I have previous experience with the practice of mindfulness based meditation and have also read about the scientific benefits of meditation but I particularly enjoyed how Tan explains the practice and how it relates to emotional intelligence. He describes how signals from our body can be the most immediate indicator of emotional states and that greater attention and concentration achieved through meditation, once directed towards the body can give you a head start on detecting and reacting to your emotional states. This helped me get a better understanding of the cognitive process you are strengthening through meditation and how the benefits of this can flow on to other aspects of your life.
I found this moment of mindfulness was valuable. I had been through a physically taxing weekend and found that during this moment of concentrated attention I became quite aware of the feeling of stress and tension this was creating within me. On reflection even where a feeling like this cannot be changed even being aware of it is very valuable as I was able to use this understanding to be more forgiving of myself and how this might have affected my work, which in turn helped to control my stress levels.