Dr. Ellen Langer

We'd go and have, she would have a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.

Now, I was always on a diet, so I never had it.

Nevertheless, while she was eating, I was eating it with her in my mind.

And I swear to you, Mel.

that when she was finished, I was full.

These things together suggest in each case that here I'm thinking that I'm eating, but I'm not eating, and my body is feeling satisfied.

I think I'm eating this pancreas, and it's chicken, which I love, and then I get sick.

Or my mother, however she did it, where the pancreatic cancer goes away.

You know, it wasn't based on anything the medical world could explain.

So what else is left?

Yes, your mind, people have no idea, I think, in general about what we're capable of.

The power is enormous.

And so the way I encapsulate this to make clear it's our physical well-being as well as our emotional, mental way of being is to question what people mindlessly accept without knowing they're accepting it, which is mind-body dualism.

Nobody knows what it means, but everybody acts.

That's why you're here.

Exactly.

Everybody acts as if this is true.

You have a mind and you have a body, as if these are separate.

All right.

And so if they're separate, you run into the problem of how do they speak to each other?