Observing what is happening and quietly labelling it. The act of naming is what creates the gap between having an experience and being lost inside it.
Listen to the Meditation
About This Practice
Most of the time we do not observe our experiences, we are inside them. Caught up in the body, or the emotion, or the thinking, and reacting before any decision has been made.
Noting interrupts that with something very small. You notice what is present and you name it. Tightness. Planning. Worry. Sound. Nothing more elaborate than that.
The naming does two things. It puts you in the position of the observer rather than the participant, and it reveals that whatever you just named is already changing. Note it, and by the time you have, it has moved.
Both of those matter. Seeing experiences as passing is what stops us treating them as permanent facts about our lives. Seeing ourselves as separate from them is what makes it possible to choose a response instead of producing a reaction.
That gap between the experience and the story around it is where most of the work in this method happens, and this practice is the most direct way to find it.
Micro Practice: Three Breaths
When you notice you have been swept up in something, take three breaths.
- Breathe and settle on the breath itself.
- Breathe and note what you are experiencing. One word is enough.
- Breathe and let it be. Things come and go. You are the one observing them.