A reporter asked a boy who was participating in the [mindfulness training] program to describe mindfulness. “It’s not hitting someone in the mouth”, the eleven year-old said.

His answer is wise, wide and deep. It illustrates one of the most important uses of mindfulness – helping us to deal with difficult emotions. It suggests the possibility of finding the gap between a trigger event and our usual conditioned response to it, and of using that pause to collect ourselves and change our response. And it demonstrates in a very real way that we can learn to make better choices……Working with emotions during our meditation session sharpens our ability to recognise a feeling just as it begins not fifteen consequential actions later. We can then go on to develop a more balanced relationship with it – neither letting it overwhelm us so we lash out rashly, nor ignoring it because we are ashamed or afraid of it.

Sharon Salzberg, True Happiness.