A children’s book on the RAIN meditation
GOOD NEWS: We have signed a contract with Mango Publishing and our children’s book on RAIN meditation will be released in July, 2025! You can pre-order it at your local bookstore, on Bookshop.com, on Indiebound, on Amazon and other platforms.
Years ago, I discovered Tara Brach’s RAIN meditation and it changed my life. Through this meditation technique, one learns a step by step guide on how to go through challenging feelings without suppressing, judging or ignoring them. Each time I practice this meditation, it profoundly transforms the understanding I have of myself, but even more importantly it gives me the tools to better understand my daughter’s emotional world. After practicing RAIN daily, I started to dream of a kid friendly way of bringing RAIN into children’s lives. What if both parents and kids were to have a compass to use for when lost in challenging emotions? What if we were taught from a young age what we could do with strong feelings? In the spirit of bringing RAIN into little one’s lives, I wrote this children’s book.
Magic of Rain
A story for children (and their grown-ups) about how to go through feelings
written by Pinelopi Sioni and illustrated by Avital Yomdin
Foreword by Tara Brach
One day at school, Faye has a tough time with her teacher and ends up getting kicked out of class. Feeling completely misunderstood and frustrated, she sits with her grandma in the park, unable to talk about what happened. Granny Yaya steps in to help her navigate the big feelings, teaching Faye that emotions can be understood through the magic of RAIN.
This delightful picture book guides readers through Tara Brach’s 21st-century version of the Buddhist meditation technique, RAIN. Using simple and enjoyable language, children (and their grown-ups) can explore this method and easily apply it in their own lives.
About the Author and Illustrator:
Pinelopi Sioni is an embodiment guide of yoga, meditation, and the Alexander Technique, integrating trauma-informed principles and polyvagal theory into her work. In her many years of practice, she has guided countless groups in connecting with their bodies, emotions, and deeply-held beliefs. She grounds her work in Ahimsa, or non-violence and the concept of allowing what is present to simply be. She believes that transformation happens through allowing, compassion, understanding, and seeing. Pinelopi rejects the notions of pushing through pain, forcefully changing oneself, or labeling any emotion as “bad.” She views emotions as messengers that, once welcomed and listened to, naturally move on to their next destination.
In 2013, she welcomed a wonderful daughter into her life. Since then, she has been exploring ways to connect the intricate emotional worlds of children with the beauty of meditation. To her surprise, she discovered that she could effectively use a simplified version of RAIN with her daughter as early as age three when guiding her through the technique. Her dream is to help people of all ages connect with and express their emotions more easily, fostering a world with less unresolved grief and pain.
Avital Yomdin is a multidisciplinary artist whose creative journey has spanned theater design, street art, sculpture, comics and installation, always with drawing at the heart of her work. With a passion for visual storytelling, Avital brings her diverse artistic background into the world of children’s illustration, crafting vibrant and imaginative scenes that captivate young minds. Her work combines playful humor with a talent for creating clear, simple visual representations of complex emotions, inviting readers into colorful, engaging worlds where stories come alive and emotions are felt in every brush stroke.
Endorsements:
The “Magic of RAIN” offers children (and adults) a simple and potentially life-changing pathway for handling difficult emotions.
Tara Brach– Author of Radical Compassion
“Behind every difficult feeling is a part of you that’s hurt,” says Yaya — and that’s the truth. Likewise, behind every book that gently helps children navigate their emotions, as beautifully and succinctly as The Magic of RAIN does, is an author with a part that is kind, wise, and capable of showing a highly recommended, practical path to transform emotional storms into sunny self-compassion — and that’s the truth of The Magic of RAIN.
Dipl.-Psych. Ana Cristina Pires – Systemic Psychotherapist for Individuals, Couples and Families, IFS-Therapist and Supervisor
Children yearn to be seen. This wonderful book provides exactly that through its elegant and profound writing, offering this gift with remarkable generosity
Ilana Weiser-Senesh – Author , playwright, screenwriter and editor
As children grow, they can sometimes be over-whelmed by unexpected and strong emotions. Lucky is the child like Faye in this charming story, who has a wise and caring Grandmother to guide her. Sometimes home-life is less than ideal and then it becomes the responsibility of the teachers, childcare workers, and relatives to support their emotional growth. This simple method of RAIN takes a complex emotion and breaks it down into steps every youngster can learn and use. This process also helps validate their feelings, rather than avoiding or ignoring their emotions, this in turn allows the child to move through the moment. With practice and over time this leads to healthy emotional intelligence.
I highly recommend Pinelopi Sioni’s book to every parent, educator, and those who work around children to help them navigate their emotions. I wish I had had this book for my own students and my son as he was growing up.
Mariana Kim Huffine -Educator at ASM and Sacramento Unified school District
What better enables a child psychologist to connect than joining these young protagonists and feeling the emotional raindrops falling within? By following the letters one by one—R-A-I-N—we discover a powerful approach.
As (grand)parents, therapists, and educators, we practice allowing ourselves to RAIN our mirror neurons and empathically attune to the child beside us. Immersed in Penelope’s narrative and Avital’s illustrations, we move fluidly between our own experience, the child’s world, and the inner child within ourselves—helping to release emotions and gently allowing the emotional storm to subside.
This mirrors the heart of expressive psychotherapy with children: we observe, recognize, and witness their internal landscape, then create space for it to be fully experienced, processed, and communicated. Through this journey, children develop reflection and insight, nurtured by authentic relationship and opportunities for growth. The author and illustrator have created an intuitive and accessible toolkit for children to thrive as they experience, express, and navigate both their rainy and sunny feelings.
Dr. David Senesh – Clinical Psychologist and Child Psychotherapist, specialist in how significant life events and traumas are processed within individuals and across generations in families.
Magic of RAIN introduces children to the wisdom of their inner world through whimsical cloud people that visually represent different emotional parts. Similar to IFS principles, the story invites young readers to recognize and connect with angry, hurt, and sad parts with kindness and compassion. This beautiful book provides children with a tangible method for self-regulation while nurturing emotional resilience. What a gift for families!
Steffi Bednarek – trauma and IFS psychotherapist and director of the Centre for Climate Psychology
To find out more information about the book, please contact:
pinelopi (at) englishyogaberlin (dot) com
