Rachel Graber

[MuMuWu]

Rachel would you be interested in talking about this stuff on skype (likely just text chat)? I can give you a hand with getting on track.

I'll msg you my skype account. I'm one of Kenneth's early students.

All the best!

[rachelgraber]

Now I'm cranky. I just wrote up a post, and it disappeared. Ah well, a nice reminder of impermanence. Brief synopsis: I noticed my mouth a lot, particularly my salivation (I wasn't drooling!); I salivated more when I was noting my salivation; some of my back muscles ceased to working in progression from the bottom of my spine to about halfway up my back - it ought to have been disconcerting, but it was just . . . notable (I know, I'm not as funny as I think I am). Once again, other than the salivation, the thing I noticed must was discomfort. Pain in my back, pain in my knees . . . I'm certainly not noticing subtle sensations with the gross sensations pushing to the fore!

[MuMuWu]

Quick question - are you directing attention (trying to notice this and that, etc.) or are you naming things as attention moves from one object to another, naturally speeding up and changing the things being noticed on it's own?

For me the second way is the best way to approach this. You'll notice that if you try to, say, note the rising and falling of the belly or the in and out motion of the breath, attention will - all by itself - move to another object (usually thought of as being distracted) and you have to move it back to the breath. Well - what you'll want to do is simply allow the attention to move how it will, and note what it moves to. When you get a feel for this, all you are doing is labeling what attention is moving to on it's own.

This is key, at least in my experience to getting things flowing and progressing through the nanas, as a big factor of what the nanas are is exactly those natural movements of attention (what it moves to, how fast it moves, etc.)

Best of luck. Looking forward to hearing from you.

[rachelgraber]

I've been trying to do the latter, but I don't think my shifts in attention are speeding up, and my attention tends to remain on the same few, strong sensations (mostly the pain in my back). I've been out of town without internet access, so I haven't posted in a few days. It's a little discombobulating (spelled correctly on the first try!) to meditate in an unfamiliar environment. Even the sensations I noticed are different. I was pretty sick too, which gave me plenty to note. I should have brought my meditation bench, but it didn't occur to me when I was packing, so that undoubtedly also impacted what I felt. And now, I'm feeling a hollowness in my stomach that indicates I probably ought to eat. Hopefully, I'll post again after I meditate tonight.

[rachelgraber]

Tonight's meditation was once again in a very different setting from most days. The physical setting was the same, but usually, I meditate with my fiance. One of our dogs requires constant supervision, so he has to be with us. If he's with us, the others want to be with us, and there are fun doggy dynamics. Ori, our dog with behavior problems, sometimes rolls around and pants loudly or whines . . . he's a rescue . . . I guess in the future, Jay and I will have to meditate separately, so we can watch the dogs for each other. The substance was similar to what it normally is, although I think maybe my attention is moving more quickly than it has been recently. On the other hand, I don't remember what I noted - I think it was mostly itching, the back pain, and noticing when I was getting caught in the inner narrative. And I frequently noted the smell of the applesauce cooking.

[Russell]

Try to report the actual vocabulary you are noting. When you say something like "I frequently noted the smell of the applesauce cooking." What words did you use when noting that? Did you just say 'smelling' or did you go off or your story about what you were smelling. Try to simplify the notes. Since you said you are sitting with your fiance then maybe you can try ping pong noting with him to keep you both on target. It is very hard to get lost in thought when noting aloud with a partner.

[MuMuWu]

Rachel, check out a post I did on my old journal. Posts are 460 to 466. Basically I took a tape recorder and described to myself without stopping what was happening in my experience as I sat. I called it conversational noting (in the sense that I wasn't labelling at a defined rate, but instead was talking constantly about what i was experiencing into the tape recorder as I sat motionless).

http://jaytek.net/KFD/KFDForumOld/kenne ... Results=20

[rachelgraber]

Thanks Russell and MuMuWu! I'm afraid my labeling isn't as nuanced as that in the posts to which MuMuWu directed me; I suspect that more practice will expand my noting vocabulary. A very brief overview of today's practice in a hopefully more useful form: at the beginning, I noted mostly things related to my posture. I noticed the greater pressure on the left sit-bone than the right, I noted the dull ache on the right side of my upper back, and I noted the pain in my knee. I also noticed my aversion to these things as evidenced by my desire to change my position. Occasionally, I would also note itches or tickles, but my attention usually ended up back on one of those few things. I did, admittedly, end up shifting so my weight was more equally distributed. After about 5 minutes, I felt very calm for a short period of time, and the sensation of calm and quiet completely overwhelmed all other sensations. Then my body started to rock. I noted the sensations that went along with my rocking - the strain in some places, the stretching in others. At first, I particularly noticed the sensation of movement in my head. As I went through the rocking arc, sensations vanished then reappeared as I returned to the previous position. My attention migrated to my upper and lower back and my sit bones. Thoughts did, of course, spring up intermittently. They were mostly about a trip I'm taking soon and everything I have to do before I go and when I come back. And now, I'm too sleepy to type another word!

[Russell]

Using your post as an an example on how to simplify your noting:

fear, expectation, pressure, aching, pain, aversion, itching, tickling, shifting, calm, silence, rocking, straining, stretching, movement, planning thoughts, tired



That's it. Practice like that. One note every 1-2 seconds.

[MuMuWu]

Russell, regarding 1 note every 1 or 2 seconds. That's a good pace obviously, and you'll want to note at least that, however I've always found it best to be to note each object that comes up and note that as it happens - without dictating a pace. The movement of attention has it's own rhythm and noting along with that rhythm always seemed to be the way to go for me. It really brings out the fact that attention naturally highlights one thing, then moves onto another thing. This pattern changes pace as the nanas progress, and seeing this pattern will make a lot of the standard descriptions of the nanas make a lot more sense.

One alternative, as in the example Rachel was looking at from my journal, is to not even follow the normal noting pattern, but to simply talk to yourself (preferably into a recording device) non-stop, out-loud in an objective narrative way, almost as if describing a scientific experiment in your secret labratory, about what you are currently experiencing. That seemed to work really well for me (though it was never a standard practice).