Mindscape 279 | Ellen Langer on Mindfulness and the Body

[@scrubjay93]

Mindfulness as employed in Dialectical Behavior Therapy is currently a life-saver for me in terms of surviving chronic and crippling anxiety and depression. I am skeptical of claims that it can change our physical bodies, but it certainly DOES HELP with re-wiring my brain away from suicidal ideation and panic and towards being an effective and practical person who can deal with the overwhelming stress that has been in my life the last ten years. Thank you Sean for another interesting guest.

[@cameupstarvin7351]

The reason you're depressed and anxious is that you're pretentious and annoying, and other people don't tolerate such fools.

[@nidritaa.5727]

BEST wishes to you my friend. 🙏🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀

[@bebex]

I get what she's saying but she never really got to the bottom of what's actually being measured when Sean asked. Makes me suspicious of "mindfulness".

[@Michael-nt1me]

the living sense, science, and salience of body mind self will duty care personal moralisations populational legalities professional ethics ego-centric ethno-centric eugeno-centric ............... world-centric cosmo-centric

[@ryanrutledge922]

Positive health results are the measure .

[@DudokX]

Yeah this was very unsatisfying. It felt like we looked at 10 different things and jumped between them before we ever could go deeper. If I did not already have some awareness of similar research I would not be able to really trust anything she was saying

[@fightingsloth]

She didn't seem to be avoiding questions from Sean on my first listen. Sean clearly respects her, I doubt he would stand for someone dodging details. That's enough verification isn't it?

[@PedroTricking]

​@@fightingsloth absolutely not at all whatsoever in the least, do you watch Sean's podcast? he likes to pushback but he strongly avoids being overbearing or seeeming confrontational. the most confrontational you see him get is when the guest clearly welcomes it.

[@wizzelhoart]

How does she pay attention to ANYTHING when she interrupts people that constantly?

[@jjjccc728]

Very interesting podcast. At first glance I was just going to give it a few minutes. I am doing the whole thing. Her idea that fear of uncertainty limits your awareness connected some dots for me. I have missed out on many opportunities due to fear of making a mistake. On the other hand I have made many mistakes by being afraid of missing out. In both cases my awareness and mindfulness was crippled.

[@robertpawley5715]

I was just thinking about how this help chronic pain and then you mentioned it. I call it a positive attitude versus a negative attitude. I manage my Post Herpetic Neuralgia (site of damaged nerves behind my left ear) very effectively.

[@bendybruce]

Honestly I thought some of the arguments presented here were very silly and the sort of pseudoscience I really don't associate this podcast with. Suggesting that it lacks mindfulness to assume that one plus 1 equals 2 was pretty painful. Two clouds added together in fact equals the summed volume so the rules of addition hold true despite the semantic sleight of hand used in this argument. There's also a big difference between saying that horses don't eat meat and horses can't eat meat. Feeding a horse predominantly on a meat diet would result in its sickness and death in the same way that feeding humans on a diet of leaves and grass would do the same thing. I just feel if someone is going to use arguments like this then they are doing their own position a great disservice.

[@zsug]

I totally agree with what you say. Painful is the exact feeling for the 1+1 example for being mindful... In my opinion her arguments are poor and sound as pseudoscience. I don't know if the experiments she mentions are scientific, but if so it's still possible that they are being used to support pseudoscientific ideas.

[@bendybruce]

@@zsug Full disclosure I heard her debate on the IAI Podcast which quite frankly often has scientifically spurious guests on it although given the nature of the podcast it's a little more forgivable. Anyway I was appalled with the disingenuous bad faith way in which she debated so I was predisposed to disliking this guest right from the start. I would point out that her position provides safe refuge for scientifically illiterate positions such as anti vaxxers for example. It's mindlessness dressed up as mindfulness in a way to defend the indefensible and I'm not buying it because I've had to suffer dealing with people like this in the past.

[@jjjccc728]

I think the OnePlus one example was good.. jumping to conclusions that you are dealing with base 10 is the type of thing that could undermine our feelings of knowing things. Is what causes to widen our openness to what we think we know which is your point. That can be taken too far as shown by the people who say if I can imagine it and it's not logically contradictory then it's possible it exists. I don't think there's any way to know that other than to demonstrate whatever is imagined exists.

[@jonathanbyrdmusic]

“You’re always hiring people for yesterday, not for tomorrow.” There it is.

[@aaronshure3723]

Business buzzword platitudes 👍🏻

[@aaronshure3723]

What a mushball of smug assertions. Her research sounds methodologically difficult to impossible to replicate. “We told one orchestra to remember and the other to do something different and the audience overwhelmingly preferred the “mindful” orchestra.” Okay so our working definition of mindful is “not remembering”? And our proof is a coin toss with a million confounding factors. You can tell she’s used to talking to a pretty gullible crowd. Sean’s lack of any follow up questions was erm not very mindful was it now? I hope this isn’t a trend where Sean feel peer pressure towards Santa Fe Institute folks

[@denisedavis7422]

This reminds me of the Science of Mind, Religious Science, and New Thought. Positive thinking and affirmations.

[@superb444]

Sadly she doesn’t sound like a scientist at all.

[@lachlanmadden1421]

Great episode Sean, you make quality episodes

[@HGALAXIES]

Very "uncertain"! Very vague! Very "all over the place"! Worse is that she herself doesn't show any improvement as a professor who has studied this and has come up with "clear obvious results"! She was way far from any such achievement. Very contradictory. Sean has to get a hold of her students and check and see what they say and show both by passing or failing her class! That would be interesting.

[@SouthOfDodge]

I think that Sean should--nay--must have Sam Harris on to provide a different perspective and a more coherent (no disrespect to Ms. Langer) explanation to what mindfulness is and its many benefits. I believe this conversation with Ms. Langer, given her style of communication and focus on the body has turned more than a few people off of the topic especially for the more high-minded sciency types (of which I am a part). Perhaps then he can also revisit some aspects of the "mindful body" claims.

[@alejandroa518]

The gest refusing to provide or cite any kind of proof to her "research" makes difficult to trust in what she is saying.

[@doodeemike9366]

Everyone References Ellen’s Work Research Gate Cited by 10700 Ellen Langer's Google Scholar profile indicates that she has over sixty-six thousand citations. Her extensive research and publications have significantly impacted the fields of mindfulness, aging and decision making.

[@gettingyounger]

I absolutely loved this interview. I knew of Ellen Langer's Counter clockwise study and have been totally fascinated with it. It was so interesting to hear her speak about her life and other studies and she is instantly engaging. I'll now be scaling the Internet to discover more from her and check out her book. These kinds of people open eyes and show us what our true potential is. Thank you Sean Carroll for this brilliant podcast

[@ryanrutledge922]

Thank you both and especially Sean for the content . It sincerely turned by bad day around and I am grateful for you .❤ from 🇨🇦

[@stoneman2023]

@11:11 I whole heartedly agree, and funny enough, was introduced to this idea through listening to Eckhart Tolle (not a scientist lol)… if we bring awareness and spacious to our body-state, emotions and thoughts - give space so not to automatically identify with them- our personal lives & the world will be healthier and better- Mindfulness/awareness is a great tool to bring wisdom. IMO much needed to temper trauma & the powerful technological advances (that are so potentially destructive)

[@FreeLevant-b1d]

Were you drinking water? 0:00

[@vtrandal]

Welcome the Wine-Scape podcast?

[@criscris5061]

I didn’t understand the point. Everything is confused

[@wizzelhoart]

She’s right! Mindfulness cured my full blown bird AIDS

[@JerimeBascon]

Time is up now I say less and more!!!

[@rajeevgangal542]

what's up with this 1+1 business nowadays?

[@rhesarozendaal]

If we're charitable, they're warning us that operator overloading is a risky thing to do. In the example "1 + 1 = 2", "plus" has the mathematically standard meaning of addition of numbers. But in the example with clouds or piles of sand, "plus" means "put them in the same place". It's not that "1 + 1" can have different answers, it's that "plus" (and "equals") can have different meanings in different contexts. I'm not convinced that's the gotcha they're trying to play on unsuspecting audiences though.

[@Sal1981]

she uses the ambiguity of what base is used, in base-2 it's 10. But for mundane math the answer is obvious.

[@badtownsound]

@@rhesarozendaal Interesting comment. It sounds to me like you "get" the point - that assuming "1+1" is an operation that is always being applied to integer numbers, as abstractions, in a vacuum, is a mistake that can prevent you from seeing the bigger picture - but you don't agree with it. Which is fair, but I don't see most commenters on this video even grasping that fact in the first place. I'm not sure "remember to stand back sometimes and think about whether the procedure of adding two trivial integers together is the right procedure here, reframing your approach to a problem can actually help you solve it. take your blinkers off" is a gotcha, though.

[@producer2123]

Great conversation!

[@dylanmonahan5909]

I'm not a scientist so I'm mindful of how potentially ignorant the following might sound, but many of the conclusions this guest reaches seem untethered or perhaps even mindless - it seems as if the guest is working backwards from unsubstabtiated personal beliefs and I wonder if her position has become more fanciful as she has gotten older.

[@davegrundgeiger9063]

I love this!

[@gsilcoful]

Wonderful.

[@Michael-nt1me]

Wonderful Vision Logic and Integral Scientific Visioneering Art Idea Logic Reason Science Technology and Visioneering

[@Reza-mx9wm]

Good talk ❤

[@ticcc3]

+1

[@Michael-nt1me]

A Greater Integral Mindscape •Mind-sets •Mind-streams and •Mind-superpositionings Virtual Physical Emotional Conceptual Ascensional ego-centric ethno-centric eugeno-centric ............. world-centric cosmo-centric body mind self will love duty care

[@Michael-nt1me]

begetting/bestowing granting •being •becoming •beholding •belonging

[@zack_120]

One of the best Sean episodes. So true and beneficial, vast amounts of solid real life evidence proves the theme, including mine own 👍

[@alan73638]

@terrencehoward

[@Gardenia926]

You should invite Thây Mãn Tûe from plum village about mindfulness! I would've loved hearing you get nerdy about physics with Thich Nhat Hanh 🥹🥰