![]() In addition to other honors, she has been a guest lecturer in Japan, Malaysia, Germany, Australia, Mexico, Switzerland, and Argentina. Her best selling books include Mindfulness The Power of Mindful Learning On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself Through Mindful Creativity and her most recent book, Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility. Her research has demonstrated that by actively noticing new things-the essence of mindfulness-health, well being, and competence follow. Each of these is examined through the lens of her theory of mindfulness. ![]() ![]() Among other honors, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and three Distinguished Scientist Awards, the World Congress Award, the NYU Alumni Achievement Award, and the Staats award for Unifying Psychology, and has authored eleven books and over 200 research articles on the illusion of control, perceived control, successful aging, decision-making, to name a few of the topics. A hopeful and groundbreaking book by an author who has changed how people all over the world think and feel, Counterclockwise is sure to join Mindfulness as a standard source on new-century science and healing.Įllen Langer, Yale PhD, Harvard Professor of Psychology, artist. Immensely readable and riveting, Counterclockwise offers a transformative and bold new paradigm: the psychology of possibility. Improved vision, younger appearance, weight loss, and increased longevity are just four of the results that Langer has demonstrated. With only subtle shifts in our thinking, in our language, and in our expectations, she tells us, we can begin to change the ingrained behaviors that sap health, optimism, and vitality from our lives. Examining the hidden decisions and vocabulary that shape the medical world (“chronic” versus “acute,” “cure” versus “remission”), the powerful physical effects of placebos, and the intricate but often defeatist ways we define our physical health, Langer challenges the idea that the limits we assume and impose on ourselves are real. We made sure to introduce them to the present-tense nature of their experience, and stressed that they should return as completely as possible in their minds to that earlier time.If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than thirty years, award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now, in Counterclockwise, she presents the answer: Opening our minds to what’s possible, instead of presuming impossibility, can lead to better health–at any age.ĭrawing on landmark work in the field and her own body of colorful and highly original experiments–including the first detailed discussion of her “counterclockwise” study, in which elderly men lived for a week as though it was 1959 and showed dramatic improvements in their hearing, memory, dexterity, appetite, and general well-being–Langer shows that the magic of rejuvenation and ongoing good health lies in being aware of the ways we mindlessly react to social and cultural cues. #4 To turn back the clock, we had to make sure that the participants were convinced that they were in the past. The control group went on a separate retreat a week later, treating them just like the first group, but with their bios written in the past tense. They were to write autobiographies as though it were 1959, and send photos of their younger selves. #3 The experiment was set up so that the participants would live as though 1959 were the present. We chose to use men because we wanted men who were not ill and who would be reasonably able to participate in the activities and discussions we had planned for them. #2 I conducted a study in which people in their late seventies or early eighties would spend a week at a country retreat and talk about the past. For example, we are afraid of rats, and our blood pressure increases when we think about losing a significant other. We see evidence of this connection all around us. Sample Book Insights: #1 The link between the nonmaterial mind and the material body is not well understood. Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |