E180: Ellen Langer: Mindful, Charming, Confident, Humble, Author (Again)

In this episode Garth interviews Ellen Langer from Harvard University in Cambridge, MA.  Early in September, look for the release of Ellen's new book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. Garth and Ellen share a lovely and far-reaching conversation; she has been studying mindfulness for 45 years, with mindfulness being the process of noticing new things.  However, she laments that virtually all of us are mindless almost all of the time!  They discuss her research about how thoughts can lead to living longer and better, sometimes like a placebo effect.  Ellen makes the sharp differentiation between mindfulness and meditation, saying that meditation is not mindful but that the practices are not mutually exclusive.  Garth and Ellen delve into many topics in this interview, so much more than what is mentioned here.