(calming music)
- Welcome to a very special
episode of BET's House Party.
I'm Kailee Scales and
I'm the Managing Director
of Black Lives Matter Global Network.
Black Lives Matter Global
Network and BET partner today
to bring some information
that is both timely
and important in this moment
where COVID is wreaking havoc
in our communities.
Many of us experience
stress and trauma and fear
during this time and at
other times in our lifetime
and we're struggling and
trying to figure out a way
to calm ourselves and
to see past the chaos,
to tap into hope and
to transform our lives.
We're very excited today to
welcome Dr. Deepak Chopra.
Deepak Chopra is the founder
of the Chopra Foundation
and Chopra Global.
He's also the author of
the book "Meta Human."
Today we have the pleasure
of speaking with Dr. Chopra
as he leads us through
conversation about our mind
and our body connection,
about how meditation can help
heal our spirit and put us
on a path towards healing.
And then he'll walk us
through a meditation
to calm ourselves and to feel
connected with our spirit.
Thank you and welcome, Dr. Chopra.
- Thank you, Kailee, it's
great to be with you.
- So first I'd like to begin and ask you,
some of us are learning
about your teaching,
about your spirit and your voice
and we are really starting
the practice of meditation
or really understand the
practice of meditation.
And we'd love to understand
your healing journey.
How did you become Deepak Chopra?
- Well, I became Deepak
Chopra when my mother gave me
that name in birth.
Which, by the way means
light of awareness,
light of consciousness.
But then after high
school I went to pre-med
and then I took training
as a physician in India,
I went to medical school in India.
I came to the United States
in 1970 as an intern.
And then I moved from
New Jersey to Boston.
I took my training in Internal Medicine
and got board certified as an internist
in something called endocrinology.
For those who don't known what that is,
it's the study of hormones.
And then I went on to
study brain chemistry
or what is called neuroendocrinology.
So at this time, this is
way back in the late '70s,
I was puzzled by two things.
One is that I could have two patients
who received the same treatment,
that had the same diagnosis,
they saw the same doctor, me,
they got the same treatment,
but they had different outcomes,
one could die, the other could recover.
And in between there was
everything else, partial recovery,
remission, chronic illness,
getting better, etc.
So my first insight was
that if you treat the body
as a mechanical machine,
you can only do so much.
You can maybe get rid of a
pneumonia or an infection,
but in the long term you
don't make a difference
in the chronic illness of a disease.
I also discovered that 80%
of all prescriptions were
for optional or marginal benefit,
which means if you didn't use them
it wouldn't really make
a difference either way.
And 80% to 90% of
prescriptions in hospitals are
for just five things:
pain, anxiety, nausea,
insomnia and constipation.
You track all these back to the source,
it's because of stress.
Everything that we call disease,
disease starts with stress.
So that was my first insight.
The second, of course, was my own training
in brain chemistry where I
realized that your emotions
and your thoughts actually
become molecules in your bodies.
So if you are having anxiety and stress,
then you make adrenaline, cortisol
which weakens the immune system.
And also creates inflammation in the body
and inflammation is the basic
background in everything.
Even right now when people
are dying of COVID-19
or we're getting sick or
getting on a respirator,
the common background is inflammation.
It's acute inflammation and then
there's something called
chronic inflammation.
Which comes from chronic stress,
chronic anxiety, chronic depression.
So there's a connection between
your biology inflammation,
your state of health and
your emotional well-being.
So that's how I started my journey.
I was teaching at
Harvard and BU and Tufts,
later in California.
We started doing research on things
like meditation, mindfulness.
Also on emotions, like
love, compassion, joy,
equanimity, peace.
And what did we find?
We found that when you
have these practices,
which we can talk about more at length,
then your body begins to
heal itself biologically.
It begins to self-regulate itself,
it's called self-regulation
or homeostasis,
which is the opposite of inflammation
or the compromised immune system.
So that's been my journey,
the science of healing.
Literally the word healing means whole,
which means everything,
body, mind, spirit,
but also relationships because
that's part of our life,
we live in relationships.
So emotions, body, mind,
spirit, environment,
food, sleep, breathing,
all these things affect
our state of biology.
Whether it's inflamed, which
is one extreme, disease,
at the other extreme is
what I would call a joyful,
energetic body, a loving,
compassionate heart, quiet,
reflective mind and then
ultimately lightness of being.
Lightness of being is the most important
because we are light beings.
Light means beings we are spirit beings,
having an experience of
mind, body in the world.
But when we're in touch with our spirit,
there's only lightness of
being and there's only joy,
there's only love, there's only laughter
and it's all healing,
There's a science to it.
- Yes.
And I think we see a
lot, especially right now
we're experiencing a great
deal of stress and Black people
in particular experience trauma sometimes
over generations and we
hold that in our bodies.
What I hear you say and I'd
love to hear more is that
that can impact our health,
our everyday health.
Can you talk more, and we hear a lot
about mind-body connection,
can you talk more about?
- First of all, we have to define stress.
Stress is best defined as
the perception of threat.
So whenever you feel
threatened, doesn't matter
what the cause of threat is,
when you feel threatened,
could be finances,
could be a relationship,
could be lack of sleep, could be anything.
You feel psychologically
and emotionally threatened,
or that's your interpretation,
then that causes biological chaos.
It stimulates a part
of our nervous system,
of the sympathetic nervous system,
which causes the release
of adrenaline and cortisol,
these both cause inflammation
and also weaken the immune system.
That's the effect of stress.
You mentioned inter-generational
trauma and that's true.
The stress that your
ancestors experienced,
maybe taken into slavery
or captivity or conquered
by foreign Colonial tribes, basically,
because it's all tribal to begin with.
'Cause all of it goes back
to our tribal history.
That stress in your ancestors,
that can cause epigenetic changes,
which means even though the genes
you inherit are the same as your parents,
your father and mother, but the genes
by themselves are just the
alphabet of our biology.
So your biology right now is
an expression of your genes.
But how those genes get
activated, they go on and off.
They go on and they go
off with every experience,
doesn't matter what the experience is.
So, let's say the experience was
in the Holocaust, Nazi Germany,
the Germans invaded Holland,
there was a famine and everybody
was starving at that time.
Now, the great grandchildren
and the grandchildren
of those Holocaust victims
have diabetes because
in their consciousness,
they're still starving.
So the effects of trauma
on the ancestors are
influencing the behavior
and the biology of the descendants through
what we call epigenetic mechanism.
Turning on genes and turning off genes.
So genes are not fixed, that's
the most important thing.
There are entire groups
of ethnic backgrounds
that are basically the victims of trauma
that happened generations ago.
Now if they're not aware of that,
then of course everything
automatically recycles itself.
Inflammation, obesity,
metabolic syndrome, diabetes.
95% of all diseases that
are connected to genetics,
95% are actually not fully determinant,
which means the genes don't determine
that you're going to get the disease.
There are 5% of genetic
mutations that are.
For example, if somebody has a BRCA gene
like Angelina Jolie had,
that predicts breast cancer.
So she had to have a mastectomy.
But then 95% even of the genetic damage
that causes disease can be corrected
through addressing the trauma,
the psychological trauma
and then going beyond
that to heal a trauma,
psychological, emotional,
even that which we have
inherited from say hundreds
of years ago, we can heal that now.
And if you heal that now it
changes our biology completely.
- That's amazing.
So the mind-body connection
is such that if we are able
to focus and heal our generational trauma,
our current trauma, it
can present outcomes
in our physical body today?
- It can lead, theoretically, it can lead
to prevention of 95% of diseases.
Also, it can, theoretically,
I'm saying theoretically,
we have to prove this,
but theoretically the
information is there,
the science is there.
So not only can it prevent
95% of chronic illness,
it can reverse it, like
diabetes, like heart disease.
- Wow!
- Like even some types
of auto-immune illness
like asthma, all of that.
And that happens biologically
through a stimulation
of a part of your nervous
system, which is the opposite
of the sympathetic nervous system.
It's called the
parasympathetic nervous system.
So the sympathetic nervous system puts you
on inflammation and overdrive,
the parasympathetic nervous
system does the opposite,
makes you more resilient, more adaptable,
more flexible and therefore,
is the healing system.
And everything that we
call mind-body interaction
addresses the parasympathetic
nervous system.
There's one nerve that is more important
than any other nerve in the body,
it's called the vagus nerve,
it's the tenth cranial nerve
and the word vagus is a Latin word
but it's related to the
English word vagabond.
So the vagus is a vagabond nerve
that goes from your mid-brain.
It affects your facial
expression, are you happy?
Are you sad?
Your eye movements, are you
being honest or are you shifty?
The tone of your voice, are
your lax, are your friendly?
It influences your heart rate
variability, ultimately goes
into your abdomen, influences
every organ in the body,
solid organs and also the
hollow organs, the intestine.
And within these hollow
organisms there are extra genes.
So you only got 25,000
genes from your parents,
you have two million extra genes
which are called the microbiome,
which is all the bacteria,
the viruses and the fungi,
without which we couldn't live.
So even COVID-19 is a
virus that's been around,
corona has been around forever,
since the beginning of time,
we call it the flu virus.
And once in a while it mutates
and the mutation is what causes damage.
So COVID-19 is the mutation
that occurred in 2019.
Now we say, what are the
causes of the mutation?
There are some mutations
that are just spontaneous,
it just happened by themselves,
we don't know why they happened.
But most mutations are not spontaneous.
Most mutations are due to
toxicity in the environment.
So if the environment is
polluted, like climate change
or too much pollution, carbon
particles in the atmosphere,
or the food is poisoned
with the petroleum products,
manufactured food.
Or you're having toxic emotions
like anger, resentment,
grievances, hostility, anything
that we can call a toxicity.
Toxic relationships, toxic environment,
toxic work habits,
toxic food, anything that you can
think is damaging causes inflammation,
that is counteracted by the vagus nerve.
And so mind-body practices
actually help you
not only to counteract
the toxicity but heal.
But COVID-19 is a mutation
and it's a mutation
because our biosphere,
which means ecosystem,
your body's an ecosystem and
so is the world an ecosystem.
Your body and the world go together,
the rivers' waters are your circulation,
the air is your breath and
the sunlight is the energy
in your body right now.
The atoms in your body
were made in the crucible
of burning stars, the
trees are your lungs,
so we are co-inhabitants
of a bigger mystery that we call life.
And that bigger mystery that
we call life is an ecosystem
where everything is in
harmony with everything else.
Now once that gets disrupted,
then a mutation can occur
and that mutation can spread
across the ecosystem devastated
and now it is doing that.
Everything that we took for
normal is being devastated,
whether it's financial markets,
whether it's race relationships,
whether it's nationalism,
whether it's tribalism, whatever it is
that thing is being disrupted right now.
And when we come out of
this I hope we'll be holy
and we'll be healed, because we recognize
that we are inseparably inter-connected.
Doesn't matter whether we
are black or white or brown
or yellow, doesn't matter
the color of your skin,
at the deepest level of
existence, we are one spirit.
Many minds, many bodies, many experiences,
many relationships but one spirit.
Now you can call that one
spirit anything you want:
God, Allah, Ein Sof,
a non-local awareness,
consciousness, doesn't matter
when we get to that level
of our being, we are healed.
- Right.
That's amazing.
And so, I'd love to talk a bit
about what healing looks like
and how we can approach healing.
Clearly healing will impact
all aspects of our lives,
our physical life, our physical
health, our environment,
the way we treat our environment,
the way we treat one another.
So, can you talk a little
bit about meditation
in particular, the practice of meditation,
how that ignites the vagus
nerve or utilizes that nerve?
And how it helps us approach healing.
- So right now,
meditation, as you can see,
is getting very popular.
About four years ago with
Oprah Winfrey's help,
we started the 21-day meditation programs.
And again, thanks to
Oprah we've reached now
10 million people online,
teaching them meditation,
which is amazing.
Totally, totally amazing.
Now in the West, when
people learn meditation,
it is precisely for what
we've been talking about,
stress management.
They are stressed, they
wanna manage their stress
and meditation helps them to calm down,
to cool down so they're not so reactive.
Their body goes into
self-regulation, the genes start
to regulate themselves, everything happens
in the direction of healing,
because you're managing stress.
But if you look at the traditions
of meditation across
the world, East, West,
look at the traditions of meditation
in the indigenous cultures of the world,
in Africa, in Asia, everywhere,
then what you find is that
meditation originally was a way
to get in touch with what we, today,
would call our soul or our spirit.
So meditation is not a system of thought,
it's how you go beyond your thinking.
Your thinking is
conditioned by your history,
your mind, your economic status,
your race and all of that,
but meditation actually gets
you to the source of thought.
And the source of thought is
also the source of emotions,
it's also the source of perceptions.
In other words, the source
of thought is the source
of all experience.
And when we get there,
we realize that actually
that source is infinite, it's formless
and it is without boundaries,
it's totally free.
So if I were to say what
is the essential experience
of meditation, I would say
it is lightness of being.
It's a very interesting
phrase, lightness of being.
When you feel lightness of
being you become a light being.
A light being is spirit being.
And light beings modify their experience
of existence in a way
that they'll always experience
a joyful, energetic body.
That's one symptom of healing,
you're feeling a joyful, energetic body.
Another symptom would be a
loving, compassionate heart.
Not because you wanna be
loving and compassionate
but because you feel like
that, it's a natural outcome
of your being in touch with your spirit.
So that is another symptom of healing.
First is joyful, energetic body,
second is loving, compassionate heart.
Third is a reflective,
quiet, creative mind.
So the best use of your
mind is creativity.
The worst use of your mind is stress.
And it's all in imagination.
So your mind becomes quiet
and reflective and finally,
you actually feel like a light being.
So if you have joyful, energetic body,
loving compassionate heart,
quiet, creative, reflective
mind and lightness of being
then you are holy and you are healed.
- Yes, wow.
How regularly is it important to center
and connect with our souls?
- Initially, any amount of time.
If you can sit quietly for
five minutes, close your eyes
and put your attention in
your heart or on your breath
and just start with some
meaningful questions:
Who am I, what do I
want, what is my purpose?
Or even one question,
what am I grateful for?
As soon as you ask that
question, everything cools down
in your body, everything calms down.
Notwithstanding what you're going
through right now, whatever
you're going through,
financial crisis, relationship problems,
if you close your eyes, feel your body,
put your attention in your heart
and ask yourself, "What
am I grateful for?"
And just observe what comes
in the form of sensations,
images, feelings and thoughts,
inflammation will go down,
immune system will assimilate,
homeostasis will be regulated
and healing will begin just
by asking that one question,
"What am I grateful for?"
And then feeling your body, that's all.
Just ask that one question.
Then you can ask others.
"Who am I, am I a changing body,
"am I a mind or am I a spirit?
"What do I really want?
"Do I want more money
or do I want abundance?"
Abundance is much bigger than just money.
Money is one.
So ask yourself, "What do I want?
"What is my purpose?"
Is it to work more and compete with others
or just to create a joyful planet?
So ultimately, meditation, if
we are enough of us doing it,
it can create a more
peaceful, thus sustainable,
joyful and healthier world and
we can upgrade this nightmare
that we are going through
right now, just by meditation.
- Thank you for that,
it's a lot to think about.
So our viewers have
asked specific questions,
a few of which I'll ask you
to understand a bit more
about meditation and how it works.
So Jen from New Jersey asks,
"Can children benefit from
meditation and if so, how?"
- Yes, children can but just remember,
before the age of five
years children only want
to do one thing, they wanna play.
(laughing)
Okay?
So, for children the
best meditation is play.
And you should play with them and play
with them meaningfully in terms of poetry,
music, story telling, fairy tales, dance.
Just any joyful expression
of your spirit is meditation
for little children.
And they will mirror your
nuance and that'll be enough.
After five years you tell them,
"Can you shut up for five
minutes today?" (laughing)
Just five minutes.
That will be an introduction
to real meditation.
About six years--
- I'm gonna try that.
(laughing)
- Be quiet for six minutes,
till they get to 10
and then you can teach
them everything you want.
(laughing)
- Okay.
That's really great.
And you touched on this a little bit,
Grace from Queens wonders,
"How can meditation help
communities in trauma?"
- Okay, so you know there
are many kinds of meditation
and we should talk about that.
So the first kind of meditation
is reflective self inquiry,
which means asking yourself
questions and quieting your mind
without knowing the answers,
that's the highest intelligence
you can have, to question
without knowing the answers.
Because knowing the answers prevents us
from actually knowing the answers.
All the answers we know
are because people told us,
"These are the answers."
So first is, ask yourself, "Who am I?
"What do I want?
"What's my purpose?
"What am I grateful for?"
That's called reflection.
The second type of meditation is
what these days people
call mindful awareness
or just mindfulness.
So mindful awareness is
observing your breath
or observing the sensations in your body
or observing a color or observing a song
or observing a musical
note or observing a taste
or observing a smell
or observing your touch
or observing an emotion.
Basically, being a silent observer
of experience without
judging it and you don't have
to observe all the experience, choose one.
Observe your breath, that's mindfulness.
Okay or observe sensation in your body.
Or just observe a thought you have
or just observe an image in your mind,
any image, rainbow,
sunrise, sunset, clouds,
whatever you want to, observe that.
That's mindfulness.
Then there's meditation
that takes you beyond that,
observation of relationship,
mindful awareness
of the mystery of existence.
But then there are mantra
types of meditation
where you repeat a phrase
like, "Thy will be done.
"The Lord is my shepherd."
Or, "Peace be upon you."
Or, "Shalom."
Or, "Aham."
Or just some mantra and
when you repeat that,
it takes you beyond thought
to the stillness and the gap
between our thoughts where
it ultimately lingers.
So yes, when we practice
these types of meditation,
takes us to the source
which is beyond all trauma.
The trauma is in the mind,
it's not at the level of being.
The level of being is
independent of the mind.
The mind is a story, it's my story,
it's the story of my
ancestors, their stories,
their story of their ancestors, on and on.
And if you look at all these stories,
then everybody has harmed everybody else
at some point in life.
So you forgive, you say, "I forgive."
Not because the other
person deserves forgiveness
but I forgive because I deserve peace.
Once you do that, then you are willing
to go beyond the conditioned mind
to where the healing really
is which is the spirit.
- That's incredible.
As we think about meditation,
sometimes it's really
difficult because there's a lot
of noise, physical noise,
especially right now we're all
in quarantining together or together
and it could just get really loud.
And then there's a lot of fear and anxiety
that are crowding our minds
with all of this information.
A few people have asked
both Allen in Georgia
and Renee in Queens Village asked,
"How do we calm our minds enough
"to engage in meditation
in these types of moments?"
- You can do it instantly.
You can do it instantly.
Any time you feel stressed,
it's because you're reacting to a threat.
So anytime you feel stress, you
just press the pause button,
press the pause button,
metaphorically, and instead
of reacting you observe
your reaction to react.
So you don't react, you
observe your reaction to react.
And that requires four things.
First, stop, stop whatever
you're doing, right now.
That's called stop.
Then second, T, take three
deep breaths and smile
from your head to your toes, just smiling
and feeling your body will
change the biology of your body.
So S stands for stop.
T take three deep breaths.
Smile from your head to your toes,
notice what's happening in your body.
That leads to number three, observe.
Observe your body
sensations and your breath.
And then P, proceed with compassion
and conscious choice.
Now, it sounds simple
but you're gonna need
to get into the habit.
So anytime you're stressed, stop.
Press the pause button, stop,
take three deep breaths,
smile, observe sensations,
breath, proceed.
After a while it becomes a
habit and then you don't need
to get stressed at all.
- Okay.
- We're in the moment,
grounded and actually
in the present moment.
And when you're in the
present moment, by the way,
there's no stress.
All the stress is imagining the future
or regretting the past, that's it.
So once you take your attention
away from imagining the
future, whatever it is,
good or bad and regretting
the past, whatever it is,
good or bad, you're totally present.
And that is called presence.
And presence is spirit and spirit is here.
- Yes, that makes so much sense.
So finally, Leah from Connecticut asks,
"Where can we find hope and
promise in times like this?"
- Right now, it's available everywhere.
just go on the internet
if you want to participate
in any of my programs, which are free,
offered lots of them are free to Oprah,
just go to chopracentermeditation.com
and you can download
whatever free meditation's happening now.
You can go to YouTube, just
again if you type my name
and you look for meditation
or type other people's
name, doesn't matter.
You'll find lots of resources
right now for meditation
because the world is asking for it.
- Thank you, that's a great idea.
So at this point, I think it'd be great
if you can walk us through
a meditative demonstration
to help us to practice.
- Okay, so wherever you
are and since we are all
on the screen you don't
need to close your eyes,
just keep your eyes open
but have them unfocused
which means just be aware of the space
that is engulfing all of us.
We are all engulfed by the same space
and that space is infinite.
And we are all engulfed by
it, so it's our common source,
the space and beyond
that space is the space
that we call spirit.
So all you have to do is be aware
of the space right now that you're in.
And just being aware of the
space with unfocused eyes,
your mind should start to quiet.
Just be aware of the space.
See how your mind gets blank.
(deep breathing)
Now become aware of your breath.
And the breath is what we call life.
It's the connection
between spirit and biology.
So just be aware of your breath.
Don't judge it, don't
try to manipulate it,
just be aware of it.
Breath is movement of spirit.
That's why we say, "I am inspired."
Inspired means in spirit, when
you're aware of the breath.
Now let's, this is a very short meditation
but let's do it anyway, close your eyes
and feel your entire body.
Feel your sense, all the
sensations in your body
and mentally introduce
the following intention,
joyful, energetic body.
Repeat that like a mantra
and feel your body.
- Joyful, energetic body.
- You can do it mentally,
just mentally feel your body
while you say it.
Now bring your awareness to your heart.
And just mentally use
the intention loving,
compassionate heart.
Now bring your awareness
to your third eye,
which is between your eyebrows
and repeat the following sentence,
"Reflective, quiet, alert mind."
Reflective, alert, quiet mind.
And let your awareness now
move outside the boundaries
of your skin, let your awareness now move
outside the boundaries of your skin,
let it pervade all of space and time.
And the intention, lightness
of being and healing to all.
Lightness of being and healing to all.
Now bring your awareness
back into your body,
relax, open your eyes.
So this is called intentional meditation.
Now this is one form.
There's mindful awareness,
there's transcendence,
there's mantra, there is relationship,
there is all kinds, inquiry.
So we can go on an adventure together
of meditation and we can heal the world.
(laughing)
- That was amazing.
I think the moment for
me, when you suggested
that my eyes unfocus,
I just felt different
for a moment and my breath was different.
And I feel the intention
that you mentioned,
I feel lighter already
so thank you for that.
And I hope that others--
- We can make this a habit.
- Yeah. (laughing)
- This is a habit and
this is the way we live
then there's no problem.
- It's important.
I feel better. (laughing)
I feel better.
It's a stressful time and
this makes me feel better.
So I'm hoping that others
feel much better as well.
Thank you, thank you so much.
I feel so good right now I'm
just trying to find my words
to close this beautiful session.
Thank you so much, Dr. Chopra.
Thank you for your time and
your energy and your spirit
and your words, they've
been incredibly meaningful.
I know they will touch
and support so many people
as we're living with fear in
this moment of uncertainty,
trauma, it just feels like
chaos a lot of the time
and we need to find calm.
And thank you also for talking
about generational trauma
and how our bodies can hold onto it.
Black people worry about a lot of things.
We worry about our health, we
worry about our loved ones,
we worry about our physical
safety in this world.
So acknowledging that
generational trauma and calling us
to heal that so that we
can heal our current bodies
and our minds and our spirits is a very,
very powerful message.
So thank you, again.
Is there anything that you'd
like us to leave with today?
- Just one phrase, "Love in action."
Love without action is meaningless,
action without love is irrelevant.
When you have love and action,
you really are start to do the work.
- Thank you.
And thank you to everyone
for participating, watching.
I'm Kailee Scales.
Thank you, Dr. Chopra.
And thank you, BET, and thank you,
Black Lives Matter Global Network.
- Thank you.
Bye bye.
- Bye bye.
(mellow music)
