Chopra on mind body

When East Meets West: A Chat With Chopra On Integration Of Mind, Body
By Susan Campbell, The Hartford Courant, Conn.
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News
623 words
11 September 2007
The Hartford Courant (MCT)
English
Distributed by McClatchy - Tribune Information Services.

Sep. 11--Deepak Chopra is coming to Hartford tonight.

Chopra is an internationally known author and medical doctor whose explorations of the connection between the mind and body in health and medicine have been chronicled in 50 books, including his most recent, a novel, "Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment" (HarperOne, $24.95).

Chopra, co-founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing based in Carlsbad, Calif., was born in New Delhi and educated in India and the United States. He became interested in integrating Eastern and Western health practice in the '80s in Boston, where he ran an endocrinology practice. He has since expanded his message to world peace, among other topics.

His presentation at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, scheduled for three hours, does not include a question-and-answer period. We asked him questions in advance:

Q: Are there messages and ideas based in Eastern thought that are difficult to translate into Western thought?

A: I think one of the things that people in the West are very concerned about and don't really get is the idea of the absence of a separate self. They are very insecure that they're not individual souls. I am very careful when I talk about that. Everybody so identifies with their personality, their ego-self. To be told there's no such thing -- that it's a socially induced hallucination -- they think they're going to lose all identity. You expand your identity, and it's very exhilarating. There's a light-heartedness.

Q: Is this realization something that happens, and you can mark it as an event, or does it have to keep happening again and again?

A: It's both. It's like a fruit that takes a long time to ripen, and it falls, certainly.

Q: Did you expect the kind of renown you've achieved?

A: Not really. I was just enjoying my explorations into consciousness, and I thought other people would enjoy what I'm enjoying. I decided to share it, and it seems like it got a great response. I still am surprised.

Q: Do you still practice medicine?

A: I do. At the center I have a group of physicians who work with me and present me patients. We do a joint conference, and now that I have a radio show in New York once a week [Wellness Radio airs Saturdays at 10 a.m. on Sirius], I actually present all the latest advances in medicine, consciousness, the role of the mind and the body, what's the latest information on how genes express themselves, how the environment affects us. I keep up with the literature, and I teach once a year at Harvard Medical School.

Q: Do you think the average general practitioner learns about mind-body connections in medical school?

A: People are not learning much in med school about this. What people don't understand is that every patient comes to their GP or their physician with a story. If you don't listen to their story, you are never going to get to the root of the problem. Nobody listens to the story. What's happening in the story is a metaphor for what's happening in their consciousness.