Yuki's practice

Hi All!

I'm new to this forum, and after reading the pratice logs and Kenneth's explanations on this site for while which has been enormously informative, I decided would like to give a shot at keeping a practice log myself.

I've been doing noting practice for about a year now. At first on and off, but more consistently these days. I am not 100 percent sure where I am on the map, but I feel that I may have crossed A&P in the past, and may have been in dukkha stage until very recently. I usually do about 10-20 mins walking meditation followed by 40 mins sitting in the morning and 30 mins sitting in the evening. Also, whenever I cannot go to sleep, I do breath counting/noting in bed.

So, here goes my first practice log this morning: (40 mins sitting).
I start out whisper noting body sensation, mostly touching warmth, stiffness in right shoulder, left knee and joints, pain in the left side of stomach, some gooseflesh. I notice pressure at temples accompanied by tingles around nose and upper lip. By this time I drop whispering. Pressure at temples dissipate and becomes stretching sensation on my forehead. I also notice slight migrane. I notice patches of slow strobing behind my eyelid going at about 1Hz with faster flashing vibration at about 5Hrz. I notice visual thinking. Then things quiet down in my visuals and I start noticing a lot of thinking, mostly thinking about what to write on this board, reflecting thought, doubting whether I'm noting or I'm thinking, and dreamy thinking. I also have some mind states like doubt, guilt and slight anger. After some time, I start noticing body sensations again. I notice the 1Hz-5Hz overlay vibration again. Then the alarm sounds.

BTW, I also had a sleep-paralysis this morning where I felt a strong light/sound inside my head. I've been having this type of distabilizing experience a couple of times recently.

Good report, Yuki. Good noting. Welcome.

Thank you Kenneth! I saw your direct path video on the youtube today, and I'm also incorporating the direct perception during the day.

10/31 (30 mins night sitting)
I start with whisper noting. Mostly touch. I feel several waves of gooseflesh in my left thigh. I note stinging pains below the sides of my rib cage. I note various tensions and stiffnesses in the joints. There's a chaotic flashes in my visual field. Along with the flashes there are pricking sensations in my hands and twitches along the side of the spine that occur from time to time.

11/1 (40 mins morning sitting)
I start noting touching and warmth. Slight tingling on my forehead. Then, slow patches of strobing behind my eyelid. Few visual thinking, after which the strobing subsides. As things calm down, I start to have a lot of wavering thought, planning thought and doubts, some of which I could note some of which I could not. For want of calming down thought, I do several rounds of breath counting, and pay attention to the movement of abdomen. At first, there is a clear sense of the begenning, middle and ending of the rising motion and the falling motion. After some time, I can no longer notice the motion but just a general sensation of expanding and contracting. I then notice the slow wavy light behind my eyelid. This eventually calms down, and not much is happening except various thoughts. I then pay attention to the high-pitch white-noise in my head. The session ends.

11/1 (day) I had a lot of anger duirng the day due to personal stuff. I tried to ground it in body. Lots of jerks, twitches and electric static sensation on my forehead and throughout my body. I felt like an electric furball!
11/2 (morning)
I woke up early so I remained in bed and did out-loud noting practice. I wanted to focus on pain, so restricted my labels to just two types: touching for neutral tactile sensation and pain for unpleasant tactile sensation. After a while I kind of "got into groove" with these labels, where attention seems to automatically shift to the next spot immediately after I label the current sensation. Then, I started noting in pairs. The first part is feeling and the second part is the qualifier that describes it. Some of the noting labels I used were:

touching - hardness, touching - softness, touching - wide area, touching - heat, pain - solidity, pain - movement, pain - undulatory, pain - sparkling, pain - stiffness, pain - pricking, pain - heat, pain - confining.

After doing this exercise for a while, I moved onto doing body scanning up and down. I'd sync my scan with rising and falling of the breath, and restrict my scan at exactly those spots that I labeled previously. This fast scanning w/o labeling seem to help jumble up the "linguistic part" of the labeling process so I can relax and sort of have a good review of the labeling I did previously.

I then did a sitting practice. For the most part there werent a lot of bodily sensations and things seemed quite equanimous. However, as in my other sits, there were quite a bit of thinking. Maybe I will try some systematic labeling like I did above with the thinking for the next sit. I am thinking of doing it in pairs with mental states like planning - fear, image - anger, scenerio spinning - super-ego etc.

I really appreciate the clarity and brevity of your reporting, Yuki. Thanks for sharing. And you are clearly making progress, so keep after it and keep us posted.

Thank you for encouragement Kenneth! I'll keep reporting.

11/2 (night, 30 mins) A couple of gooseflesh on my left thigh. I note a somewhat chaotic in frequency but genrally smooth strobing behind my eyelid. I keep my labels simple, like thinking or strobing. After the vibration quiets down, I start getting a lot of dreamy thoughts. Sleepiness also sets in. For a while it's like this. Then, there is a change in scene, sleepiness clears and I feel like there's an open space in front of me. It feels a bit like I'm riding on a car driven by someone else. Then that perception changes and I feel the space is opening upward. Then, back to calm strobing.

11/3 (40min walking, 40 min sitting)
Walking:Thought of doing walking meditation to bring up my energy. Each movement is quite smooth and there is a fluffy feel. Generally pleasant but sometimes I feel that my legs are heavy.

Sitting:
I decided to focus on noting the feeling out loud. I start just noting pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sensation about 1 per sec. After getting a feel for it, I note in pairs. Some of the labels I've used were: stiffness-unpleasant, touch-neutral, chest-unpleasant, warm-neutral, image-pleasant, breath-pleasant, breath-unpleasant, breath-neutral, back-unpleasant, shoulder-unpleasant, energy-pleasant, energy-neutral, mood-pleasant, mood-unpleasant, thought-unpleasant.
I used energy-pleasant etc. to mean any sensation which I could not tell which sense door it's coming from. Just by noting breath-unpleasant and breath-pleasant seems to get me into a nice tranquility state. Also, focusing on the feeling seems to make the interactions among the sensations more clear. I noticed causal links between mood-unpleasant and chest-unpleasant, and I also could see more clearly how thinking-unpleasant and the action of labeling it as a kind of interaction with the latter dissolving the former.

I also did some fun exercise when brushing my teeth this morning. I would note "seeing" of various parts of my face or try to be the "watcher" when I look at myself in the mirror. Then it begins to feel as if there's some dude that's looking right at me and that its not me. I can see how much I'm identified with the mirror-image.

11/3 (20 mins kasina practice + 40 mins normal sitting)
Session was generally calm. A lot of alternation of attention between breath and image in the beginning. Images were mostly calm and peaceful. Then, a few image with movement, followed by some dream thinking, planniing etc. Then, I go back to bodily sensations. The labels I used were: breath-clear, breath-contentment, image-contentment, image-spaciousness, image-centeredness, image-fear, image-movement, energy-spaciousness, hearing-fear, hearing-request, hearing-suggestion, planning, stiffness.

Day: Tried to stay with the witness. Particular attention to aversion and fear of external sensations (physical pains, conflict with family).

11/5 (10mins walking, 40 mins sitting)
The morning sit was similar to yesterday. Noted bodily sensations in the beginning, mostly touching-neutral but some tension and pain with a speed of about 2/sec. Lots of images in the beginning, mostly of calming nature. Then, few images with repulsive content. Then, some images having panoramic perspective. However, I feel somewhat distant from the experience. There is a kind of virtual-reality feel to it, like I'm just watching a boring movie. There might even be a subtle aversion to the fact that the experience is a bit boring. Experiential clarity is not very high, with noting being a bit monotonous.

11/5 (night) I sit down with a subtle sensation in the center of my body. There's a nebulous cloud-like light in the visual field synchronizing with fine vibrations on my forehead. The fine vibration then spreads around my face and moves around. I then moves down to my heart area, hands and eventually to sole of my right foot. Not much else is going on. Mind state is calm but I'm a bit bored.

11/6 (morning 40mins sit) I spent time mostly noting just the physical sensations. Whenever thinking came up, I tried to sense it inside my body. Thinking seems to be associated with sensations in my head, face, throat and sometimes behind my eyes. Similarly, I tried grounding mindstates inside my body. Typical mind states such as anxiety, fear and guilt are associated with pinching sensations of my throat and chest. Sometimes fear seems to be associated with a momentary sense of disorientation (spatial awareness). I think spatial awareness, hearing and fear are closely associated with each other.

11/6 (day) Wanting to rush in doing routine things at work. The associated sensations are: restlessness, blood pressure, tiredness in my eyes and pains in my pancreas region.

(night, 40mins sit) Started with noting physical sensations. There was a pulsing pain behind my left eyebrow. I've been having migrane that alternates between the left and right sides of my head recently. I have a high-pitch ringing in my ear. Among various frequencies, one noise that sounds like a steam going off stands out as it goes on/off from time to time. Also, I have a clicking sensation behnd my eardrum that goes off every 20 seconds or so. As usual with my other sits, I have pains around liver/pancreatic area, feel the intestine undulating, and I notice twitching and pricklings in my thighs and arms.


11/7 (morning 40 mins sit): I start noting the rising and falling of abdomen. After some time, the breath gets calmer and I start to sense the breath moving up to around my chest area, throat area and then to my palate area. The calm breath seems to expand and smooth out the sensations in those area I feel them. Then, I note subtle vibrations around my face, in my hands, on the sole of my right foot and on my thighs. I also see the slow wavy vibrations in my visual field. After the vibration calms, attention shifts to the high-pitch ringing and steaming sound inside my head. Things seems to stabilize and I start noting thinking and mind states. Some of the things I noted are image-thought, doubt, anxiety, guilt, planning-thought, investigation, and questioning. I have difficulty noting them, as I somtimes feel that I'm "embedded" in noting..like I have a lot of wavering in the noting itself that I feel that I'm not with the bare sensations. So, I go back to noting the breath.

11/7 (day) Some sensations I noticed: Releasing the tension in my chest and throat. Inability to concentrate on work. Then, something clicked and could get ahead with my work, and had a few moments of threshold concentration. Later in the day I decided to procrastinate one work for tomorrow and felt guilty about it.

11/7 (evening 20 mins walking, 40 mins sitting)
Walking: I paid attention to just the movement in the beginning. Then I moved my attention to the touching and pressing sensation of contact with the floor, also noting the simultaneous movement of my legs interspersed with that sensation.
Sitting: More pronounced and chaotic vibrations, nerve sensations than my evening sitting in last couple of days. The sensation is not hash though. I also had more gooseflesh in my left thigh than usual.

11/8 (morning 40 mins) Started mostly noting touching sensation. Then, alternated noting touching with the breath movement with faster pace than usual at about 3/sec. Noted some visual/auditory thinking. Some pains in the back. Then, I moved on to noting feeling. Had trouble noting dreamy state. It's pleasant but I simultaneously feel aversive to it because I shouldn't fall asleep.

"It's pleasant but I simultaneously feel aversive to it because I shouldn't fall asleep." -yuksaka

Be sure to note the aversion and also the thought "I shouldn't fall asleep." Are you sure you shouldn't fall asleep? (That's just another thought; we don't really know what "should" happen, we just know what "is" happening.)

Yes! Thank you Kenneth. I think I tend to bring quite a bit of presumptions into meditation. I'll be more attentive to noting these mind states and thinking. Your comment is so timely with the experiences I'm having now described below.

Yesterday (11/ was a bit tough. I had a consistent strobing and sometimes fluttering of my eyes whenever I closed my eyes during the day. Emotionally, I had a quite a bit of restlessness and a lot of mind-chats. This carried on into my night meditation, with the visual field consistently strobing at about 4-5Hz, stretching sensation of my forehead, and generally feeling the energy in my head without noticing any stage change. There's quite a bit of mind-chats and I had difficult time noting. I also woke up around 2 am, and it was like one of those waking up moments where I momentally forget who I was. Of course, I quickly came back to myself, but this happened to me a couple of times before. I couldn't fall asleep, and in the early morning, I had two sequences of visions. In the first one, I had this vision of some flying machine making a smooth landing and with the landing comes a brief bliss wave going through my body. The second one, I am cruising along an edge of a cliff then I jump off, which is followed again by a bliss wave, then a quiet scenery of a river below.

With these visions, I can't help but to recall Kenneth's description about 1st-3rd Jhana, the 1st with the exhilaration, 2nd with the bodily bliss and 3rd with chilled out bliss (well, more like 1st-5th nana since I cannot really keep those states constant). Since my predominant sensation on the previous day was strong strobing and energy in my head, with the altered state activity this morning, sleeplessness and so on, I speculate that this is A&P thing.
(..cont).

(..conted)
I think much of the energy and restlessness may have been brought up by the walking meditation I did on the previous day (11/7). I did not write much about it but I rarely do walking meditation at night, but when I do more walking meditation I think the tendency is to get the sleeplessness and altered states during the night. This is a pattern that I've cycled through before, so this time I think I'm faring better in terms of not identifying with it.

In my morning sit, my nose was running consistently, and since I had a lot of mind-chat, it was difficult to note. So I switched to doing breath-counting for about 20 mins to calm myself. After that I turned to noting, which was still difficult, but I think I could "listen" to myself better than just identifying with the thought.

Also, much of mind-chat has been this speculation of where I am on the map, like vascillating whether I'm in A&P or perhaps because of the edginess during the day, maybe in dark night. Again, I think this is also about these presumptions that I'm bringing onto cushion. I couldn't always objectify all these, but I'll try to keep my noting cap on.

"
That's just another thought; we don't really know what "should" happen, we just know what "is" happening - kennethfolk"

I'm keeping in mind what Kenneth says above "should" thoughts. During the day, I noted mindstate whenever I notice them. I noted inferiority, restlessness, embarrassment, hurried, anxiety etc. whenever I seem to get off track from what I'm doing. Interesting that I quickly got into good concentration in doing work, with all the mind-chats in the morning becoming under good control.

11/8 (evening, 40 mins) Noted physical sensations, mostly touching in the beginning. The sensation is diffuse and difficult to discern clearly. Also, sleepiness comes in and I start getting a lot of dreamy thoughts. The noting mind gets sucked into this sleepiness and there is this shifting back and forth of noting mind waking up to note and the mind getting sucked in. I also realized that like the physical sensations, thoughts also lack a well-defined edge, diffused and seemingly scattered over my sense field, or kind of like pervading in the whole of the background of attention. Around the middle of the session, I sort of noticed some shift in the vibration from more diffuse to more edgy. I noted some disgusting images too.

11/9 (morning, 40 mins). Noted mostly touching sensations on my legs and my hands in the begenning. I start noticing various tensions on my right shoulder, left knee, tightness in chest, throat and forehead. The tensions appear on thier accord and I just note them as they come. I start paring these with pleasant/unpleasant/neutral feelings. I notice pleasant tingling at my temples spreading. The attention to gets softer and I notice also the sensation of release that comes after noting of tensions. I start noting the sensations pared with mind states, like image-curiosity. image-exhilaration, touch-calmness, tension-aversion, tension-compassion.

11-11
Dream: Fearful and cannibalistic images w/ archetypal characters.
Morning 30mins sit: Noted out loud in the begenning. Starting with specific touching sensations, then to feeling the touching sensation over wider area such as my lower body, torso area, back and so on. Noted tensions among various parts. Paired bodily sensations with mental states. After gaining sufficient momentum, I paid closer attention to thoughts, images and emotions and tried see how it is associated with sensations in my body. I sensed thoughts between my ears, in head and in throat. Emotions tends to be in throat or chest. There is also a sensation that the tensions are forunners for various thoughts and emotions. I tried to sense these tensions, and urges for producing the thought or emotions.

Day: Walking outside, waiting for a bus, or on a train, I tried to "immerse" myself with the senses, mainly seeing and hearing. Also, I notice a kind of a cabin-pressure sensation and high-pitch ringing when concentration is good.

11-11 (evening, 40 mins sit) I started out noting touching, moving to tensions at various parts of my body. Then, tingling at my temples start so I focus on it. I wanted to see how this energetic sensation changes so I stay with it. The tingling spreads over my face and I feel it is slowly moving left and right on my left cheek. After some times tingle moves down to my thumbs. I also feel my visual field flashing. The flashes are at first steady and then moves faster. I also notice that sometimes the flashes varies in its frequency in synchrony with the breath, with the faster flashing at the top and bottom of breath cycles. There are also some shaking in synchrony with the flashes. Then, the vibrations drop and there is just the quiet. I then note touching and tensions again, followed by tingling at the temples. This cycles a couple of times. The later cycles, however, does not have all the variations of frequencies I experienced the first time.

11/12 (morning 40 mins) The sit was similar to the evening sit yesterday, but quieter. I seem to be just cycling between, touching sensations, various tensions, then tingling, then some vibrations, then back to tensions or touching. The later cyles are basically shifting among those three states, and its a bit like feeling suspended in air, not knowing where to go next. I got bored with this monotony of cycling sensations (which I forgot to note at the time) and tried to pay more attention to mind states and thoughts, such as urge to stop meditation before the alarm, thinking about the day, calmness, impatience, and shame.

11/12 (evening 40 mins) When I sit, I immediately have this stretching on the forehead and static sound in my brain that gets more and more pronounced and covers the whole of my head. The auditory static is very clearly discernible. Eventually things calm down a bit and the vibration seems to be light but scattered over the whole of my visual field. The objects are difficult to discern clearly but the background static is felt rather clearly. The thoughts are plenty but they do not have a pronounced presence, as if staying like a ghost in the background.

11/13 (morning, 30 min sit) The sit is again similar to the evening sit yesterday with light static in the background both in my auditory and visual field. Tingling and stretching of forehead is less pronounced. However, I have more thoughts. Thoughts are repetitive and speculating kind that goes on and on in the background. I try listening to them as if listening to a static on a radio. Sometimes it is difficult as noting of the thoughts gets mixed with the thoughts themselves. From time to time I notice definite mind states such as boredom, doubt, embarrassment, some anxiety. I also try to locate the mindstates and thoughts in key body areas such as forehead, shoulders, throat and chest.

11/14
Half Dream: I focus on darkness, then I feel like I am falling into an endless pit, then I get an uneasy pulsing sensation in my gut mixed in with fear.

(morning , 30 min sit) I start by noting physical sensations such as touching, tension and pain. As my attention shifts from one object to another, I also try to take note of the ending of the noticing of each object. The objects seem to be clear compared to last few days. The ringing in my ear has a higher overtone. The strobing behind my eyelid also seems to have a more uniform and faster flashes and there's a faint of blue color. I get tingles at my temple as usual. Then I note various thoughts and mind states. Some of the mind states: impatience, boredom, regret, repressing, spaced out. I try to feel the thought inside my brain, at throat and chest area.

Day: Starting the day off with lots of mind chats, mostly related to external things. Mind states of anger, anxiety, confusion, defensiveness. Prominent feeling is that there is regret and guilt for being aloof and uncaring to my family and simultaneously feeling defensive and hard-headed (perhaps outright arrogance) that I am above it in some way.

11/15
I only did a short sit today. From last night, I've been keen to some of the emotions that I used to have but I no longer feel so strongly, like the sense of intense curiosity into things, the sense of strong protectedness of being in solitude, sense of wonderment for the unknown and so on. Like I am trying to catch a hold of something that had once felt real, but now it can only be felt as being an artificial creation of mind. I was also trying to do the witness practice, but I had a difficult time understanding this state. When I focus on "awareness" I can subtly sense that I'm operating in a different mode than when I'm noting, but it is not in any way an "absorption" kind of thing. The witness as a thing that only cares about itself is an interesting idea. I wonder if this has any connection to metta directed to oneself?

Practice: 20 mins morning sit. I tried the witness practice for first few minutes, then I started noting various tensions. The main focus is on the sensations at throat, chest and abdomen. I feel that there is this sinking sensation that the tensions are being transported from my throat down, like something is being slowly swallowed in and being digested. I think the prominent physical sensations associated with some of the sentimental emotional states from yesterday is this downward motion of my sensations. I find it interesting that it's almost as if the Half dream on the 14th having a more intense physical "falling" sensation accompanied by fear is leaving its trace as a more mundane sense of sinking feeling with sentimental mood.

11/16 (morning 45 min sit) The sit was not very remarkable. I was going back and forth between noting of touching sensations and breathing, investigating, but not knowing exactly what to do. I see that noting of rising and falling of abdomen comes in certain stages. First, as I track the breath there comes a moment when it becomes clear exactly when the abdominal motion "dissapears" then appears again. This digital-like stage usually only lasts for some tens of seconds. I then try to pay more attention to this begenning and the ending. The more I did so these timing begins to concide with on/off flashes in my visual field, and eventually certain tactile sensation in my eyelid or brow area. From then on the breath gets unclear and hard to follow, and this is the time my attention begins to wander, other thoughts begins to come up. Then, I come back to myself, starting to note the touching sensation and breath. I was basically cycling this sequence of events in my sit.

11/16 (night, 40 min sit) I start with quite a bit of flashing and frequent fluttering of my eyelids. I try to follow the strobing and even feel that my body is shaking in sync with it. After a while, the strobing and fluttering slows down and starts to become more in sync with my breath. I can also notice a slight after-vibration that follows after each time the eyelid clicks. Eventually things calm down to the point that fluttering does not occur.

11/17
Dream: Energetic phenomena with light and screaming voices inside my head.
(morning, 20 mins sit) I'm noticing quite a bit of mindnoise today. I start noting touching sensations and breath as usual. Then, I note various tensions in my body, but especially my shoulders. I can feel the tension in my shoulder being released into my throat area. The general direction of movement of tension seems to be upwards. This is in contrast to last few days where the movement seems to have been downwards. Similarly, I'm getting more active mindstates like restlessness and anger as opposed to sadness and sentimental moods that have been prevalent last few days.

Thanks for the notes Yuki.

Thank you, Anthony, for posting on my thread.