invites the question of what is doing the knowing — a gradual, accessible entry into non-identification practice.
• •Four-Element Body Practice: The Buddhist mindfulness-of-elements practice uses earth (solidity), water (fluidity), fire (temperature), and air (breath/movement) as body-sensation anchors. It can be applied during walking meditation or daily life — feeling feet on ground as earth, breath as air, warmth as fire, saliva as water — making embodied awareness accessible without formal sitting.