The Odoki Method

Week 2

Noting

Recap

Last week we covered:

• Course aims to give tools to explore experience
• Brain as a predictive engine, stopping as soon as plausible explanation reached.

Noting

We explore what is happening in our experience.

We attempt to label experience without thinking about it.

Exercise: Noting

Exercise: Noting

• Noticed thoughts
• Noticed sensations
• Noticed emotions
• Attempted to stay with these

The Urge to Explain

• Brain is designed to predict
• In external world this can be efficient
• In inner world, prediction can be harder
  • Might never find a prediction
  • Might get stuck in a loop
  • Lack of evidence prevents prediction error

Changing the Question

Questions we might ask:

what does this mean?
what do I know?

Exercise: Noting #2

Labelling what we notice:

• Feeling:
  • Valence: Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral
  • Arousal: High energy (eg. excited) vs low energy (e.g. dull)
• Emotions:
  • Anxiety, joy, fear, excitement
  • Feeling inventory (link)
• Thoughts:
  • Remembering / Judging / Reflecting / Planning

An Inner Landscape

• Practices aim to increase our inner landscape
• Richer landscape means better predictions

Homework

• 5-10 minutes of practice each day.
• Combine noting with last week’s exercises, we can scan experience, then note what we see.
• If we choose, we can focus on one range of experience, and note what we see there, too.

Questions?