Harvard psychology professor Ellen J. Langer‘s latest book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health, focuses on the importance of the mind-body connection. It is far from her first foray into this subject, however. With over 40 years of study in this area, Langer, often regarded as the “mother of mindfulness” as well as the “mother of positive psychology,” has authored several other related books. 

“It is not primarily our physical selves that limit us but rather our mindset about our physical limits,” she stated in her 2009 Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.

In The Mindful Body she expands on the mind-body unity concept. From the publisher: “Whether it is hotel chambermaids who lost weight when they simply came to see that their work constituted exercise, or patients whose wounds healed faster in rooms with accelerated clocks, she shows how influential our thoughts are to the state of our bodies. Her work has likewise proven that discouraging health news can have negative effects. Learning you are prediabetic, for example—even if your blood sugar reading is only a fraction away from ‘normal’—may actually play a part in the development of the disease.”

Kirkus Reviews offers additional info about the latter amazing finding: “…(T)here’s not much difference between A1C counts of 5.7 and 5.8, but one is held to be normal and the other prediabetic. Furthermore, telling someone they are prediabetic often leads to diabetes owing to the way people are inclined to read medical judgments as infallible and fixed.”