Mindfulness is the art of tuning into your emotional state of being. It’s becoming aware of yourself, and particularly your motions. You might think that you are already in-tune with your emotional states, but are you really? Do you just recognize when you have experienced an emotion? Or do you recognize when you are experiencing an emotion? There is a difference. The first way is past recognition and the second present recognition. Most people are guilty of the former, although they believe they are doing the later.This is what mindfulness of your emotional states is all about. It’s being able to recognize your current or present emotional experience. When you intentionally identify what your current emotional state is, you can experience significant improvements in emotional health.If emotional health is something you want to improve, below are some of the benefits of mindfulness.

Experience Full Emotions

When you practice mindfulness around our emotions, you learn to experience your emotions at their fullest expression. Suppose you are sitting around a table during the holidays with your closest friends and family.

There is delicious tasting food packed on every last inch of the table. There is a sweet and pleasant smell in the air. The sound of laughter and conversation is bouncing off the walls. In that moment, you notice a warm glow deep inside your chest.What you if were able to identify this warm deep glow inside of you as joy and love in the present moment? Not after the fact—when you reminisced about this memory—but in the present when it occurs. When you’re mindful about emotions in the moment, you can also cultivate the emotion and allow it to develop into its fullest expression. You can experience the joy and love to its fullest.Allowing your emotions to express themselves to their fullest does wonders for your emotional health. It’s much like allowing your body to experience the fullest expression of physical motion, which is good for your physical health. Mindfulness helps you exercise your emotions to their complete expression.

Experience a Complexity of Emotions

When you practice mindfulness of your emotions, it also enables you to experience the entire complex array of emotions that you possess. When you are at the mercy of your emotions—meaning that your emotions just occur to you and are completely outside your control—you will often notice that the same few emotions seem to always be present.

You will tend to have a “top tier” set of emotions that seem to dominate the others. They can dominate so much that you soon never see any other emotion surface.When a few emotions dominate over the rest, it’s not a healthy way to live. Just as going to the gym and only working your calves and biceps creates an imbalance in your musculature, only expressing a few emotions creates an imbalance in your emotional health.When you practice mindfulness, you develop the ability to intentionally cue into different emotions you possess. You can experience a wider variety of emotions because you intentionally seek out different emotions and identify them when they occur.

This leads to a more balanced and healthy emotional state.

Experience the Right Emotion

Finally, practicing mindfulness helps you experience the right emotion for the situation. When you are not mindful of your emotional state, an emotion that is not well suited for the occasion might present itself.It can happen that a very hurtful and sad situation happens to you, for example, and yet anger boils up in you.

If you don’t practice mindfulness, you might unconsciously experience this emotion and therefore display a behavior that is not well-suited for the situation. This can lead you to experience more distress, anxiety, and pain.A person adept at practicing mindfulness, on the other hand, would be able to identify the current emotions they are experiencing, and determine whether or not they need to pivot and access a different emotion that would be more effective for the situation.

Mindfulness applied in this manner allows you to function in a healthier emotional space.

One of the biggest benefits of practicing mindfulness is the reward it brings to your emotional health. A strong and healthy emotional state is critical to overall personal health and wellbeing.