Professor Ellen Langer once apologized when she bumped into a mannequin, the kind of automatic, mindless response she says robs us of the benefits of being mindfully engaged in day-to-day existence.Langer, the first woman to be tenured in Harvard’s Psychology Department, has spent decades ...

In her research, she explicitly mentions mindlessness in opposition to mindfulness.

Langer, the first woman to be tenured in Harvard’s Psychology Department, has spent decades studying both mindless behavior and its opposite, making her the “mother of mindfulness” to many. She spoke to Alvin Powell from the Harvard Gazette about the power of psychology, the problem with absolutes, and more.
Her research supplies evidence that most of us are “not there” much of the time. When we are mindless, we are not able to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, we are not able to avert danger not yet arisen, we are not there, and we are oblivious to not being there.
 
Her research found that most of what people believe, is what they’ve been taught and read about, they’ve learned mindlessly, they’ve learned as absolute fact. And,  because everything is always changing and the context is changing, absolutes need to be questioned. And she questioned them. '...You say something “has to be” and my first — almost mindless — knee-jerk reaction is, well, “Why?” And, “How might it be other?”...'

​​news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/10/ellen-langer-talks-mindfulness-health/

The terms adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress seem to be everywhere right now, but what are they exactly and how are they related? Clear up the confusion in this new, easily shareable resource that includes a helpful infographic and answers to the most frequently asked questions (FAQs). Most importantly, we've included information about how to help mitigate the effects of ACEs and toxic stress, whether you've experienced them yourself or want to help others.

developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/aces-and-toxic-stress-frequently-asked-questions/
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Statement by Center Director Jack P. Shonkoff, M.D. on Separation of Families
developingchild.harvard.edu/about/press/shonkoff-statement-separating-families/
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University

Stress is a feeling we all experience when we are challenged or overwhelmed.
​But more than just an emotion stress is a harrowed physical response that travels throughout your entire body.  

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Wisława Szymborska  (2 July 1923 – 1 February  2012)  was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996 - “for poetry that with ironic precision allows the historical and biological context to come to light in fragments of human reality,” the Nobel commission  called her “the Mozart of poetry” — but, wary of robbing her poetry of its remarkable dimension, added that it also emanates “something of the fury of Beethoven.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTwrTtqZC1s
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Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold Dir. Griffin Dunne, USA, 2017, 92m World Premiere
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Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor, and grounded in the illuminating presence and words of Didion herself. This is most certainly a film about loss—the loss of a solid American center, the personal losses of a husband and a child—but Didion describes everything she sees and experiences so attentively, so fully, and so bravely that she transforms the very worst of life into occasions for understanding. A Netflix Original presently showing at Curzon Bloomsbury.

​“Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” – will be featured at the New York Film Festival and is a Netflix Original, premiering on October 27, 2017.

"It is a tremendous honor to have the opportunity to convey the life and work of my aunt, and literary icon, Joan Didion," said director Griffin Dunne. "This documentary is a true labor of love and to partner with Netflix, who will help bring this to a global audience, is more than I could have hoped for when I started on this over 5 years ago. And to world premiere at NYFF, is just the icing on the cake."