There are many mysteries in the world, but perhaps one of the greatest is that of how the human mind and body interact. This week in our study of Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer we are discussing the powerful impact of mindsets on health.
The effects of attitude on various health issues have been well documented for a number of years. Still, cognitive techniques have been given little prominence in the medical arena in our culture. If the way I think can influence my health, why don’t I hear more about this in my doctor’s office?
One reason, Langer asserts, is society’s tendency towards dualism.
Dualism: A Dangerous Mindset
Though it hasn't always been this way, Langer argues that in recent years, a rigid view of mind as separate from body has serious consequences.
One such consequence is what she calls psychological death. She cites her earlier study that showed that patients who were moved to the ward labeled “hopeless” were more likely to die than those on other wards. She also mentions “failure to thrive”—the syndrome that occurs when infants are given adequate physical care but not enough touch and affection. These conditions suggest a deeper interaction between our health and mental processes.
Another form of dualism is making a distinction between thoughts and feelings. Traditionally, cognition is seen as producing emotions. Langer argues that, instead of separating the two, they should be seen as one total simultaneous reaction, citing studies that indicate thoughts and feelings seem to occur in no predictable order. She points out that emotions are often based on premature cognitive commitments. Once again, Langer points out the power of context.
Contexts are learned. Thus most of what provokes emotion is learned. And these emotional contexts are generally learned in a single-minded way…Without looking closely and noticing that the same stimulus in different contexts is a different stimulus, we become victims of the associations we ourselves constructed…
By recognizing the unique relationship between our mind and body we open up vast potential in treatment approaches.
The Body in Context
When we open our minds to the interaction of mind and body, we begin to see how important context is in understanding health and well-being.
…each outside influence [on our health] is mediated by context. The response of our bodies does not reflect a one-to-one correspondence to stimuli in the external world because there is no one-to-one correspondence between the external world and how we perceive it…Our perceptions and interpretations influence the way our bodies respond.When the “mind” is in a context, the “body” is necessarily also in that context. To achieve a different physiological state, sometime what we need to do is to place the mind in another context.
Langer cites the following examples of the power of context:
Subjects who chose to fast for a prolonged time for personal reasons tended to be less hungry than subjects who fasted for extrinsic reasons.
Pain is influenced by the degree we focus on it and how we interpret it. Subjects who were able to reinterpret a painful stimulus required less pain medication.
The perception of context as strange affects mortality. A hospital study of patients who had suffered severe heart attacks found that sudden death increased when unfamiliar staff took care of them.
Studies show that context can improve vision and affect our body’s immune system.
There is also extensive discussion on how context affects addictions and addictions recovery in this chapter.
These studies suggest that physiological illnesses may be impacted by individual control than previously thought. Langer concludes:
Even when the course of a disease may appear to progress inexorably, our reactions to it can be mindful or mindless and change its impact on us…
The Active Placebo: Enlisting the Mind
No one knows why placebos work in many cases. Langer suggests that placebos, like other methods of self-healing, are a device for changing mindsets, enabling us to move from and unhealthy to a healthy context…
Another such practice that intentionally seeks to change a mindset is hypnosis.
Langer tells us of a study on wart treatment where a group of subjects under hypnosis was given a suggestion to be rid of warts. A control group was not given these instructions. Nine out of fourteen in the experimental group successfully got rid of the warts. None in the control group were rid of any warts.xIn another experiment using this technique, subjects were even able to isolate warts on one side of their body!
Since reading this I’ve been using self-hypnosis to suggest to my body to get rid of belly fat. My husband tells me that this is not going to work but I figure it’s worth a shot. So far I haven’t noticed any difference, but I’ll keep you posted.
Thinking about our health in a mindful way can make a significant difference in overall wellness.
There are many other alternative healing methods than those described here. The point is simply to show the similarity between these methods and the definitions of mindfulness described earlier. Whenever we try to heal ourselves, and not abdicate this responsibility completely to doctors, each step is mindful. For example, we question destructive categories of disease (such as the image of cancer as a death sentence). We welcome new information, whether from our bodies or from books. We look at our illness from more than a single perspective (the medical one). We work on changing contexts, whether it is a stressful workplace or a depressing rather than a positive view of the hospital. Finally, the attempt to stay healthy rather than to be “made well” necessarily involves us with process rather than outcome.
What fun it has been journeying through this book together. As we bring this study to a close, I am reminded of Ellen J. Langer’s words in the introduction.
Many who have read the manuscript…have found, as I have, that thinking about mindfulness and mindlessness has altered their views of the world…
I hope you have found this to be true and have felt a positive transformation in your thinking, as I have. We’ll be starting another book club after the holidays. Keep your eye out for an announcement about the next book.
No comments:
Post a Comment