Currently I don't want to cross the A&P again because I am in my last year of university and have to write a couple essays. For more information: http://www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discussion/-/message_boards/message/5602295

So I have the time to investigate the nana 1 till 4. Because there isn't a subcategory '#3 nana: 3C's' I wanted to post my experience with this nana.
I noticed the following things in #3 nana: stifness in neck, shoulders en chest. Because of the stifness it is sometimes hard to breath. Then later there is tiredness/fatique, hotness in the whole body, light-headed and sometimes pain in the jaws. Then later there arise intense itches on several parts of the body. The dominant mindstate for me is anxiousness. In the beginning of the #3 nana there is just a subtle irritation but later the anxiety takes the more dominant role. It is like you haven't slept for one or a few days and you are just very reactive. You can watch all this because of your concentration and wisdom but it definetly is unpleasant.

How to deal with all of this?

Well for me there are a few things that helped and get you to early #4 nana: A&P.

1. Do formal insight meditation every day for a certain amount of time, say one hour.
2. Do formal concentration practise every day to help keep your mind stable to handle the experiences.
3. The most important thing: note as much as possible during the day. Because of the many noting, thoughts don't have the power to drag you into daydreaming or the spiral of thinking. So you are more mindful during the day so mindfulness becomes more continuous, so your concentration becomes stronger and the conditions to understand the 3 C's and to move to the #4 nana A&P, become right.

All the things above are mine own experiences. What do you experience during the #3 nana? What is your advice for people who go through this nana?
I hope this will help some of the people who are dealing with the Three Characteristics.

howdy john,
nice post on an often under-appreciated stage.  one of the reasons may be that its can be an uncomfortable one.  i, personally, found it a fascinating one when i first encountered it on retreat. also, daniel's book does a really great job in pointing out some of the same things you've noticed.

in addition to your advice i found that a tight focus as opposed to a wide one and a little more focus on effort helped me ramp up into tha A&P.  daniel's analogy of shooting aliens was the helpful one to me at this point.

cheers mate

Heey Tom,

Yes I also experienced that more focus on effort in daily life really helps to get to A&P.
The analogy of daniel about shooting the aliens really aplies here.

What also helped me was, putting more focus on concentration during the formal practise.
In daily life it was noting as continuous as possible, staying mindful as continuous as possible, this requires a lot of effort. Because of the excess of effort there will arise more of an irritated state, even though your mindfulness is more continuous. Thus I noticed that spending more time then normal doing concentration practise helps to keep balanced and reduce the irritated state. The concentration practise I like, I have read in a article from Kenneth Folk. I say rising when the abdomen rises and I count the breath when the abdomen falls. So it goes like this: rising, one, rising, two, rising, three. Then when counted to ten I return to one again. When I can do this three times without losing count then I know my concentration is good enough to practise insight again. I found this counting of the breath also helpfull to do during the day to boost the concentration when I notice that there is a more irritated state.

Kenneth Folk also mentioned in an article that westeners have more trouble concentrating and are used to put in a lot of effort in reaching goals in comparison to burmese people who have in general good concentration skills and need more focus on effort. So I can affirm this statement from my own experience that it helps to do concentration practise in addition to your main practise (insight).