Omni's practice log

Hi Kenneth,
I saw some fluctuations in the light before, but it was never so intense that it startled me like now. And this is the first time it was accompanied by a warm glow in the body.

1 hour sitting meditation, noting mentally
I started out with eyes open because of some sleepiness. I first noted mainly things like:
warmth, cold, imaging thought, planning thought, remembering thought, itch, pressure, sleepiness, ...
Halfway the sleepiness caused some getting lost in thoughts, so I got up and did a warming up exercise I learned at one of my first Tai Chi lessons, this helped to get alert again.

I sat back down and quite soon the light in the room seemed to flicker and I started seeing all kinds of subtle visual patterns. I noted these as "imaging thought" (not sure if this is right?). When I closed my eyes the visuals changed right away and got clearer, they varied a lot as well. One of the clearest I remember was an (almost black) dark purple background with quickly moving light purple stripes, squares, and lines on the foreground. Another was a white background with hairlike lines that looked like they swam like a school of fishes. When the visuals faded I opened my eyes again.

Near the end of the sit the visuals came back less clear and alternated with a nauseous feeling near my diafragm and a stiff feeling in a muscle near my neck. Then my timer went off but I continued for five minutes or so to investigate what was going on, but it faded.

Update: Forgot to mention there were many unvoluntary movements again, usually my head turning right and the fingers of my left hand twitching, usually simultaneous. This made me laugh a couple of times.

1 hour sitting, whispered noting, eyes closed

It's been a while since I meditated with music. Today I changed a couple of things in my practice, just out of a whim:
- as usual I sat upright, but this time lightly touching a wall with my lower and upper back and head (to detect slouching/sleepiness quicker)
- there was no light in the room and I closed my eyes (I usually meditate with open eyes facing a blank wall)
- there played songs by 'Stars of the lid' with the shuffle option on

There was no sleepiness whatsoever, which was very welcome. The attention was quite stable. I noted tension, posture correction, planning thought, remembering thought, imaging thought, tingling, warmth, hearing (music) and 'light' when the blank behind my closed eyelids seemed to lighten up in reaction to the music now and then. This surprised me. At first it was quite subtle, so I thought I was making it up, but it got clearer a few times.

At a certain point I had a physical and emotional reaction to a song with an appropriate title( tinyurl.com/63g7hal ). My whole body seemed to be covered with goosebumps or what felt like a cold tension of my entire skin. There even followed some tears. I kept noting as well as I could: "tingling, tension, coolness, goosebumps, tension, crying, warmth, coldness, movement, tickling ..."

This all faded after a couple of minutes. There was suprisingly little imaging thought throughout the whole sit, except for some memories and half a dozen funny dreamlike images.

1 hour sitting, whispered noting

A bit the same as yesterday, but without the music and lots more sleepiness thanks to our two little zen masters who kept us up for a big part of the night.
Noted: itch, pricking, coughing, swallowing, tension, doubting thought, remembering thought, imaging thought, music thought, sleepiness, coldness, warmth, darkness, hearing, seeing, impatience, contentment ...

Attention kept going back and forth between inner and outer world, between alertness and sleepiness.
Lately I do get the feeling the sleepiness has less grip on how the meditation goes.

1 hour sitting, whispered noting

Quite stable attention this time, eventually some subtle but clear light phenomena: once again like someone used a fader to churn up the light in the room.
Mainly noted: tension, itch, frustration, restlessness, feelings of falling short, doubt, imaging thought, planning thought, remembering thought, annoyance, worry, ambition, hope, trust, motivation, despair, tingling, agitation, tension, light, grasping, darkness, light, amazement, grasping, hearing, amazement, tingling ...

The past week I've been trying out different speeds of noting. When walking for half an hour from the trainstation to my home fast noting really helps to stay present. On the cushion the fast noting is sometimes helpful (to fight sleepiness) but often it feels superficial compared to the slower noting where I get more time to stay longer with each phenomenon.

Every day brings another 1 hour sit, ladeedaa! Except for wednesdays when I practice Tai Chi, which is a great concentration exercise for an hour and a half.
Today's sit offered me a fine stew of ... contentment, peacefulness, alertness, imaging thought, remembering thought, movement (kriyas), pulsing (visual field), itches, nausea, flickering (visual field), tingling (hands), nausea, tingling (belly and chest), soft focus (eyes involuntary changing focus, going cross-eyed ...), sudden heightened alertness, attention going up and down ("the wheel") but never off into lala-land, impatience, amazement, tension, nausea, pulsing (visual) ...
I also tried Nikolai's advice of setting the intention to experience those tiny blackouts again, but it didn't happen.

In daily life I get the feeling that less and less is hiding from my attention lately. This morning for no apparent reason I was ultra aware of the "acting" I do towards other people. "Social smiling" when I'm not feeling like it, politely laughing when someone tells something bloody idiotic ... stuff like that. It was hard to actually go through the motions. This lasted a couple of hours. I blame vipassana of course.

Sounds like good practice to me, omni!

Thanks meekan! Yes we can!

Oh forgot: since this week I've included some 10 to 15 minutes of concentration practice to the start my daily sits. To time the formal meditations I use a cooking timer that I set to 62 minutes (2 minutes to get settled). To start I grab my left thumb with my right hand and count 10 out breaths, then I do the same when I grab the left index finger, and so on until I've counted 10 times 10 out breaths. It's a while ago since I practiced 'pure' concentration like this, and I can clearly notice how my ability to concentrate has really improved since last summer. Yay!

1 hour sit, eyes open, whispered labeling

I first spoke out my intention, counted breaths (10x10) and then started noting:
talk thought, planning thought, imaging thought (remembering, fantasizing), stuck with an itch, pulsing (visual field alternating darker/brighter at the left/right, like a slow 'stereo' strobe or something), mapping thought (thanks @mumuwu! ), restlessnes, tingling (belly), visual static (overlaying the visual field), hypnagogic imagery, laughing, tingling, grasping (wanting to remember the imagery), seeing, hearing, music thought, catching myself trying to ignore/deny thoughts & feelings (erotic imagery & lust ...), tolerance (letting it come up anyway), contentment, involuntary movements (head jerking, slowly rocking back and forth), suddenly focused on the breath and heartbeat, hearing (the timer go off), surprise (is it over already?) desire (to meditate longer)

Yesterday I spend the day with an artist friend who makes statues in a distinctive style. Some of the hypnagogery I saw was definitely influenced by that.

1 hour sitting/standing, eyes open, whispered labeling (+ feeling tone)

I've added feeling tone (Neutral, Pleasant, Unpleasant) back to my labels the past few days & noticed it helps me detect wandering more easily (the tone is the first thing I tend to forget to whisper when attention starts to slip) + it helps to investigate further into each noted experience.
It's been a while since I struggled with sleepiness, but here it was again quite strongly, so halfway I stood up to practice.

annoyance U, impatience U, jealousy U, frowning U, self-judging U, dissatisfaction U, sleepiness U (again and again), drifting U (again and again), self-judging U, itch U, standing up N, seeing N, hearing N, doubting thought U, hope/fear U, imaging thought N, planning thought N, eagerness P, kriya N, height P (weird sensation of being taller than I really am), amazement P, slow strobe N, mapping thought U, impatience U, self-judging U, seeing N, hearing N, focus P, rest P, restfulness P, pressure U ...

approx. 30 minutes practice in motion + 2 hour sit + approx. 45 minutes practice in motion, eyes open, whispered labeling

After putting the kids to bed I ate dinner on my own (my wife wasn't home) while labeling mentally. I kept at it afterwards while tidying the house a bit and going upstairs for my daily seated meditation.

As Nick suggested I made the intention to experience those tiny blackouts (which were perhaps what people call fruitions or cessations here at KFD?). I meditated for my usual hour, starting with counting the breath 10x10 times. After about 30 mins I got too sleepy and stood up for a while. This helped. To my surprise the sleepiness stayed totally gone and for the rest of the meditation my concentration/attention was better than ever. There were the usual itches, kriyas, tingling, warmth, remembering thought, fantasizing thought, planning thought, imaging thought, music thought, correcting posture ...

Intense nausea came up just when the timer went off. I felt no need to get up and wanted to see what happened if I sat for an extra hour (I don't often have this luxury). The nausea went away and came back in waves, sometimes getting so intense that I gagged. Heat built up in my body, there was tingling, pricking, restlesness, ticklish feelings, kriyas, ... all quite uncomfortable, but at the same time it didn't bother me. There was an undercurrent of curiosity: "Just how bad can this get? What if I started to really throw up here?" I was feeling quite humorous about it (when I wasn't gagging that is )
(to be continued...)

(... continued)
Eventually it stopped and something shifted. The meditation became much more passive and mellow. Where I had been actively looking for sensations before, now it was quite effortless. There was that nice welcoming curiosity to see what would be the next thing my attention focused on. At a certain point the attention settled on the static you can hear when the environment is quiet. It really gripped me and I noted a lot of restfulness, contentment, joy, gratitude, ... Eventually my body started rocking back and forth. When that second hour had passed my wife came home. I quickly scribbled some notes in my meditation diary and went downstairs to talk with her.

Then I resumed practice in motion while vacuuming and mopping around the house.

During all this there were some moments where I thought a very short fruition had occured, but I wasn't sure if that was it or the light in the room glitched for a nanosecond. There were no dinstinctive sensations before or after. Also today no clear light fluctuations either. Just an overall sharp alertness and welcoming curiosity, but also some disappointment, grasping and mapping thought. My feelings towards knowing about the maps swing back and forth.

Very interesting reading!
Go Omni!

1 hour sit, eyes open, whispered labeling
I started with counting the out breath 10 times 10 before switching to labeling.
This session was quite different than yesterday's with the cold, soar throat and especially the accompanying tiredness.
So I noted a lot of drifting U, sleepiness U, annoyance U, ambition U, frustration U, pricking U, coughing U, dullness U, ... finally I decided to get up and do the ultra slow walking (kinhin) they practice between sits at the zendo I go to now and then. I didn't just jump up but took time to notice my intention to get up, the accompanying planning thought N, imaging thought N, talk thought N, pressure N (of my hands pushing off on the mat to get up), coolness P & pressure N (contact of my feet with the floor), movement P, seeing N, ...

The kinhin helped me stay awake, but the clarity and alertness of yesterday didn't return by far. Eventually I sat down again. Mumuwu suggested I tried the eye flickering thing to see if it induced any blips, so I tried this for a while but just got annoyed with the whole thing: doubting thought U, mapping thought N, frustration U, flickering N, pressure U, itch U ...

Then the timer went off. What was the same as yesterday though is the eagerness to meditate longer, the feeling that an hour is much shorter than it used to be. Too bad I didn't have the opportunity to prolong my sit now.

1 hour sit, eyes open, whispered labeling
First concentration practice: counted the out-breath 10x10 times. Then insight practice: labeling experiences + feeling tone (P U N).

Alertness was almost as sharp and clear as last thursday.
Attention went almost immediately to pulsing in the chest, throat and mouth area. The latter was something I could notice when I switched to mental labels for a minute. I could hear and feel the top front teeth touching lightly against the lower front teeth on the rhythm of my pulse. I also noticed warmth and tingling sensations in the hands. There were a couple of involuntary head jerks (kriyas) and after about 30 minutes there were very clear fluctuations in the brightness and colour of the light in the room. There even were some faint coloured blobs in the visual field (blue/purple-ish and yellowish). It happened a couple of times that the light in the room seemed to blink off for a fraction of a second. For a long time there was a lot of agitation (ticklish in the chest and belly), anticipation when the eyes started to flickr on their own and my focus honed in on this strobing like it was the only thing happening. This agitation built up for a while causing my whole body to tense up a bit.

For the rest there was a lot of itching U, imaging thought N, remembering thought N, nostalgia ?, melancholy ?, smiling P, planning thought N, worrying thought U, slight nausea U, fear U (felt in the body but with no obvious thoughts that caused the fear)...

Once again I started to think that the timer wasn't running properly about a minute before it went off. This time no obvious eagerness to sit longer though I would have if I'd had the opportunity.

Something I've been noticing more and more, also in daily life is that I label something but know there is much more happening that makes part of what I label. For example I'll label "talk thought U" but at the same time there is "aversion U", "tingling U", "pressure U" ... but no time to label all this or really penetrate it because it happens so fast that a whole different experience is already arising in awareness. Also I find it difficult sometimes to decide on the feeling tone. Sometimes I want to label it both as Unpleasant and Pleasant, I can't decide. However it's definitely not Neutral. When this happens I'll often just skip noting the feeling tone to be able to be with the next experience that is already arising.

Nice work with the feeling tone.
I still at times feel I just invent something just to say it.
(but I am not noting it at all as consistently as you do!)

Really, I wrote this just to be able to write "P U N intended"

Last sunday was totally different than what was planned. Our toddler gave us a real scare the night before with a huge coughing fit (laryngitis subglottica) and breathing problems. My wife took her to the hospital for emergency treatment. They stayed there for a couple of days and nights. In the meanwhile when I wasn't visiting the hospital I was at home with the baby and a painful laryngitis of my own. I took the time to meditate more than usual. This is last sunday's log:

-- 1 hour morning sit: 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (eyes open, whispered labeling)
Kriyas started before concentration practice was over. Upper body rocked back and forth for what felt like 30 minutes. In the beginning my attention was strongly focused on the different rhythms of kriya, breathing, pulse and the churchbells outside, resulting in mild agitation. Now and then there were some vague light fluctuations and coloured blobs in the middle of the visual field, and also some short visual blackouts (fraction of a second), while the rest of the sensations (hearing, thinking, feeling ...) kept going on (and no this wasn't blinking with my eyes. )

I noted things like anticipation U (of movement and pain when I felt I would have to swallow), stabbing U (soar throat when swallowing), itchiness U (in throat and chest), chaotic imaging thought U (feverish?), nonsensical talk thought U, worrying thought U (mostly about our toddler), cold U, warmth P, pulsing N, movement N (kriya), movement P (kriya), relaxation P (breathing out), correcting posture N, stability P, contentment P, grasping U, restlessnes U, mapping thought U, hope P, dispair U, nausea U, coughing U ...

Excuse my ignorance!
What does "kriya" mean?

EDIT: Sorry for premature posting. Found an answer through a search on the site. Bodily movements if I got it right?

-- 2 hour evening sit: 10x10 breath count concentration + insight practice (eyes open, whispered labeling)
Again attention was surprisingly clear, given that I've been feeling woozy from that laryngitis the past days. This time there were no intense kriyas until after 90 mintues. Again the upper body rocked back and forth for a while until it slowed down and stopped just like this morning. The meditation felt quite different once it had stopped: more restful and stable.

There was a lot of planning thought, but I could remain disembedded where this was impossible in the past. I noticed that there were lots of talk-and-imaging-thoughts that brought the urge to undertake something in the future (I noted "planning thought" and "enthusiasm", immediately followed by other thoughts that told me I'd just forget it or not get the time to do those things ("talk thought") , followed by bodily feelings of frustration ("frustration", "tension", "tingling"), followed by acquiescence (had to look this English word up, so not sure if it's the right one) ... all this in a period of just a few seconds or less.

When this happened I just noted and even smiled at it, but after the meditation, when writing it down in my log I thought to myself: "I can't take myself serious anymore"

"Excuse my ignorance!
What does "kriya" mean?

EDIT: Sorry for premature posting. Found an answer through a search on the site. Bodily movements if I got it right?
"

@Meekan Yes, "involuntary movements" I often call them, but kriya is just shorter and it's good to know there's a term for it and that it happens to others as well, so it doesn't necessarily mean I'm loosing my marbles.

Quite a full day last monday, the toddler is back home, which is great, but my wife and me both have laryngitis so hurrah for grandma and granddad to take care of the kids the coming days. Not feeling to great, so a shorter sit today:

30 minutes sit, insight practice (eyes closed, mental labels)
No spoken labels this evening because of my throat hurting far too much. The mental labels are more difficult to establish a sort of concentrated rhythm like the spoken labels usually do. So there was some more drifting of attention. I also kept my eyes closed for a change, but still it was like someone was playing with a lightfader in the room. There was a very distinct pressure on my forehead like someone had placed a big fingertip there.

"@Meekan Yes, "involuntary movements" I often call them, but kriya is just shorter and it's good to know there's a term for it and that it happens to others as well, so it doesn't necessarily mean I'm loosing my marbles. "

cool, thanks!