James' World 2

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Time heals all wounds, as the saying goes. But any medical professional can tell you that the hours required for recovery after an injury can vary widely. A person’s age, lifestyle, and level of social support, for example, are all known influences on how quickly their body heals.

Their thoughts can play a remarkably powerful role as well. In a recent experiment, we tested whether expectations about the time it takes to heal can affect how long it actually takes to recover. We found that people’s perception of the passage of time influenced how quickly their wounds healed. The work is just the latest in a larger collection of evidence—documented in a new book written by one of us (Langer), The Mindful Body—that underscores the unity of mind and body, an idea with profound implications for health and well-being.

For the past 45 years, members of the Langer Lab have studied the ways in which the mind shapes the physiology of the body, or what our lab refers to as mind-body unity. The basic idea is simple: when people conceive of the mind and the body as a single entity rather than separable units, they can see how the mind has enormous control over health and well-being. Wherever we put our mind, so too will be our body.

The first test of this concept was the counterclockwise experiment, which one of us (Langer) designed and ran in 1979. In that study, elderly men lived in a retreat that was retrofitted to appear as if it had existed 20 years earlier and had vintage furniture, appliances, and magazines. We asked the men to live as their younger self. They discussed past events in the present tense as if they were currently unfolding. The results were astonishing. Without any medical intervention, their hearing, vision, memory, and strength improved. They also were perceived to look noticeably younger in photographs by the end of the week.

Since that time, the Langer Lab has found further confirmation of mind-body unity. We have discovered that expecting fatigue can cause people to feel more tired, and that thinking you will catch a cold is associated with an increased likelihood of doing so. In another study, people who anticipated certain benefits such as weight loss from daily exercise did see those benefits, even as other people doing the same activities without those expectations saw no such changes.

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