Mental Noting: Short Guidance with Reminders

Mental noting practice with reminder sounds throughout. Ride the sensations of the breath, mentally "note" when your mind has wandered (e.g., "future," "past," "don't know"), and come back to the breath again and again. The moments of catching the mind wandering are pure mindfulness.

Transcript

Okay,

So in this mental noting practice,

You have two tasks.

The first one is to ride the sensations of the breath all the way through in and out as deeply as possible.

And you'll do that by focusing on the sensations at the tip of the nostrils,

Coming in and going out,

Noticing them cool as they come in and warm as they leave.

And even noticing the gaps between the breaths.

So the space after the out breath,

Follow that all the way and wait till it comes back in.

And the same thing.

So you're riding these waves of breath in and out.

And also,

If you find it helpful,

I find it pretty helpful to also count from one to 10.

So in your mind counting one in,

Two out,

Three in,

And so on up to get to 10.

And then repeating over and over again.

These two things focusing on the nostrils,

And the counting will ground you firmly and have something that you can grab on to whenever your mind wanders away.

So number one,

Riding the breath.

Number two,

Noticing whenever your mind wanders away from the breath and making a specific mental note of wherever it's wandered to.

So you can think of general things at first and then maybe you can get more specific but you can think future,

Past,

Or just generally thinking or feeling like a sensation in your body.

Or if you just know that your mind isn't on the breath right now,

You don't know exactly where it is,

You can just say,

Don't know.

Or you can even just make a sound in your mind.

Just making a specific mental note and then gently coming back to the breath.

And I want to emphasize that there's no need to judge yourself when your mind wanders.

That is the actual flexing of the mindfulness muscle when you catch yourself and you come back.

So we'll ride the sensations of the breath in and out at the tip of the nostrils,

Counting from one to ten,

And then repeating again and again.

Noticing when your mind wanders away,

Making an intentional mental note of where it's gone,

And then just coming back to the breath,

Over and over.

You'll also hear sounds like this.

These are there to help you remember to note where you are and come back to the breath.

Alright,

Good luck.

Nice job.

Congratulations on taking the time to investigate directly what it's like to just be alive.

And I will see you next time.

Reviews

Profoundly simple to do… just noting the I am being lived and loved 🌠🦋🌹

I enjoyed this. A challenge worth taking. Thank you 🙏

A useful way to practise metacognitive awareness.
The pings as gentle reminders works well.

Such a powerful practice I took the longer version but this one was great for break time during my day work 🌱⭐️thank you Charles💠

This is a perfect practice when you have 15 minutes to experience just being alive. The initial instructions are informative. There are helpful tips to stay on track and concentrate on your breath. I highly recommend this practice.

This is just what I was looking for - a mediation that let me be in the moment with reminders to stay in the practice.
I'm ready for the day!

Loved this brief meditation, helps me focus, rapidly! Thank you for sharing 😊🙏💗

I felt like I needed some encouragement to deepen my focus during anapanasati meditation… this was just the ticket! Many thanks

Very interesting practice🙏 the reminder signals are to loud and spiky in relation to the instruction voice, come out like zen masters heavvy stick, better massivly lower vol before practice

Very useful. Although I would like a lower sounding reminder such as a gong and more frequent intervals. But this format Is so helpful!

Just what I was looking for - guidance & then complete silence to meditate.

WOW! I really struggle to shut off my mind to meditation. My usual meditation practise? I sit down, open insight timer, get anxious on which meditation to choose, put it off, scroll on social media. Then time passes and I choose a meditation but I’m never in it. I can never lose myself, my mind is active to the point it feels like my head is pulling itself away from my neck. But this, this is the first time I’ve breathed without what feels like a bag of bricks on my chest. Thankyou.

Helpful. The reminder tones were jarring for me - same starting note as my Studio Ghibli ringtone - but otherwise a helpful meditation.

Excellent practice for focus & concentration training 🙏

Helpful guided practice without too much talk

Thank you! The guidance was very helpful. I appreciated the space in silence to practice.

Charles, thank you for teaching me this technique. Simple, yet powerful 🌻

All the teachings you offer are exceptionally good. I'm so glad I found them.

Great technique to stay focused on here and now. I find the background sound is very helpful too - it assures me that i am still in the session. With some guided mediations when there is now sound for a long time, i start panicing that i have fallen asleep and the session has long finished :)

Straightforward mental and spiritual grounding. Hands off guidance that really cuts to the core of the task at hand. Thank you!