Participant To Observer: Mindfully Engaging With Emotion

According to Neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, emotions have a physiological lifespan of 90 seconds. We humans, however, love to prolong our emotions by replaying the event, thus generating new emotions and creating stories that attach blame or shame while dwelling on the negativity of what happened. Mindfulness can interrupt this cycle: we turn toward the emotion and allow ourselves to experience the physiological cues as sensations rather than true interpretations. We turn emotions into information rather than facts.