Creative noting and mindfulness strategies

I have collected and devised some alternative and creative noting and mindfulness strategies. I can't think of anywhere better to share these than the home of "ping pong noting". For example, I developed cross-brain finger noting as a mindfulness practice while driving to and from work. First, I always stick with basics while driving . I stay away from "trance driving" I stick with the rubric of HEAR OUT, SEE OUT, FEEL OUT, as Shinzen recommends, because these keep me anchored in the process of navigating my car through traffic. In order to understand these labels go to Shinzen's website and read about Focus Out-
www.shinzen.org/Retreat%20Reading/5%20Wa...0Know%20Yourself.pdf
By the way, while some labels I use come from Shinzen, most of these strategies come from me, not from Shinzen's teachings.
As my own personal use of SEE OUT, I note the "GONES" that occur in my peripheral vision. These GONEs occur when something in my peripheral vision disappears as I drive past it. I finger note these gones by tapping the steering wheel, cross brain style. So if some object or visual mass disappears on my left side, I tap my right finger on the steering wheel. Contrariwise, if something disappears in my right field of vision, I tap my left finger on the steering wheel. This has worked for well over a year to keep me in mindfulness while driving. No noting technique I do more resembles Daniel Ingram's "shooting aliens" metaphor. Fun.
One might think that attention to the periphery might draw too much attention away from traffic lights or away from other important things occurring in the central field of vision. But it has not done so for me, so I always notice the traffic lights, and cars braking in front of me as I do this noting. I think it has made me a safer driver than when I drove without mindfulness.
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Outside of driving, I also do "regular" finger noting as a substitute for "out loud" noting, when my concentration wanes for silent mental noting. I use three or four fingers, assigning them each a different task. For the FOCUS OUT model I mentioned above, I use index finger tapping thumb for HEAR OUT, middle finger tapping thumb for SEE OUT, and third finger tapping thumb for FEEL OUT. Shinzens labels work well for finger noting because each focus set usually has just a few labels to work with.

Sing noting. When I want to do "out loud" noting, I usually engage another part of my brain and sing the labels. I don't know why this works better for me, aside from the fun of it, and the way singing engages the right brain more than saying. Instead of saying the noting labels, I sing them. This way, it does not feel like slogging uphill fighting zombies as regular noting does. Singing labels works well while sitting in traffic. Cell phone technology has helped liberate us all from the self consciousness of talking to ourselves or singing while driving.

Tongue noting. I've done this with good old breath awareness, but it can combine with finger noting and foot noting. Simple tongue noting goes like this, breathing in, tongue touches roof of mouth. Breathing out, tongue goes into open position, down from roof of mouth.

Wink noting + tongue noting. Using focus out, Hear out, right eye closes, See out, left eye winks. Feel out, tongue goes open/close. Good at work.

Written noting - Students, you can practice mindfulness in class, and listen to the teacher at the same time (if you want). Using Focus Out (my default noting practice) write the letter h when you hear out, write the letter s when you see out, and write the letter f when you feel out.
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While you appear to take notes and pay attention in boring class or meeting, you can practice mindfulness. Written noting works great, I use it when I go to our monthly political discussion group. Otherwise it gets too tiresome hearing about how awful our situation has become.

Most of these techniques I have devised to bring mindfulness into my daily life and my work. Sometimes I have a little privacy at my work and I can hum to myself. I can hum the mindfulness labels or I can hum the actual experience. I don't know how to describe this, but it works. I can actually do this now as I type these words in. I hum to accompany the experience. I improvise the humming based on the activity. This keeps my awareness in the present moment, and it works in a fun way rather than an dull and boring way. Maybe I can describe this better as I practice it more. I have only done this for a few weeks.

Silent humming. I do this one at work. I hum in my imagination as I perform each task. Not pop songs, but the way a child hums or sings.


Direction noting- After doing written noting for a while, I started doing direction noting. Basically, I do focus on Hear out, but I note the direction of the sound with the pen. Sound in front of me, line goes to 12 o'clock. Sound to the right, I make a short line to 3 o'clock. I keep doing this, the pen wandering over the page making a picture of the sound environment. Keeps me in present time awareness. Good in group meetings.

Pulse noting. Put finger on pulse. Observe the rhythm.

Pulse space noting. Note the rhythm and note each space between the beats. By the way, sometimes I use the word "takk" for noting. Norwegian for "thank you". I don't know of any other language that has a one syllable word for thank you. So sometimes I use it in general noting, noting gones, noting hear outs, noting pulse space or walk space beats. Takk takk

takk...
Walking step-space noting. While walking note each "beat" between your steps. Your steps have a rhythm to them. Note the beats between each step "off beats". Mark those beats with alternate finger noting. Right left right left. Works very well when walking, including walking with a partner in dialogue. It takes moment to moment attention to stay on the off beats, so it keeps my attention very present centered.

Foot tap noting. Obvious.

Creative listening- still testing it out.

Butt-cheek noting. Maybe later.

Wild Swing-go noting. Hopefully someday I'll remember it.



You have probably hear of the saying "If something is worth doing, it's worth doing well". I respect that truth, but I also respect what I think of as the corollary of that axiom: If something is worth doing, it's worth doing crappy. So I do crappy, lazy, sloppy, weird, wacky mindfulness and consider it an improvement over no mindfulness.

And now for something completely different.
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I almost always get 100 Mindfulness Units each week. Usually well above, like 120-130, and occasionally going into 200's with 4 hour Shinzen mini-retreats. I should average it out, but I haven't. Taking 100 as a very conservative estimate of the typical week equals 500 minutes which breaks down to about one hour and 11 minutes per day. I have never tried setting up any reward system, because I have found this activity intrinsically rewarding. I record my numbers each week in my journal. I like getting to 100. Sometimes I will take time off after hitting 100 before the end of the week. Kind of a "Cool Hand Luke" reward if you've seen that classic movie, and remember the sequence wherein the road "chain gang" works super hard one morning and finishing early, they get the reward of doing nothing for some time afterward. Otherwise, I enjoy seeing the numbers add up and I have the ultimate goal of doing a 300 MU week, every week, for a year. The number 300 adds up to over 3 hours mindfulness meditation per day.
300!
ARRRGHH!!!
I've only hit 300 twice.

When I go about my activities at home I set the timer on 10 minutes. Frequently when the timer beeps it just serves to remind me that I got distracted again so I re-start my timer and re-set my intention. Sometimes none of my strategies work, even doing fairly simple things. I fail much more than I succeed at this, but I succeed more than I would have otherwise.

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To answer the question: "How do I bring mindfulness from the cushion into my daily life activities?", I devised a strategy to break it down into manageable parts. I devised a simple way based, like physical exercise, on sets and repetition. Then I add up points. My meditation at the time I started this game consisted of simple breath awareness. Almost all of my years of meditation practice has fallen into this category, until recently.
The MU or Mindfulness Unit, consists of 5 minutes of mindfulness practice. It does not matter what I activity I engage in, as long as I practice mindfulness while engaging in it. I carry a timer and a counter as much as I can manage. Taylor makes a handy little kitchen timer, and I find cheap little tally counters at Office Depot. I could do this with an I-phone, but I still have old school habits.
I frequently sit in formal meditation only 10 minutes per day, just to keep the habit of sitting practice. So ten minutes gives me two Mindfulness Units. The rest I pick up while engaging in activities such as juggling, hula-hooping, walking, showering, doing dishes, preparing food, eating lunch, weeding the garden, driving to work, and sometime while working. Now driving to work I don't focus on my breath, I focus on noticing gones, (part of Focus Out) as I described above. Best noting meditation to stay safe while driving. For other activities, I default to focus on breath, I don't interfere with it, as far as possible, I just note in and out, and relax the abdomen. Otherwise I use Focus Out (hear out, see out, feel out), and the recently developed alternatives described above.

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I've done this almost 3 years now. I've gone from simple breath awareness to various mindfulness and noting strategies, some of which I have described above. But this MU strategy does keep me motivated. When the going gets tough, the tough get goofy with it to make it more fun. I figure at some point I will outgrow this game and the basic level of mindfulness I usually practice. But I haven't reached a point of building enough momentum in which mindfulness has become my default setting, and I have not yet found a better way to bring it into daily life. So for now, I'll do as Tony Jo White advised: Keep Going.

Finger noting sounds like an interesting alternative to noting out loud which I often can't do with family sleeping. When you sing note do you make a tune, or just use a singing tone for each note? I tried it without a tune and it seems like I need an extra second of sustain on each note to make it seem like singing. Do you find that? Since I'm not a real fast noter, it wouldn't usually be a problem.

I just tried singing noting while walking and it made me cheerful almost instantly. I guess the spoken noting I was doing before that doesn't have that effect for me.

Yeah kacchapa, it takes a little longer than spoken noting. I use different singing tones but kind of randomly, not making a specific tune. A tuneless tune if that makes sense.
Glad you enjoyed trying it out. Sounds to me like your'e doing it "right". I have a lot of fun with this too.