I practice mindfulness, especially with the Pomodoro Technique (working for 25 minutes and resting for 5 minutes in mindfulness). I practice mindfulness to be able to rest well during breaks and return to work better. But I have difficulties with mindfulness because I keep ruminating.

I tried using the technique of labeling emotions, and it helped a little at first. But now it's like saying "I'm irritated" and detailing the feeling, but it seems to only make me ruminate more: "Why should I be irritated?" "Should I be less irritated?" "How can I be less irritated?"

Considering my difficulty with mindfulness and the technique of labeling emotions, I speculate that a considerable reason for my mind ruminating is because it doesn't know if it's worth the effort to solve the problem.

You know? When a system doesn't have a stopping criterion, it doesn't know if it's worth solving now, too complex for the moment, or if it has already solved enough to test? It's as if my mind doesn't know whether it's worth investing in solving it or if it's better to file it away for now.

So, I speculate that asking myself some questions, a pre-meditation, like the 5 minutes at the end of a 25-minute Pomodoro, would allow me to align myself enough to improve my mindfulness practice; perhaps my mind would stop searching for solutions for a moment.

Could I set up experiments and measure how much a mindfullness to focus analyzing physical EEG waves?Where does my reasoning break down? Has anyone tried something like this?

I don't know if it works, but I would like to discuss how to start testing whether using systems theory in emotions would be of any use. I've been treating emotion as a complex control system to reduce pre-meditation rumination.

As much as I would like to admit, I have many problems that I did not want to define as emotional. However, I found heuristics that show some evidence that they can improve focus, such as affective labeling (Lieberman et al.). With labels, I began to look for relationships between systems theory and affective labeling. So I tried like a complex system, I tentatively map emotion using two dimensions, but:

• Could I treat emotion as a complex system that I could map and navigate better?
• Could I map focuss stages as: input, process, output and feedback?
• Could I map complex functions layers, as: corporeal-reactive, intellectual-predictive, motivational-valuational or social-identity?
• • Corporeal-reactive (milliseconds): sense, react, survive
  • Intellectual-predictive (minutes): predict from individual memory, not just instinct
  • Motivational-valuational days to months): prioritize, value, decide what to pursue
  • Social-Identity (years): coordinate values between individuals
• Could I set up experiments and measure how much a mindfullness to focus analising physical EEG waves?

I don't claim the brain literally has these layers. Why this could help me: when I say "I'm anxious," classic affect labeling names it. But mapping asks: which layer? Which stage? Corporeal (slept badly) vs Social (unresolved conflict) means different actions. Less residual uncertainty may reduce rumination during mindfulness.

Where does my reasoning break down? Has anyone tried something like this? Could I running an N=1 crossover experiment (EEG) comparing classic labeling vs. this sistemic mapping as pre-meditation preparation?