Hello everyone,
I am a 50 year old male, living in England, and I've been practising meditation since 2013 when I sat  my first Goenka course. I have sat 2 Goenka courses and served on one.

I have meditated daily since September 2014 mainly focusing on the breath.
There have been a couple of breaks from this due to illness.

Since June 2015 I have been meditating twice daily building up to my current sitting, of an hour each time. Since March this year I decided to switch to noting technique as I felt that a lot of my time may have been spent daydreaming and not really aware of the three chracteristics while concentrating on the breath. 

Since March I have tried to note aloud once per second whatever came into my field of experience.Initially it felt strange to do, then came a period where it was quice nice and enjoyable, followed by a period where I found it difficult. The difficult period has eased off and the practice these days just seems very boring and samey with no real big aversions like before. 

My aim is to reach stream entry.

I don't know where I am on the maps but I think I may have passed the A&P during my last Goenka retreat, as I had a very extraordinary experience on day 5 where everything became super real and absolutely fascinating. But I can't be sure.

I am hoping that this log will help to inject some new life into my sits.

I am a bit worried about putting my practice out in the open for all to see but I also think it would be a good thing, allowing other more experienced meditators to comment, and giving me some objectivity.
   

Hi Mo,

Tell us about your "noting" practice. What are you doing exactly from the moment you start meditating?

~D

In the goal towards objectivity -

You may wish to break down your practice log into some structure for a while....something like this.

Hello Dream Walker,

Thank you for your interest. Currently my noting practice looks like this.

Length of sit: 1hour 5 minutes

Posture: Crosslegged

Meditative technique: Follow breath first five minutes, noting out loud four foundations

Dynamics: I have a mild aversion to meditating before I start.
Things I note include aches, pain, stiffness, heat, cold, and pulsing, all ussually in my back. It used to be really annoying but nowadays I don't mind so much. I can pretty much watch it do it's thing.
Also wandering mind, worry, time thoughts, frustration, hearing, seeing, observing, images, and pins and needles in extremities.
There are also lots of don't knows.
I find it easy to note body feelings and sensations. I can sometimes get confused when noting pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, so I just note don't know.
I have difficulty with mind states and thoughts. I can pick up the obvious ones like worry, story spinning, mind wandering, but sometimes I just don't know.
By the end of the sit I find that I'm thinking more and more about the time and wanting the session to be over.
Lately I have felt frustrated with my out loud noting practice and feel that it may be getting in the way and hampering the deepening of my practice, but I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and I just need to keep going. It feels a bit mechanical at the moment. 

So as per Dream Walkers suggestion.
Here's my sit broken down.

Premeditative context: watching tv, relaxing

Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit

Posture: Cross legged(strong determination sit)

Cutting edge stage of session : I don’t know

Meditative techniques utilized: sit – follow breath, silent noting, choiceless awareness

Dynamics: First 5 minutes counting breath to concentrate the mind.
Decided to try silent noticing rather than out loud noting as I feel that this is getting too mechanical and the noting was getting in the way.
Things I noted include, brightness, hearing sounds, wandering mind, pins and needles in hands and feet, images of various parts of my body, ticklishness between my forehead, rehearsing what I was going to write on this log, worrying. There was no big aversions or pain.
About halfway through I got to a pleasant state which was centred around the top of my head, was nice and very easy to space out.
The biggest noticeable difference between the start and end is that I felt much more inmmersed in my body at the end, the mind became less and I didn’t feel so much as if I was trying to meditate. I felt more at one with my body feeling the aches and pains and stiffness. It wasn’t particularly pleasant but felt more concentrated, condensed and contracted, almost squashed in and down. It felt very easy to stay with the physicality of my body. It felt good to be immersed, although I knew the time was going to end soon, which may have helped to ease the ache and pain.

Goal of next session: I don't know

You need to spend more time getting concentrated. I can shift up the jhanas very fast now but I still spend more time than you are. I would reccomend half of your sit dedicated to concentration. Once you know how long it takes you to get to your cutting edge then you will have a better idea how much time to split between concentration and insight.


First a vocabulary tip
 
Noticing is being present with what is happening in the moment. You're training meta-cognition to keep track of the experience and are not being sucked into the experience but watching it closely.

Noting is an after the fact hack that keeps you on task by labelling what you just noticed such that you don’t get sucked into the experience. Noting is a wonderful hack that works really well and is useful thru many of the Nanas. It is also something that should be put aside when you don't need it. Test this in each Nana and you will learn when you can stop noting and just notice instead while keeping on track.

I used 4 words in my noting practice -

1. Thinking
2. Hearing
3. Seeing
4. Feeling

On very rare occasions I would smell and taste, but not often enough to worry about.
These four words cover 99% of our meditative experience and I didn’t need to waste time searching for the "right" word.
Say the words silently to yourself.

Noticing the current experience with all the curiosity you have is the key to moving up the nanas. Its not a grit your teeth process, but more like a game that is endlessly entertaining and pleasant. Have fun with it as it is your meditation.
Message me if you want to skype
Good luck,
~D

Dream Walker:
Thanks, I will spend more time doing this


Thanks for pointing that out, and I like your idea of simplyfying the noting vocabulary.

I have to say that I don't really see my practice as a game(maybe I should). It's feels more like an endeavour and something that I have invested so much time in that that I have to do it. My whole life seems to evolves around it, for good or bad. That might come over a bit desperate, don't get me wrong, I like it and I want to do it.

Once again thanks for your time and input. Much appreciated.

Date: 08/10/2016 Morning sit

Premeditative context: woke up, coffee

Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit

Posture: Cross legged(strong determination sit)

Cutting edge stage of session : I don’t know

Meditative techniques utilized: sit – follow breath, silent noting, noticing

Dynamics: First 30 minutes following breath to aid concentration, my nose, and forehead area between the eyes became very sensitive, and at times my attention would lock into these areas without my trying. This was interspersed with my attention being drawn to body feelings of tingling in hands and legs. Overall felt relaxed.
Last 35 minutes spent silent noting of

1. Hearing
2. Seeing
3. Feeling
4. Thinking

This was a little confusing to do at times, and I’m really not sure how it went.
I kept worrying about whether I was doing it right, and what to write in my log. I did notice the interplay and link between them like the feeling affecting the thought, and vice versa.
At times I dropped the noting because I felt it was too cumbersome and I was missing a lot of the stuff.
I’m also a little worried about spacing out, and enjoying the pleasantness and not being able to catch these.
Towards the end it became very pleasant to just sit, and there was a heaviness and solidity which was comforting and reassuring.
One thing I notice about stopping out loud noting is that my sit is much more calming pleasant and relaxed.
The out loud noting felt very harsh at times and also felt like I was just skimming the surface all the time.
It may be that I have to put up with the harshness and superficiality, I don't know, but I think I will continue with the silent noting for a while and see how it pans out.    

Date: 08/10/2016 Evening sit

Premeditative context: watching tv

Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit

Posture: Cross legged(strong determination sit)

Cutting edge stage of session : I don’t know

Meditative techniques utilized: sit – follow breath, silent noting

Dynamics: First 30 minutes following breath to aid concentration. Found it difficult to concentrate tonight. The mind kept wandering off, Feeling dullness, sleepy and spaced out.
Last 35 minutes silent noting of
1. Feeling 
2. Hearing
3. Seeing
4. Thinking
Also generally a sleepy, dull and spaced out session. Very easy to note feeling, and hearing the sounds from the neighbours. I found that thinking and seeing were very influential on each other like an image thought.
Towards the end of the sit started to fell aches and pains which although were unpleasant I tried to stay with them at at times they morped, appeared as only sensations and disappeared. These aches, pains in my back have long been with me when meditating and I am coping much better with them these days.

Date: 09/10/2016 morning sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – follow breath, silent noting

Dynamics:
First 30 minutes follow breath
Difficulty in staying with the breath kept losing count. I noticed that my whole nose area feels very sensitive, and so prominent and have an "always there" feeling. My mind kept losing track of breathing and jump to the "sensitive nose area". I'm wondering if this sensitive nose thing is something I should cultivate as I'm so inclined to it. It could help me to get concentrated. 

Last 35 silent noting
Overall not a pleasant sit, lots of mind wandering, difficulty in noting, confusion, and feeling lost.
Sensations on my body were predominant and easy to note.
Seeing and hearing was relatively easy to note.
Thinking was harder and seemed to be linked with the other three areas influencing and being influenced by them.
At one point I couldn't distinguish between them all as they all seemed to be happening together, which brought on frustration. 
Strong feelings in my back which were easy to note.
I tried to investigate the feelings in my back but couldn't, just seemed to bounce back out again.
Also unpleasant sensations in my stomach. Just tried to stay and roll with the frustration, unpleasantness.
Also at times there was a feeling of things building up and up into an uncomfortableness which was quite unpleasant, like something was going to blow, but never happens. This is a feeling I have experienced before quite a few times. Not sure what it is. 

Date: 09/10/2016 evening sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – 30 min follow breath, 35 min silent noting

Dynamics: 
30 minutes follow breath
Immediately went to ticklish forehead at start. Felt yhe sensitivite nose thing. Also the sensitive nose thing is something which I often feel off the cushion as I go about during the day.
Counting breaths was easy at first but then I got lost and was daydreaming, and spacing out a lot.
Aches and pains in my back also took my attention away from the breath. I also tried to foucus on my nose area but I kept spacing out from this too.

Last 35 silent noting
Lots of sleepyness, spacing out and drifting off. I forgot to note a lot of the time. When I did, noting feeling was easy as there was often pains in my back.
Hearing, seeing and thinking  didn't really seem to get noted that often. Towards the end I get a lot of aches and pains in my back which were unpleasant. I tried to investigate the sensations to see if I could locate the sensation and separate it from the feeling.
I couldn't. It was a painful sensation.
The ache also moved from my back to include the shoulder area.
I had to open my eyes before the timer went off and move position but continued to the end. 

Date: 10/10/2016 evening sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – 30 min follow breath, 35 min silent noting

Dynamics: 
30 minutes follow breath
Started by just trying to relax. Then counted breaths, but kept losing track all the time. Honestly feel like I'm starting out again, as my concentration is so bad. Towards the end of the 30 minutes got into quite a pleasant state which felt good and kind of centred around a spaciousness around my head. By now I thought I would kind of know the jhanas but I don't, so I'm not sure even if I've hit the first jhana, or whether I'm just spacing out.  

Last 35 silent noting
Had difficulty noting tonight.
It seemed that the note I came up with was just too simple for what was being experienced. So I stopped and just stayed with noticing and went with the flow of things.
Just seemed to be a general tenseness and anxiousness to the sit.
A couple of times I noticed my shoulders relaxing down which would suggest tension.
When I could note I would and most of these were the physical aches, pains and some tingles.
There was also some itching, worrying, and doubts. 
Towards the end the aches, stiffness, and tensions became more and more predominant, and appeared more and more as sensations which although were painful would change.
Tried towards the end to look at the difference between feeling aches and pain normally versus seeing and feeling aches and pains as pure sensations followed by the unpleasantness. Not sure if it succeeded.
There was also a pulsing which I often feel which I havn't mentioned before.  
It seems like I should be able to remember a lot more of my sit but I can't, which makes me wonder if I'm just daydreaming most of the time.
I feel a little bit like I'm backsliding and not progressing. Another thing to note.

Date: 11/10/2016 Morning sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – 30 min follow breath, 35 min silent noting
Dynamics:
30 minutes follow breath
Kept losing count of my breaths.
As the bell went I was still counting breaths.
Noted doubts and worrying about my concetration skills. 

35 minutes silent noting
Noted feelings and bodily sensations such aches, pains, stiffness, and tensions particularly in back.
Tingling feelings in hands followed by images of my hands which were so obviously mental creations which I knew did not match up to the actual seeing of them. I knew that my fingers were in contact with each other but my mental images seemed to show that the fingers were apart.
At one point there was a whole body view and feeling which was quite pleasant.
The body seemed to be separate from the head area and was as if I was observing the body.
Also pulsing in the torso area.
Generally the sit was marked by doubts, and worry.
Ended the sit with the usual aches, pains, stiffness, and tension particularly in the torso area.

Date: 11/10/2016 Evening sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – 30 min follow breath, 35 min silent noting
Dynamics: 
30 minutes follow breath
Started by relaxing and just sitting.
Started to count breaths and kept losing count.
Could not complete 3 counts of ten even when the bell sounded. I wonder if this is because I have changed my technique recently as for the last 6/7 months I have only spent 5 minutes on concentration and the rest of the hour on out loud choiceless noting.
I'm embarrassed at how bad my concentration is. Felt doubts and worry about it. 

35 minutes silent noting
When I'm sitting I tell myself to remember to log this feeling or that sensation but I can never remember the details of my my sit well enough.
I wonder if could stop the meditation and make a quick note. 

Towards the end of the sit I decided to limit my noting to just bodily sensations, and see if I could just experience them as sensations and nothing else. This also worked in that I could concentrate better and not worry about noting the other senses(hearing, seeing, thinking). 
It kind of worked in that I flet disembedded and not caught up in them.   
It also seemed to be more effective when I reminded myself to do it.
I must try to see if I can take the same tack with thoughts and mindstates but must be much harder to do.
I also saw that these sensations were not "me", they were just sensations happening without me doing anything.
Again towards the end the aches, tightness, stiffness and tensions were getting stronger but seemed like I could watch it all happening, changing, morphing, and moving. Although I wonder if I extended the sit and the pain got more intense if I could still handle it.

I have a 10 day Goenka retreat planned for November, which I'm kind of looking forward to and also worried about, because of all the hard work that's gonna be involved. Although knowing there's a retreat coming has been great in getting me focused.  

I have been missing a couple of morning sits lately which is not a habit I want to get into.
Not sure why, could be because I have an aversion to meditating lately feeling that I'm not making progress and it's all a bit boring.
I guess it must be part of the journey and to be accepted and worked through regardless. 
Having a log like this where I am accountable will hopefully help to kickstart my morning sits again. 

Date: 12/10/2016 Evening sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – 30 min follow breath, 35 min silent noting & noticing
Dynamics: 
30 minutes follow breath
A trend I have noticed is that the first 30 minutes of following the breath seems to fly by. I think this is becasue it takes me a while just to relax and let the working day go before I can start to feel the breath. 
I also have a general aversion to sitting at the moment so the start is always a bit crap with thoughts of "not this again".
Started by just feeling the aches and pains in my body. I'm starting to get a feel again for following the breath by concentrating on the triangle formed between the nostrils and the corners of the mouth. Initially images of this area arose then managed to feel the breath passing over this area with coolness and warmth. Interspersed with tension and tightness in back, and listening to the wheezing sounds of my breath, which brought on fear. I located the actual physical location of the fear to be in the stomach. Even thinking about this now brings up the unpleasant stomach feeling.  
For some reason not sure why, I asked myself what the breathing had to do with Mo. The answer was nothing. Breathing seems to just happens, and this seesm to bring up fear again.
At times managed to zoom in to the breath touching the skin on the nostrils. My particular spot is the entrance of the right side of the right nostril. Not sure though if I'm actually feeling this or it's just an image and I think I'm feeling it. 

35 minutes silent noting
The general trend of the second sit seems to be a lot slower and me noticing the time more.
There seems to be pockets of experience which are slightly different to each other.
One part was full of mindwandering and coming back to the present.
Also felt like a huge pressure was pushing on my back and when I tried to investigate it by zooming in I couldn't, I could only seem to see the whole back and not any detail.
Another part was being unable to note, and feeling of having no control whatsoever a feeling of helplessness and kind of anxious.   
Another trend of the second part of the sit seems to be a very physical aspect to it as it nears the end the stiffness, aches and tensions seem to get stronger. 

Date: 13/10/2016 morning sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit – 30 min follow breath, 35 min noticing
Dynamics:
30 minutes follow breath
Went to bed early last night to make sure I was up for this sit this morning as I've been missing a couple of morning sits.
It seemd to work as I felt quite fresh and alert this morning
Attention bounced between breath at the tip of the nose and whole body. Got to a point where I could feel tingles in hands and lower arms, aches & stiffness in back, skin crawling around my head and numbness in legs. Alternated with feeling the breathing at the nose. I wasn't able to zoom in to the breathing at the nose for long lengths of time. So I just let it do what it wanted.
As usual the 30 minute timer went off really quickly.

35 minutes noticing
Instead of jumping in to noting I decided to just stay with what I was feeling, and let it do it's thing and just try to be aware of mindwandering or spacing out. So it was more an awaraness of the body, the pleasantness and aches, and trying to catch mindwandering and  spacing out. I don't know if this is the right thing to do but it felt like it was right, so I went with it. It was like I tried to get out of the way and let the meditation do it's thing, with some gentle coaxing when things drifted off.
It was a gentle, kind sit, which as I'm writing feels strong in my heart area.
Maybe this is due to it being in the morning when things are quieter and the days events hasn't really started.
There was quite a lot of stories around meditation planning.
At one point I noticed an unpleasant sensation in the upper stomach/chest area, accompanied with feelings of breathlessness and wheezing, heavy breathing. This passed, breathing became quieter and the bell went. 

I'm realizing that this log of my sits is making me look at my sits much more closely and reflect on what's happening. It seems to be an ever evolving practice with many changes and tweaks at the moment.             

Date: 13/10/2016 evening
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Follow breath
Dynamics: 
Have decided to drop the noting and just concentrate on following the breath at the nostrils entrance area and see where it takes me.
Kind of going back to basics.
Took at least the first 10/15 minutes to relax and watch the attention bounce between nose, thoughts and body. Thereafter started to feel body  sensations more and attention started to get stabler and less jumpy while nose area became more and more sensitive. This continued and sensations in the hands and lower arms started to get stronger and took my attention. 
Also had some mind wandering, and worry about timer thoughts got so strong that I doubted that the timer was working properly to the point where I stopped the meditation to check, and it turned out that there was nothing wrong with the timer.
I think it may have been boredom and some sort of aversion and craving.
I carried on.
Then experienced sensitivity and tingling on forehead.
Then experienced pain in lower back, itching, and pain and aches moved up to shoulders which became cool.
A section where I was at a lost as to what to look at. It seemed like I was expecting something to happen and waiting.
The last 15 minutes was interesting as there was lots of spacing out and drifting off but never sleepy. It wasn't particulalrly pleasant nor unpleasant. I caught myself a couple times thinking "Oh yeah I'm suppose to be meditating".  

Date: 14/10/2016 Morning sit
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Follow breath & noticing
Dynamics:
Felt tired this morning when I got up.
Attention was very scatterred, and difficult to zoom in on the breath at the nose.
Beathing was mostly heavy, coarse and unpleasant. Lots of mindwandering, worries and stories.
After a while pins and needles in my hands, and numbness in legs.
Strong sensations in torso which moved up to include the shoulders which felt cool. The sensations continued and included my head area, with feeling of pressing and tension on the sides of my head.
A bit weird in that it was pleasant to be feeling something so stable but feelings of pain and tension wasn't so pleasant.
At the end came a moment where attention just locked on to the breathing at the nose very easily, and also stabbing pain in my back. Was satisfying because of the ease of focus of attention, felt like i didn't need to try, but also unpleasant because of pain, I wasn't sure how long I could stand it before i thought I would have to move or do something.
I knew the bell was sounding soon so continued then bell went.            

Date: 14/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Follow breath & noticing
Dynamics: 
Very little progression during this sit.
Nearly the whole time was just mindwandering, stories and getting lost.
Which resulted in feelings of frustration, but also came acceptance.
I used to get sits like this when noting aloud and at the end of those sits I would be exhausted with frustration, helplessness and pointlessness but happening now with no out loud noting, it's more of an acceptance.  
Every now and then I tried to steer the attention back to the breath but through the whole sit it just didn't seem to happen, so most of the time was spent just accepting that I couldn't at present, follow the breath, and just being aware of stories and mindwandering and noticing that.
I'm not sure what's right and wrong, but acceptance sure feels a lot kinder and more loving. I have doubts though whether the acceptance is just a copout for me to daydream and space out, but atleast I was aware of spacing out.
There was of course the usual back aches and pains which became cool at one point as it moved up to the upper back and shoulders area, and some ticklishness in the forehead.
I again tried to investigate my breathing to see if "Mo" instigated the in breath, the need to breath in, and it seemed at the time that this is just a process and nothing actually to with me. I feel daft mentioning it now. 
My breathing was also wheezy, loud, heavy, and laboured, sensations which have always brought on negative feelings when they occur in my meditation. This idea has has lost more and more of it's power over me as my meditation has grown, but I still can't shake it off particularly if it is loud.
So I tried to investigate by just listening to the breathing and trying to discern that the noise had nothing to with "Mo" and just occuring on it's own.
This breathing has also caused me quite a lot of fear during the Goenka retreats,"strong determination sits", where all students are asked to come to the hall to meditate together. I was always worried that my meditation was really loud, and disturbing others. This worry and fear would spiral out of control and sometimes the breath would quieten and sometimes it wouldn't which resulted in a pretty unpleasant hour experience, of using various means to try and control the breath.
I don't know, maybe I'm doing the wrong thing, but at least I'm investigating. 
I was kind of hoping by investigating it I might understand and accept it and not be so fearful.
Ah well, onwards...

Date: 15/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Follow breath & noticing
Dynamics: 
All these timings are approx
0 to 15 minutes
Just relaxing and getting a feel for where my mind is at, how my body is feeling, and whether following the breath is possible. Lost count when counting breath so stopped. Restlessness and scattered mind.
 
15 to 30 minutes
The body slowly started to become heavy and aches, stiffness and pain appeared. Mind still scattered and jumpy, couldn't count breath and zoom in on breathing at nose. Feelings of anxiousness and craving.  

30 to 45 minutes
The body became heavier and a feeling of acceptance and flowing with the sit took over, which made me think that I was perhaps striving too much. It felt calmer.
I also saw my attention always looking and striving for something, it didn't want to stop, it kept always finding something, a twitch here, feeling there, this, that, here, there, which made me wonder what it would be like were attention to stop doing that. 

45 to 60 minutes
My body felt like it had a heavy warm thick coat on, and felt very restful, as if I needed it. I felt very sleepy but also aware of being sleepy.
The thought came "this is nice but what now, lets move on" but I let it go and just stay with awareness. Tried to not get spaced out by the niceness and stay aware of the feelings.
Started to get feelings of acceptance, non striving, receiving, forgiveness and love, which as I'm writing this is felt in my heart area. 

Definitely a different flavour to this sit.
Seems to be headed towards more of a let things happen rather than trying to force it, with an awareness of trying to stay alert and not getting caught up in whatever arises.

Date: 16/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: I have stopped following the breath and adopted a more just sit and notice type of approach
Dynamics: 
0 to 15 minutes
Sat and noticed averison, worry, craving, and thinking I should be doing something, which I tried to let go.
The breath and nose area came to my attention of its own accord a few times. It seems to just pop into view very easily and then fade into the background and pops back again. When it pops into view again I sometimes wonder if I was aware of it previously, it kind of seems like it was always there but I'm not sure.
There was a general feeling of "I" should be doing something while I'm sat here meditating, which I tried to let go.
By the end of the 15 minutes my body sensations became more prominent as aches, pressure in the back, tingles in arms and hands.  
 
15 to 30 minutes
The intensity of bodily sensations stayed the same.
A sense of waiting, watching, and wanting something to happen.
The pressure on my back kind of feels like having something heavy placed on it.

30 to 45 minutes
The bodilys sensations continued with a slight rise in intensity.
I started to feel the ticklish forehead and nose area becoming sensitive.
The ticklish forehead is like a feather brushing against it. 
Started to feel the heavy, seductive, sleepyness feeling. Didn't try push it. Tried to just be aware of it when it was there  
Can't really remember mindstates.

45 to 60 minutes
Heavy, sleepyness continued.
Sensations around the head area, pressure around the sides of head, nose, forehead and middle of eyes, became stronger and torso sensations less.
Some timer thoughts, and wanting to stop.
Sleepyness started to subside and bell went.

A couple of times I treid to zoom in to areas but it seems to be more of a whole view at the moment.
I don't know if this is right or wrong.
There are some doubts too about my meditation as there is no mention of the 3c's.

Great practice Mo!

Don't worry too much about the 3C's, I'm sure you are noticing how sensations come and go on their own (imperminance), no single sensation is ultimately satisfying (dukka), and "you" are not the sensations (not-self). You don't need to obsess about the 3C's, but if you feel stuck, you can explore those characteristics of experience. 

Consistent practice is the most important thing. Keep doing what you're doing!

Thank you shargrol.
It's reassuring to get validation from other more experienced meditators that I'm on the right track.

Date:17/10/2016 morning
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Strong determination sit, feel body sensations including breathing, & noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 15 minutes
Always seem to start with doubts about technique, timer thoughts, self coaching, watching mind jumping around, a general mixed bag with no clear definition of anything.
Takes me at least 15 minutes of sitting still to relax into the sit, start to feel the sensations of the body becoming predominant, and begin to start looking at mindstates, and thoughts.   
 
15 to 30 minutes
Intensity of body sensations slowly rising, and becoming more and more stable, quite difficult to see the mindstates, because nothing was particularly unpleasant or pleasant, there was a sense of trying and wanting to see and feel more progress which is difficult to catch.
By the end of this section of sit sensations around the head became more prominant than bodily ones, manifested as pressure on sides of head, and sensitivity round nose and middle of eyes. 

30 to 45 minutes
At the end of this section there was a very difinite shift.
Felt like I jumped into a slipstream and there didn't seem to be a divide between a watcher and the stuff that I'm watching. The whole body became very obvious and I could feel everything at once including the breath, I could easily feel parts of my body at will. I tried to see if I could zoom in and stay concentrated on a single part but unable to. It wasn't particularly pleasant or a "wow" factor to it, more of an interesting phenomenon. Had the heavy coat feeling to it too. There was an easyness to it    


45 to 60 minutes
The slipstream feeling subsided and body sensations became more localised and intensity rose in the localised parts like the back, and hands, which had a gritty feel to it.
A sense of wanting something to happen still lingered, timer thoughts, some rehearsing what to write in log thoughts.

The overall sense of sits is of an easyness without any real unpleasant/pleasant sensations, feelings, or mindstates.
The worry with the easyness is in being aware of the subtler mindstates and not spacing out.
The major difference between the start of the sit and the end is in the predominant awareness of bodily sensations whether they be localised or whole view, lower or higher intensity, with different flavours such pulsing, flowing, heat, cold, pressures, tingles, numbness, etc.  
There is a feeling that I might need to extend the sit to see where it takes me.
At the end of the sit I get the sense that I should be sitting longer and that there's more to come.

And I still get a sense sometimes that I'm faking it, it's all a big game, scripting all of this, and not really progressing.

Date:17/10/2016 evening
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Strong determination sit, feel body sensations including breathing, & noticing
Dynamics: 
0 to 15 minutes
Aversion to sitting, kept putting it off. 
Body sensations and nose area came into attention fairly quickly this evening.
 
15 to 50 minutes
This whole section of the sit was full of doubts, worry, mind seemed very scattered, general edgyness, anxiousness and restlessnes.
There was also frustration, disappointment and a craving and wanting. I tried to investigate who this "I" was that was feeling all these negative states, but didn't really seem to have any progress with it.
The bodilys sensations, continued along with the sensitive nose area. A couple of times I tried breath counting and again lost count pretty quickly.  

50 to 65 minutes
The last part of sit continued with the confused, scaterred, and restless mindstate.
I tried zooming in to nose area, managed to watch movement in this area but not for too long. 
Bodily sensations became hot and cold in the back area and throbbing pain starting in right knee.

Overall a very different sit to the previous.
Interesting how sits can change so much.  

Date: 18/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Strong determination sit, feel body sensations including breathing, & noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 10 minutes
Body and nose sensations becoming more prominant. 

10 to 65 minutes
Couldn't see any real progression through the whole sit.
Body, nose sensations rose in intensity and died down in parts of the sit.
Some tingling in hands and arms. 
No real bodily pains anywhere. 
Most noticable was general sense of being outside of things, looking on, an inability to control anything, helplessness, which was unpleasant in a boring tedious way.
Like being made to watch a movie you have seen a thousand times, so it's become very boring, and you just want to walk out.
Inevitably there's a craving or aversion. I'm never sure of these two as they seem very similar to me in some ways.
There's a craving for progress and something different to happen, and an aversion to the boredom of it all.
I tried to try to see who is being bored, where is it located, which didn't seem to give me any clues. I kept trying anyway.
I tried zooming in on nose sensations and managed for short periods but again just seemed boring and pointless.
I felt I should be looking more at mindstates, and investigating the sense of "I" which was wanting, craving and having aversions.   

Thinking of increasing the sit duration to 1hour 15 minutes.  

Date: 18/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: 0 to 30 minutes just sit still, 60 to 90 follow breath
Dynamics: 
0 to 30 minutes
Just sit and try not to do anything other than relax the body.
If mind wandered too much then brought it back to the body.
Feelings of boredom, and aversion.
Tried to find the person who was feeling the boredom and aversion.  

30 to 60 minutes
Lots of stories, thoughts, and general mind wandering. Seems that if I don't give my mind something to do then it just goes a bit crazy jumping all over the place.
Kind of seems so obvious.
Whenever an obvious thought, story arose tried to find the "I" in it all.
Not having much luck with this.
Seems like there is an "I" because I think can feel it, it's seems to be there all the time, but where, I don't know.
Had a definite shift at the end of the hour when I felt my whole body start to expand and there my a brightness/luminosity to things.
The awareness grew more panoramic.
It was quite pleasant.
I felt I could have gone with it and enjoyed the ride more but I kind of reined it in by shifting the gaze back to zooming in on the nose, and it subsided. 

60 to 90 minutes
This is new territory in terms of lenght of sitting, although I have sat for this long before but not recently.
Had to shift position due to pain in knee, but didn't move again for the rest of the sit.
Position of my eyes seemed important during this section of the sit although I had noticed this before but not bothered to record it.
I wanted to practice following my breath more in order to develop my concentration skills, don't know if this is the right thing to do.
Found that I could concentrate on my breathing at the nose by literally keeping my eyes gazing in the direction of my nose and visualizing my nostril.
This helped me to physically feel the air brushing past the rims of my nostrils.
Again I'm not sure if I should be doing this but it helped me to zoom in, focus and concentrate.
I also found that a lot of the times when I was mind wandering, spacing out, lost in thought, my eye position and direction of gaze and visualization had moved from my nose.
And if my eyes were rolled up in the top of my head then it would get quite spacy and sleepy.
It was easy to bring my attention back to my nose by directing my gaze back ahead and below in the direction of the nose area. 
Reminds me of all the buddha statues with his eyes half open and a droopy gaze below.
Also made me think how related my sense of seeing is to a lot of things I experienced.
I found that each time I experienced something, I was checking the position of my gaze and also what they were seeing.
I was spacing out and drifting off a lot during this part of the sit, but each time I realized, I brought my attention back to my breath, which was very reassuring and comforting because it very physical and I knew there was no spacing out happening there.
It was a nice feeling, kind off very grounded.
This section went by relatively quickly.

Interesting sit, and after the messines of the last couple of sits this has come as a welcome relief.

Date: 19/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath at the nostril
Dynamics:
0 to 30 minutes
Just sit, relax and feel the body.
A general feeling of doubt, uneasiness, being lost, and needing something to do.
It's quite unerving to just sit and not have any agenda. 
After about 15 minutes, started to gaze down at the nose and visualize the nostril in order to help concentration on the feeling of air brushing past my nostril.
Quite difficult to do at first, certainly not as easy as it was the last sit, but maybe because I had not sat for long. 
Started to feel headachy feeling in between the eyes, not sure if this is because my eyes are looking down and maybe going a bit crosseyed .  

30 to 65 minutes
Continued with concentrating on feeling air brushing past nostril aided by visualizing.
I noticed the difference between just watching the breathing and visualizing my nostril and feeling the air brushing past skin.
When just watching the breathing part of my attention was able to think about other stuff, but when I visualize my nostril and tried to feel the actual sensation of air on skin, it seemed like there was no room for my mind to think about other stuff.
It reminded me of Nikolai's comments(http://thehamiltonproject.blogspot.co.uk/#!/2011/12/yogi-toobox-anapanasati-sutta.html) about engaging "the mind's proliferating tendency by giving it more things to pay attention to as opposed to just the breath", like using up 100% of your processing power rather than just 40% or 50%.
It's quite difficult to see the difference at first but once I tried this I could definitely notice a difference.
It was also difficult to keep the visualization and feeling of air on skin going for any lenght of time, had to remind myself and keep coming back to it, which made me realize actually how much mind wandering and generally not being fully present was happening.   
It was good to have this solid anchor (visualizing nose/feeling air on skin) to come back to, when I felt swamped with thoughts, images, mindstates, and feelings, especially during the current sits where things are starting to get unstable, and a general feeling of being lost. 

  


      

Date: 19/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 75 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath at the nostril
Dynamics:
0 to 30 minutes
Aversion to sitting.
After about 10 minutes of relaxing, started to follow the breath. Difficult to visualize and feel the breath at first and an ache and tension developed from straining to visualize. The ache grew stronger and after a while i got tired and exhausted with trying too hard.
I was so tired from trying that I had to stop and get up. 
There was way too much trying going on.

30 to 75 minutes
Continued with the sit and following the breath using the visualization in order to stop mind wandering.
There was lots of aversion, frustration, hopelessness and doubts.
Feeling a little lost.
I tried to investigate the "I" in all the negativity to see if I could see what everyone is talking about when they say they is no "I".
Didn't seem to yield any results.
I'm unable to recall any particluars from the sit.

A difficult sit. 

Date: 20/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, body sensations, noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 30 minutes
First 10 minutes relaxing and concentrating on breathing.
Didn't try as hard but still kept awareness of gaze directed downwards but not visualizing as much since it caused quite a lot of strain yesterday and I think led to unpleasant pains and aches. 
After about 15 minutes body sensations started to become more prominant.
Mostly alternating between body sensations, breathing sensations at nose area, and thoughts, with some hearing.

30 to 65 minutes  
Body sensations gradually rose in intensity, with tension/pressure middle of eyes and forehead.
Woke up feeling sad and unhappy this morning, but the longer I sat and as body sensations became more noticable, feelings of sadness would recede. 
I tried to investigate the sense of self that is suffering to see if I could find "me".
There's something about the eyes and the sense of self but I don't know what it is.
Can't put my finger on it. I have also read elsewhere that the sense of self can be found behind the eyes, can't remember where I read it.  
I noticed that if I put my attention on body sensations there's a different feeling to when I have a thought.
I can literally feel that the sensations are very separate to a sense of me, they also have a very transitory nature, always moving/changing, fizzing.
But there's a link between what my eyes are doing and when I have a thought, which is a lot harder to see as separate.
Once again there was a nice grounded feeling to being able to place my attention on my body sensations in between the feelings of sadness, adn thoughts.
Five minutes before the timer went I got worried that the timer had stopped working and I was going to be late for work, so I got up and checked, and of course the timer was fine(this always makes me smile when I do this) so sat back down and then timer went.             

Really awesome Mo!

Building the instinctual act of "coming back" to the meditation object/anchor without creating a lot of extra drama (i.e., simply starting again, without judging if you are a good meditator or not or whether practice is working or not)...and grounding emotions/thoughts by going to the body and experiencing body sensations along with the thoughts are the two basic skills that take you all the way.

once again, thanks for taking time out to respond, good to know that I'm headed in roughly the right direction as it's been a little confusing the last couple of sits, also the little nuggets of instruction you provide are very useful and hopefully keep me on track  

Date: 20/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, body sensations, noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 30 minutes
Relaxing, concentrating on breathing, using the gaze downwards to aid focus, but didn't try too hard, just slowly coaxing into the sit.
As usual body sensations came into view more and more, and this alternated with attention on breathing sensations and pressure sensations in middle of eyes and forehead. 

30 to 90 minutes  
Investigated mindstates and thoughts as much as I could alternating with coming back to breathing and body sensations when I needed a break, and to stop mindwandering, getting lost and spacing out.
Tried to see the sense of "I" in mindstates and thoughts.
There's still that connection with the eyes, I think.
When I had mindwandering thoughts I would check my eyes to see what they were looking at.
I think they were looking at the thought or some sort of image of the thought, but it was only when I decided to look at the eyes that I became aware of this.
When obvious thoughts came up such as "I wonder what the time is?", boredom, or mind wandering thoughts, I would immediately look to see where it was but as soon as I thought to look it was gone, I also made a point to see if there was a feeling anywhere in the body linked to the thought, a couple of times I thought they may have been something in my stomach, but as the thought had already gone, I couldn't be sure if the stomach feeling was connected, in any case the feeling became just a feeling anyway. 
The direction of the gaze of my eyes also helped with concentrating and drilling down on sensations in different parts of my body.
Pains in the back could be easier concentrated on when my gaze was directed ahead and to the right.
Gazing downwards was always good for reconnecting with the breath.
Also I hit a point where I just didn't know what to do next.
It was like I was keeping going, and going and going and all of a sudden, "Oh, I don't know what to do next?".
It seems such an odd thing to describe now.  
I tried to see if I could pin down who was feeling this, and why it was causing problems.
Long sit with no bodily pain to cause me to move my position, and no extreme aversions.
Quite stable in a lot of ways. 

Seems like you are nailing the Mind and Body Nana.
Read up on these nanas and see what you can explore about sensations....notice mind states and body states and really get as close to the action as possible, see it clearly as you can.

• MCTB 1. Mind and Body
• MCTB 2. Cause and Effect
• MCTB 3. The Three Characteristics

Watch how one sensation transitions into the next, notice things
happening on thier own, unless they are not, then notice where ever they
are and notice what makes it seem that you are "doing". Notice that
there are beginnings to sensations, middles, ends, transitions. Notice
what seems to be permenent, see how long you can stay focused on it
before you lose your attention on it and have to move back to it. Notice
things that seem to be more personal than others, which sense door
feels more or less like "you"?  Play around with stuff as much as you want in your explorations, dont just get bored and veg out, take interest in some atribute and really have a go at it and see what you can learn about it.
Good Luck,
~D

Date: 21/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, body sensations, noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Feeling and grounding the body, concentrating on breath, overall pleasant body sensations.
There was impatience to start looking at thoughts, but decided to pull the mind back to the breath and body sensations.  
There's a very noticable difference when attention is pulled back to the breath when it has wandered off.
Again the positioning of the eyes is noticable for me. 

30 to 65minutes
Got to a point where I didn't know what to do next.

I tried to investigate thoughts to see what was happening, not as easy as looking at sensations, a lot more slippery.
Things I can say about thoughts are
1. The thought is there.
2. It has a different feel to it than sensations. 
3. I only notice it once it's already there, meaning it has already happened. 
4. As soon as I look at it it tends to disappear and be replaced with an awareness of looking at the thought, which I can kind of trace with my eyes. 

I also tried to drill down into sensations to see if I could break them down into smaller parts.
When I tried this I seemed to get immersed into the sensation and kind of lose a sense of "me".
My attention would bounce out of the sensation and I would get a sense of me watching the sensation again, and only then realise that I had lost a sense of the watcher or separateness. 
I was unable to really see parts of sensations. Couldn't really see start, middle, and ends.
It was hard to see individual sensations because
1. My attention couldn't focus that sharply.
2. My attention would just change where it was looking at, I couldn't control where it decided to look at next.   

It's quite difficult to do some of this stuff as it takes quite a bit of application.
So I didn't push it too much, I tried these things and then came back to breathing and body sensations for a rest and stability.
It's like going out on little exploration trips and then coming back.    

Towards the end of the sit, I started to feel body sensations which were unpleasantness, painful, and brought on aversion.
I hadn't felt these in a while and thought it strange how they just suddenly appeared out of the blue again.
I wonder if they are a sign of things to come.
We shall see.

Hello D,
Thanks, that's just the kind of specific advice I was looking for.
There's a lot useful, practical ideas for me to work on. 

Thank you!

Date: 21/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, body sensations, noticing
Dynamics:
Difficulty in getting any sort of concentration going tonight.
Even at the end of 90 minutes my concentration was weak, kept spacing out, and everything was very fuzzy, no clear distinctions of anything.
I'm finding it easier to see if I'm spacing out, which is something I guess. 
I kept trying and bringing back the attention to my breathing.
And even body sensations didn't seem that clear most of the time.
Couldn't drill down into sensations.
There were a few moments of clarity of body, and breathing sensations where I felt I had most of my awareness on them but they didn't last that long. 
Some feelings of frustration arose as a result, and I tried to look into that.
Tried also to note stuff happening to see if If it could help to stop the spacing out, and watch moment to moment breathing sensations at the nostril. 
Pains in knee started at about 80minutes so shifted position.
Seems a far cry from my recent sits, maybe because it's the end of the week and it's been quite busy at work today.
Lets see what happens tomorrow.

Date: 22/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, noticing
Dynamics:
Deciced to spend the whole sit just trying to follow the breath and and see if I could just keep coming back to the breath and not let the mind wander.
As time went on realised how much subtle mindwandering was going on, which took my attention away, the visualition of my nostril helped to keep my attention more focussed on the sensations at the nostril.
If negative emotions, feelings took my attention I came back to the breath at the nose.
If pleasant sensations, thoughts took my attention I came back to the breath at the nose.
Kind of trying to develop a neutral approach.
Saw how impersonal, breathing is, and the actual sensations didn't have a good/bad aspect to them, and this became obvious when thoughts, emotions, feelings took my attention and brought with them pleasant/unpleasant associations. Breathing sensations didn't seem to have a negative/psotive/pleasant/unpleasant quality to it.
It's just seemed to be breathing.
Also saw how it's always there and how easily forgotten it is. 
Saw how deceptive spacing out took my attention away from the breath.
Further into the sit I tried to drill down and stay with the moment to moment passing of sensations at the nostril to see if I could get closer and closer to each passing moment, which revealed even more how much mindwandering was going on.
At times the breathing got heavy and then got quiet again.
Also towards the end the breathing got and less and less to the point where it was difficult to focus because the sensations of air passing became less.
I also tried to apply the visualization to body sensations to see if I could feel the sensations like at the nose, but it seemed harder to do, not sure if this is because I need to practice at it more.
At the end an ache in my upper back started to appear more and more in my attention so tried to incoporate awareness of breathing at the nostril together with the ache in the back, which helped me to concentrate more and help to stop spacing out, also thought I could feel a connection and interplay between the sensations of the ache and sensations of the breathing although not sure if this just my mind creating a link. 

Date: 22/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 75 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, noticing
Dynamics:
Felt very sleepy and tired this evening, couldn't focus on breath . Spacing out and drifitng off a lot.
Kept trying to pull attention back, but it was all a very dreamy sit.
Also tried to disembed from what was happening by visualizing and imagining it, which worked for my breathing at the nose sometimes, but didn't seem to work with the tiredness and sleepyness.
Felt frustration, and tediousness of it all.
After about 30minutes started to get pain in back, which stayed pretty much the whole sit.
The pain was difficult to deal with tonight, it was a struggle to stay with it.
Tried to drill down into the pain and look at it closer.
Had aversion thoughts and a couple of times when I looked at them they disappeared.
Also planning thoughts about what I was going to do after the sit
I had intended to sit for 90 minutes but stopped at 75, just couldn't sit through the pain and sleepyness, seemed to be a waste of time, so I got up.

Date: 23/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Worry, doubts, sadness, about meditation, difficulty following the breath, mindwandering, stories and drifting off.
Body sensations came into attention a bit more.
Inability to extract myself from the negativity.  
Sleepyness and tiredness.

30 to 60minutes
Sleepyness and tiredness continued, apathy, hopelessness and feeling of uselessness followed.
Fellings of wallowing and completely immersed in all these emotions.
Tried some silent noting and saw how it helped to lift me out of identifying with the emotions and feelings.
The negativity slowed down and didn't seem to affect the sit as much when I noted.
Still couldn't follow breath.
Body sensations became more prominant.
As I couldn't follow breath I stayed with body sensations for a while, there was a light overall buzzing more noticable in certain areas.

60 to 90minutes
As I continued to note, my noting shifted on it's own and started to ask "who is noting this thought, emotion, sensation etc?" and then shifted to "what is this awareness that is aware of this thought, emotion, sensation etc?".
So I was focusing my attention not at the sensations, thought, feeling but at the awareness of the phenomenon that was occuring.
So with everything that was happening there seemed to be two layers, the phenomenon and the awareness of the phenomemon.
But then also it suddenly occurred that there must be something else that "is aware of the awareness of the phenomenon?". 
This last question was very slippery to see if it was there at all, so I'm not sure.
It reminded of the dog chasing it's tail, or snake eating it's tail. 
This act of looking at awareness itself was quite calming as it didn't seemed to be affected by the thing it was perceiving so if there was a pain, by looking at the awareness of the pain, the pain itself didn't seem to be that bad.
Mind you I don't know if this would work if there was really strong pain, or overwhelming negativity.

An interesting sit in how it started quite negative, and finished at a completely different place.

Date: 24/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, noting & noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Follow breath at nose, mindwandering, lost in thought, spacing out, and returning to following breath.

30 to 60minutes
More spacing out and returning to breath.
Tried to be aware of all phenomenon not being me, so as not to identify with it, through noting and noticing.
Seemed to work as I could feel a separateness, and also kept me aware so as not to space out.
The questioning changed again back to who is noting and noticing all this phenomenon which also helped in not spacing out.
At one point had an overall feeling of comfortablenes and pleasantness.
Body sensations grew more intense and more prominant towards the end of the sit, and breath became easier to follow.
Felt I I could have sat longer but I had to get ready for work. 

Date: 24/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 65 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, noting & noticing
Dynamics:
Difficuly in following breath tonight, virtually the whole sit was spent on mindwandering, stories, spacing out and coming back to the breath at the nose, there was some sense of the breath being a thing on its own, but not as strong as other sittings.
I could see strongly at times the difference between
1. being sucked into a mindstate, feeeling, story, thought
and
2. when just experiencing the breath for what it is i.e just sensations
There's an awareness of looking at the breathing that is not present when I'm in the feeling, thought, etc.  
But I can't yet see mindstates, thoughts, emotions, feelings as separate as I can easily see the breath, it's only when I come back to the breath do I realise how lost I was in mindstates, thoughts, emotions, feelings.
But the strong sense of separateness when looking at the breathing and seeing it as a thing on it's own is making me aware of a watcher and making me ask who is watching the breathing.  
Body sensations grew more intense and there was aversion, and wanting the sit to end towards the end of the sit.
I realised how tense I was when the bell went and I relaxed my shoulders down in relief. 

Date: 25/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, noting & noticing
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Follow breathing at nose area, mindwandering, stories and body sensations pulled my attention away, tried to keep coming back to breath.
Breath got very quiet and soft, difficult to follow, so rise and fall of stomach came into view more, and also body sensations.

30 to 60minutes
Moved attention from breath to body sensations, attention wanted to stay with breath at nose, so incorporated this into whole body attention, including rise and fall of belly, also mindwandering, and stories.
Difficulty switching to whole body sensations view, as attention kept coming back to breath.
Tried part by part body scanning.
Towards the end of this part of sit the whole body felt like a balloon being filled with air as it expanded, noticed how mind became more agitated by this phenomenon, tried to come back to concentrating just on the body sensations but mind kept wanting to interrupt, and wanted to theorize about what was happening.
The balloon body sensations subsided.

60 to 90minutes
Watching thoughts, every few seconds asking "I wonder what my next thought will be?", difficult at first to differentiate between what is a thought and what is a body sensation, image, sound, feeling, etc.
At first all I could say to the question was "looking", and "wondering what my next thought will be", and noticing attention fixing on body sensations, and breath at nose. 
This slowly changed and became more about what came into my attention rather than just thoughts, so it seemed that everything I was experiencing was also a thought.
So if I experience pain in my leg then there was a "pain thought", if there was an ache in my back then there an "ache thought".
I'm not sure if this correct or if I'm mixing this up with body sensations, but awareness seemed to be quite strong even if it was confusing.
Sometimes a thought would just seem to drop in from nowhere and didn't seem to be related to anything that was going on currently.  
Most of the time it seemed that thoughts were linked to other things going on.
I don't know, maybe this is all rubbish, as it's difficult to put into words a lot of this stuff after it's all happened.  
At one point had a strong pain in my knee, so I noted "pain thought", and I noticed that my attention was more on the thought rather than the actual pain itself. Odd
The pain got too strong at about 80minutes and I shifted.
Continued with looking at thoughts till timer went.

This format of
30minutes following breath
30minutes following body sensations
30minutes following thoughts
seems to be a good format.
 

Length of Sit: 65 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Tried to follow breathing.
Mindwandering, and spacing out, and coming back to breath.
Everything was very fuzzy and nothing really distinct.
Kept returning back to breath.

30 to 65minutes
Body sensations became stronger. 
Mindwandering, beathing and body sensations started to separate into distinct strands.
Body sensations took more and more of attention, and became more pleasant.
Very easy to get sucked into the pleasantness of it.
At one point there was a spaciousness to awareness, and the balloon filling up sensation of body.
Also back felt like a heavy sheet of iron at one point.
Tried to keep coming back to breath. 
I didn't bother with noting so much, just concentrated on following the breath as much as I could.
I feel like it takes me an hour just to get to some sort of stable concentration state.
Some days I'm like "Ok if it takes an hour to concentrate then , that's fine, all the better", and other days I'm like "Why does it take so long to get concentrated, I want to start noting and make progress". 

Length of Sit: 90 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Difficulty in getting any sort of following the beath.
Seemed to be getting lost, and coming back and getting lost and coming back with no progression to deeper concentration on the breath.
Towards the end of this section felt more and more frustrated, feelings of failure, worries and stories.
Worried about timer and got up to check, noticed how tired I was, sat back down and continued.
Worries about not being able to sit the whole 90 minutes.

30 to 90minutes
The whole sit was the same as the beginning.
Unable to concentrate on breath, and kept having to pull attention back to breath, over and over again.
Uncomfortable feeling, no real pain just an unpleasant uncomfortableness.
Wanting sit to be over.
Each time I pulled the attention back to the breath, it would stay for a split second and then I felt the breath fading into the background again, but that split second of attention on the breath at the nostril was very clear as just sensation, but it was gone straight away, each time I pulled attention back the same thing just kept happening over and over again. It was quite tiring having to do this.
I could get a less concentrated feeling of breathing by not trying to follow the breath so closely but it was very easy to drift off if I tried this.
Towards the end of the sit I could hear my heartbeat, and also feel it beating, which caught me by surprise, it didn't last very long.
Things got uncomfortable at the end with pain in knee, ache in back, and feeling uncomfortable. 
Generally an unpleasant sit with lots of aversion.

Date: 27/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 1 hour 5 min sit
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath
Dynamics:
The whole sit was spent following the breath, mindwandering, and returning to following the breath, didn't seem to be any progression during the sit.
At first mindwandering and spacing out was very noticable, and easy to catch.
Later on in the sit harder to catch mindwandering, and found myself a couple of times lost in thought for quite a while before realising.
This is probably because things had quieten down and became more subtle.  
Ache in back, tingling in hands, sensations in middle of forehead. 
Body sensations intensity got stronger, and at the end became quite uncomfortable and I wondered how long i could put up with it.
Fell as if I should have more to report, and maybe not paying enough attention to what is going on.

Am noticing a pattern during the last few sits of feeling as if I'm starting all over again and experiencing poor concentration skills, which is interesting as my Goenka 10 day sit is just around the corner.
   

Usually when things seem "worse" but you have been practicing consistently, it means that you are working on a new layer of subtlety. It's actually a good sign. 

Good luck on retreat. Probably the main recommendation I have is not to be "seduced" by new experiences caused by the increase in concentration that will happen on retreat. Both "rapture" and things feeling "worse" will probably be stronger. It doesn't matter. Keep a consistent practice and balance your energy -- not pushing too hard, not being lazy. Just consistently practice.

Read about Equanimity and Stream Entry. Equanimity is one of the hardest stages because it involves continuing to note and investigate when things already seem clear and open and simple and plain. Frankly, it can feel like you have never meditated before and are a beginner all over again. When you experience that, be sure to note clearness, openness, simplicity, plain-ness, etc.

A&P and Reobservation can also become very strong on retreat. Again, don't be seduced by big experiences of light and bliss, but definitely enjoy them when they happen! Likewise, if it seems that you are doing everything wrong and the retreat is a failure, note "thoughts of failure" "feeling of doing things wrong". It's just more thoughts and feelings to note.

You may have moments when you can "look at thoughts" or "look at the mindstream". Those are very interesting. See if you can see where thoughts and the mind begins. This is the early stage of High Equanimity.

When you come out of that concentrated state of looking at thoughts, continue to stay curious about normal experience. How does the experience of this moment happen?

The rules are the same on retreat as in home practice: practice consistently, when things get challenging note the experience of the challenge, and balance your energy so that you stay curious/interested but don't burn out from "seeking" too hard.

Best wishes!

Thank you, shargrol, I always appreciate the input, in times when I think I'm alone it's good to know that there is this community of people looking out for each other. 

You're very welcome.

I should add: one thing people underestimate in the practical dharma world is how effective "letting practice happen" can be. (This is obviously in contrast to other groups of episodic meditators that have the problem of not putting in enough effort!) Try to remember that awareness itself is >effortless<. So practice can be very easy to continue during a full days of retreat.

Date: 27/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Alternating between mindwandering and coming back to following the breath.
Quite obvious when my mind had wandered off.
Again that moment when my attention is initially brought back to the breath sensation at nostril coupled with visualization is very effective in feeling some kind of pure sensation, and then straight away it's kind of gone into the background, still there I think but not so strong.

30 to 60minutes
Alternating still between mindwandering and coming back to following the breath but it's much harder and actually easier to get lost and sucked into stories and spacing out, and harder to catch. Sometimes I'm surprised at how long I've been in the story.
Body sensations are starting to get stronger and grabbing attention more and more.
I'm surprised at how difficult it is to experience body sensations to the level where I'm experiencing my breath, even though they are both basically the same thing. Sometimes I get a clarity to the body sensation as just some kind of sensation but not as often as the breath.
Coming back to the breath becomes very restful and provides a space I can come back to when the stories, spacing out, and mindwandering gets too much. It's like I know where I am when I can feel the sensation of breathing.
Sometimes I can catch myself starting to mindwander and I bring my attention back to the breath.

60 to 90minutes
I didn't seem to be able to rely on the sensations of the breath as much, and I couldn't visualize my nostril anymore, it wasn't very clear.
When i visualized my nostril it was a different shape to what it should be, and I couldn't zoom in as much. 
Body sensations becoming stronger, with different twangs, sudden jolts, pulsing pain, sharp small pain, in limbs, and torso
Pressures on sides of head.
Tingling forehead for much of the sit.
For a brief period I heard my heartbeat again, and felt it too.
I tried to just ignore a lot of the sensations and tried to not get sucked into them and kept coming back to the breath, but it was harder to zoom in.
Funny thing to say but for a while I kind of enjoyed watching the fireworks of pain in parts of my body.
A general feeling that I'm unable to really describe what was happening during this section of the sit. 

Yes, I do think that I have to be doing something, and I can see how this can be a hindrance.
I'm guessing it's trying to get a balance between effort and and spacing out.
Great, thanks, I'll bear that in mind. 

Date: 28/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath
Dynamics:
Body sensations dominated for much of the sit.
Unpleasant feeling being bounced around all the body sensations.
Tried to zoom in to certain body sensations but not very effective.
Zooming in to breath at nostril helped with grounding when the myriad body sensations became too confusing and out of control, but difficult to stay focussed on just the breath.
The overall body sensations was mixed in with a fuzzy kind of mindstate which helped to mash things up and unable to take the different strands apart. 
A couple of times I could zoom in to body sensations but unable to stay with them.
Nothing really unpleasant/pleasant but a general uncomfortableness.  

Date: 28/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath
Dynamics:
0 to 60minutes
The tiring day at work today seems to have taken it's toll on my meditation tonight.
Virtually the whole hour went by in a zombie state, with a few moments of clarity on the breath.
Pain in knee became too much so shifted on the hour.

60 to 90minutes 
The torpor eased off a little and following the breath suddenly didn't take much effort, just seemd to be there.
With this easiness came the feeling of not knowing what to do next, as I was so used to trying to focus on breathing all the time.
Because I always seem to have an ache or sensations which are very prominant in my back area, I tried to see if I could alternate between zooming into the breath at the nostril and the sensations in my back.
Sometimes I could zoom in to my back, othertimes only a whole back view, and also attention kept pulling me back to my breath a lot of the time. Some boredom and frustration arose out of the inability to focus on sensations in back as sharply as sensations at nostril..

Date: 29/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath & body sensations
Dynamics:
0 to 60minutes
Surprised at how quickly body sensations became prominant this morning.
Spent the whole hour placing attention mainly on body sensations.
Notice how easy it was to space out when overall body sensations are attended to, so decided to zoom in to back sensations.
Notice the difference in attention when zooming in and zooming out.
Every now and then zoomed into sensations at nostril which was always quite strong initially but faded out. 
The attention kept coming back to breath a lot, and zooming out to overall body sensations again.
Just kept trying gently to zoom in attention back to sensations in back, and watching out for frustration, from the repeated process of trying.
Started to hear and feel my heartbeat a couple or times.
A couple of times I reminded my self about the aspect of no self and impermanence when zooming into sensations. 

60 to 90minutes
There was a distinct easyness to the sit.
5 body areas became very stable and had an orblike, glowing quality.
The middle of forehead, and the nose area, which had a ticklish quality.
The upper back had a warm heat pad feel to it which felt like it had a healing quality to it.
The hands and the feet were very obviously tingling and pulsating.
Attention bounced between these areas, and sensations on these areas slowly spread to cover more and more of the body becoming more homogeneous.
Noticed again of how easy it was to get sucked into these states, so tried to zoom in to specific parts of back and look at sensations moment to moment, to stop spacing out.
The pleasantness of the sensations subsided and felt like I was going into a new state when the bell went.
The body sensations of the new state felt like sandpaper, although not unpleasant.

Virtually no real pain/unpleasantness or strong aversions throughout the whole sit.
Not sure if this means I'm spacing out and not paying enough attention. 
  

Date: 29/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath & body sensations
Dynamics:
0 to 10minutes
Let the stories of the day replay themselves.
The sensations of the breath at the nose slowly came into attention and then quite abruptly became obviously much easier to follow.

10 to 45minutes
Trying to notice the moment moment sensations of the breath touching the rims of the nostril and realizing how difficult this really was to keep up continously for even a few seconds.
General awareness of breathing yes.
Actual moment to moment awareness of breath sensations on skin no.

45 to 90minutes
Tried to keep awareness as much as possible on sensations in back, and also zooming in to moment to moment awareness of sensations in back.
Occassionally zooming in to sensations at nostril to remind myself that it's all ok.
Sensations in legs, back and nose area became very prominant and stable and easy to watch stuff going on there.
Noticed how easy it was to hallucinate as a result of these sensations and zoomed in to moment to moment sensations to ground myself and to avoid spacing out.
Eventually changed sitting position as leg pain became too much.
Carried on with observing sensations in back and noticed them becoming quite stable and much easier to focus on as a whole and zooming in, then bell went. 

Date: 30/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath, body sensations, noting feeling, seeing, hearing & thinking
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Lots of doubts and worry about practice today, and whether I'm doing things right.
Tried to just let them come up,although they were very sticky.
Tried to follow breath as much as I could.
I can't remember how I ended this section of the sit.

30 to 60minutes
Body sensations predominated. Breathing was loud and coarse.
Switch to attention on sensations in back, which became stronger and stronger as sit progressed, which aided in ease of focus on back and zooming in to particular moment to moment sensations, but couldn't do this continuosly for any lenght of time.
Body sensations grew in intensity.

60 to 90minutes
Tried noting feeling, thinking, seeing, and hearing.
I have not consciously done this for quite a while. Thought I'd try this today to see how it went.
Found that I wanted to be more specific about the notes, especially ones which were unpleasant.
I saw how this could suck me into the sensation and lose my objectivity so just tried to stay with the four words of thinking, feeling, seeing, hearing.
Body sensations were easy to note as feeling, but thinking was harder, also noticed how there were connections between between all of them and not so clearcut. 
A spell where questions came up.
Who is noting?
Where am "I"?
What is pain?
Who is experiencing pain?
What is being attentive to what is going on?
Who is noting?
Got into a very jumbled state where it all got a bit mixed up especially with the intensity of body sensations.
Just kept noting as best I could. 
Heard myself sighing a couple of times.
Towards the end things seemed to settle down a bit and didn't seem so jagged.
Felt that I could ahve sat a bit longer when the bell went.

 

Don't worry too much about zooming into sensations and losing "objectivity". There could be some interesting insights in doing so and you'll come back to objectivity eventually. Let yourself be naturally curious and explore.

Sighing is a good sign, a visceral dropping of tensions. Questioning arising is a good sign, an opening up of what can be considered in practice. Sounds like now you can relax a little more. Let sensations and thoughts arise on their own and be aware. And remember awareness happens on its own, no effort is needed.

It can feel like the body is offgassing all these tensions and thoughts as the body settles into equanimity.

I'll try to remember this, I think it's something I need to work on, although "work on" is probably the wrong words!
I think I can get to something which resembles something like this after I have sat for awhile. 
It takes a long time, of course I could be completely wrong, and probably am.

Thanks again for the advice.

Date: 31/10/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, follow breath, body sensations, allow awareness to happen
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Scattered attention at first.
Body aching particularly in back.
I was eager to start "allowing awareness to happen" and see where it takes me, but pulled back to concentration on breath.
Breath slowly came more more into attention around nose area.

30 to 60minutes
Practised "allowing awareness to happen" and letting it take me.
Unpleasant at first as it was very out of control, too much going on, frustration.
Also body aches.
Then an overall pleasantness, comfortableness, around the body/torso.
Then a spell where things closed up like a flower closing it's petals or a snail coiling back.
Contracting and sinking in.
Things got sleepy and drowsy, still pleasant though.
There was also a spell where it felt like just sitting, like noting was happening, although I'm sure lots was happening.
There was nothing really major going on, nothing really obvious. Just an OKness to it. Kept reminding myself that it's ok to sit here and not have to "do" anything.
But questions also came up
"Who is saying I don't have to do stuff?"
"Who is directing the awareness to just be aware?"
Also a spell where awareness was more round the head area and not round body/torso.
There was also a spell where awareness became more localised around sensations in hands, back and nose and pressure on sides of head.
I'm not sure of the sequence of some of this, but there was definite different recognizable states, which had different qualities to them.
Everynow and then I tried to remember to ask myself "What is happening now?" just to aty on track.
That is if I remembered.
I also found myslef asking
"Who is asking what is happening now?"  
"Who/what is directing attention?"
I couldn't answer these questions.



 
          

Date: 31/10/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, follow breath, body sensations, allow awareness to happen
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
After about 10minutes thoughts and mindwandering started to get replaced by following the breath.
Body sensations grew and started to pull my attention away a few times.
Made a conscious decision to bring attention back to follow the breath for at least 30minutes.
The breath and nose area became more and more abvious and zooming in to nostrils.
At times I felt really concentrated and other times felt like my concentration was not good enough as I couldn't stay moment to moment for long at all. At most a split second before the moment to moment sensation was gone. 

30 to 60minutes
Practised "allowing awareness to happen".
Pain and aches in upper back for a while, so placed awareness as much as I could on that area.
Not sure if the ache disappeared or I just got used to it but attention then moved lower down my back to another area of pain.
After this I really don't know how to describe what I was feeling.
There were a few thoughts and some mindwandering, but I noticed that most of the time I was thinking that I just didn't know how to describe this section of the sit.
It felt physical, but no real pain, or aversion, or boredom, but there didn't seem to be much thoughts/thinking going on.
There just didn't seem to be a lot going on, and like a space inside, or zone.
I don't know how to descibe it.
Maybe I was just spacing out.
Nothing that stood out really, but I didn't give myself a hard time because this was what was occurring so I just let it go.

60 to 90minutes
More aches and pains during this section.
Pains grew stronger and stronger especially in leg and knee.
Sat and watched it ebb and flow, like waves.
Not really sure what was happening thought wise.
Again no real aversions during the whole sit.
Towards the end started to think about the timer more and more. 

Date: 1/11/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, allow awareness to happen
Dynamics:
0 to 30minutes
Thought I would just go straight into "letting awareness happen".
The usual monkey mind, doubts, and also strong body ache paticularly back pain.
Straightening the back to try and ease the pain.

30 to 60minutes
Body sensations grew stronger including back pain. Although it was unpleasant I didn't have any strong aversion to it. 
Rather than focusing on the back pain, I tried not to interfere and let awareness go where it wanted.
There was craving for progress, worrying about progress, rehearsing what to write in this log.
"Letting awareness happen" sounds simple but a lot harder to practise, something always seems to want to interfere, theorize, and generally judge what's going on.
I noticed that when I couldn't latch on to anything in particular there was a lost feeling, and normally I would probably start zooming in to sensations, but this time I just sat with it and just let it go. It wasn't unpleasant but difficult to describe.
I also tried noting but the notes I came up seemed to somplistic.  
The thought came to mind that this is what it is and to just let it go.
Things seem a lot harder to explain with this "letting awareness happen" approach.
I'm also wondering what does "letting awareness happen" actualy mean.      

Letting awareness happen means not choosing what you focus on and just noting what is occuring. That's it. Sorry if I confused you.

Loosening up this way will sometimes take you to new feelings (like the lost feeling) which wouldn't be encountered if you were directing things. The main thing is to balance letting awareness happen and intentionally investigating phenominon. So again, it comes down to balance. Balance effort, balance the investigation. Don't try to hard or too little. Don't investigate too hard or too little. If you are experiencing things and make notes every few seconds, that's enough. That will take you into new territory. 

As always, don't listen to me or anyone else if they give you advice that doesn't seem helpful. You're in the driver's seat and need to judge what works for your practice.

Hope this helps in some way!

It's ok. I think I confused myself by making it more complicated than it seems.
That is all helpful advice, and a great reminder that I'm trying too hard sometimes. Thanks
I will persevere with it a little longer and see where it takes me.
It's a juggling act balancing, the advice of meditators who have much more experience than I do and can probably see things in my practice much more clearly than I can, with my own thoughts of whether what I'm currently doing is the most skillful approach or not.    

Date: 1/11/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, allow awareness to happen
Dynamics:
0 to 30min
Quite quickly there was general awareness of sensations in nose and body area, particularly back as usual.
Also the right eye area became prominant, and when I looked closer seemed like the whole skin area was subtly shifting.
And a brightness even though my eyes were closed, quite blinding at one point which died down fairly quickly.
I kind of just went with the flow rather than directing attention.

30 to 90min
Felt like I was "sitting with the sensations" for most of this sit.
I didn't even try to investigate a lot of them.
My attention seemed to jump from sensation to sensation a lot of the time, so I just let it.
When it stayed for a while with a particluar sensation then I would just sit with that sensation, just be with it.
I think I drifted off a couple of times, but I kind of thought that was ok, as long as I could stay with the sensations most of the time.
There didn't seem to be much mindwandering or stories. There were some and they were very noticable.
Most thoughts seem to center around the sensations being experienced, the different flavours, areas, intensities, movement, etc.
It was a nice feeling to be able to allow myself to just sit with the sensations and not worry about whether I was doing it right.
Didn't really have any painful sensations to deal with so not sure if I would feel the same.
At times it felt very easy to zoom in.
Thinking about it now, there was a distinct lack of expectation.
Then came a spell where I could feel sensations all over my body at the same time, and each area was very distinct, quite unusual.
I could feel sensations and flow in both my legs, arms, left & right side of my back, and left & right side of my head, at the same time and also individually.
Individually and symetrically.
I remember Goenka mentioning something about this from his retreats. 
I can't really remember ever experiencing something like this other than at retreats.
It was very pleasant, and had a high degree of clarity and sharpness.
This subsided and I can't really remember much else.

This was an interesting and enjoyable sit.
But I'm very conscious of sits where things have been good.
They are usually followed by ones which may not be so interesting or enjoyable.

Date: 2/11/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, allow awareness to happen
Dynamics:
0 to 30min
I'm on a 1 day fast today and it's affected my sit more than I thought it would.
Took a while to settle into the sit, thoughts and mindwandering going on.
I didn't think my attention was very good but then there was a very noticable sudden feeling of being pulled into something.
And it was easier to feel sensations after that,
The breath at the nose wasn't as strong tonight.

30 to 90min
It was a very dreamy kind of sit,not sleepy, although I can't be sure.
I tried to let awareness go where it wanted, but I noticed how there was still an element of me controlling which was hard to let go, and needed reminding.
There wasn't any major shifts, all pretty samy through the sit.
There was pain in the back which was stronger than usual and I consciously sat with it quite a lot.
At times I found myself zooming in to the pain which invariably seemed to ease the discomfort.
But then I suddenly remembered that I was trying to let awareness happen and stopped zooming in.
I really tried to let awareness go where it wanted even if it meant drifting off or spacing out.
Started to wonder about awareness and what it is.
Got muddled up and wasn't sure about who was aware of what, and there was a feeling that something was watching the awareness.
Letting awareness happen and noting it got quite fast towards the end, and I noticed how easy it was for me to interfere with letting awareness happen.
I saw how noting can reinforce the idea of a self which is probably not so good.
Not sure if this correct or not.
I'm not sure how awareness can be aware of itself, felt like the dog chasing it's tail again. 
The back pain got pretty intense towards the end.

Date: 3/11/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 65minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, allow awareness to happen
0 to 30min
Took a while to settle from mindwandering and stories.
Using breath at nose as anchor.
Body sensations becoming stronger.

30 to 60min
Practising let awareness happen.
Ache and pain in back quite intense.
A few times I exhaled big sighs, felt like trying to release steam or something.
Ache and back pain stayed for most of the sit.
Quite uncomfortable and unpleasant.
A couple of times I wanted to zoom in and look closer but I noted this and let awareness do it's thing rather than directing.
Then sensations got gritty and spiky in certain parts of body.
The gritty sensations subsided and become more uniform still quite unpleasant and back ache and pain persisted.
I tried to note where awareness was as much as possible.
Noticed how easy it was to stop noticing where awareness was because it was so quick.
Also notice the difference between being embedded in awareness and the moment I noted/noticed where the attention was, the experience of it changed, it became lighter more distanced, and if it was anpleasant/painful then it didn't seem to so bad.
I becme quite tired of it at the end, as I have been fasting, food thoughts came up more and more and thoughts of what I was going to eat after the session.
  

Date: 3/11/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, follow breath, following awareness
0 to 30min
Took about 10/15minutes for attention to synch with body sensations, after following breath for a while.
I think I can get into this feel for body sensations quite regularly now, I don't know if it's right or wrong but it's happening and it's happening regularly.
I just have to sit still and allow, thoughts and mindstates to come and go, and I find myself naturally synching up with body state.
I don't have to try that hard.
It feels like by not doing certain things this state comes along, rather than by striving for it. 
There was a phase of bright things blinking behind my eyelids. 
There were moments where although I was lost in thoughts or mindwandering I also felt that I was still strongly feeling body states.

30 to 90min
Tried as much following awareness and noticing without directing.
Most of the sit was unremarkable.
No real extreme pain/aversions or highs/wow moments.
Most of it was spent noticing awareness of body flows as attention pinged from one sensation to the next with some slight and strange rises in intensity of aches and tensions in different parts of the body, a lot of it in the back.
A few times found myself relaxing my shoulders.
There were big spells of mindwandering, stories, and worries 
I didn't do any zooming in at all.
Seems odd to say that in an hour not a lot happened.
Surely there must have been loads of things happening.
A few times found myself maybe concentrating too hard to watch awareness, like searching or looking for awareness.
There was also the wondering about what/who is noticing/watching all this awareness, who/where is "Mo".
At the end a few itches started started but the timer went.
I was curious as to wether these itches would have dveloped into something.
I have read elsewhere that itches are sometimes the sign of a certain stage of insight. 

Date: 04/11/2016 Evening 1st sit
Length of Sit: 60 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, letting awareness happen
0 to 60minutes
Very agitated and restless mindstates tonight.
Kept switching between concentrating on breath or body sensationsm couldn't decide what I wanted to do, which added to feelings of confusion.
There was strong craving, expectation, resulting in frustration,  
Although body sensations could be felt, it was all about mindstates and thoughts, and wanting things to happen.
I couldn't seem to disembed from them.
Recent sits have been around the body sensations and quite calming.
This one was all in the head area and not at all calming, very active and quite unpleasant and unsettling.
Although there was a lot of timer thoughts, the hour passed quickly.
Got the feeling that I was stopping letting awareness happen.
Towards the end I tried to see who was feeling craving and feeling frustrated.
Very different sit to all the other sits I've been having recently, especially after yesterdays sit where I felt I thought I was able to replicate certain states of body awareness.
.

Sounds a bit like reobservation. Basically use noting to objectify all the ways meditation seems to throw up roadblocks (these come from your post):
agitation
restlessness
doubting
indecision
confusion
craving
expectation
frustration
wanting
trying
avoiding
controlling
investigating
frustration

This can be no big deal if you take those "problems" and turn them into notes!

Date: 04/11/2016 Evening 2nd sit
Length of Sit: 60 minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: Sit still, follow breath, letting awareness happen
0 to 60minutes
The inability to follow awareness persisted through whole sit.
Unable to keep up with attention which was moving too fast.
Kept forgetting that I should be following awareness and having to come back.
Awareness of body sensations were slightly stronger than 1st sit.
Moments where I just gave up, then tried again.
Not sure if it is because I'm not concentrated enough and should be spending more time concentrating on breath or if it's a new phase or maybe just a glitch.
Let's see how the next sit goes tomorrow.

Really, I didn't think I have even gone through dark night stages.
I have tried one word noting and it just seems clumsy, almost like picking up needles with boxing gloves, if that makes any sense.
So I do a that, that, that, etc type of noting in between the forgetting and stories.
It still feels like I'm embedded in it.
I'll see how it goes tomorrow. 

Date: 5/11/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques: sit still, following awareness
0 to 30min
Tried to follow breath, but gave up as it felt like trying too much.
Just sat and experienced sadness, loss, and crying.  

30 to 60min
Apathy, loss of faith, hopelessness, and a giving up feeling to the sit.
A feeling that I couldn't give a monkeys for the whole thing, and not wanting to investigate anything.
Resignation.
The strong calming body sensations which I have been experiencing recently were still there, not as strong, and they didn't seem to grab my attention as much as the apathy and not caring. 

60 to 90min
The overall body sensations got stronger but there was an indifference to it, whereas before I would have probably experience it more..
This phase was marked by a solidity and sleepyness and a shunning of mindstates and wanting to escape, and wallow in the sleepyness.
It didn't feel like a falling asleep kind of sleepyness, as there wasn't the head nodding which you get if you are sleepy and tired.
Lots of spacing out and apathy continued.
Also timer thoughts, and just wanted it to be over so I could get on with doing other stuff today.
Again no actual horrible physical pain from the long sit, and felt I could sit longer.
 
 

That's possibly a sign that it's time to work on it. Clumbsiness means either difficulty experiencing or difficulty recognizing it as a distinct mind state. Noting helps train both of those things. It becomes very fast over time.  

Give it a few tries. Just note one thing in experience on every exhale, so 10-12 times a minute. Just note what is obvious. If you don't know what to note, note "confusion" or "indecision". 

Ok, I'll give it a try, thanks for the advice.

Date: 05/11/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath, follow awareness and noting
0 to 30min
Kept losing focus when following breath.
Feeling useless, kept trying anyway.
Impatient to start noting
Still a kind of resignation similar to the sit of this morning though not as strong.

30 to 60min
Practice following awareness and noting on outbreath.
Very spaced out and dreamy, halucinatory, and forgot I should be noting a lot of the time.
Aches and pains would bring me back down to earth at times 
A lot of the noting was "breathing", some "seeing",and lots of "hearing" as my neighbours were having a party tonight.

60 to 90min
Came out of the dreamy spacing out, as pain in legs grew stronger noted these mostly and sounds of neighbours and breathing.
There wasn't a lot of noting of mindstates as there was nothing standing out and probably too subtle for em to catch anyway.
Although I did note "looking for" quite a lot.
Shifted position as pain got too strong.
Just as the bell went I got into a state where awareness of sensations around nose and part of back became very stable and easy to stay with and awareness seem to want to stay there, and I dropped noting.

Date: 6/11/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
Meditative techniques:sit still, follow breath, follow awareness and noting
0 to 30min
Tried to follow breath, felt like I was forcing it, so let attention go where it wanted to, which was general overall body sensations feeling.
Didn’t do any noting, just tried to be gently aware as much as possible of where awareness was.
There was feeling of breathlessness, and sharp inbreathing, which took attention a lot.
And out breathing tended to be more relaxing.
Some build up of pressure and sighing like wanting a release
 
30 to 90min
Practise noting on outbreath.
Interesting thing about this technique is the useful way it has of developing both skills of following
1. breathing
2. awareness through noting
Because I had had to remember to note on the outbreath I was always reminded that I had to be aware of my breathing.
I also find this much more manageable than noting once per second which causes me too much stress and tends to get me really hyper.
I think because of the persistent reminder to focus on breathing, mindstates, mindwandering and thoughts tended to be minimized, so less agitation, and a lot of the notes were “breathing”.
Not sure if this will change and the noting will move to to other things ovet time.
Also a lot of body sensations noted.
Other notes include, hearing, seeing, theorizing about meditation, rehearsing what to write in this log, remembering, sleepy, tiredness.
There were probably others but I can’t remember.  
Got very sleepy and dreamy for most of the sit. 

Date: 06/11/2016 Evening
Length of Sit: 90minutes
Posture: Cross legged
0 to 30min
Confusion at start, didn’t know whether to follow breath or stay with body sensations or just to let it all go.
Worrying.
Breathing was heavy, loud, and feelings of breathlessness again, and sharp intakes.
A couple of sighs to try to relax.
Towards the end got into the body sensations feelings again.
 
30 to 60min
Noting awareness on outbreath.
Breathing slowed and quieted down.
Felt like I was immersed in drowsiness and heaviness, even noted “immersed”.
At some points I could remember thinking that “this is out breath, let’s note” and nothing came to mind.  
Came out of this drowsiness and noting mainly body sensations, and breathing.
The persistent, and constant focus on breathing made it feel at times as if it was all just processes and things happening, very impersonal.
 
60 to 90min
Still noting mainly body sensations, some forgetting.
Pain in legs grew stronger, noted for some of it and then shifted position.
Continued to note mainly physical sensations.
But started to notice underlying mindstates too, like restlessness, impatience, and timer thoughts.
Felt like I had stepped out of a deeper state, and more aware of a watcher. 

Date: 07/11/2016 Morning
Length of Sit: 75minutes
Posture: Cross legged
0 to 30min
Confusion between following breath, and body sensations.
Doubts about practise.
Losing count when counting breaths.
Zoooming in to nostril seemed silly.
Attention seemed to to want to stay more with overall body sensations, with the pull for this becoming stronger and stronger.
Familiar overall body sensations feeling like a mild current running through body.
As 30min bell went seemed to get pulled into a more concentrated state.

30 to 75min
Noting on outbreath.
Most of the time was noting sleepyness, tiredness, and aches, pains, and other body sensations.
Some times lost in spacing out.
Shifted position due to pain after about about 65min.
Sleepyness and tiredness subsided a little.
Noticed a general uneasiness, and wondering mindstate in the background whilst also noting body sensations.