How, in the dark night or low equanimity, does one note things that are appearing over and over again without the notes turning into a mantra and mindfulness disappearing?

Example: When using touch sensations of the breath as a primary meditation object, and also noting distracting things such as disgust, pain, thought, distraction, hearing, et cetera, it's easy to just start going "in, in, in, in, in, touching, out, out, out, out, touching, pain, in, in..." in a repetitive loop. The ins and outs (or risings and fallings or whatever) are especially vulnerable to turning into a mantra. By "turning into a mantra," I mean that I start attending to the note itself and am no longer mindfully attending to the sensations that make up the breath, or distraction, or whatever.

I really don't think it's an issue of not trying hard enough. In fact, I'm kind of the poster child for a meditator that has to watch himself to avoid over-efforting and burning out in the first 10 minutes of a sit. I've found a great deal of truth in the saying that concentration requires a light touch.

With that in mind, I think this is an issue of mindfulness, because the problem isn't getting distracted. I can note distraction. I'm probably never going to stop needing to note distraction no matter what path or nana I'm at. The problem is getting so zoned out, without the mindfulness to notice that I'm zoned out, that I start sinking into sloth and torpor, or random thoughts for several minutes. The thoughts aren't even seductive thoughts whose content I care about -- just random crap. The mind could be reciting multiplication tables for all I care -- but it's not vipassana if I'm not mindfully observing it!

So, any suggestions?

Not having been given a solution, I invented one that works a good deal of the time: noting the sensations that make up every other (or every third, or every fourth) breath cycle, then directly attending to the sensations making up the intervening breath cycle(s) without any verbal note, even just a "dat" or "there."

An example of this could look like "in, in, in, in, in, in, silence, silence, out, out, out, out, out, silence, silence, touch, pressure, (mindful observation of sensations without noting for ~2 breath cycles), in, in..."

Any thoughts or further suggestions are welcome. It completely avoids the issue of getting hypnotized by noting, though it doesn't help my concentration the way ritalin, not being sleepy, or being in Equanimity does. I guess that's why they invented kasina practice!