Latest / The Pausecast / Ep. 119: Ellen Langer The Mindful Body: Thinking our Way to Chronic Health

Transcript

Ep. 119: Ellen Langer The Mindful Body: Thinking our Way to Chronic Health · The Pausecast

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All right. Hi, everyone.
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I'm so excited. Today we have an exciting VIP
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guest. I call her doctor Ellen Langer.
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Hi, Ellen. Great to see you today.
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Again, welcome back. Thank you.
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So for those of you who are not familiar with Doctor Langer's
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work, Ellen is known as the mother of mindfulness.
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She also recently came out with her latest book called The
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Mindful Body and the Thinking Our Way Through to Chronic
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Health. I think this is such an
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important topic today and I do think this is ground breaking.
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So I'm so excited to talk more about this.
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You've also published incredible research in your tenure there at
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Harvard, including Count Counterclockwise, your studies,
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and we'll talk all kinds of stuff with that.
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But it's just great to have you here.
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I'm just really excited to dive in.
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How are you doing? Yeah, All right.
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So you're coming to us live. I know.
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From Cambridge, right? No, I'm in Dartmouth, Mass right
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now. OK, you're in mass.
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Awesome. Well, the the the the leaves are
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peeping and. That's right, they're going well
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there. But for you, why were you
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feeling compelled to write The Mindful Body, knowing the is
1:13
kind of happening right now for everybody?
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Sure. Well, first of all, I keep doing
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research that I want people to know about, and putting it in a
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book is always a way for that to happen.
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But I've been on this quest, we'll say, for my entire life.
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I'm happy. I'm healthy.
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I see very few other people. In in either of those states.
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So I keep trying, writing, doing research, telling people
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essentially everything is mutable.
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We can make all sorts of changes.
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And what's most exciting about this book essentially is the
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control we actually over we have over our health.
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Now this book started as a memoir.
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So what that means is that they're a lot of fun.
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Maybe sexy stories in it I noticed.
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Then I just, you know, kept writing and it became similar to
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mindfulness but with more stories.
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In fact some of the stories, the some of the earliest things that
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I experienced gave rise to what eventually became my mind body
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unity theory. So in a very quickly.
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But mind, body unity is that mind and body are just one
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thing. And if you put them together as
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one thing, then wherever you put one, you're necessarily putting
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the other. And that's why we have so much
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control that we're not realizing.
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In the distant past, the medical model used to believe the only
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way you were going to get sick would be the introduction of an
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antigen. It's nice to be happy, but it
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was irrelevant. Now people know that things like
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stress and so on are not good for your health.
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So they talk about mind, body connection.
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I am not talking about mind, body connection.
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If you talk about mind body connection, you get into this
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funny thing trying to figure out how do you get from this fuzzy
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thing called the thought to something material called the
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body? So I don't have to bother with
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any of those because I'm talking about mind body unity.
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All right. So some of the questions you'll
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ask me, hopefully I'll get to tell you some of the unusual
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mind things, unusual body things.
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All based on research, but I was going to tell you this story.
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So when I was young, I was married very young and I went to
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Paris on my honeymoon, honeymoon.
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And I am now 18 or 19 going on 40.
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OK, so we go to Paris, we go out to eat, and in this restaurant I
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order a mixed grill. One of the things on the mixed
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grill was pancreas. OK, now I have to prove that I'm
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all grown up. I have to get myself to eat the
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pancreas, which is not going to be easy for me.
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So I eat everything else on the plate.
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And now before that I asked my then husband which of these
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things was the pancreas and he was more worldly than I.
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He said that, OK, I eat everything else.
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And now the moment of truth, can I do it?
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I have to do it, Rachel, because I'm all grown up.
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I start eating it and I literally, literally get sick to
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my stomach. He starts laughing.
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I say, why you laughing? He said.
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Because that's chicken. I ate the pancreas quite a while
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ago. OK, so.
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And I love chicken. But thinking it wasn't chicken,
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I had made myself sick. That was on one end.
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Much later, my mother was diagnosed with brain with breast
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cancer, and the cancer had metastasized to a pancreas.
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You probably don't know anybody who has any pancreas stories.
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I have two of them, not many. So now the cancer is in a
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pancreas, and that's the end game.
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All right, so this is terrible. Then magically it was gone and
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the medical world can't explain it.
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And mind, body unity can. It's also the case that it made
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me think a lot about these spontaneous remissions, which I
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believe and can argue at another time.
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There's no time now that I think they're far more common than
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most people believe. You know, just sort of imagine
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just to you know to illustrate that so the the medical world
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says you have. Three months to live, you say, I
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want to go home, you have my family, die in my own bed,
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whatever. And then magically you get
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better. I don't think it would occur to
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most people to call their doctors and say, haha, you were
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wrong, you know? So we we just don't know.
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OK, now back to basics. What were you going to ask me?
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I may give you a chance to talk 'cause this is your podcast,
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this is good. No?
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We want to hear from you too. And so this is a good topic mind
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body unity. And what I was going to ask was
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I sense and my my sense is there's a lot of different
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thought leaders like yourself who are coming up with these
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kinds of theories now like in this day and age.
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And I'm, I'm wondering, do you sense that as well Like do you
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feel like there's more now we're thinking about mind body where
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it is more of a unit, it is more integrated?
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No, I think people have gotten as far as mind and body
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connection. And what's the difference?
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Can you really clarify? That for me, yeah.
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It it's big difference because mind and body have treated as
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two separate things. Then you have to figure out how
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you get from one of those to the other, and you're limited in the
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kinds of, let's say the kinds of.
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Cures, for example, for dread diseases that you can come up
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with mind body unity. You know, the first study I did
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testing mind body unity was quite a while ago.
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It's called the counter clockwise study.
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And in this study we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier
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and we had elderly men live there as if they were their
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younger selves, so they spoke about the past events.
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In the present tense, as if it was just happening in a period
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of time less than one week, we found their vision improved.
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These are men 90 years old. Their vision improved, their
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hearing improved, their strength, their memory, and they
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look noticeably younger. This is now a study that I think
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many people know about. If you watch The Simpsons go to
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Havana, they describe the study. So if The Simpsons thinking it's
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important, who am I to argue? Anyway, so so that was the first
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one. We took their minds.
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We made the minds younger. The body, then showed us that
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they got younger. The next study, and there's so
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many, I'm only going to give you a couple, but the next study was
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a study with chambermaids. Chambermaids are interesting
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because they're exercising all day long, but they think,
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according to the Surgeon general exercises, what you do after
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work. Because that's what the surgeon
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general does. It's at a desk, OK?
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And you know, after work, they're just too tired.
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So very simple study. We just divide them into two
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groups and we teach one group that in fact their work is
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exercise. Making a bed is like working on
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this machine at the gym. And so lots and lots of
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measures. They're not eating any
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differently. They're not working any harder.
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The only difference between the two groups before we take the
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final measures is now one of those two groups sees their work
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as exercise. As a result of that change of
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mind, they lost weight. There was a change in body mass
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index, waist to hip ratio, and their blood pressure came down.
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So those were studies, you know, from the past.
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Now we have a whole bunch of new ones.
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I'll just tempt you was one of them.
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If people find it interesting, I hope you'll get OK.
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So we inflicted A wound. Now.
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It would have been dramatic if it could be a big wound.
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But you know, I wouldn't hurt people that way.
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And even if I were sadistic, the review committee wouldn't let
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me. But anyway, it's a womb
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nonetheless, and they're in front of a clock, three groups
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of people. The clock is rigged, but they
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don't know it. So you have a wound.
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You're looking at a clock. For one group, the clock is
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going twice as fast as real time.
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For one group, the clock is going half as fast as real time.
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For the third group, it's real time.
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What happens to the wound? Turns out that the wound heals
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based on perceived time. Clock time, even though the
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clock was rigged, right? We have so much control.
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We have barely tapped into it. Yeah, and and So what I'm
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getting is perception when we alter that our whole body.
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Everything changes everything. Your unified body mind is, yeah.
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You change your thought. You're changing your body.
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You change your body. You're changing the way you're
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thinking. And sometimes the differences
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are subtle, so we don't realize it.
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But there are always changes on every, yeah, were there any
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prizes for you in this in terms of, you know?
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It's so funny, everybody. I mean, I've been doing a
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million podcasts because I want people to come to know the book.
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And so several people have asked me this question.
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And the truth of the matter is that the studies that we'll talk
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about in a minute, the more mind studies stem from my having
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experience noticing something and then seeing, is this more
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generally true? So there aren't any surprises
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there. The mind body unity studies,
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Yeah, a a little surprise. I wouldn't do the study if I
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didn't think it would work. Right.
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So it's not so much surprise as, yes, thank goodness I'm right
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because there are all these other studies I want to do and
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and so on. Yeah.
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OK Well that is insightful and I in the in the mindful body in
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your in your book. I know that I've been I'm about
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halfway through it. So Full disclosure I've not read
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the full part but I've I'm upset I can't hear your voice on the
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audio book too. I I I want you to read your book
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so good but it's all good. I'm still getting it.
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And for just several concepts you also talk about and the one
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that really, really stuck out to me was this similarly like work
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life integration versus work life.
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Balance. Can you share more about that
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'cause I think we are stress falls now and we have to figure
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out new ways of doing things. Well, people are led to believe
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that stress is necessary, you know, and that work has to be
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stressful. And I vehemently disagree.
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Stress is a function of the views we take of events.
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If you take a different view, a more positive view, you're not
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going to experience as much stress.
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Interestingly, also, people don't realize that stress is
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based on prediction. What it is, is you believe that
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something is going to happen, and when it happens, it's going
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to be awful. And first of all, most of the
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things we dread never happened. That's the first thing.
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But a way to deal with that is. Ask yourself for three four
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reasons why it won't happen, and as soon as you generate those,
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you go from, it's going to happen to maybe it won't.
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Then imagine that it does happen.
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How might that actually be a good thing?
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And that's the piece. Once you master those two
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pieces, you'll never be stressed again.
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But for those who don't in this quick interview, understand just
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what I'm saying, here's a one liner for them.
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As soon as something happens and you get yourself praised, ask
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yourself. Is it a tragedy or an
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inconvenience? And it's almost never a tragedy.
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Oh, my God, the dog ate the Homer.
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Go, oh, my God, I missed the bus.
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I missed the deadline. And whatever.
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They take a breath and recognize that the world isn't going to
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end and the consequences will probably be negligible, if any
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consequences at all. But when we're talking about
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stress, I believe that stress is the major killer.
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Not you know. Just bad for you.
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So if we took people, and this is a supposition, I was going to
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do this study with people in China, but it never came to
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pass. Very hard study to do.
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We look at people who were just diagnosed with cancer and no one
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is going to say, oh, well, I have cancer, I mean, everybody's
13:18
going to be stressed, but then we let people adjust to it or
13:21
not over the next two weeks. Now we start testing how
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stressed they are, let's say every three weeks.
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After that I believe. Their reaction, how stressed
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they are over and above genetics, over and above their
13:38
treatment, over and above nutrition will predict the the
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course of the disease. OK and stress is psychological,
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so if you can keep yourself from being stressed, you've won half
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of the battle. I've.
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I've heard of, yeah, exactly. IA 100% agree with you and I'm
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not the researcher, but I I I think that that's accurate.
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Knowing the stress is what the body also processes, which then
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leads to things like the things I believe proven immune system
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to function. Everything to every.
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Part of your body is thrown off. Yeah.
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So even if I'm getting medicine and I'm I'm, I'm, I'm taking
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care of myself. If I'm just worrying all the
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time thinking oh this will never work, or why, Why me or
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anything, then that is the stress that's also prohibiting.
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So you bring up something that I enjoy about the book is I'm very
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sensitive to language. And so there's subtle ways that
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language reveals what we're really thinking in ways that
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we're oblivious to it. And so this is about trying
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something which whatever you just said made me think of it.
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So, you know, people think trying is good, and trying is
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certainly better than not trying, you know, than just
14:58
giving up in the 1st place. But trying has built into it an
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expectation for failure. You wouldn't try to eat an ice
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cream cone. You just eat the ice cream cone,
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right? And so when we talk about
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trying, so we do studies where we have one group try to do
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whatever it is we're going to have them do, The other group
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just do it. And across different activities
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and the doing group always outperforms another thing that's
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kind of fun. Hope, Hope sounds good, right?
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Well-being hopeful is, of course, better than being
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hopeless. But hope itself also has built
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into it an expectation for failure.
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You don't get up in the morning, go into the kitchen hoping
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you'll have a cup of coffee, right?
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You just expect to have a cup of coffee.
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All right, so there are lots of these.
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One that's most relevant to health is about.
15:51
Remission versus cure. So I went to see a friend of
15:54
mine had a very, very bad case of cancer and she had just come
15:58
back from Mass General. And I said, Eva, how are you?
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She said, well, I'm in remission.
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And right then, you know, a light bulb went off and I said,
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wait a second, If I take the exact same test, presumably
16:09
they're going to tell me I don't have cancer.
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Why is it that I don't have it? But you have it in remission
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that it's lurking there, They can't see it.
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You know, and what happens is if you believe that the cancer is
16:22
there, imperceptible, and it's going to come back, that's very
16:26
stressful. All right.
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So we looked at women who were on a cancer awareness walk,
16:31
breast cancer, and we simply try to distinguish and ask them did
16:37
they see their cancer as cured or in remission?
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OK. And what we found is that those
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P and then we checked back in six months later, those people
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who saw themselves as cured were much better psychologically and
16:53
physically on all the measures we took.
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You know, you have a you get a cold, Rachel, and the cold goes
17:00
away. You don't see the cold in
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remission, right? And if you get another cold, in
17:05
some ways it's the same cold because colds are all the same.
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In another way, they're all different.
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It's the same thing with cancer, that if the cancer, cancer were
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to come back, in some ways it's the same, which is why you can
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see it as having been in remission.
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But in some ways, it's also different.
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And so you can see yourself as having been cured.
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And when you're cured, you go about living in such a way that
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you're making yourself healthier, you know, So again,
17:31
remission is better than having the cancer be active.
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Better still, is that next step. So what?
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So let's say you've. So for those who've had cancer,
17:41
or in this scenario, what should we What should you be saying to
17:45
yourself? Was it definitely not?
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I hope I don't have cancer. What would we say?
17:49
Well, no. If you had cancer in the medical
17:51
world, tells you that your cancer's in remission, you can
17:57
inquire with them or check out with other oncologists and say,
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is it reasonable for me to see myself as cured?
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And most of them will tell you yes.
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And then you see yourself as good.
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And then you live. You know, you stand tall and you
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feel good. And everything you do is
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nurturing yourself so that you're going to be stronger.
18:19
So, and being stronger, either you won't end up with another
18:22
bout of cancer or if you do, you're going to be even stronger
18:26
and better able to deal with it. Yeah, that's such a great way to
18:31
say that because of my I I imagine there's a lot of
18:34
individuals who maybe don't ask a question.
18:37
That would be that. Curious.
18:38
No, you, I mean people typically take the medical world at their
18:41
word and and and you know and these are people who are working
18:45
very hard, who are educated and by and large very well meaning.
18:49
But it's still the case that we should never just hand ourselves
18:53
over to them or anybody else, because all of the information
18:58
that they've been taught, first of all, it's already dated.
19:01
Right. Second and more important is
19:04
science. Whether it's medical science,
19:06
any kind of science only gives us probabilities.
19:10
That means they're best guesses, which is very different from.
19:14
This causes that. This could cause that.
19:18
Very different. Now, I was at a horse event many
19:21
years ago, and this changed my life.
19:23
So you didn't tell your audience I'm Harvard, Yale all the way
19:26
through. It's very important before I
19:28
tell them this to know I've got all these Distinguished
19:31
Scientists award, even a genius award.
19:33
OK, So I'm at this horse event. This man says, well, I watch his
19:37
horse for him because he wants to get his horse a hot dog.
19:40
Well, you know, I mean, nobody knows better.
19:43
They can know as well. But nobody knows better than I.
19:46
Horses don't eat meat. Good.
19:48
He comes back with the hot dog and the horse ate it.
19:52
And that's when I realized that everything I think I know could
19:56
be wrong. And all the humility that that
19:59
brought with it. All right, now, if you know, you
20:02
don't know, or you think you might not know, you pay
20:05
attention. It's when you think you know
20:07
that you no longer pay attention.
20:10
And 45 years of my research has shown that.
20:14
Virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time.
20:18
You can see mindlessness is frequently an era, but rarely in
20:21
doubt. All right, and to no fault of
20:24
our own, we're taught absolutes. We're taught horses don't eat
20:27
meat. You know, we're taught one in
20:30
one is 2 or one in one is not always two.
20:34
If you were to add 1 wad of chewing gum plus one wad of
20:37
chewing gum, 1 + 1 is one OK? That no matter what it is you've
20:41
been taught that you're sure of, there's at least one context,
20:45
probably more, where it's just not so.
20:48
And so people are afraid, you know, not to know.
20:52
They're afraid. They're gonna seem stupid, They
20:55
don't know you know what to do. If they're talking to somebody
20:57
who acts like they do know, then you either fake it or you get
21:01
out of a situation as quickly as it can.
21:03
So I'm here to free everybody to tell you I don't know, you don't
21:06
know, nobody knows. And not knowing is good, because
21:11
then we're in a position to make everything new.
21:14
Yeah, well, this is a great point.
21:16
I think in in the Mindful Body book, because you're as the
21:20
mother of mindfulness, I think really helping, well, holding
21:25
people accountable that mindfulness isn't about
21:27
necessarily sitting down on a cushion and doing something like
21:30
this. Meditation isn't mindfulness.
21:33
Meditation is a practice you engage in to result in post
21:37
meditative mindfulness. And meditation is fine.
21:40
You know some wonderful things that result when you meditate.
21:43
This is very different. Here you're not sitting by
21:46
yourself, you're out in the world and it's not a practice.
21:51
You, you, you know, Rachel, you've never been to my house
21:54
here, so you and I'll invite you.
21:57
But right now, for argument's sake, you come to the house.
22:01
You don't have to practice. Everything's gonna be new.
22:03
You go, oh, look at that, look at the arch she has.
22:05
Look at it. And that's mess over there.
22:07
You would notice things, right? And what mindfulness is as we
22:11
study it is simply noticing, active noticing.
22:15
You don't notice, though, when you think you know.
22:18
So it's noticing new things about the things you know.
22:21
And when you do that, you become sensitive to context and
22:24
perspective. You can have rules and routines,
22:28
but they guide what you do. They don't determine what you
22:30
do. And this process of noticing is
22:35
the essence of engagement. So it feels good, So it feels
22:39
good. And as you're doing it, the
22:40
neurons are firing and you, you seem alive.
22:43
People find you more appealing, You live longer, you're happier,
22:48
your relationships are better. Not only that, but it leaves its
22:51
imprint on the things that we do.
22:53
So mindfulness, as I study it, is simple and couldn't be better
23:00
for us. Not only that, but it's energy
23:03
begetting, not consuming. When you're having a good time,
23:08
you can't have a good time unless you're mindful.
23:10
You have to show up for the good time.
23:12
You know you do if you like crossword puzzles, A silly
23:15
example, but let's take a joke. I tell you a joke and you laugh.
23:20
And the reason the joke is funny is because there was a surprise
23:23
ending. Oh, I thought you were going in
23:24
here, but you went there. Now, if I tell you the same joke
23:27
again, it's no longer funny, right?
23:30
So it's the the newness that keeps us engaged.
23:35
And since everything is always changing, everything looks
23:39
different from different perspectives.
23:41
Everything is always new. So we could all save a lot of
23:44
money and not spend our, our, our, our savings on traveling
23:47
the world. We could just sit in our rooms
23:49
and notice new things. And that's right.
23:51
That's actually, that's actually right.
23:53
And you know, so lots of people, if you were going to travel,
23:57
half of the fun and traveling is deciding in advance where you're
24:00
going to go, what are you going to do?
24:02
So this one week vacation is spread out to, you know, to
24:05
three weeks, 4 weeks, and that first part of the vacation where
24:10
you're doing all that planning and imagining you're in your
24:14
house, so. Yeah, yeah, interesting.
24:19
Well, I I also know from what I talk about with people who are
24:24
burning out and stressed out as corporate leaders, I cite you a
24:28
lot in in terms of being curious and and active noticing.
24:31
I'll say OK, so but mindfulness isn't curiosity.
24:35
The reason for that is, so let's say you're reading a newspaper
24:38
and you spill some hot chocolate and you say, you know, is that
24:41
an R? OK, so it is an R or whatever
24:46
other letter. So the the point that I'm trying
24:49
to make poorly is that when you're curious, there's an
24:52
answer and then it ends. When you're mindful, it never
24:56
ends because it's always changing.
24:58
But being curious again is better than not being curious.
25:01
Like trying is better than giving up.
25:03
But there's a better way. Right.
25:06
OK. So we need, yeah.
25:07
So the ACT. So being mindful, if I'm
25:10
understanding you correctly, is the the continuum of noticing
25:15
the new things right now you know that it when you do this
25:19
often enough, then you come to see, Gee, the things I thought I
25:23
knew I don't know very well at all.
25:25
Then you end up with a different appreciation of everything.
25:30
So I don't look outside to notice new things because I know
25:35
that I don't know. So if you can accept that you
25:38
don't know, then you will naturally, mindfully approach
25:41
whatever it is you're doing. So literally telling yourself I
25:45
don't know and so and you shouldn't know because you can't
25:48
know how would. You know, right.
25:51
And that way I'm I'm giving, I'm allowing myself to access a lot
25:55
more, right, so to speak. Yeah.
25:58
So give me another horseback riding example.
26:01
So I'm on a horse and I'm racing through the woods and I tell
26:04
myself, watch out for the branch so you don't get hit in the head
26:08
and knocked off the horse. So that's vigilance.
26:11
Be vigilant of those branches. Well, vigilance sounds a little
26:14
like mindfulness, but it's not. OK.
26:16
So I'm racing through the woods. I'm not going to be hit by a
26:19
branch, but I don't notice the boulder that the horse now trips
26:23
over because I wasn't paying attention to it.
26:26
So it's sort of like a soft openness.
26:28
You're not attending to any specific thing and because
26:32
you're not, you're sort of open to much more information.
26:36
And so when you're mindful in this way, you you get to see
26:42
experience, benefits to which other people are blind, and you
26:46
avert the danger not yet arisen and then and you just did peace.
26:50
You know that when you recognize that outcomes are in our heads,
26:55
they're not in events. Events aren't good or bad.
26:58
People aren't. This is the way we interpret
27:00
things. And you can just as easy tell
27:03
yourself a different story. And so when you recognize good
27:07
is bad, bad is good. All right, so it's fine.
27:10
You know, Rachel, you and I are gonna go out to lunch.
27:12
If the food is good, wonderful. If the food isn't good,
27:15
wonderful. I won't eat as much.
27:17
It'd be better for my waistline. If the food is awful, I'll be
27:20
able to pay more attention to what you're telling me.
27:22
There's always, you know, an understanding that leaves you,
27:27
you know, always, virtually always in the lives that most of
27:30
us are living, at least. Yeah.
27:32
And I and I think part of that is our brains are such labelers.
27:35
We just enjoy categorizing and labeling at such a level that,
27:39
well, we can, you know, I mean, we need categories.
27:44
The problem is that we think the categories we we behave and act
27:49
as if these categories are handed down from the heavens
27:53
rather than somebody just decided what the category is,
27:56
right? So years and years ago, I think
27:59
it started in England, but whatever, we adopted it here.
28:01
That you were supposed to retire when you were 65.
28:05
Yes, that that didn't come from anything, you know.
28:07
So you had people who are under 65, people over 60?
28:09
5 This is a rule you're talking about.
28:11
Yeah, that's right. And.
28:11
But the category younger and older, right?
28:14
And so now you know the rule makes no sense and people are
28:18
working until they're until they decide.
28:21
I've had enough, but not based on age.
28:23
So what am I saying? I'm saying we can have
28:26
categories, but along with the categories, we need to
28:29
understand that they were person created, that they're not true
28:34
or useful across all contexts and all time.
28:39
All right, so let me give you an example.
28:40
All rules and categories, it's all the same thing.
28:43
So I played tennis. So the rule to tennis is that
28:47
you get 2 serves now. So I play double SI, throw the
28:52
ball up, I kill it, it doesn't go in.
28:54
OK, so now I have my backup wuss serve that they can return very
28:58
easily. If I if I created the rule, we
29:03
would have had three serves. Then the first one I hit, I kill
29:08
the second one. I've learned from that first
29:10
one, I hit it hard again and I still have my backup third
29:14
serve. The point is the, you know, my
29:17
tennis performance is in part dictated by somebody else's
29:21
decision about how many serves we should have about the rules
29:25
to the game. Now this is very important,
29:28
especially for women, and I would say especially for short
29:32
women, maybe even especially for short black women.
29:36
OK, what am I saying? If the more different you are
29:41
from the person who created the rule, the more important it is
29:45
for you to do it your own way. And the only way you can do it
29:49
your own way is to realize that the way you're taught to do it
29:53
was just somebody's decision that met somebody's needs.
29:56
And so if I'm lecturing rage and it's amazing how I'm always able
30:00
to have someone like this in the audience, I look around, is
30:03
there anybody really tall here? And so Guy 65, I said, can you
30:07
come up to the stage now? I'm 5, three on a good day.
30:11
So he's standing next to me at six five, and we look silly.
30:16
And then I asked him to put his hand up.
30:18
I put my hand on his hand. His hand is 3 inches larger.
30:22
And then I just raised the question, should we do anything
30:24
physical the same way, right. You know, no.
30:28
But we don't realize how much, how mutable, how changeable
30:34
everything that we're doing is and that we should find a way
30:38
that works best for us. A more graphic instance might be
30:43
he's sitting on a toilet and he has a wife who's 411 who's
30:48
sitting on the same toilet. One of them is not getting their
30:52
biological needs met. OK, so we're given a world
30:55
that's stable, and stable was based on what worked for whoever
31:00
created it. For some people doesn't work for
31:04
all of us. When we're mindless, it doesn't
31:06
occur to us to question it. And if you question it, then you
31:10
can change it. You know, when I gave my first
31:13
talk years and years ago, I walk into this room, a big room, and
31:19
the podium is over here and the, you know, the chairs are very
31:24
far away. And I know that's going to make
31:26
me nervous. So what do I do?
31:28
I rearrange the furniture to bring the chairs close to me.
31:33
Now, I I think most people, I mean, if you ask them, could you
31:37
move the chairs? Most people would say yes.
31:40
The point is, when you're mindless, it doesn't occur to
31:43
you, right? So this mindlessness robs us of
31:46
choices. It robs us of the ability to to
31:50
change the world to to better meet our needs.
31:54
We have to get off that autopilot, I think, right,
31:57
exactly. But the problem is that when
32:00
you're not there, you're not there to know you're not there.
32:02
So people don't know they're on autopilot.
32:05
And as that's why I'm here to announce after 45 years of
32:09
research, virtually all of us, most of the time are not there.
32:14
Sad, but yeah, because when you're there, then again the
32:18
neurons are firing and it's good for your health and you feel
32:20
better. You light up, people like you
32:22
more everything. And you know, when you're doing
32:26
your work, you find ways of doing it that are novel.
32:29
That wouldn't occur to you when you're from the past.
32:34
All the mindlessness leads us to solve today's problems with
32:38
yesterday's solutions. And today is different.
32:41
Yep, and we can get out of those stressful times when our when
32:46
our bodies are not as connected and not unified in our ways.
32:50
That could serve us, right? So, like, you know, there's no
32:54
time now for me to share all of the stories in the book, but
32:59
there is so many things that I would love people to know.
33:03
We have, you know, placebos are perhaps our strongest
33:06
medication. You can't give yourself a
33:09
placebo because you know, it's nothing.
33:11
So it's not going to work. But there is something bizarre
33:14
that we have to get a doctor to give us nothing in a pill.
33:19
It's just a sugar pill for us to then heal.
33:22
But if the pill isn't healing us, who's healing us?
33:24
We're healing ourselves. And so in the book, I outline
33:31
procedure treatment that we've studied across many chronic
33:34
illnesses called attention to symptom variability, which is
33:38
just a fancy way of saying be mindful, that turns out to be
33:42
very effective. We've done it with people who
33:44
have Ms., arthritis, chronic pain, Parkinson's, lots of
33:50
biggies. And it it seems to work.
33:54
So and and all of this is not arguing that we shouldn't go see
33:58
the doctor. But I think that, you know,
34:01
sometimes you can't get there right away and that there are
34:04
many things we can do before we go see the doctor.
34:08
And some of these things may make that trip unnecessary.
34:13
The bottom line is that we have enormous control over our health
34:19
and our well-being, and it's time that people woke up.
34:25
You know, mindlessness, in a sense, is being sealed in an
34:28
unlived life, and it's time to break the seal.
34:33
That's powerful. And your book is the way
34:36
through. I would say yeah, where you can
34:39
read this and learn about all the great work you've done over
34:42
45 years. Anecdote, stories and data and
34:46
knowledge so that you can get off of the autopilot and really
34:50
shift in that in that way that's needed.
34:52
So for you, as we wrap up here, you've mentioned some great,
34:57
some great work already. What would you say if I, you
34:59
know, if I didn't know anything about mindfulness other than I
35:03
really know I should learn more and I get your book.
35:06
What can change in my life? What would you say are the
35:09
things that I could walk out of there after reading that?
35:12
Everything. Everything.
35:14
Actually everything. Yeah, no, no.
35:16
I mean people, you know, emotions.
35:18
People think you made me angry. Nobody makes you angry, right?
35:24
You know that all that we experience depends on the way we
35:28
frame things, and the more mindful you are, the the more
35:31
frames you have available to you.
35:34
There's a lot in there about decision making that's great
35:36
fun. Let me just give people the
35:39
bottom line and they can read it and figure it out.
35:43
The way most people are making decisions now is perfectly fine,
35:46
but they don't realize it. They think they should be doing
35:49
cost benefit analysis, which doesn't make sense because every
35:54
cost is a benefit. Every benefit is potentially the
35:56
cost. It adds up to 0.
35:58
So rather than waste your time trying to make the right
36:03
decision, I think time would be better spent by just choosing
36:09
anything and then making the decision, right?
36:14
So just going with it and going, yes, you could flip a coin, you
36:18
could take the first alternative.
36:19
It doesn't matter because prediction is an illusion and
36:23
decision making relies on being able to predict, right.
36:26
You give yourself the outcomes and you're trying to predict if
36:30
I choose this, what will happen if I choose that and we can't
36:33
predict. We can post it.
36:35
We can look at something after the fact and say, yeah, you
36:39
know, I knew that was going to happen.
36:42
But going forward, we live our lives going forward and going
36:44
forward. You know, anything could happen.
36:47
We could finish this conversation.
36:49
My dog could start screaming, right.
36:51
So I have to quickly not say goodbye and run to the dog.
36:54
I can lose the cable connection, Internet connection.
36:58
I could have a heart attack. We won't go there.
37:01
How about this? I could get really hungry and
37:03
feel like, let's go to, you know, there's no way of knowing.
37:07
And that should be freeing to people once they realize that
37:12
whatever occurs, they can see in such a way as to be positive no
37:19
matter what, you know? So I'm giving an example of
37:23
decision making very quick, and I'm already OK.
37:28
If I say to you, do you want to meet my friend?
37:31
She's very impulsive. You'd say, no, Why would I want
37:34
to meet her? If I said to you, do you want to
37:37
meet my friend? She's very spontaneous.
37:39
Yeah. Well, spontaneous and impulsive
37:42
of the same thing. So what does that mean?
37:44
Do I want to meet her? Yes or no?
37:46
Well, there's no decision to be made.
37:48
You can't add up things. If you say for whatever you're
37:52
looking at, how is it good? How is it bad?
37:55
You recognize. But what ends up happening is
37:59
that we make the decisions that we make work for us, not because
38:04
of some strange cost benefit analysis or other process we
38:08
went through. I'm almost sorry, Rachel, that I
38:10
got into this because it's so it's so important to me and
38:14
there's no time to really make it clear.
38:17
But the idea of not having to waste your time making
38:21
decisions, you know, you can never know that the decision you
38:26
made was right or wrong, Right. Should I go to Harvard or Yale?
38:29
So you go to Harvard. You don't like it.
38:30
Oh, I should have gone to Yale, but Yale might have been worse,
38:34
might have been better, You know?
38:35
And the point is that while you're at Harvard, Yale, or
38:39
Bronx Community College and it makes no difference, there's
38:42
always a way to make what we're doing interesting and exciting
38:47
and approach it mindfully. I think that's a great way to
38:50
just put this all together where we can know and trust our own
38:56
decisions. Know that it's just whatever is
38:59
it is and it's not a time to be in the analysis process of all
39:04
the data, right. And not to be stressed by all of
39:07
this. You know that whatever you're
39:11
doing, it's not the wrong way of doing this unless it's not
39:15
working for you. Then change it and everything
39:18
again can be changed. So, I mean, you know, we have
39:22
data where we're improving people's eyesight and I told you
39:25
the, you know, in their late 80s and 90s and, you know, their
39:29
vision improves all sorts of things that we seem almost,
39:36
well, hard to believe except we have so many studies.
39:38
So I hope people will get the book, The Mindful Body and enjoy
39:44
it and take it seriously. And so then my hope is that the
39:50
whole world is going to become even more mindful and that'll
39:54
make it less frustrating for everybody else.
39:56
Yes. Exactly.
39:58
And we can all focus on ourselves to understand
40:01
ourselves better, to learn from ourselves, which can help.
40:04
Everything was we move out into the world.
40:06
So your book is profound. Thank you for bringing it to the
40:09
world, sharing it with us today. And I do think, yeah, maybe,
40:13
like, people can change their lives profoundly in every way.
40:16
Like you say, just. With and easily.
40:18
That's the point. And you don't have to sit for 20
40:23
minutes twice a day with your eyes closed, which is a fine
40:26
practice to achieve these changes.
40:30
As soon as you understand the changes that can easily be made
40:35
it it will just unfold. Yes, and I can't can't express
40:40
enough to go out and get this book if you haven't gotten it
40:43
yet, The Mindful Body, Ellen Dr. Ellen Langer.
40:45
Thank you for being on the podcast today.
40:48
Where can we find more out about you?
40:50
Where can we buy the book? How does that work?
40:52
I think that it we can buy the book.
40:54
Any place books are sold, you go to Amazon Random House.
40:57
My website which is Ellen lanyard.com or you just put my
41:01
name in Google and too much information will come up.
41:04
OK, OK. Thank you so much Ellen.
41:07
I so appreciate. You thank you for having me,
41:08
Rachel. It's wonderful to see you again.