Mental Noting Meditation, Moderate Guidance - 12 Minutes

This will be a mental noting meditation.

Finding a comfortable posture,

Alert yet relaxed,

And closing your eyes or lowering your gaze.

Taking a deeper than normal in-breath 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 them or pushing them away.

Just seeing thought as thought 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.

Keep listening as they come and go.

Now turning attention to the body and investigating what it feels like to be sitting,

Noticing any areas of obvious sensation.

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,

Resting your attention here for a while.

Now beginning to mentally note and label the in-breath in and the out-breath out,

Continuing to stay connected to the physical sensations in the body as you note and label the breath.

Once you have a little bit of stability in the breath,

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.

And when you're ready,

Returning to rest in the breath,

Labeling in and out 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.

Where are you now?

Continuing to track your experience,

Coming back to your practice again and again,

Perhaps with a slight smile.

For the last moment or two of our practice,

Dropping the breath,

Noting and labeling,

Dropping any effort at all,

Not trying to control or drive your experience,

Just experiencing what wants to happen.

And taking a moment to acknowledge yourself for having spent this time developing a bit more clarity and a touch more equanimity.

And taking a deeper than normal in breath and with a notable exhale,

Opening the eyes,

Raising the gaze,

And orienting to the space around you.

Thank you for your practice.

See you back here tomorrow.