The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health

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 thoughtprovoking 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 IrrationalCan 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. Awardwinning social psychologist Ellen J. Langers lifes 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 assumptionbusting findings and outlines her bold new theory of mindbody unity, along the way clearly demonstrating how our thoughts and perspectives have the potential to profoundly shape our wellbeing. 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 paradigmshifting book by one of the great psychologists of the twentyfirst 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.