Mindfulness

Yesterday, we had training regarding mindfulness. It named strength of mindfulness. We learned the definition of mindfulness, the methods to practice the mindfulness.

I think the definition of the teacher is complex. I describe it using my language.
Mindfulness: you should feel and control your body and action by your metacognition, not feel and control by your instinct feeling, just when you see grape, your saliva spray out and you pick one and chew it immediately.

In my opinion, mindfulness consists of two parts. The first part is awareness, the second part is control basing on awareness.

Awareness is that you should immerse into the thing when you do it, you should realize what you are doing now. Focusing on the feelings reacted from your body. When you laugh, just enjoy the happiness. When you cry, just enjoy the sadness. When you eat something, just enjoy the meal, appreciate the shape, size and color, smell it, taste the flavor, live the present.

After the training, I think mindfulness is closed to some other definitions. But I admit that foreigners are good at repackaging the definition coming from other places. The meaning of mindfulness is “正念”， the word is a positive word than any other words.

Two things of mindfulness are most important. The first is metacognition, the other is meditation.

Metacognition just like a monitor in our brain. We need to let the metacognition conduct our lives. It can make sure that we do everything following our plan. When we are misleading, it will correct our direction. The correction not only happened in our daily behavior but also happened in our minds.

Meditation is a way to strengthen our attention. What does make us different from other persons, especially on our minds? The answer is attention. Some guys can focus on one thing for a long time and immerse into it deeply. So, the guy can get more from the materials. There are so many neurons in our brain when we study something. The reaction happens between the neurons. But for different people, the numbers of reactions are different. Some more, some less. So, the meditation will enhance our attention, at the same time make more reactions in our brain. We have to say, this is the best way to training mindfulness.