Mental Noting Meditation, Light Guidance - 12 Minutes

This is a lightly guided mental noting meditation with space and time to practice on your own. This practice helps 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 improve 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 too.

Transcript

This will be a mental noting meditation,

Finding a comfortable posture,

Closing your eyes or lowering your gaze,

Taking a deeper than normal in-breath,

And with 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,

Observing thoughts and emotions,

Without engaging with them.

Now,

Turning attention to the body and investigating what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Turning attention to the body and investigating what it feels like to be sitting.

And now,

Placing your attention on the sensations of the breath in the body,

Feeling each breath as it enters and exits,

Resting your attention here for a while.

Beginning to mentally note and label the in-breath and the out-breath,

Staying connected to the physical sensations in the body as you note and label the breath in and out.

Now,

Opening your awareness more broadly to anything that arises in the moment,

Sounds,

Sensations,

Thoughts,

Or emotions,

Without looking for anything in particular,

Softly,

Mentally noting and labeling,

Hearing,

Sensing,

Thinking,

Feeling.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Where are you now?

Looking to track your experience,

Coming back to your practice again and again.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

For the last couple of moments of our practice,

Dropping the breath,

Noting and labeling,

Dropping any effort at all,

Not trying to control or drive your experience,

Just opening to what wants to happen.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Now,

Looking at the body and understanding what it feels like to be sitting.

Taking one deeper than normal in-breath and with an audible exhale,

Opening the eyes,

Raising the gaze and orienting to the space around you.

Nice work,

Thank you for your practice.

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