So for today's meditation practice we're going to be looking at the concept of labeling.
So what you're going to do is close your eyes,
Take a seat and take a long slow breath.
Enjoy your attention to the sensations of the breath entering and leaving the nose.
Now what you're going to do is with your broad awareness,
Your peripheral awareness,
You're going to label things that appear.
Such as memories or moods or thoughts or emotions or physical sensations.
When you notice something arise you simply label it,
Let it go and return your focused attention back to the breath entering and leaving the nose.
If you find yourself becoming distracted just mentally note to yourself that you were distracted and return your focus back to the breath.
Whilst maintaining your focused attention on the breath you'll use your awareness to preemptively label things as they appear.
Then you can simply observe the breath and label the next thing that arises.
Okay good work.
So you'll notice that our focused attention is towards the meditation object.
In this case it was the breath.
But we still have this ability,
This this broad attention or broad awareness so to speak,
That can help us to sort of pick up things as we're going along.
There's an analogy here to someone looking down a microscope.
They're looking down a microscope,
That's our focused attention on the breath.
But if we're in that state looking down the microscope we're at risk of things in the environment surprising us,
Coming out of the blue and hitting us.
Whereas if we were scanning the environment with our broad awareness we would notice and label and be able to address those things as they came.
So from a meditation perspective we are now able to use the concept of labeling to acknowledge and address the things as they come and thus be able to maintain our focused attention on the meditation object.
This is just a tool that can potentially help to enhance your mindfulness practice.
So I encourage you to explore and experiment with the concept of using your broad awareness to label potential distractions as they arise.
And remember if you get lost in distraction and then you notice it you label that as a distraction and you return back to your focus on the breath entering and leaving the nose.
And the final point is at times there'll be things that you can't quite label like a cluster of thoughts or an overwhelming feeling or emotion or something going on that you can't quite pin down.
If that occurs use a label like a cloud or cluster to describe a group of undefinable or a collection of mental phenomena.
Give it a try and good luck.
