Great observations about life in "The Mindful Body"

It was kind of a strange way for me to learn about a book. I usually ignore emails from Strong Towns, an organization devoted to making cities and towns more livable, but this one featured messages from staff members about what they're finding interesting in books, film, and such.

I saw that a woman spoke highly of Ellen Langer's book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. Since I'm big on mindfulness, and also liked the creative mention of "chronic health," I ordered the book after reading some laudatory reviews on Amazon.

The cover copy says that Langer, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is known worldwide as "the mother of mindfulness" and "the mother of positive psychology." Okay, I'm willing to believe that, though I don't recall hearing of Langer before in connection with mindfulness. 

(Wikipedia says she's a year older than me, being born in 1947, so that lends some credence to those mother of claims.)

Anyway, I've read the first chapters in her book. Langer is an excellent writer with an appealing style. I'm enjoying The Mindful Body more than I thought I would, in large part because Langer starts off by sharing some perspectives on life that I'd call philosophical, if they weren't based on either psychological research or arguments that strike me as persuasive.

Here's some quotes of what I've liking in those early chapters.

Mindfulness. But mindfulness -- as my students and I have shown -- is instead the simple process of actively noticing things, no meditation required. When mindful, we notice things we didn't notice before, and we come to see that we didn't know the things we thought we knew as well as we thought we knew them. Everything become interesting and potentially useful in a new way.

Mind and body. I believe the mind and body comprise a single system, and every change in the human being is essentially simultaneously a change at the level of the mind (that is, a cognitive change) as well as the body (a hormonal, neural, and/or behavioral change). When we open our minds to this idea of mind-body unity, new possibilities for controlling our health become real.

Rules. 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 "right" clothes and ask the "appropriate" questions. When we approach the rules mindfully, however, we realize they are often arbitrary and don't make sense. You don't need to use that brush or obey the rules of perspective. It's your painting. It's your life.

Continuums not sharp distinctions. An athlete earning a medal by a few milliseconds. A patient barely meets the threshold for a diagnosis. A law student fails the bar exam by one question. Are these people truly substantially different from the medalist, the healthy patient just below the threshold, or the attorney who just barely passes the bar exam?

Everything in the world exists on a continuum, whether in speed, size, virulence, or any other possible descriptor you could think of. Still, we create and mindlessly adopt sharp distinctions, and those distinctions change lives far more dramatically than marginal differences ever do.

Question. When we recognize that rules, labels, and cutoff points are made by people, there is lots of room to question how any situation could be otherwise. We gain a newfound sense of freedom. We expand our possibilities. This is true of our behavior, but also of our health. The key is to question those things we mindlessly accept, to mindfully interrogate all of the descriptions and diagnoses that can hold us back. When we do, we can get better. We can learn to heal ourselves.

Risk-taking. We behave in ways that make sense to us or else we would act differently. When my expectations for success in some pursuit exceeds yours, you see me as a risk-taker. However, if you believed what I did, then you'd probably behave as I did. In other words, risk-taking is really an observer's phenomenon. "Risk-takers" do things that make sense to them, even if the same actions seem inexplicable from someone else's perspective.

Prediction. In this sense, prediction is no different than a guess or a hunch and, as we will see, a decision is also just a prediction or guess... Perhaps we think we can predict because we overlook the many mistaken predictions we make daily. Every embarrassment we suffer is an instance of our mistaken predictions. How often do we push or pull when we should pull or push to open a store door; reach into the silverware drawer for a knife and pull out a fork; unsuccessfully look for the sock in the dryer?

In each of these scenarios we predict that our action will be successful, and we come up short. How many people predicted they'd never get COVID-19? How many of us predict we'll never really lose our strength or our ability to remember? How many of us predict we'll be fine with very little sleep? We predict these things incorrectly all the time. What about our inability to predict the behavior of others? How often have we waited for a phone call that never came, or came a day later than predicted?

Control. In short, I believe that the illusion of control is not always an illusion. While it might lead people to choose seemingly worse gambles in the lab, it can also help us cope with risk and uncertainty in real life. In this sense the so-called illusion is often a necessary psychological strategy. Control is motivating, helping us handle all sorts of unpleasant and difficult situations. After all, if you believe you have no control, then you may become helpless. 

Mindful optimism. I propose we adopt an attitude of mindful optimism. This doesn't mean we should bury our heads in the sand with a certainty that all will be fine. Rather, it involves recognizing that uncertainty is not new. Neither is risk. Everything has always been uncertain, we were just oblivious to it.

We can worry or relax, and things will turn out good or bad. If we worry and everything turns out fine, we've stressed ourselves unnecessarily. If we worry and things turn out to be bad, we're usually no more prepared for it than if we didn't worry. If we relax and things turn out bad, we'll be stronger to deal with it, and if it all turns out to be fine, we can continue behaving adaptively.

Comments

[um]

Funny what the lay has tp say about science, conducting experiments and above all about ...FACTS

Given her chronic moving around she must consume very strong foffee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XQUJR4uIGM

[sant64]

Just do Zazen.
Zazen sets the mind to be mindful, centered.

Just reading stuff about mindfulness won't lead to much. One has to actually sit every day for the mind to get purchase on mindful awareness. Sitting isn't some empty ritual. Every Zen Master since before Dogen put paramount importance on sitting. And for a reason.

Guess what, sitting isn't fun. At the outset, my mind rebels at sitting, but the more the minutes pass, my outlook changes. Zen isn't like TM. TM is far easier. But while TM does deliver on stress reduction, the end result isn't the same as what one gets from Zazen. Integrated mindfulness.

If integrated mindfulness is the goal, then the method to get it is like what someone once told me about what car wax to buy. His advice: "The only one that works is the one that hurts."

[um]

@ 777

How many people have you come across from the Dutch community or otherwise, that have had the same tale to tell as you.

I do not know of any other than you

Why are you the exclusion to what seems to be the rule.

[um]

@ 777

You are like a man in the empty dessert with a stand, with speakers loudly promoting cool soft drinks.

[um]

@777

IF there is a god
and
IF he made it simple
he did not make it simple for 99,999%, however much they do simran.

You experience what you experience, that is allright, but given what you write here over the years ..it is alone for you

Most people, satsangis include, can WRITE the word "love" have an intellectual understanding of it but have no experience.

So they in fact have no idea what you are talking about.