Dr. Mark Hyman: Coming up on this week’s episode of the Doctor’s Farmacy.
Deepak Chopra: If your internal dialogue is, I don’t have time, then your biological clock will speed up. You’ll have a faster heart rate, you’ll have low heart rate variability, your platelets will be jittery and your body will be inflamed.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Welcome to the Doctor’s Farmacy. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman, and this is a place for conversations that matter. Now, my conversation today is with Deepak Chopra, who has been an inspiration and friend to me for decades and to millions around the world. And if you’re interested in stepping out of our western paradigm of how we view and experience aging and disease, you’re going to find this to be a fascinating and mind expanding conversation. Now, Deepak is the founder of the Chopra Foundation and Chopra Global, a world renowned pioneer and integrative and personal transformation. He’s a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California San Diego, and he serves as a senior scientist with Gallup organization. He’s the author of more than 90 books, translated into 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. Time Magazine has described Dr. Chopra as one of the top a hundred heroes and icons of the century.
Dr. Mark Hyman: My work and the focus of most of the conversations I have on this podcast center around our physical health. But Deepak and I begin our conversation by talking about the concept of our quantum bodies, or as he explains it, our soul, our spirit body. Now that’s a big concept, one that spiritual and religious traditions have been built on for thousands of years. Through our conversation, Deepak discusses how this concept of our quantum bodies is also based in science or quantum science. To be more exact, busyness is more pervasive than ever, and Deepak shares how the belief of not having enough time affects our physiology. And we explore things like our perception of time and space and how they impact our relationship to our bodies and our health. Now we’re learning more and more about the way we live and how it directly influences our gene expression.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Deepak explains how practices that stimulate our vagus nerve, the longest nerve in our body, promotes physical healing, and he breaks down why disease is actually becoming optional. We also touch on how information changes your metabolism and the daily practice Deepak uses to overcome fear of death and the four intentions he starts his day with and why we are not our brains. Delving into the quantum nature of the body through the lens of quantum physics is complex, and this is a fascinating discussion that scratches the surface of how we can apply this science to create better health at every age. So now let’s dive into my conversation with Deepak Chopra. Welcome back to the Doctor’s Pharmacy podcast, Deepak, it’s so great to have you again.
Deepak Chopra: Thank you, mark.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I’m excited this time to talk to you about one of your, I dunno if it’s your 95th book or 96th book, but it’s up there. I’m very excited about this book that you wrote called Quantum Body, the New Science of Living, a Longer, healthier, more Bottle Life. And we’ve had a lot of conversations lately about longevity, about aging, about how we live, and I think I was sort of reflecting back when I got out of medical school and this book that I wrote called Ageless Mind, timeless Body,
Deepak Chopra: Ageless Body,
Dr. Mark Hyman: Mind, body, timeless Mind, well works either way, like Mind, body, body, mind. And it really kind of catalyzed a lot of my thinking about what needs to change in medicine, how I wanted to shift my career. And I was very inspired by some of the lessons I learned in there about biology and the things that go beyond our even physical body. And I remember one of the stories, and there was about Rosetta, Pennsylvania where this whole group of Italians that had come over from Italy, and then they started eating the American diet, but they weren’t dying at the same rate from heart attacks and other diseases because they had this really tight-knit community, which sort of speaks to something other than our physicality that’s influencing our health. And I just want to start by opening this podcast with a quote from your new book called Quantum Body, which is this, your body isn’t what you think it is or to be more precise. Your real body isn’t what you think. It’s because your real body cannot be seen in the mirror. It doesn’t get sick or grow, it doesn’t fit inside the package of flesh and bones that occupies a few cubic feet in time and space. Your real body is a quantum creation. Now, most of us know about quantum physics. Maybe they read the Dao physics, but what does quantum body mean and what is the difference between your quantum body and your physical body? Let’s just start with the bigger framework.
Deepak Chopra: Well, if you do your research, you’ll see that there’s something called the quantum field, which is the fundamental ground of all existence, and it pervades all of space and time. It’s rounds you, but it’s also in you. So right now, as we speak the quantum field and we use it, we are using it right now to the electromagnetic expression of that quantum field to do this podcast. We use it to send emails or text messages or Instagram or anything. All our technology is based now on quantum technology, if you want to call it.
Dr. Mark Hyman: And the next generation of computing is called quantum computing, right? I mean type of computer.
Deepak Chopra: And also right now, 80% of our economy comes from quantum technologies. Okay, so now what is the quantum field? It’s a mathematical object. You cannot directly see the quantum field, although you can infer its existence through various kinds of experiments. Nobody doubts that the quantum field is the ultimate ground substrate of all existence. And the way you define it is the feel from where virtual particles appear and disappear at the speed of light because that’s the fundamental thing. And somehow these virtual particles end up creating what we call the physical universe. Then there’s another problem in science. So we know that the quantum field is basic. Now, if you go on the internet and these days, it’s easy to check out anything with ai, and you ask the following question, is the quantum field subjective or objective? And you’ll get the answer. Most of the time that it’s objective, we can measure its effects.
Deepak Chopra: But then if you go further and you say, how can you have an object without a subject? Then AI gets confused. And then if you go a little further in your research, you’ll see that actually the pioneers of quantum mechanics, people like Erwin Schrodinger, who wrote the most famous equation ever other than ease equal to mc squared, Schrodinger’s equation describes everything in the universe. And Schrodinger actually said the wave function is which basically determines the appearance of a particle on measurement. So the quantum field doesn’t appear till a measurement is made. And once the measurement is made, there’s something called the uncertainty principle, which means you cannot predict where the particle will appear. Anyway, that’s the math of it. But Schrodinger himself said the wave function, and you can check this out and don’t believe what I’m saying, Schrodinger equated the wave function with ottman. Ottman is in Isha. Ottman is what you call the soul.
Dr. Mark Hyman: And the ahas are the Ayurvedic text of Hindu religion.
Deepak Chopra: So the Bible Shing was a big fan of the open. Now remember, he’s the original inventor of this concept, and that was called the Copenhagen Interpretation, that you cannot actually, there’s no appearance of a physical particle unless there’s an observer to measure the wave function. Now, recently that kind of conjuress up all kinds of things is consciousness fundamental in the universe. And that makes material scientists very uncomfortable right now because most of material sciences based on an atheistic interpretation of the quantum mechanics or quantum field. So right now, even though the pioneers, Copenhagen, max Plank, Warner, Heisenberg, and most famously the Danish physicist, Neils bore, they all believe that consciousness is fundamental to the universe, but the atheistic viewpoint doesn’t. Now, the Copenhagen interpretation is not the most popular. It used to be the most popular. Now, there’s something called the multiverse where the wave functions spontaneously differentiates into every possible outcome.
Deepak Chopra: And that posits that there are infinite universes, and that’s the only way you can get out of consciousness. And if you talk to say people like Sean Carroll, who’s one of the most famous physicists right now, he’s popular in his last book, something deeply Hidden. He popularized the multiverse theory. It’s the most accepted, and there are 35 interpretations of quantum mechanics if you go to Wikipedia. So quantum mechanics by itself is a recipe for making calculations. It posits no philosophical interpretation. As a result, we have 35 different interpretations, and the Copenhagen interpretation is the second most popular. Now, it used to be the most popular, but needless to say, if you go further into your inquiry, you realize that there are a number of physicists now who believe that the field is subjective. That if we trace back every experience, every perception, every sensation, every image, every thought to its source, you’ll end up with the quantum field. And because the quantum field is not in space time, it’s eternal, it’s immortal, and your body is a projection. The body, you and I see when you look or any object that because
Dr. Mark Hyman: We’re atoms, right, we’re atoms. It’s like our particles, right? We’re waves for hell of it.
Deepak Chopra: But what you see is very small fragment of what it really is limited by your perceptual apparatus. So the human visual apparatus can only experience between 300 or 800 nanometers of wavelength. So what I’m seeing right now, you as Mark Hyman is a fragment of what you really are. Now, if I could see you as you really are, I’d see that your body is proportionately as void as intergalactic space. I would see a huge emptiness with a few scattered dots and spots to random electrical discharges. And even those are manifestations of a formless field, which is infinite. So your quantum body is your soul body, your spirit body.
Dr. Mark Hyman: So in terms of the quantum body, then if it’s really physics, then how do we influence it to change the trajectory of our health and wellbeing? Because many of us feel the weight of our bodies, whether it’s pain or illness or suffering or mental health issues. And these feel heavy. But what you’re talking about is a very light expanded view of human health, biology and just sort of the nature of reality. And I think what you’re talking about is really undisputable in terms of the way physics works is sort of well laid out. There’s no doubt about the quantum field. There’s no doubt about this phenomenon that you’re talking about, but most people don’t apply it to the body. And so I think that’s what’s unique about your book is how do we take this insights to be learned from physics and apply it to the
Deepak Chopra: Body? So you purposely wrote the book with a quantum physicist who happenss to be a quantum biologist. Jackinsky, he’s a professor in Canada and also professor in European universities. He’s a quantum biologist. And when I speak about quantum biology, traditional quantum physicists kind of roll up their eyes. There he goes again. So I purposely make sure that my two co-authors, one’s a neuroendocrinologist like me, but he’s interested in quantum metabolism. And the other is jackinsky, a quantum biologist. Here’s the key issue. See, now these days we are all talking of epigenetics and epigenetic modulation, et cetera, et cetera. If you go back to the quantum field experientially, and there are many ways to do it, but let’s take the simplest way, meditation. Okay? Meditation quiets the mind. And at some point, if you stick with meditation long enough, I practice two hours of meditation in the morning, one hour in the evening, and I’ve been doing it for 35 years.
Deepak Chopra: I’m 77 right now, and my biological age is not even half of that, and I have no sickness, zero, and I sleep eight hours. I, I’m in perfect health as far as I can tell, and I get my checkups regularly. So if you go back to the field, which is we transcend space time. There’s no time, there’s no experience, there’s no pain, there’s only pure awareness. And awareness is independent of its expressions, just like the bottom of the ocean is independent of the surface of the waves, the bottom of the ocean is not affected by the fluctuations on the surface of the ocean or a computer screen is not affected by what’s appearing on the program. Pure consciousness is not affected by its manifest expressions, which are sense, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, emotions, imagination, anxiety, stress, but also the opposite. It’s not affected by any positive or negative emotions.
Deepak Chopra: It’s a field of pure silence and there’s no time in it. So while I’m seeing all the aging research signal molecules, vagal stimulation, nobody’s talking about how we consume time. So in the ancient literature it says, time is the consumer, and we are, its food, and we’re times’ food. So the yogis of ancient India, and even the really good yogis don’t talk about the celebrity yogis. They don’t count their life in years. They count their life in number of breaths and they count their life in number of heartbeats. And now we can do that with all the technology, heart rate, variability, et cetera. So my resting heart rate right now is 52, okay? And my heart rate variability can go up to a hundred. And so that’s the key. We have to slow down the experience of time. Now people normally when you talk to people, they say, I don’t have time to meditate.
Deepak Chopra: I don’t have time to do this. If your internal dialogue is I don’t have time, then your biological clock will speed up. You’ll have a faster heart rate, you’ll have low heart rate variability, your platelets will be jittery and your body will be inflamed. And then if you suddenly drop date of heart attack, then you’ve actually fulfilled your internal dialogue. I have no time. So in the quantum field, there’s no time, there’s only eternity. And we have access to it Now, now, not now in imagination, but now as it is, now is not a moment in time. So the fundamental thesis of this book is that your quantum field is immortal. It is timeless. It is also by the way spaceless because if something has no form, it has no boundaries. And if it has no boundaries, it’s infinite. So your real body, your soul body, your spiritual body is actually immortal.
Deepak Chopra: And it kind of fits in with the spiritual traditions that the body experience dies, but the soul experience is eternal. Now, people have many interpretations of that, but the interpretation I have here is the traditional interpretation. Your soul is never born. It never dies. What is born is a series of experiences, a story, and that like for example, the screen that we’re having this computer screen, let’s assume that’s the quantum field, and the program is in time, but even the program is a fluctuation of the screen, the electrons and photons of the screen. Similarly, a physical body is a fluctuation of the quantum body, but as you know, there’s something in science called the heart problem of consciousness. We can’t explain how atoms and molecules and force wheels and electrochemicals produce any experience right now. We both experiencing sound. There’s no sound in your brain, there’s only electrochemistry. We’re experiencing colors. There’s no color in your brain. So where is experience happening? And this is a mind boggling idea, mark. This experience we are having is happening outside of space time. It’s being processed outside of
Dr. Mark Hyman: Space time. Wait, wait, I thought space time was all there is. I mean, isn’t that the
Deepak Chopra: University? No, no. Space. Time is emergent. Space time is emergent from the singularity. In the singularity. There’s no space time, however you term the singularity. But we also have something called the qua field. And right now scientists are not talking about the qua field. Qua field. Where do experiences come from? Colors, shapes, forms, sounds, textures, smells, et cetera.
Dr. Mark Hyman: So start again with the quality of field. And then you do want to talk about sort the more so sort of humanistic aspects. How do we actually understand the quantum body in terms of what it means for us in terms of how we live our lives, what we need to do for health and so forth?
Deepak Chopra: The quality field is the equivalent. You say complimentary to the quantum field. Quantum field is what we measure. Quality field is what we experience. You don’t experience photons and electrochemicals. You experience colors and shapes and sounds and textures. Okay? So that’s the qualia field. It’s complimentary. Okay? So just like complimentary, like brain and mind are complimentary to each other. The quality field and the quantum field are complimentary to each other. And so in the spiritual traditions anyway, these are formless fields. So there’s the physical formless field, which right in front of you is the space. So look at my hand right now. The space between my fingers is actually connected to intergalactic space. You can’t divide space. So anytime you’re in front of space, if you focus on space, you can do that right now as you’re looking at me or your computer, be in, just put your eyes kind of vaguely in the space in front of you, and you’re connected to intergalactic space. That’s the physical space. In Sanskrit, it’s called Akash. Now, close your eyes and let me do some experiments in your eye with your eyes closed experience John Lennon singing. Imagine.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, got it.
Deepak Chopra: Okay.
Dr. Mark Hyman: I’ve actually been in his piano in his apartment
Deepak Chopra: Central apartment. Okay, with your eyes closed. With your eyes closed, see the Empire State Building or see snow clad mountains or see a rainbow or red rose. Now keep your eyes closed with your eyes closed. Touch the rough bark of a tree or feel that you’re walking on the beach with bare feet and your feet are touching hot sand and feel that,
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah,
Deepak Chopra: Wow. Or imagine that your lover is kissing you with a wait kiss and experience it. Okay? You get the point. All the five senses can be experienced by just thinking about them. So if I tell you think of 11, it’s true.
Dr. Mark Hyman: It was so vivid. It was so vivid. I was like, wait,
Deepak Chopra: Close your eyes. Let’s go a little further. Close your eyes. Imagine you’re licking a lemon, and you should even feel saliva pouring into your mouth as you lick the lemon in imagination.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Wow. Yeah, taste, it’s really amazing.
Deepak Chopra: Taste. Italian food,
Dr. Mark Hyman: Food. I like that pasta.
Deepak Chopra: Okay, so now open your eyes. The point is you can experience all the five senses in another space, and that’s called mental space. So the first was physical space, and then the second was mental space. Now, close your eyes and imagine that your body is nothing and that borders have disappeared. It’s one with the nothingness of the universe. Now, open your eyes. That was the original quantum field, and it’s also the quality of field from where the first experience was the physical space. Second experience was mental space. And the third experience is infinite space. This is your real body, which is now appearing as Mark Hyman on my computer screen.
Deepak Chopra: So in order to actually really affect aging and disease, you have to master these three fields. And then that’s the fundamental, fundamental thing. Master. The three fields that expressed themselves as physical and mental fields. First was physical fields, second was mental fields. Now in the western modalities of looking at the autonomic nervous system, we have focused only on the autonomic nervous system. And during Covid, I was doing research our foundation on who was getting sick, who was dying, et cetera. And most of the research was through AI and meta-analysis. But in every single case, people who died who got sick had inflammatory storms. That sympathetic overdrive, and nobody has ever talked until recently about the parasympathetic nervous system. So once again, in yogic traditions, they don’t use these terms sympathetic or parasympathetic. There are different Sanskrit terms, eap, pala, ram, et cetera. But when you look at the parasympathetic nervous system, as you know, there’s one nerve that dominates the longest nerve in the body, the vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve in our body.
Deepak Chopra: Now in Vedic traditions, in the yogic traditions, that’s the healing nerve. So it comes from your midbrain, and first it interferes with the ocular motor nerve. So by doing eye exercises, you can actually stimulate the vagus nerve just by doing eye movements. And the eyes everybody knows are the kind of windows to the soul, at least metaphorically speaking, the eyes can give away. Whether you’re frustrated, you’re angry, you are happy, or whether you slept well or you have a hangover, it’s all in the eyes. Okay, so then the vagus nerve interacts with the facial nerve, and there are 43 facial muscles in our face that express every single human emotion. So you can look at facial expressions and figure out the emotions that a person has. Then the vagus nerve goes to the laryngeal nerve and it interacts and it influences tone of voice. And you can tell by tone of voice a person’s mood.
Deepak Chopra: A baby can tell that mother’s happy, mother’s upset, mother’s frustrated, et cetera. After that, the vagus nerve influences the depth of breathing and then heart rate variability. Then it pierces the diaphragm and it innervates all the organs in our body, the hollow organs and the solid organs. And then it goes, influences even the microbiome. And as you know, there’s bilateral traffic between vagus nerve. So everything you can do to stimulate the vagus nerve is a healing response. Eye exercises, facial exercises, including smiling. By the way, singing and chanting will stimulate the vagus nerve. We’ve recently developed a little apparatus, which is similar to your EarPods that you’re using, and that stimulates the auricular branch of the vagus nerve. Then deep breathing, heart rate, heart awareness, meditation, yoga. If you do the 35 or so postures of yoga, forward bends, backward bends, sitting postures, standing postures, twists, stimulate every branch of the vagus nerve. And then of course, if you have a diet that’s maximum diversity of plant-based foods, seven colors of the rainbow, and six days of life, you stimulate the vagus nerve, you correct inflammation of the microbiome. So every technique of healing in yoga and Ayurveda is parasympathetic stimulation. Now, we don’t use those terms, they use different terms. And then there are all these other techniques, emotional intelligence, social intelligence, breathing techniques, mind body coordination techniques, meditation focused awareness, and what we call transcendence. You put them all together, your evoking the healing response.
Dr. Mark Hyman: So this is really powerful as a framework, and I think people might be going, wow, this is different than ever I’ve heard about how to work with my biology and my health. What you’re talking about are things that have practical tools and applications and ways you can access to quantum body. I think that’s what your book is really about. But you kind of taken us into a step where even I’m having trouble bridging the gap, and I’d love you to sort of help us bridge the gap between the physical world and the quantum world. We have Alzheimer’s type two diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and in the book you say they don’t exist at this fundamental level of quantum reality. And that by using the quantum body, we can improve our mental, physical wellbeing and help solve our cells, our tissues, our organ functioning, help our immune system get better mental resilience and basically kind of extend our life and increase our health span and our lifespan. So how do we kind of bridge that gap from this concept too? So
Deepak Chopra: This has been the challenge for me because you’re using two different systems of thought, and all my life I’ve struggled to build back to bridge the gap. So let’s just talk about the western model right now from the west, and then I’ll try to bridge the gap. So from the western point of view, right now, you and I know that less than 5% of disease is due to what we call fully penetrant genes, which means if you have say, let’s say the barca gene, it guarantees that the person will have breast cancer or reproductive cancer. It guarantees that 5% of gene mutations are fully penetrated. Now, thankfully, we know that gene editing is around the corner, CRISPR and all these things around the corner. And in fact, I was just in England where I actually had the opportunity to meet a young man, 27 years old from a university in Italy, and he had progeria.
Deepak Chopra: So when you looked at him, oh wow, that’s incredible. He looked like he was 90 years old, and he’s a professor at the age of 27, but when you look at him, he looks like he’s about to die. He has been working all his life on the genetics of Progeria, and he’s figured out now the gene editing process for Progeria. Imagine that if you can find out the genetics of aging and you can cut and paste those genes, you can get rid of old age basically. And I mean, this guy is a genius. He’s studying his own disease. And anyway, so 5% of diseases genetically determined. The rest is epigenetic. And actually even there’s a movement now to stop classifying diseases like heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases, because all epigenetics either is inflammation and stress basically, and diet. Okay, those three things, inflammation, stress and diet, all of that.
Deepak Chopra: So 95% is under your control, 5% is not, but that 5% will have gene editing, and it’s around the corner. It’s already there for sickle cell, and it’s already approved for sickle cell disease. So that means disease can become optional all together. Optional, we know that 2 million genes are microbial genes. Only 25,000 genes are human genes. Now, we did a study in 2012, one week meditation retreat. All the genes that were responsible for self-regulation, homeostasis went up some 17 fold over baseline, 17 fold, the level of the enzyme ERUs went up by 40%. Elizabeth Blackburn, who discovered the enzyme and is a Nobel laureate, was a co-author in that study. It was published in Nature Translational Psychiatry, nature, one of the best journals in the world. And now that study has been replicated. Meditation will change the activity of your genes. So fundamentally, you can change, upgrade the activity of your genes through meditation.
Deepak Chopra: You can’t change the genes, but you can change their activity. But the microbial genes that you have in your body, you can change them, yeah, hundred times as much, and you can change them just through diets, as you know. So if you can change 95% or more of your genetic population, you can upgrade the activity of the 5% that are inherited and you have gene editing, then disease should be optional. Now, that’s the western model in the Ayurvedic model. Now, this is a different model. They say that your genes, which are right now in your body, you can’t even move your hands without those genes. They are your ancestors’ genes. So all your ancestors are alive in your body right now, okay? And the Ayurvedic framework says that’s the karma of your ancestors in your genes. Karma doesn’t mean good or bad, it just means the experience.
Deepak Chopra: Like right now in the Middle East, there’s a war going on. Epigenetic modulation is happening. Those poor kids and this next few generations will have chronic disease. We know that from the Holocaust victims in the Second World War and from animal expense, we know that epigenetic transmission can occur for many generations. So the fact is this is all under control. So according to Ayurveda, you can get rid of 95% of disease just through various techniques, which are mentioned in the book, by the way, and then the remaining 5%, which is the karma of your ancestors. You can even modulate that through punch a karma, which is an emotional and physical and spiritual detox. And then there’s a
Dr. Mark Hyman: Technique changing your epigenetics, right? It’s like changing your epigenetics
Deepak Chopra: And even, yeah, epigenetics gene expression. Now, I haven’t talked about this because it sounds so bizarre, okay?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Don’t worry, Deepak. I think people know you. We often say things that are very different, so it’s okay.
Deepak Chopra: There is a technique in Ayurveda called kayak culpa, and you’ll go into a dark room or a cave for about a year in silence, and you go physical detox, and you go into an emotional detox and a spiritual routine, and you go on a special diet. And when you emerge after six months or a year, you have new hair, you have new teeth, and your age has reversed by more than half. Now, this is what’s in the literature. I have now gone to the Himalayas. I just went, came back from Laak in Tibet, and I met people who were over 115, 120. I’ve met a woman who was 108 years, and she climbed a mountain and she was out walking every 25-year-old. So the thing is, there are so many things outside the Western framework that it becomes embarrassing to even talk about them because people roll up their eyes every time I speak, at least my scientific colleagues roll up their eyes. That’s why I have Jack and
Dr. Mark Hyman: Brians,
Deepak Chopra: At least I teach at three medical schools, but nobody cares. But this guy’s a quantum biologist, and as you know, there are several chapters in the book on quantum metabolism and quantum motors and all of that.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, what is quantum metabolism? Because that’s something that’s very interesting. A lot of the work that I do is around helping people address the burden of metabolic health issue.
Deepak Chopra: Let me share with you a story that’ll tell you something very interesting. So this is when, this is almost in the 1990s. I was reading the chart of a patient, and I looked at the patient very reluctantly. I said to the patient, listen, I am sorry to tell you that you might have cancer. And as I said that, I saw his face crest fall, his blood pressure went up. I’m sure his platelets was sticky and his body was inflamed. In the next moment, I realized that I was reading the wrong chart. And so I said to him, I’m really sorry, but that wasn’t your chart. Immediately his metabolism changed. Information is metabolized at a very fundamental level at the quantum field. Information and information is a very interesting word. It says to give rise to form, and information changes your metabolism at the most fundamental level, whether it’s mitochondria or the little quantum motors in your body that make metabolism possible.
Deepak Chopra: So in the book, you’ll see there is a whole section on what we call quantum metabolism aging, and it’s in the book, it talks about the mechanics of quantum metabolism, but metabolism, physical, what we call metabolic pathways, whether it’s the kreb cycle or whether it’s glycolysis or any metabolic cycle. First of all, they’re non-locally correlated. You can’t have one metabolic cycle which is not correlated with another metabolic cycle. You have to wonder, how does a human body think, thoughts play a piano, kill germs, remove toxins, make a baby all at the same time? There’s no linear explanation for that. You have to invoke quantum principles like superposition, entanglement, uncertainty, everything that quantum mechanics talks about.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Okay, yeah. But how does the metabolism in terms of what you eat, diabetes and some resistance connect to the quantum body? And how do you instruct people to change what they’re doing to access that?
Deepak Chopra: Well, you’re doing that with people. You’re telling people insulin resistance can be removed if you lose your weight, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah.
Deepak Chopra: Aren’t you doing that? I mean, every time you
Dr. Mark Hyman: For sure. But is the quantum body different in terms of how we would intersect with it and how it
Deepak Chopra: Would interact with it? Yeah, it goes deeper. It goes much deeper because if you go into these different mind body states, you can actually fine tune and even organ specifically through what is now being called interoception. You’re familiar with the word interceptive awareness, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, of
Deepak Chopra: Course. So everybody as a child learns interceptive awareness. We call it toilet training. Okay? How do you, A baby can learn how to control bladder and bowel, right? You can even get your pets to do it. You can train your dog to control its bladder and bowel. And the yogi said, why do you stop there? Why don’t you control your heart rate? Why don’t you control your immune system? Why don’t you control your endocrine system? All of that is possible through what is called interoceptive awareness. So you take your mind to a very quiet state. There are three processes in Sanskrit, they’re called hana, which means you focus your attention to a particular part of your body. The second is called the Hana, which is meditation, and the third is called samadhi, which is called transcendence. So when you combine these three, then you can target mentally any port part of your body to evoke the healing response.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Amazing. Wow, that’s incredible. And the healing response that happens, it actually creates a biological change. It’s not just in your mind, it’s actually changing your physiology through
Deepak Chopra: What is healing. Healing is just homeostasis. That’s all it is. And when a child is born in a state of perfect humor, homeostasis, unless it has a genetic disorder, right? So homeostasis of fundamental basic response, it’s what? And Jack, in his research, he calls something called the fitness landscape. You read it about in the book that you have to maintain your parameters within certain ranges, blood, sugar, pressure, body temperature, all of that. That’s the fitness landscape. And if you can regulate your body in those parameters, which we call homeostasis. So healing response is nothing other than return to homeostasis.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Interesting. And how does it apply that longevity in aging? I know in your book you put a talk about aging in a very different framework, and you basically say that we can sort of shift our aging process through the quantum field and that no one really knows what aging is, and it’s maybe mistake.
Deepak Chopra: Yeah, there are 10 ways you can shift to the aging process. So let’s talk about the three most important. First is get rid of the idea that your body’s a physical object. It’s not a physical object, it’s not a noun, it’s a bird. If you say, I have a body, which one, fertilized egg, embryo, zygote, baby, toddler, teenager, young adult, mature adult, your body’s a verb, number one. Number two, it’s not a physical object. It’s a field of awareness. The only way a body is, you’re aware of it, you can see it, you can touch it, you can taste it, you can smell it. So once you understand that, and also the body biology of the body is different in different states of consciousness. And now people find that very esoteric. But I’ll just give you an example. Your biology is, metabolism is different in waking.
Deepak Chopra: It’s different in sleeping. It’s different in dream states. Now, the yogis go beyond that, beyond waking, dreaming, and sleeping. There’s a fourth state called non-local awareness. There’s a fifth state called local and non-local awareness. There’s a sixth state, which is you experience the world non-locally and other people non-locally. And there’s a seven state called enlightenment. Now, in each of these states, perception is different, biology is different. Sensory experience is different. Metabolism is different. So the first way to alter your aging process is shift your concept. Your body is not a physical object, it’s a field of awareness. There’s a sutra in yoga, meditate on your body as the universe and having the nature of awareness. So that’s the first thing, change your concept of the body. The second is change. Your concept of aging itself. Aging is, in our society, is the hypnosis of social conditioning.
Deepak Chopra: At 65, you retire, then you go to Florida, then you end up in a nursing home with a tube in somewhere in your body, and then you die on a respirator or in the ICU. That’s not normal. It’s western indoctrination. You can have the biology of youth with the wisdom of experience. So change that cultural hypnosis. And so first is change your perception of the body as a physical object from a physical object to a field of awareness. Second, get out of the hypnosis of social conditioning. That tells you that you have to die at a certain age and end up in a nursing home at a certain age. And the third is change your experience of time. These are the three most challenging things in the aging research, because I look at all the aging experts. Nobody’s talking about this. So that’s number one. The second is deep rest, two kinds of rest, deep sleep and meditation. The third is mind body coordination along with vagal stimulation. The fourth is what does
Dr. Mark Hyman: That mean, mind? What does mind body coordination mean?
Deepak Chopra: This yoga, martial arts, tai chi, qigong, these ballet, you see, regular exercise will not do that. Regular exercise will stimulate your muscles, whether you do aerobic exercise or you do weight training, it’s not connecting your mind to your body as in vagal stimulation. So anytime you do martial arts, tai chi, qigong, yoga, you’re doing that mind body coordination.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Okay, got it. Okay. And the next one is
Deepak Chopra: The fourth is emotional resilience, empathy, compassion, joy, equanimity, and loss of the fear of death. Okay? The fourth is getting rid of the
Dr. Mark Hyman: Last one’s a hard one, though.
Deepak Chopra: No, it isn’t. If you get in touch with your quantum body, there’s no death. I mean, I don’t have any fear of death. In fact, I meditate on my death every night with joy because I can experience my physical death, but I cannot get rid of my quantum body. So the essential spiritual experience is three things, finding your identity beyond spacetime, the emergence of platonic values like love, compassion, joy, equanimity. And the third is loss of the fear of death. So that’s the next point. That’s number four. Number five is getting rid of not just physical toxins, but emotional toxins, emotional and relationship toxins. Okay, that’s six. Seventh is biological rhythms. Now, we talk only about circadian rhythms because we are so familiar with the jet lag, but we have four rhythms in our body, circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, lunar rhythms, and gravitational rhythms. And nobody’s talking about these.
Deepak Chopra: And even though two years ago, three years ago, the Nobel Prize went to biological clocks, you know that you know the people who specialize that your body organs obey certain different organs, for sure, different cycles, but actually our body is a symphony of the universe. Universe means one song. So we have circadian rhythms, you have seasonal rhythms, we have gravitational rhythms, you have lunar rhythms, and they all are connected to each other. They all coordinate with each other. So there are Ayurvedic rituals that allow you to balance all these five. If you have perfect harmony of your biological rhythms, that’s the state of least entropy. And as you know, aging is entropy. The arrow of time is entropy. So biological rhythms now for people who are not willing to go all the way, even walking barefoot on the beach or walking barefoot on the grass or spending time in nature or going to a forest in Japan, they have this custom called forest bathing.
Deepak Chopra: All of those things will help balance your biological rhythms. But actually, that might be the most fundamental thing. If your body is totally in harmony with what we call cosmic rhythms, that should decrease the arrow of time, and that would be the state of least entropy. Okay? So that’s another way. And then you can go a little further. What is a youthful mind? What is youthful aesthetics? What does love do? Ultimately, how do you get in touch with that which is timeless in your own being own? So it’s a lot to take. I know it’s a lot to take.
Dr. Mark Hyman: It’s quite a framework. It’s a lot. I think the book really lays it out very well, though, and I think
Deepak Chopra: It does. I was very careful actually even in the book, not to try to confuse people because people say I confuse them, them.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Well, I think one of the ways maybe we can get out of that is to talk about some of the case studies you share, and I’d love you to share some of those case studies that actually show the practical application of quantum principles of the human body and to health.
Deepak Chopra: Well, I just told you about the most interesting case that actually started me on my journey. I read a person’s chart incorrectly, gave him the wrong information, and then of course, start instead of thinking in terms of matter energy, think in terms of information.
Deepak Chopra: I think the main thing is very practical terms. If you’re feeling relaxed, unpressured, if you’re enjoying a loving, fulfilling relationship, if you always stay in your comfort zone, if you’re experiencing joy and delight, if you’re learning to be resilient, if you’re rejecting pressure from other people, if you’re feeling good about yourself, then you start to see that your body responds. You should be able to wake up in the morning. Here are four things that are key. Okay? I start every day with four intentions. Number one, joyful, energetic body. Then I feel my body, and I ask myself, on a scale of one to 10, how joyful and energetic is your body? If it’s eight, nine, or 10, I’m fine. If it’s six or seven, I’m struggling. If it’s less than five, I’m suffering and I already have a chronic disease. That’s how I figure it out.
Deepak Chopra: So that’s number one. Do you have a joyful energetic body? Number two is loving, compassionate heart. No resentments, no guilt, no shame, no anxiety, no anger, no depression, no hostility, no resentments. Number three, quiet mind, not a positive mind. I think a positive mind can be very stressful. If you’re trying to be positive all this time, you’ll stress yourself out, but you’ll also stress other people out because it’s not natural. You have to quiet the mind and observe the mind and be quiet. The mind has to be quiet. Can you silence your mind? And the fourth is lightness of being. If you’re not feeling light as the wind, then there is either entropy and heaviness on one side, or there is lightness on the other side and in between a whole range of experiences. So those are my four intentions. Every day. I start with joyful, energetic, body loving, compassionate, heart, quiet, creative, reflective mind and likeness of being.
Deepak Chopra: And then I have these seven breakthroughs in the book. I don’t know if you saw those. Those are very important. Your two ident is not your ego identity, your true identities, your quantum mind or your spiritual identity. Or by the way, people are now understanding that because of psychedelics. Because when people go through an ayahuasca experience or through a psilocybin experience, there’s a part of your brain that’s called the default mode network, which is the neural correlate of your ego mind. So once that cools down, you feel, oh, I’m connected to the whole universe. Now, psychedelics can do that, but I’m now focusing on how you can get people VR experiences that can also give you the same experience that psychedelics do, because people just don’t have the time to meditate. So either VR or psychedelics can give you that experience. The second
Dr. Mark Hyman: Doing meditating is a lot shorter journey than a 20 minute meditation, though.
Deepak Chopra: Say that again?
Dr. Mark Hyman: Psychedelics are a longer journey than a 20 minute meditation.
Deepak Chopra: But some people have one experience with psychedelics and they’re done. I mean, I’ve seen that with PTSD. I’ve seen that with a lot of people, whether it’s ketamine or Cy.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Be profound. Yeah,
Deepak Chopra: Profound. So the second is understanding that your brain is not you. Your brain. Now that we know neuroplasticity is such a feature that you can change the neural networks of your brain, there’s something in the brain called short-term and long-term use dependent neuroplasticity, which means synaptogenesis and neurogenesis. So when I speak to a person, I know which part of my brain I’m activating, whether it’s my cortical brain or my limbic brain or my reptilian brain. So those seven breakthroughs are also very important, by the way, which are about identity, which are about looking at existence at a fundamental level by identifying your body as not having any form, et cetera, et cetera. I know these are difficult abstract ideas till they become very practical for you. I’ve been a lifelong yogi, so for me, this is natural.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah, yeah. These are really interesting practices because it’s not like eating better or exercising more. They’re actually doorways into our biology that we often don’t think about or use that are accessible to us if we learn them. And I think that’s what’s so beautiful about the quantum body. It really provides a roadmap for learning about these unexplored avenues for accessing the potential in our biology that exists because of the quantum fields that we’ve kind of neglected in medicine. It’s interesting. We use nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and other kinds of incredible technologies that are measuring our electromagnetic field and the spin of atoms and electrons, but we don’t really think about it when it comes to how do we use that as a power and a force for healing. And I think what’s so great about the quantum body, it gives us an understanding and the connection between the biology and the physics. So I think about it almost as there was that book, the DAO Physics by FR of Cap, which was really profound. Many of us read in the seventies, and then this is almost like the DAO biology, right? It’s like, how do we think differently about biology in a way that allows us to access?
Deepak Chopra: But now science is getting very interest in what they call the biofield of the body. Every cell in your body has a biofield. Your heart is a very strong biofield. The pace you have to have a hundred cells fired all synchronistically for the pacemaker to work. And just by bringing awareness to your heart, you can actually create heart wave coherence and you can then match that hot wave coherence with brain wave coherence as well. It’s all very measurable.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Yeah. Yeah. It’s quite interesting. So it takeaways from the book, Deepak, what are the things that you want people to really take away that will really impact
Deepak Chopra: Mark the takeaways? You should aspire to live a long health span, not just a longevity health span. And my goal is when I can comfortably say I’ve been there, done that to close my eyes and make my final exit in meditation.
Dr. Mark Hyman: That’s beautiful. That’s really beautiful. Well, Deepak, thank you for your work for decades and decades for inspiring me when I was a young medical student and doctor to think differently about the body and healing and challenge some of the assumptions that I was taught in medical school, which really helped lead me on this path. And you’ve been doing that for so many for so long. This work is just so, so important, and especially in this time where we’re seeing a disconnection from ourselves, our souls, our mental health is declining. This divisiveness is increasing in society. There are tools for at least us as individuals to kind of reset our nervous system, to reset our biology, and to actually get in a grounded state, which I think is the beginning of healing of society because it has to start at least with us, and then it can spiral out in our community. I’ve seen that with your life. I mean, the way you live, the way you work, how you operate in the world really creates this ripple effect of goodness and healing and generosity. And it’s really been a joy and a pleasure to know you all these decades. And thanks for your work.
Deepak Chopra: Thank you, mark. It’s a privilege to always to talk to you. I’m very grateful to you as well.
Dr. Mark Hyman: Thanks for listening today. If you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment on your own best practices on how you upgrade your health, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And follow me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman, and we’ll see you next time on The Doctor’s Pharmacy. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic and Function Health, where I’m the Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guest opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only. It’s not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. Now, if you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search there, find a practitioner database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who is trained, who is a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.
