![]() He started integrating Ayurveda-a 5,000-year-old system of natural healing that has its origins in India’s Vedic culture-with Western medicine.Īyurveda is based on the belief that good health is dependent upon the balanced and dynamic integration between our environment, body, mind and spirit. They-along with Hindu spiritual luminaries Ramana Maharshi and Swami Vivekananda-had profound effects on Chopra, and inspired him to embark on a more comprehensive approach not only to health and wellness, but also to life in general.Ĭhopra began practicing TM (he still meditates) and in 1985 he resigned from his position at NEMH to become the medical director of the Maharishi Ayur-Veda Health Center in Lancaster, Massachusetts. He then began delving into the works of Jiddu Krishnamurti, a prominent East Indian philosopher, and met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a spiritual teacher best known for developing Transcendental Meditation (TM). But that describes his lifestyle before his consciousness gradually began shifting in the 1980s. His work covers a wide spectrum, including the hospitality and meetings industry as he helps to create more healthy environments in hotel rooms and meeting spaces.Ĭhopra is such a prominent health advocate that it’s hard to visualize him smoking up to a pack of cigarettes a day, consistently drinking and constantly stressed. He has retained a respect for Western medicine and science in general while integrating it with Asian approaches in his vast amount of work-which includes more than 80 books (translated into 43 languages), a busy lecture schedule, frequent appearances on television and substantial involvement with several organizations and institutions. He became a wealthy, full-fledged celebrity and a close friend of Winfrey, Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor, among others. Chopra then began serving as chief of staff, at the age of 31, at New England Memorial Hospital (NEMH, later known as Boston Regional Medical Center) before starting a private practice in endocrinology in Boston.Ĭhopra’s popularity grew by leaps and bounds after the publication in 1993 of his Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, which sold more than 1 million hardcover copies alone. He subsequently passed the American Medical Association exam and went on to teach at the Tufts University, Boston University and Harvard University medical schools. ![]() Originally an aspiring writer who loved the work of Samuel Coleridge, William Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Mark Twain and other English literary giants, Chopra graduated as a physician from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences in 1969 with training in internal medicine and endocrinology. Time magazine got it partly right when it referred to Chopra as the “poet-prophet of alternative medicine.” His work actually falls much more into the realm of integrated, rather than alternative, medicine. This may appear to be in stark contrast to Chopra’s more intellectual presentations of his views, but it is merely a more poetic expression of his idea that we all are part of an interconnected universe that in its primordial state is balanced and harmonious.Īfter leading a meditation, Deepak Chopra gathers with youth from Peace is a Lifestyle, a Chopra Foundation initiative that incorporates peace practices and conscious choice-making practices to help develop teens and young adults into peer leaders for a more peaceful, just, sustainable, happier and healthy world. “Life springs from play, light, freedom and joy.” ![]() “It instructs us that life isn’t compelled by responsibility, laws and determinism,” he writes. One of the mantras in the “21-Day Meditation Transformation Trilogy” that he created with Oprah Winfrey focuses on the Hindu concept of lila, the playfulness of life, underlying all creation. It seems perfectly appropriate that his first name means “light” in Hindi. His work is as much poetry as it is science, as simple as it is complex, as playful as it is serious.Ĭhopra, 67, has described himself as “playful” and “carefree,” and despite the profound nature of his work, during his illuminating lectures and conversations, he projects a lightness of being, a calming presence. Deepak Chopra as a progressive, serious intellectual, but this is far too limiting. ![]() He stands serenely in front of his audiences, eloquently delivering groundbreaking talks that integrate modern science and traditional wisdom. ![]()
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