Meditation practice
Week 1 — practice review

For Roger · 10–16 August 2026
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20261

Sat every day this week, up from zero the fortnight before


23
sits tracked
~7.0h
total practice time (419 min)
0
missed days
4
new session types tried this week

Baseline two weeks before: zero sits per day.

Sources: iAm app (18 sits, 306.9 min — full API pull) and Insight Timer (5 sits, 112 min — CSV export).

Days with at least one tracked sit Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20262

The plan: three daily anchors, plus a capped strong-determination sit


  1. 1Sit 1 — somatic sense-gate connection, 60 min09:45 nominal — “hardest first”
  2. 2Sit 2 — breath counting, 30 min15:00 nominal — “movable, keep bookable”
  3. 3Sit 3 — open awareness, 30 min20:00 nominal — “resting, last”

The strong-determination sit replaces that day’s Sit 1 on Thursday and Saturday — Roger’s cap of 1–2× a week.

Curriculum v2 went live from Wednesday 12. Monday and Tuesday were pre-schedule ramp days. On call days, the guided practice on the call stands in for that day’s morning block.

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20263

Planned versus actual: the anchors moved around, but every day had sits


Wed 12
Thu 13
Fri 14
Sat 15
Sun 16
Sit 1somatic hour · 60 min
n/acall day
→ SD insteaddone
✕ skipped
→ SD insteadskipped
→ Reactivity Notinginstead
Sit 2breath counting · 30 min
moved → 08:36planned 12:00
on-slot → 14:40planned 14:30
moved → 19:19planned 12:30
on-slot → 17:28Breath Counting Plus
pendingevening
Sit 3open awareness · 30 min
moved → 14:20planned 20:00
moved → 21:53planned 20:00
moved → 22:39planned 20:00
✕ skipped
pendingevening
SD sit1–2×/week cap
n/a
done → 09:35+10:3030 + 20 min
n/a
✕ skippedplanned 20:00
n/a
done, on slot
done, moved or different
skipped
pending
n/anot scheduled
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20264

Thursday was the outlier — and the day the somatic hour actually happened


plan: 120 min/day (from Wed) 47 42 43 102 70 54 60 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

Minutes of tracked practice per day (iAm + Insight Timer). Sunday total is partial — evening sits still pending at review.

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20265

The slot produces the sit — the time it actually happens flexes


06:00 09:00 12:00 15:00 18:00 21:00 23:00 Insight Timer iAm planned slot Mon 10 Tue 11 Wed 12 Thu 13 Fri 14 Sat 15 Sun 16

Hollow grey = planned slot (from Wed, when the schedule went live). Filled blue circle = iAm sit. Filled blue diamond = Insight Timer sit. Mon–Tue were ramp days with no fixed slots.

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20266

The month’s central practice ran once; breath counting ran thirteen times


Somatic sense-gate hour 1 sit Breath counting 13 sits

“I’ve probably gone kinda overboard with breath meditation via the iAm app b/c it’s cool… I feel like I went kinda off-piste / got kinda nerd-sniped vs what I was meant to be doing.”

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20267

Under the noise: a real skill gain, real strain, and aversion actually shrinking


Best unbroken run
13 sits, chronological
9 18

“wtf lol… think this is partially because I was breathing way slower.”

Strong-determination urges
button presses per sit
26 64
desk sit, 30 min mat sit, 20 min

“Shaky hip flexors for the last ~10 mins, painful!!… Proud of how it went.”

Reactivity Noting — aversion share
across the week’s three sits
Sat AM 29% Sat PM 26% Sun AM 6%

Blue = aversion share of noted moments (grey = neutral / craving). 116–278 notes per sit.

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20268

96% counting accuracy, still wandering — so I built a fix and shipped it


230
breath counts
28
resets
96%
counting accuracy

Friday’s sit scored 96% on the count itself — yet much of it felt like mind-wandering. The number and the felt attention didn’t agree.

That gap motivated Breath Counting Plus — a new session type adding a “Mindful Breath” signal alongside the count, so attention can be checked, not just arithmetic.

Merged into the open-source iAm app as PR #31 (session type) and PR #32 (a graph fix).

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 20269

In my own words: working through resistance

13 August 2026 · dictated

“The idea of doing this for an hour feels aversive b/c boring, non-profound…”
“I think I just need to come out as having alexithymia. Like I genuinely don’t have many sensations in my body.”
“Well, let’s just look a bit closer. Maybe what I’m doing is expecting it to be really big and obvious. That was the move. Once I dropped the size requirement, there was a bunch of subtle stuff.”
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 202610

In my own words: the shift that followed

13 August 2026 · dictated

“So: not empty. Just quiet.”
“It felt like I was seeing active inference. A grabby, willing-things-to-be-different thing, directly observed.”
“It took about 10 minutes to get through the doubt and scepticism, and then I got engaged and found it fruitful and interesting. That’s a pretty big win.”
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 202611

Findings: what the practice revealed

13 August 2026 · dictated

“Key finding: I can’t hold a thought and its soma at the same time — I collapse into the thought, then catch the residual somatics on waking up.”
“Realising that this practice is helpful for — I start with automatic aversion to anything negative, and over time I can just let negative valence things be negative valence with less aversion towards them.”
“Ok I think I confused myself and started using ‘pushing away’ to mean ‘negative valence’ and ‘pulling toward’ to mean ‘positive valence’ for a while, kind of labelling the First Dart rather than the presence of a Second Dart 👀 — but this was still really cool!”

Definitions question to settle: first dart vs. second dart labelling in Reactivity Noting.

Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 202612

Pre-call check: five straight answers before we talk

16 August 2026

Did the Saturday 20:00 SD sit happen?
“Didn’t happen!”
The three unlabelled timer sits (Wed / Thu / Fri evenings)?
All open awareness.
How many somatic sense-gate hours actually happened?
“Only did this once!”
Something for Roger that’s not in the notes?
“Had some great moments w/ somatic sense gate stuff, including noticing just how much kinda 3D movement there is in my experience even with eyes closed — e.g. when mind wandering or daydreaming. Really felt like I was noticing the thing from Cartoon Epistemology or active inference, when there’s a 3D push/pull/motion in experience.”
Week 2?
“Wanna keep it! Noting that I’ve probably gone kinda overboard with breath meditation via the iAm app b/c it’s cool, and I also did the Reactivity practice there maybe twice — so I feel like I went kinda off-piste / got kinda nerd-sniped vs what I was meant to be doing.”
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 202613

Week 2: keep the structure, re-centre on the somatic hour


Keep the 2h/day structure for week 2 — and deliberately re-centre on the somatic sense-gate hour, the practice that produced this week’s one real breakthrough.

Awaited from Roger
Being-mode video
Sub-goals chart
Negative-space guided meditation
With Alexander
Reply on steps v2
Agree next call cadence
Definitions to settle
First dart vs. second dart labelling in Reactivity Noting
Week 1 — practice review — Roger — 16 Aug 202614