Let's say I feel a sudden feeling of Anxiety...

Is it better to note just "Anxiety" or "unpleasant" or both "Anxiety... Unpleseant"

Example noting 1:

Anxiety
Worry
Tension
Fear
Joy


Example noting 2: (noting the mind state with whenever it's pleasant or not or neutral or whatever)
Anxiety... unpleasant
Worry.... unplesant
Tension... unplesant
Fear... unplesant
Joy...pleasant

Example noting 3: (whenever feelings such as anxiety or worry arise)
unpleasant
unpleasant
unpleasant
unpleasant
pleasant

I'm no meditation expert, but that won't stop me from expressing an opinion.

If "anxiety" is your experience, then you should of course note "anxiety".

In this tradition, though, there is an emphasis on focusing on the accompanying physical sensations. So somewhere in your experience, you'll likely see an interruption of the breath and a tensing of the belly muscles. So when you see that, note "tensing."

Remember that noting is not an aim in itself. The point is to grow your awareness, including your awareness of what's happening in your body.

And now I'll leave this thread and let the real experts take over.

How do you know it is anxiety?

The same way I know when I feel sad?

It's something you feel mentally and might as well conribute to physical sensations inside the body... yet feeling sadness and anxiety aren't the same, not by one bit, one might have a certain anxiety disorder and life his whole live with that not knowing what is happening to him and why he feels the way he feels, but once he looks up for information and the physical sensations and feelings matches his case, he finally can name and categorize this whole thing with the tag "anxiety".        instead of just feeling unpleseant feelings without having a name for it to know what's going on exactly.

Thanks! your opinion is very much welcome!!!

I'm in the same boat as Derek, I can talk a little about what I do, and then more expert people can weigh in.

If "Anxiety", "Joy", "Fear", etc are the very first name that leaps to mind when that state arises, use it and don't stress over whether it's exactly right.  If you're really mis-naming the feeling, my experience is that it will persist, you'll look at it more closely, and its real name will occur to you. It's like being at a party where you call another guest by the wrong name, they'll hold your attention until you get their name right, and then move on to get more artichoke dip. If you acknowledge them by the right name the first time, they will just go on their merry way.

As another post in here said, if the feeling persists, then you'll start interrogating after the physical sensations, the location, the color, the weight, temperature, mobility, and so on. 

I would advise against associating "pleasant", "unpleasant", "good" or "bad" with the noting. That's not the goal. The goal is for you just to see what is going on.

There's a story I've heard from a couple of sources about Trungpa Rinpoche and introducing noting practice in the West. Reportedly, he was alternately amazed and amused that Westerners (and I think Americans in particular) would manage to jam self-criticism and judgement into an otherwise straightforward technique.

Are you sure that sadness and anxiety are felt mentally? Are you sure that the relationship with the physical sensations inside the body are that sadness and anxiety:
1. contribute
2. to
the physical sensations?


Well that's philosophising, not really meditation 



So here you are saying the opposite of what you said before: the sensations come first, and the interpretation of them as "anxiety" comes next. But this, again, is philosophising. What do you actually see when you look for your sensations? Remember that buddhist phenomenology talks about six sense doors: sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, thought. Which sense door does this anxiety you are talking about belong to? Don't answer here, look it up next time you meditate, note what you feel.

If you keep up doing noting, you will very soon see that most feelings sensations, whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, haven't got a name in your language, and often even a whole sentence or paragraph would be very inadequate to describe them. Labels only take you so far. Note harder. Note deeper. Note faster. Break it down in smaller and smaller fragments.

Thanks, actually this helps to put stuff in perspective!

I kinda abadoned the noting, instead of noting with labels, I "notice" whatever is present, just without any labels. this way I can move from sensation to sensation without words holidng me off and making it slower. my mind awareness is the same level as with the notes, I don't get off thoughts or forget what the hell I am doing...

Do you think without noting will bring the same result as well?
Anyone have any experience without noting, but just noticing?

PS: I find the the no noting approach afterall, the last session I did I felt a lot of vibrations and some pleseant "supressed" pleasurable feeling to it, also a few mins after session... like a feeling of something trying to pop open, mostly at the back more below

Actually long time ago when I did noting practice (since then I had quit) my very first session of noting, my whole system was filled with intense vibrations, like I am inside a tornado or something, and my noting or noticing speed became super fast.

It's more important to have clear acknowledgement of the experience before the label. That's why bare sensation has to be put first and then label it. Eventually just acknowledgement is enough.

Make sure you note things like intentions before you act (that impulse that makes you feel like acting), and just plain 'ol attention. Attention is usually on an objects other than nirvana and the brain is rating qualities of objects.

Everyone drops the labels eventually. For several reasons: the speed increases, macro sensations break up into component sensations and mental afterimages for which our language is inadequate, synaesthetic effects (what mctb calls "formations").

Personally, I almost never use labels anymore except when I am extremely tired, distracted and so on.

Keep up the good work

Thanks!

Most of the sessions now within 30 minutes of just noticing whatever is present (also I am using a less effortful zooming in kind of approach to the sensation or thoughts/images or whatever and just have a soft "point" of noticing it. so NO hard zooming in that I feel some pressure at the forehead.if that makes sense), I feel a bliss aspect at the throat area and overall at the body and perhaps a bit mentally... and if I am not wrong perhaps I am also hearing a very low buzzing sound aspect... the bliss thing not bliss in the way that I feel piti energy physically flowing around my body... not sure how I would explain this, perhaps it's a low level of rapture, but still very pleseant to stay with.

It makes sense. "Did you note it?"




"Did you note it?" (I mean all of those, separately, each one as it arises and passes away in your stream of consciousness)




It happens to most people I know. Usually at some point between Access Concentration and 2nd jhana / A&P. As inner silence increases, the signal-to-noise ratio of the buzzing sound in our ears increases and becomes clearer. Makes sense?

Anyway, note that too ;)

Yeah, everything you mentioned to note I did... to "notice" actually
As the pleseant feeling was felt through the whole body as a whole, I put my attention on it as a whole, unless I feel it more intense in one area then I shift towards that and so on...


Yesterday morning a migraine started to develop, I had it for the whole day, during the night my forehead seem to be very hot, so I used the thermometer to check my body temperature and it was high as one would expect from a fever... after drinking some water, very fast it went down... also a couple of times I felt very cold and actually physically shaking and shivering without control, and there were waves of those very cold shivers going through my body appearing and disapearing very fast. I don't know what that was all about, for years I didn't have a fever, also while the migraine was damn painful, I didn't feel weak or a lack of energy... more like a state of empitness, as a person with a lot of anxiety, I didn't feel any anxiety in me and thoughts didn't induce bad or good feelings in me, just neutral... today most of my migraine is gone, feeling kind of emptiness/dullness feeling if I describe it correctly... but not feeling "bad" in a way.

May have nothing to do with the vipassana practice and just a coincidence though.

I did do some concentration practice following noting, in concentration practice I managed to arise some piti which also touched my forehead, it did relieve the migraine in a noticeable way... though after practice it came bace as strong again.