You can find the words "mindfulness" and "meditation" in more and more places these days. That means there is increasing interest in being present, consciously and appreciatively, in the hours of your life. Sounds good to many people. Thus, there is a growing market for information and encouragement about various ways to be more conscious of what you are doing with your mind and attention.
There is such a thing as attention training. What is often called "meditation" can be many different activities with different philosophies and understandings behind them. One of the earlier books to get many American readers was Dr. Herbert Benson's "The Relaxation Response." You can see from the title that it gave instructions for full relaxation, not unlike the well-known "body scan", where a person asks if her feet are relaxed, her legs relaxed and so on over the whole body.
When I think about various sorts of meditation, I personally think of what could be called "attention training." When you are watching a riveting mystery on tv, it is unlikely that while caught up in the story, you would suddenly ask yourself why you are watching tv at that time. However, the right sort of attention training can make it more likely and easier to sense, right while you are worried for the heroine, that you feel the tension in the show, that you are you and you are engaged with the show.
That sort of self-knowledge comes in handy and can keep you in good tune with yourself, rather than being in the grip of an emotion but being unable or unwilling to acknowledge how you feel. Better mindfulness means you can be more able to know what is going on but not fall into the grip of an emotion and the situation as you see it. You have more work space between it and you, and can decide more consciously how you want to react to the feelings you have.
It can take some getting used to being at ease with just yourself. When you sit still and alert, paying attention to a single spot or to your natural breathing, there is just you there, nobody else. No music, no Facebook, not snacking, no jiggling - just you.
