This will be a mental noting meditation.
This practice helps us develop an ability to notice and label various mind and sense experiences as they arise.
Noticing or noting thoughts and sense experiences and then giving them a precise mental label during meditation helps strengthen our ability to bring awareness to and ultimately work with inner states like stress,
Fear,
Or even just an unproductive inner story in everyday life.
Finding a comfortable posture,
One in which you feel stable and alert,
And closing your eyes if you feel comfortable or lowering your gaze,
And taking a deeper than normal in-breath and an audible exhale to mark the transition into formal practice and allowing the breath to return to its natural rhythm.
Noticing and allowing what is already here,
The experience you're having right now.
Observing thoughts and emotions without engaging with them or pushing them away.
Just seeing thoughts as thoughts and emotion as emotion.
Watching as they naturally come and go.
This moment can be experienced through our senses.
Turning attention here,
Beginning with the sense of hearing.
Noticing sounds around you,
Some close,
Some further away.
Keep listening as they come and go.
Now turning attention to the body and investigating what it feels like to be sitting.
Noticing the pressure between the seat and your hips,
Feet on the floor,
Hands in your lap.
Noticing any areas of obvious sensation,
Pain,
Tension,
Relaxation.
Continue watching sensations as they come and go.
Now placing your attention on the sensations of the breath in the body,
Feeling each breath as it enters and exits.
Noticing where in the body you experience the breath most clearly,
Maybe at the tip of the nostrils,
The chest,
Or the belly.
Resting your attention here for a while.
Now beginning to experiment with mentally noting and labeling.
Taking the breath as the initial focus of this noting and labeling experiment by simply mentally whispering in on the in-breath and out on the out-breath.
This is just a soft whisper in the mind.
Continue to stay connected to the physical sensations in the body as you note and label the breath.
Once you have a bit of stability in the breath,
You can open your awareness more broadly to anything that arises in the moment.
Sounds,
Sensations,
Thoughts,
Or emotions without looking for anything in particular.
When attention moves away from the breath to thinking,
Just softly note and label thinking.
And when you're ready,
Returning to the breath,
Noting and labeling in and out.
Practicing in the same way with sounds,
Noting and labeling hearing,
Or with sensations,
Noting and labeling sensing.
Eventually returning to rest in the breath until the next sense is engaged.
Continue with a gentle attention on the breath opening to whatever experience you're having in the moment.
Noting and labeling,
Thinking,
Sensing,
Hearing.
You you you Where are you now?
Continuing to track your experience,
Coming back to your practice again and again,
Perhaps with a small smile.
Seeing this as an opportunity to squeak in a few more attentional reps,
Strengthening your attention and equanimity.
You you For the last moments of our practice,
Dropping the breath,
Noting and labeling,
Dropping any effort at all,
Not trying to drive or control your experience,
Just being open to whatever wants to happen.
You And now taking a moment to acknowledge yourself for having spent this time cultivating a bit more clarity and a touch more equanimity for training in the mindfulness gym.
You you Taking a deeper than normal in-breath with an audible exhale,
Opening the eyes,
And reaching to the space around you.
Thank you for your practice.
Nice work.
See you tomorrow.
