Understanding Practices

The Flammarion Engraving, Artist Unknown

Noting

Noting is perhaps the most basic and stripped-down form of insight meditation, and serves as an excellent introduction. Fundamentally, it is a practice of labeling each object of awareness as your attention alights on it, by gently whispering it in your mind. This helps to expand awareness and aids in the development of pattern recognition. Gaining mastery in this practice is an excellent reinforcement for a practice of contemporary mindfulness, as well as most practices of Noticing.

The meditation teacher Kenneth Folk has a good primer on noting, which you can find here.

Vipassana

Vipassana meditation is a contemplative practice thought to be very close to the method used by the historical Buddha, Siddartha Gautama. It is a systematic investigation of what are called the Three Aspects of Reality: Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and no-self, or the illusory nature of identification. Vipassana is an important practice within Theravada Buddhism, one of the three major schools, and differs from samatha (mindfulness or concentration) meditation in that its primary goal is not relaxation or bliss, but true perception of the nature of existence.

Here is an excellent primer on vipassana meditation by Doug Smith. 

Dzogchen

Dzogchen, also known as “utmost yoga”, is a form of Tibetan Buddhist meditation focused on direct perception of the perfect ground of being, also known as “Buddha mind” in other schools - the context in which all of existence is situated. While a teacher is greatly beneficial to any contemplative practice, Dzogchen explicitly makes use of the teacher-student dynamic to empower the student’s self-perception and how the sense of self is constructed, moment by moment. As such, Dzogchen meditation should only be performed with instruction from a qualified teacher.

Here is Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche with a great explanation of Dzogchen, as well as a skillful situation within the broader Tibetan tradition.

Focusing

Focusing is a psychotherapeutic technique, invented by Eugene Gendlin, that helps practitioners develop their capacity for felt sense, and learn to express and relate to their innermost feelings with skill and intimacy. 

Here is an excellent introduction to the Focusing process.