All your life, you have been practicing the Mindfulness the Buddha taught, you just weren't aware of it. Once you have found how simple and natural it is to be aware of your emotions influencing your thoughts and actions, and how natural it is to control this process, you can be a true practitioner of The Buddha's Mindfulness.

Hunger is example of a physical sensation being the first you know that an emotion, a spontaneous action, and/or thoughts involved with that emotion will follow.

Hunger begins with a physical sensation in the stomach that can have you reach for nearby food before you have given that conscious consideration. That reaching for food is a programmed action in your preconscious. If your conscious mind is aware of the coming action you can intervene and consider if you really should eat that piece of cake.

If there is no food at hand, your preconscious will turn it over to your conscious mind which will go through its menu of things you like to eat in this kind of situation, and you may go to your refrigerator or the snack bar. Or you may take control of that emotion with conscious consideration and decide to wait and eat more healthful food later at meal time.

Now think of the times the sight or thought of something you like to eat has caused you to salivate and your stomach to prepare for for food.

Thus your thoughts and things you see and hear can control your physical reactions and emotions, which in turn reinforce your thoughts and emotions, in an escalating loop. This is one thing when it is food, and another when it is a loop of rage, fear, or hatred. Think of the effect military bands have in getting men to join a parade to enlistment

We have all experienced the sensations associated with hunger from a gentle reminder to an urgent, mind obsessing need. Now become aware of the other sensations that direct and motivate you, and learn to control those that are harmful.

There are many sensations associated emotions you may not be aware of. There is a sensation just below the V of your ribs that reinforces something your mind is telling you that you should do now. When the opportunity has passed, that sensation is gone.

In real life, The Buddha was a secular, self-help teacher who said he was just an ordinary man and that ordinary people could achieve the enlightenment he had that brings serenity and peace with the world.

A important part of the Buddha's teaching was Mindfulness, a term, if not the practice. that has become very popular.

The Buddha's teaching of Mindfulness can be built on what you already experience and understand about being hungry, the sensations and thoughts it creates and the temptations it causes, and than expand that to the other aspects of your life.

Science has now shown that we have a preconscious that performs programed actions in response to the onset of emotions before our conscious mind has a chance to consider what we are thinking and doing. The only warning we have are physical sensations of the emotions

The practice of Mindfulness involves being aware of the sensations in the different parts of our body that are associated with the onset of emotions that can trigger spontaneous thoughts and actions in the preconscious. 

Our unconsidered words and actions can get us in trouble. Our uncontrolled thoughts can form persistant self-reinforcing loops that will increasingly influence how we think and act.

By maintaining Mindfulness we are aware of the warning sensations and can take rational control of our words, actions and thoughts before the preconscious can act in harmful ways.

Preconscious responses are essential in daily life for driving a car, and for success in sports. It has been found that mentally rehearsing the plays in sports programs those plays in the preconscious in the same way as practicing them on the playing field (but obviously does not have the same physical benefits).

The Buddha said  our mindfulness must be done constantly over a lifetime, and is a continual learning process about our emotional response to situations and our thoughts.

Our natural temperament and our situation in life influence how difficult it is to achieve mindful awareness and control over our emotional responses, and thus over our thoughts and actions.

The Buddha said all his teaching is secular self-help instructions given by an ordinary man to ordinary people to achieve the enlightened inner peace that he had.

In the tolerant environment of the independent teachers of Hinduism in northern India in the 400's BCE, the Buddha was able to attract a large number of followers and for them wealthy patrons built monasteries. Within his life of 82 years, the Buddha was able to guide the founding of large communities of mendicant monks, for whom he left guidelines. (This was some thousand years before there were Christian monastic orders of monks.)

Most people reading this will be living in the world with all its responsibilities and troubles, joys and sorrows. But try to find some time alone to study and think about one of the paths to inner peace that has been given to us down through the ages.

Mindfulness is just one part of the Buddha's secular, self-help instructions for the way to inner peace, and the monastic life, which can be found in books and on-line.

Over the centuries, the Buddha's teachings were turned into various philosophies such as Zen and into religions with temples and rituals such as they have in Tibet. The Buddha himself came to be portrayed in statues to which people pray and make offerings.