Living in the
present moment
Noticing New Things
Mindfullness vs Mindlessness (automatic pilot)
Mindlessness : an inactive state of mind characterised by reliance on distinctions, categories drawn in the past:
-
The past over determines the present
-
trapped in a single perspective
-
insensitive to context
-
rule & routine goverend
-
Typically in error but rarely in doubt
​
Mindfulness : an active state of mind characterised by novel distinction - drawing the results in
-
being situated in the present
-
sensitive to context and perspective
-
rule and routine guided
-
phenomenological experience of engagement (noticing novelty reveals uncertainty)
Mindful health is not about how we should eat, exercise, or follow medical recommendations, nor is it about abandoning these things. It is not about New Age medicine nor traditional understanding of illness. It is about the need to free ourselves from constricting mindsets and the limits they place on our health and well being, and to appreciate the importance of becoming the gaurdians of our own health.
Dr Ellen J. Langer
​PhD Social & Clinical Psychology
If we put the mindand the body back together so that we are just one person again, then wherever we put the mind, we would also put the body. If the mind is in a truly healthy place, the body would be as well - and so we could change our physical health by changing our minds.
Dr Ellen J. Langer
PhD Social & Clinical Psychology
Dr Ellen Langer shows us the mind-body connection, or rather, that they are actually, one.
The question, 'are we really here?'. You can't be happy if you're not here in this moment.
But you can be more; healthy, creative, skillful, intelligent, less predudice. Have an increase in; memory, confidence, and leadership, and also have a decrease in; burnout / accidents / stress / addictions, just through simply being mindful. What's that?
​
Everyone is saying it - "be in the present", "live in the moment", "where you are, be there".
It's so simple that it defies belief. We just need to NOTICE NEW THINGS - putting you in the present.
This is the essence of engagement - you become engaged instead of routinely glossing over every experience.
Roles and routines can guide what we do but should not govern what you do where the past overdetermines the present. The more we see something, the more we realise how much we didn't know about it before, The thing is, we'll never know something fully. Novelty reveals uncertainty. The proof of this is that we are frequently in error when mindless, and at the same time being rarely in doubt.
​
Being sensitive to context and perspective opens up new possibilities which free ourselves from constricting beliefs.
​
Research give us probabilities from a certain perspective which are passed on as absolutes through journals and the media.
​
Dr Langer continues to illustrate these phenomena through various incredible experiments done with groups of people over the years showing how a simple shift in persepctive literally changes how we age and if we get sick. Their results should be front page news and will surely change the way we see our lives going forward! Watch the presentation.
Dr. Ellen Langer, Ph.D., is a social psychologist and the first female professor to gain tenure in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. She is the author of eleven books and more than two hundred research articles written for general and academic readers on mindfulness for over 35 years.
co-operating with life & opening up creativity
Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life - and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
​
Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship
Thinking and consciousness are not synonymous. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.
​
Eckhart Tolle
