In an experiment done in 1981 at Harvard Ellen Langer took a group of old geezers in their seventies and eighties to an old monastery in New Hampshire and told them to pretend for a week that they were back in the 1950s. To help them live the part, they were given 1950s issues of magazines and the newspapers, a black-and-white TV which showed only the 50s films and the sports events, and a vintage radio, broadcasting only the 50s programs. They had discussions of the events of the time: the launch of the first satellite, the threat from the Soviet Union and the need for bomb shelters.
The results of the experiment astonished everyone:
the men became truly younger in just one week - they were stronger and more flexible. Height, weight, gait, posture, hearing, vision, their performance on intelligence tests had improved. Many gave up their canes and were playing football! Just like in the 1985 movie Cocoon:
Langer came up with the concept of Mindfulness. She explained it as the process of actively noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, and then acting on the new observations. She said, “Men who changed their perspective changed their bodies.”
In another, more recent experiment, “We took a group of 84 hotel workers, who claimed they never exercised, but spent their days cleaning rooms and pushing carts, and told half of them that their work was exercise, like being in a gym,” Langer explained. One month later, the group told that they were exercising showed significant changes - those room attendants lost an average of two pounds each, lowered their blood pressure by 10 points, and reduced their waistlines. In the control group, however, there were no positive changes, in fact, some of them got fatter.
The results of the experiment astonished everyone:
the men became truly younger in just one week - they were stronger and more flexible. Height, weight, gait, posture, hearing, vision, their performance on intelligence tests had improved. Many gave up their canes and were playing football! Just like in the 1985 movie Cocoon:
Langer came up with the concept of Mindfulness. She explained it as the process of actively noticing new things, relinquishing preconceived mindsets, and then acting on the new observations. She said, “Men who changed their perspective changed their bodies.”
In another, more recent experiment, “We took a group of 84 hotel workers, who claimed they never exercised, but spent their days cleaning rooms and pushing carts, and told half of them that their work was exercise, like being in a gym,” Langer explained. One month later, the group told that they were exercising showed significant changes - those room attendants lost an average of two pounds each, lowered their blood pressure by 10 points, and reduced their waistlines. In the control group, however, there were no positive changes, in fact, some of them got fatter.
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