Informationen zum Autor Ellen J. Langer Klappentext Learn how adjusting your thoughts can change your healthfrom the mother of mindfulness and first female tenured professor of psychology at Harvard. What matters more: mind or body? Filled with original research and thought-provoking insights, The Mindful Body shows that the two are not just connected but are actually one, opening us to vast potential for health and happiness.Dan Ariely, New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational Can changing your thoughts improve your health? We tend to live our lives as though our ailmentsour stiff knees or frayed nerves or diminished eyesightcan change only in one direction: for the worse. Award-winning social psychologist Ellen J. Langer's life's work proves the fault in this negative outlook as well as the healing power of its alternative: mindfulnessthe process of active noticing where we are not bound by past experience or conventional wisdom. In The Mindful Body, Dr. Langer unpacks her assumption-busting findings and outlines her bold new theory of mind-body unity, along the way clearly demonstrating how our thoughts and perspectives have the potential to profoundly shape our well-being. Whether it is hotel chambermaids who lost weight when they simply came to see that their work constituted exercise, or patients whose wounds healed faster in rooms with accelerated clocks, she shows how influential our thoughts are to the state of our bodies. Her work has likewise proven that discouraging health news can have negative effects. Learning you are prediabetic, for exampleeven if your blood sugar reading is only a fraction away from normalmay actually play a part in the development of the disease. A paradigm-shifting book by one of the great psychologists of the twenty-first century, The Mindful Body returns the control over our bodies back to us and reveals that a true understanding of health begins with our minds. Leseprobe Chapter 1 Whose Rules? Any fool can make a rule. And any fool will mind it. Henry David Thoreau Rules are important but, in my view, they should guide not govern our behavior. We need to take a closer look at the creation and adherence to rules in general before we can more fully understand the problem mindless compliance to rules has on our health. Consider a simple, low-stakes example. I've been painting for decades, though I've never been formally trained. When I started to paint, I had no idea what the rules were. I didn't even know there were rules. Had I known, I think my own technique would have taken a different form. I am still amused when I go into an art supply store and see the labels indicating which brush to use for which effect, as if there were no other way to achieve itas if there were a right way and a wrong way. On occasion, I cut the hairs of my brushes to get a novel look. I'd like to think it is this originalitythe desire to create something different, a work of art that doesn't resemble anything elsethat makes my paintings interesting, at least to me. The novelty might not have been possible if I had rigidly followed the rules. This attitude has defined my artistic style. One of my first paintings featured a boy holding groceries at the top of a distant hill. In the foreground, a woman sits on a bench. When I was done with the painting, I showed it to a few friends. One person commented on my mistake, how the perspective was all wrong, since the boy in the distance was too big. I dutifully tried to fix things, shrinking the boy to make him look more realistic. But then I realized that the flaw is what made the painting worth looking at. In life as in art, although we tend to praise rule followers, I believe that breaking the rules is often necessary. Too often, we follow rules ...

Autorentext

Ellen J. Langer

Klappentext

Learn how adjusting your thoughts can change your health—from the “mother of mindfulness” and first female tenured professor of psychology at Harvard.

“What matters more: mind or body? Filled with original research and thought-provoking insights, The Mindful Body shows that the two are not just connected but are actually one, opening us to vast potential for health and happiness.”—Dan Ariely, New York Times bestselling author of Predictably Irrational

Can changing your thoughts improve your health? We tend to live our lives as though our ailments—our stiff knees or frayed nerves or diminished eyesight—can change only in one direction: for the worse. Award-winning social psychologist Ellen J. Langer’s life’s work proves the fault in this negative outlook as well as the healing power of its alternative: mindfulness—the process of active noticing where we are not bound by past experience or conventional wisdom.

In The Mindful Body, Dr. Langer unpacks her assumption-busting findings and outlines her bold new theory of mind-body unity, along the way clearly demonstrating how our thoughts and perspectives have the potential to profoundly shape our well-being. Whether it is hotel chambermaids who lost weight when they simply came to see that their work constituted exercise, or patients whose wounds healed faster in rooms with accelerated clocks, she shows how influential our thoughts are to the state of our bodies. Her work has likewise proven that discouraging health news can have negative effects. Learning you are prediabetic, for example—even if your blood sugar reading is only a fraction away from “normal”—may actually play a part in the development of the disease.

A paradigm-shifting book by one of the great psychologists of the twenty-first century, The Mindful Body returns the control over our bodies back to us and reveals that a true understanding of health begins with our minds.

Leseprobe
**Chapter 1

Whose Rules?**

Any fool can make a rule. And any fool will mind it. —Henry David Thoreau

Rules are important but, in my view, they should guide not govern our behavior. We need to take a closer look at the creation and adherence to “rules” in general before we can more fully understand the problem mindless compliance to rules has on our health.

Consider a simple, low-stakes example. I’ve been painting for decades, though I’ve never been formally trained. When I started to paint, I had no idea what the rules were. I didn’t even know there were rules. Had I known, I think my own technique would have taken a different form. I am still amused when I go into an art supply store and see the labels indicating which brush to use for which effect, as if there were no other way to achieve it—as if there were a right way and a wrong way. On occasion, I cut the hairs of my brushes to get a novel look. I’d like to think it is this originality—the desire to create something different, a work of art that doesn’t resemble anything else—that makes my paintings interesting, at least to me. The novelty might not have been possible if I had rigidly followed the rules.

This attitude has defined my artistic style. One of my first paintings featured a boy holding groceries at the top of a distant hill. In the foreground, a woman sits on a bench. When I was done with the painting, I showed it to a few friends. One person commented on my “mistake,” how the perspective was all wrong, since the boy in the distance was too big. I dutifully tried to “fix” things, shrinking the boy to make him look more realistic. But then I realized that the flaw is what made the painting worth looking at.

In life as in art, although we tend to praise rule followers, I believe that breaking the rules is often necessary. Too often, we follow rules mindlessly. We buy the “right” brushes and wear the “…