Harvard’s “Mother of Mindfulness” on the Mind-Body Connection

Fact of the matter is nobody knows. You can't know, because everything is changing. Hey, everyone, it's Rosie here. Welcome back to Radio Headspace. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who spent decades studying the mind-body connection. It's an incredibly fascinating theory that thoughts don't just influence your body. They are your body. And trust me, I had many questions and she answered all of them. We talk about why healing isn't just physical, how shifting your perspective can lead to real change in your mind and body, and why embracing uncertainty might be one of the healthiest things you can do. This was a very eye-opening conversation for me, and I hope you enjoy it. So one of the things that I wanted to discuss with you today, you've said that changing your perspective is teachable, right? But being uncomfortable with uncertainty is definitely easier said than done. Yeah. So how do you encourage people to follow this idea of like questioning everything? Okay, well, first of all, people wanna be happy. And if you ask yourself, "Can a robot be happy?" The question is silly, right? Now, when we are being mindless, we're no different from robots. So if we seek happiness, health, satisfaction, all of the good things, we have no choice but to be mindful. And when you're mindful, you're aware that everything is always changing. Everything looks different from different perspectives. So we can't know. Now, the reason people are so uncomfortable with uncertainty is because they've been taught that they can know. And so if you're talking to somebody and you think you're supposed to know and you think they think you're supposed to know, then you're scared and stressed and wanna avoid those situations. But the fact of the matter is nobody knows. You can't know because everything is changing. I try to teach people this by starting with a very simple thing. And I've done so many of these podcasts. There are some people who are gonna know the answer, but if they know the answer now and they think they know, they're as mindless as if they didn't know, right? The one thing everybody thinks they know is how much is one plus one. So, Rosie, how much is one plus one? Well- Of course, because I'm asking and you were afraid to be wrong. Yeah, I would say two. Yeah, most people would say two. And if you're using a base 10 number system, one plus one is two. But if you're using a base two number system, one plus one is written as 10. Who cares about number systems? Most people are not interested. If you add one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. If you add one cloud plus one cloud, one plus one is one. If you add one wad of chewing gum plus one wad of chewing gum, one plus one is one. Then it goes on...