Is there a split between mind and body, and if so, which is it better to have?

Woody Allen has some good lines - and I like this wry observation questioning the split between mind and body.

In her book "Mindfulness" the Harvard professor of psychology warns about the dangers of 'dualism', the notion that mind and body are separate.  One example she cites is of a patient in a psychiatric hospital who lived on what was affectionately known as the 'hopeless ward'. Renovations forced the patient to be moved to another ward where patients typically did better and returned to the community.The patient got better.  Once the renovations were completed, the patient was returned to the old 'hopeless ward' - and died immediately afterwards from no apparent physical cause.

A fascinating study documents how patients under hypnosis were able to rid themselves of warts through thought alone; to reinforce the power of thinking, a further study demonstrated how the majority of patients instructed under hypnosis to get rid the warts on one side of their body succeeded in doing so!

Langer presents a compelling case to

• exchange unhealthy mindsets for healthy ones ("this cancer will kill me" exchanged with "my resourceful body will draw on my considerable resources of my immune system and good cells will kill the cancerous ones"), and,
• increasing a generally mindful state (a dramatic experiment demonstrates the power of mindfulness.  70+ year olds who participated in an experiment to live as they had 20 years earlier (with the mindset of 50+ year olds) showed significant improvements mentally and physically: after the experiment they were judged (independently) to look 3 years younger, their resting heart rate and blood pressure decreased, their hand strength improved, and their cognitive functions scored higher.  The conclusion: our mindsets can limit us or can liberate us.  The choice is for us to make.

Food for thought.