Let's learn about... mindfulness
Because, your thoughts and beliefs affect your health. For better or worse.
According to award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer, mindfulness is the simple process of actively noticing things. As she puts it in her 2023 book, The Mindful Body: Thinking our Way to Lasting Health, “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.” She also understands mindfulness as a condition of the body by, saying, “I believe our psychology may be the most important determinant of our health.” By this she means not just the mind/body connection as commonly understood, but that “every change in the human being is simultaneously a change at the level of the mind (that is a cognitive change) as well as the body (a hormonal, neural, and/or behavioural change). When we open our minds to this idea of mind-body unity, new possibilities for controlling our health become real.”
It’s an interesting concept. But what does she really mean? That I can think myself well? Or ill? I’m not sure I completely believe that, but let’s explore… I’m also cross referencing another fascinating book that I recently read called The Biology of Belief, essentially the science of how our thoughts control our life, written in 2005 by cell biologist Bruce H Lipton.
What is mind-body unity
Many research studies show that our thoughts initiate real physiological processes, think tears when we experience something as sad as the most obvious example, or the knots in our stomach if we feel scared. But here’s the thing… the overwhelming evidence is that it happens on an even deeper level too. Langer cites in her book many interesting examples of immune responses beginning in our brain; and how positive expectations can boost antibacterial and anti-tumour immunity. Research has even shown that when pleasure centres in the brain are stimulated, tumour growth slows.