OceanofPDF .comTable of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
PART I - A PLACE CALLED PERFECT  HEAL TH
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 - INVIT ATION TO A HIGHER REALITY
PROMISE OF A NEW  MEDICINE—A YUR VEDA
THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL  HUMAN BODY
THE BODY  IS A RIVER
THE REENCHANTMENT  OF NA TURE
LIFE FREE FROM IMPERFECTIONS
CHAPTER 2 - DISCOVERING YOUR BODY  TYPE
THE FIRST  STEP—KNOWING YOUR BODY  TYPE
THE BODY’S SWITCHING ST ATION
DETERMINING YOUR BODY  TYPE
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BODY  TYPES
CHAPTER 3 - THE THREE DOSHAS— MAKERS OF REALITY
LEARNING TO “SEE” THE DOSHAS
BALANCE IS DYNAMIC—THE 25 GUNAS
THE FIVE ELEMENTSGETTING DOWN TO DET AILS—THE SUBDOSHAS
THE SUBDOSHAS—A  MORE PRECISE GUIDE
CHAPTER 4 - A BLUEPRINT  FROM NA TURE
RESPECT  YOUR BODY  TYPE
AS NA TURE MADE YOU
THE SUBTLE SOURCE OF DISEASE
HOW  THE DOSHAS GET  UNBALANCED
CHAPTER 5 - REST ORING THE BALANCE
A HUNDRED THERMOST ATS
SIX ST AGES OF DISEASE
HOW  TO BALANCE YOUR DOSHAS
PART II - THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL  HUMAN BODY
CHAPTER 6 - QUANTUM MEDICINE FOR A QUANTUM BODY
EXPLORING THE INNER WORLD
QUANTUM MEDICINE
THE POWER OF AWARENESS
CHAPTER 7 - OPENING THE CHANNELS OF HEALING
PANCHAKARMA—PURIFICA TION OF THE BODY
MEDIT ATION—A  TECHNIQUE FOR “GOING BEYOND”
HEALING SOUNDS—NA TURE’S FINEST  VIBRA TIONS
MARMA  THERAPY—STIMULA TING THE POINTS WHERE MIND AND BODY  MEET
AROMA THERAPY—BALANCE THROUGH THE SENSE OF SMELL
MUSIC THERAPY—MELODIES TO BALANCE NA TURECHAPTER 8 - FREEDOM FROM ADDICTIONS
ROOTED IN MEMOR Y
A HANDS-OFF CURE
ADDICTION AND THE DOSHAS
GIVING UP  CIGARETTES
CURING AN ADDICTION AT HOME
CHAPTER 9 - AGING IS A MIST AKE
AGING VERSUS HEALING
RASA YANAS—HERBS FOR LONGEVITY
QUIZ: HOW  WELL  AM I AGING? PART II - LIVING IN TUNE WITH NA TURE
CHAPTER 10 - THE IMPULSE TO EVOL VE
MAKING RIGHT  CHOICES
HOW  TO INCREASE SA TTVA
CHAPTER 1 1 - DAIL Y ROUTINE—RIDING NA TURE’S WAVES
ONE DA Y IN PERFECT  RHYTHM
DINACHAR YA: THE DAIL Y ROUTINE
CHAPTER 12 - DIET—EA TING FOR PERFECT  BALANCE
BODY -TYPE DIETS
THE SIX TASTES
AGNI—THE DIGESTIVE FIRE
A BLISSFUL  DIETCHAPTER 13 - EXERCISE—THE MYTH OF “NO P AIN, NO GAIN”
SUCCESS WITHOUT  PAIN
THREE-DOSHA  EXERCISES
HOW  TO PERFORM THE SUN SALUTE
CHAPTER 14 - SEASONAL  ROUTINE— BALANCING THE WHOLE
YEAR
DOSHAS AND THEIR SEASONS
FOLLOWING A SEASONAL  ROUTINE
Epilogue - FLOWERS IN A QUANTUM FIELD
Appendix A - SOURCES FOR AYURVEDA
Appendix B - GLOSSAR Y
Bibliography
Also by Deepak Chopra
Copyright Page
OceanofPDF .com 
To Shankara
and the
Shankaracharya Tradition of Masters
for Preserving the knowledge of
The Wisdom of Life. OceanofPDF .comAcknowledgments
I wish to of fer my heartfelt thanks:
To my family , for their deep love and support, which is the basis for
everything I do. To David Simon, my friend and colleague, for his support in the updating
of this book and the greater vision we share. To a superb agent—and valued  friend—L ynn Franklin, for her belief in
this project. To Huntley Dent, a close friend whose keen literary judgment helped me
bring the original text to completed form. To my editor , Peter Guzzardi, who insists on perfection and bringing out
the best I can of fer. And to the dedicated family of doctors, nurses, teachers, and support staff
of the Chopra Center for Well Being who are committed to living the ideals
of perfect health every day in their lives. OceanofPDF .comPART I
A PLACE CALLED PERFECT HEALTH
OceanofPDF .comIntroduction
Remarkable transformations have occurred in the world since I wrote the
first edition of Perfect Health almost a decade  ago. Ten years ago the ideas
that there was more to health than the absence of disease, that natural
approaches could enliven our intrinsic healing system, and that the human
body was a network of energy and information rather than a frozen
anatomical structure seemed radical. And yet today we see that these
concepts have become woven into the very fabric of our modern view of
health and sickness, and of life and death. A recent report in the Journal of
the American Medical Associati on found that over 40 percent of Americans
are now regularly accessing unconventional medical care that goes beyond
a materi alistic view of the human body . More than two in three medical
schools have introduced courses on alternative and complementary
medicine to their students. And, recognizing that patients are demanding
greater choice and access, increasing numbers of insurance companies and
health maintenance organizations are covering the costs of holistic medical
care. The scientific community has shifted from outright rejection and ridicule
of altern ative healing approache s to serious investigation. If you access the
National Library of Medicine’ s database, you will find over forty thousand
articles on alternative and complementary medicine with over sixteen
hundred on herbal medicines alone. Meditation, yoga, massage, and
nutritional approaches are increasingly embraced as mainstream tools for
healing. St. John’ s wort, ginkgo biloba, and echinacea have become
household word s, with almost every pharmacy in America carrying its own
line of natural medicines. Throu gh the proliferation of journals, books, and
the Internet, people have unpre cedented access to information on health,
and are taking increasing responsibility for their own well-being. Although
this may be threatening to the established medical communit y, I see the
trend toward increasing self-awareness and empowerment as a sign of
expanding personal and collective health.At the Chopra Center for Well Being in beautiful La Jolla, Calif ornia, we
have created a healing enviro nment to directly explore the power of
Ayurveda and mind body medicine. We have developed courses applying
the principles and practices of holistic medicine to the most common health
concerns. Our Magical Beginnings program provides information and
inspiration for pregnant couples to nurture their unborn children as
incubating gods and goddesses in embryo. We have certified birth educators
around the world teaching this program, which will help create a new
generation of healthy , conscious beings. Mind body educators on every continent in the world have been trained
at the Chopra Center to teach Creating Health, our premier course on mind
body medicine and Ayurveda. More than five hundred people have been
certified worldwide as instructors in Primordial Sound Meditation, our
stress-relieving program that enables people to directly experience their
inner field of energy and creat ivity. Return to Wholeness, our course for
people facing cancer , has had a transformational effect on those dealing
with this challenging illness. Programs for people with chronic fatigue,
women transitioning through menopause, and those struggling to lose
weight have helped thousand s to realize their intrinsic potential to
consciously transform their lives. Over the past decade I have  repeatedly
seen the profound effect that the approaches described in Perfect Health
have on people’ s lives. It has been very gratifying to witness the changes occurring in world
consciousness. We are in the midst of a revolution that will forever change
the way we view  the world and ourselves. The timeless wisdom  tradition of
Ayurveda and the most advanced  theories of modern physics both point to a
deeper reality that encourages us to see the universe as an eternal, infinite
field of potentiality that we can access for healing and transformation. This
is the core message of Perfect  Health . This updated version contains some significant changes. I have
introduced new healing techniqu es that we have found useful with patients
at the Chopra Center . Guided visualizations and meditations are presented
that can provide the direct experience of more expanded awaren ess, the keyto changing your perception of your body . I offer subtle mind body
approaches to consciously connect with your cells, tissues, and organs. Learning to influence so-called “autonomic” functions is important in
creating and maintaining perfe ct health. I have updated the sections on
nutrition and herbal medicines, with an emphasis on a wholesome, balanced
diet. These days, in the rush to ensure health with nutritional supplements, it
is important not to overlook the basic health-promoting value of a balanced
nutritional program. The Ayurvedic diet promoted in Perfect Health is
characterized by its simplicity , elegance, and sumptuousness. I have
introduced new, updated references, which draw from the growing body of
scientific resear ch on mind body interactions in health and sickness. It is
very fulfilling to see objective documentation of health principles and
practices that go back thousand s of years. Expanded ways to nourish your
body through the five senses are explored that use healing sound, touch,
sight, taste, and smell to awaken  the body’ s inner pharmacy . Understanding
that the environ ment is our extended body , I have introduced fun exercises
to enliven the connection between our inner and outer worlds. Overall, this
edition of Perfect Health is designed to be practical, accessible, and very
user-friendly . In my continuing exploration of healing, I am totally convinced  that true
health is much more than the absence of an abnormal laboratory finding; it
is even more than optimal mind body integration. Health in its essence is a
higher state of consciousness. For thousands of years the great  Vedic seers
have proclaimed  that the purpose of attending to the body is to support the
state of being known as enlightenment. In this state our internal reference
point shifts from the ego to spirit, and we recognize that the knower , the
process of knowing, and that which is known are one and the same. The
boundaries of time and space become fluid as we remember ourselves as
unbounded beings temporarily masquerading as individuals. This state of
wholeness is the basis of all healing. This is the state of perfect health. I am
grateful for the opportunity to escort you to this place that is very near to
where you currently reside. OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 1
INVIT ATION TO A HIGHER REALITY
There exists in every person a place that is free from disease, that never
feels pain, that cannot age or die. When you go to this place , limitations
which all of us accept cease to exist. They are not even entertained as a
possibility . This is the place called perfect health. Visits to this place may be very brief, or they may last for many years. Even the briefes t visit, however , instills a profound change. As long as you
are there, the assumptions that hold true for ordinary existence are altered,
and the possibil ity of a new existence, higher and more ideal, begins to
flower . This book is for people who would like to explore this new
existence, bring it into their lives, and make it permanent. The cause of disease is often extremely complex, but one thing can be
said for certain:  no one has proved that getting sick is necessary . In fact,
quite the opposite is true. Every day we come into contact with millions of
viruses, bacteria, allergens, and fungi, and only the tiniest fraction of these
encounters ever leads to disease. It is not uncommon for doctors to see
patients whose respiratory tracts contain clusters of virulent meningococcus
bacteria living there harmlessly . Only on rare occasions do they break out
and cause meningitis, a serious and at times fatal infection of the central
nervous system. Many of us carry the varicella virus, lying dormant in our
nerves since a bout with chicken pox as children, but only rarely , under
stress, does it reactivate to cause the painful condition of shingles. What
provokes such an attack? No one knows precisely , but it seems to involve a
mysterious factor called “host resistance,” meaning that we, the host of
germs, somehow open or close the window to them. More than 99.99percent of the time, the window is closed, which implies that each of us is
much closer to perfect health than we realize. The leading cause of death in the United States is heart disease, which in
most cases is caused by deposits of plaque blocking the coronary arteries
that conduct oxygen to the heart. When cholesterol and other debris begin
to obstruct these arteries, oxygen starvation threatens to impair the heart’ s
function. Yet the course of heart disease is highly personal. One person with
a single, rather small bit of plaque can be incapacitated by angina, the
squeezing chest pain symptom atic of coronary artery disease. A second
person with several deposits of plaque large enough to block much of the
oxygen flow to the heart might feel nothing. People whose coronary arteries
were 85 percent blocked have been known to run marathons, while others
have dropped dead of a heart attack with completely clean vessels. In fact,
recent studies have found that many younger people who die suddenly of a
heart attack have none of the usual risk factors for coronary artery disease. Our physical ability to repel disease is extremely flexible. In addition to our body’ s physical immunity , we all have strong
emotional resist ance to sickness. As one woman, an older patie nt of mine,
put it, “I’ve read enough psychology to know that a well-adjusted adult is
supposed to become reconciled to getting sick, growing old, and eventually
dying. At some level I have understood that, but emotionally and
instinctively , I don’t believe it at all. Getting sick and deteriorating
physically seem like a ghastly mistake, and I’ve always hoped someone
would come along to correct it.”
This woman is nearly 80 now, and her physical and mental condition is
excellent. When  asked what lies ahead, she said, “You may think this is
crazy , but my attitude is that I’m not going to get old, and I’m not going to
die.” Is that so unreasonable? People who consider themselves “too busy to
get sick” are known to have above-average health, while those  who worry
excessively about disease fall prey to it more often. Another man told us
that the idea of perfect health appealed to him because it was a creative
solution—perhaps the only solution—to the overwhelming problems
currently facing medicine. A highly successful electronics executive, thisman compared perfect health to the kind of “breakthrough thinking” that
transforms corporations. Breakthrough thinking is a unique form of problem solving: it involves
making a situation better by first raising your expectations much higher
than anyone believes possible and then looking for ways to make your
vision come true. “If people continue to think and act in the same familiar
ways,” this man commented, “they may accomplish five to ten percent
improvements by working harde r. However , to get improvements of two to
ten times, targets must be set high enough that people say, ‘Well, if you
want that much improvement, we’ll have to do this an entirely different
way.’”
Breakthrough thinking has been applied among advanced software
companies in Silicon Valley . For example, if the current version  of software
took two years to develop, the next generation may be scheduled to take
only one. If defects in manufacturing have been cut down to 5 percent, then
“zero defects” becomes the rule for the future. That is exactly how perfect
health works—it sets zero defects as the goal and then explores how the
goal can be met. In the high-te ch industry , it may cost eight to ten times
more to repair a defect than to make it defect-free in the first place. For that
reason, imposing “quality at the source” (i.e., doing things right the first
time) makes better business sense than going for engineering that is merely
good enough. The same is true in medicine, where prevention is much cheaper than
treatment, both in human and economic terms. A recent poll showed that
Americans fear catastrophic illness more than anything else. The reason has
less to do with pain and suffering than the crushing expense of a long
hospital stay and the devastating  costs of long-term care. For many people
even death is not as frightening  as leaving one’s family destitu te. Clearly ,
we need  a medical approach that believes in “quality at the source” and can
promote it in individuals. PROMISE OF  A NEW  MEDICINE—A YUR VEDAThe first secret you should know about perfect health is that you have to
choose it. You can only be as healthy as you think it is possible to be. Perfect health is no mere 5 or 10 percent improvement over good health. It
involves a total shift in perspective that makes disease and infirm old age
unacceptable. Can we really believe in “zero defects” for something as complex as the
human body? According to the National Institute on Aging, no diet,
exercise, vitami n, drug, or lifestyle change has proved itself capable of
reliably extendin g life. Averting the degenerative disorders that afflict the
elderly— heart disease, stroke, cancer , arteriosclerosis, arthritis, diabetes,
osteoporosis, and so on—is more feasible than ever before but still unlikely . Although in public medical researchers speak optimistically of major
breakthroughs in curing cancer and the other major intractab le illnesses,
they are much more pessimistic among themselves. The best that they hope
for is creeping gradualism—taking one tiny step at a time towar d a solution. (Lowering cholesterol levels will, statistically , reduce heart attacks in a
large group of people, for instance, but it does not guarantee that any single
person will be spared.) To make health twice or ten times better , you need a new kind of
knowledge, based on a deeper concept of life. This book presents a unique
source of such knowledge, a system of preventive medicine and health care
called Ayurveda. Dating back in India more than 5,000 years, Ayurveda
comes from two Sanskrit root words, Ayus, or “life,” and Veda, meanin g
“knowledge” or “science.” Therefore, Ayurveda is usually translated as “the
science of life.” An alternate and more precise reading would be “the
knowledge of life span.”
The purpose of Ayurveda is to tell us how our lives can be influenced,
shaped, extende d, and ultimately controlled without interfe rence from
sickness or old age. The guiding principle of Ayurveda is that the mind
exerts the deepest influence on the body , and freedom from sickness
depends upon contacting our own awareness, bringing it into balance, and
then extending that balance to the body . This state of balanced awareness,
more than any kind of physical immunity , creates a higher state of health.Ayurveda embodies the collec ted wisdom of sages who began their
tradition many centuries before the construction of the Pyramids and carried
it forward generation after gener ation. At the Chopra Center for Well Being
we have developed a modernized system of Ayurveda that integrates the
perennial truths of this ancient healing approach with the most advanced
insights of modern science. Over the past fifteen years my colleagues and I have treated more than
ten thousand patients and trained nearly three thousand other health care
providers in Ayurvedic theory and practice. In adopting Ayurveda, we have
not abandoned our conventional training but extended it. Blending
Ayurveda and Western medicine brings together ancient wisdom and
modern science and the two have proved completely compatible. The
doctors at the Chopra Center still take medical histories and work up
physicals on their patients, relying on objective tests to tell them when a
person is sick. In addition, however , we guide our patients to look inward,
to find that all-important balanced awareness inside themselves. THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL  HUMAN BODY
To comp rehend how this is possible, we have to delve deepe r into the
body itself. In Ayurveda, the physical body is the gateway to what I call the
“quantum mechanical human body .” Physics informs us that the basic fabric
of nature lies at the quantum level, far beyond atoms and molecules. A
quantum, defined as the basic unit of matter or energy, is from 10,000,000
to 100,000,000 times smaller than the smallest atom. At this level, matter
and energy become interchangeable. All quanta are made of invisible
vibrations—ghosts of energy—waiting to take physical form . Ayurveda
says that the same is true of the human body—it first takes form  as intense
but invis ible vibrations, called quantum fluctuations, before it proceeds to
coalesce into impulses of ener gy and particles of matter . The quantum mechanical body is the underlying basis for everything we
are: thoughts, emotions, proteins , cells, organs—any visible or invisible part
of ourse lves. At the quantum level, your body is sending out all kinds ofinvisible signals, waiting for you to pick them up. You have a quantum
pulse underlying your physical one, and a quantum heart beati ng it out. In
fact, Ayurveda holds that all the organs and processes in your body have a
quantum equivalent. The quantum mechanical body would do us very little good if we could
not detect it. Fortunately , human  awareness is capable of sensing these faint
vibrations, thanks to the incredible sensitivity of our nervous system. A
single photon of light falling upon the retina of the eye makes far less
impact than a single speck of dust falling on a football field. Yet the
specialized nerve endings of the retina, the rods and cones, can actually
detect a single photon, send a message to the brain, and cause you to see its
light. Rods and cones are like giant radio telescopes, huge structures that
can still gather signals on the very threshold of physical existence, and then
amplify them in such a way that our senses can deal with them directly . By treating the underlying quant um mechanical body itself, Ayurveda can
bring about changes far beyond the reach of conventional medicine,
confined as it is to the level of gross physiology . This is because the power
available at the quantum level is infinitely greater than that found at grosser
levels. The explosion of an atom  bomb, which is a gigantic quantum event,
is but one instance. A more constructive example is the laser, which takes
the same light that is emitted by a flashlight, and by organizing it into
coherent quantum vibrations boosts its power enough to cut through steel. What is at work here is the quantum principle, which reveals  that the
subtlest levels of nature hold the greatest potential energy. The black
emptiness of intergalactic space, although a mere vacuum, contains almost
inconceivable amounts of hidden energy, enough in every cubic inch to
power a star. Only when it makes the quantum leap does this “virtual
energy,” as it is called, explode into heat, light, and other forms of visible
radiation. We all know that burning a piece of wood releases much less energy than
splitting its atoms through a nuclear reaction. But we have ignored the
creative side of the same equation— making something new at the quantumlevel would be just as powerful as destroying it. Only nature creates rocks,
trees, stars, and galaxies, but we are busily engaged every day in making
something arguably far more complex and precious than a star—a human
body . Whether we realize it or not, all of us are responsible for creating the
body we live in. Headlines were made several years ago when a San
Francisco cardio logist, Dr. Dean Ornish, proved that forty advanced heart
patients could actually shrink the fatty plaque deposits that were
progressively blocking their coronary arteries. As the arteries of these
patients began to open, fresh oxygen started reaching their hearts, thus
relieving their frightening chest pains and reducing their risk of having fatal
coronaries. Rather than relying on conventional drugs or surgery to unblock their
arteries, Dr. Ornish’ s group used simple yoga exercises, meditation, and a
strict vegetarian  diet. Recently , Dr. Ornish confirmed that these basic
health-promoting lifestyle changes provide long-term benefits in reducing
heart disease. Why have these  findings been considered so remarkable? Because mainstream medicine had never before acknowledged that heart
disease can be reversed once it has started. Medicine’ s official position is
that a sick artery follows its own course of development: No matter what
you believe, think, eat, or do, such arteries relentlessly pursue  their grim
fate, degenerating a little more every day, eventually becoming blocked and
strangulating the heart muscle. Yet, at the quantum level, no part of the body lives apart from  the rest. There are no wires holding together the molecules of your arteries, just as
there are no visible connections binding together the stars in a galaxy . Yet
arteries and galaxies are both securely held together , in a seam less, perfect
design. The invisible bonds that you cannot examine under a microscope
are quantum in nature; without this “hidden physiology ,” your visible
physiology could not exist. It would never have been more than a random
collection of molecules. Ayurveda would say that Ornish’ s breakthrough for heart disease holds
true for any disorder , once you know how to make use of the quantum
mechanical body . A deposit of cholesterol-filled plaque looks solid, like rustlining an old pipe, but plaque is alive and changing, just like the rest of the
body . New fat molecules drift in and out of it, new capillaries develop to
bring in oxygen and food. The real news from Ornish’ s study is that what
we build in our bodies we can also unbuild. A man who dies of a heart
attack at age 50 has had innum erable chances to build new arteries. A 70-
year-old woman who develops osteoporosis in her spine has had
innumerable chances to make a healthy spine. (We cannot really count the
chances, since the process of change is constant; however , you could
possibly heal a damaged artery or a defective bone in a matter of a few
weeks or months.) We are all building new bodies all the time. Why not
build a healthy artery , a healthy spine, a complete and healthy person? In India’ s ancient Vedic tradition, the most basic force underlying all of
nature is intelligence. The unive rse, after all, is not “ener gy soup”; it is not
mere chaos. The incredibly exact fit of things in our world—above all, the
astonishing existence of DNA—ar gues for an infinite amount of
intelligence in nature. As one astrophysicist put it, the likelihood that life
was created randomly is about the same as the likelihood that a hurricane
could blow through a junkyard and create a Boeing 707. One of the most crucial changes in contemporary science is the sudden
arrival on the scene of models that take intelligence into accou nt as a vital
force in the universe. (In physics, for example, there is the so-called
anthropic principle, which proposes that the whole of creation since the Big
Bang was designed expressly to lead to the existence of man.) Why is this relevant to us? Because Ayurveda, seen in its larger context,
is nothing less than a technology for contacting the quantum level inside
ourselves. To get there you need special techniques, which we will cover in
detail, that allow you to peel away the mask of the physic al body; in
addition, you have to transcend, or go beyond, the constant activity that fills
the mind, like the noise of a radio that cannot be turned off. Beyond that
distraction lies a silent region that appears as empty as the quantum field
between the stars. Yet, like that quantum field, our inner silence holds rich
promise.The silence inside us is the key to the quantum mechanical body . It is not
a chaoti c but an organized silence. It has shape and design, purpose and
processes, just like the physica l body . Instead of seeing your body as a
collection of cells, tissues, and organs, you can use the quantum perspective
to see it as a silent flow of intelligence, a constant bubbling up of impulses
that create, control, and become your physical body . The secret of life at
this level is that anything in your body can be changed with the flick of an
intention. You may find this hard to believ e, so let me offer the example of Timmy ,
a perfectly ordinary-seeming 6-year -old who suffers from one of the saddest
and strangest of psychiatric syndromes—multiple personali ty disorder . Timmy has more than a dozen separate personalities, each with its own
emotional patter ns, vocal inflections, likes and dislikes. Yet people with
multiple personalities are not just psychological cases; as they drop one
personality and put on another , remarkable changes can occur in their
bodies. One personality might have diabetes, for example, and the perso n will be
insulin-deficient as long as that personality is in force. Yet the other
personalities may be completely free of diabetes, testing normally for
insulin levels. Likewise, one personality may have high blood pressure
while the others do not; even warts, sores, and other skin blemishes have
been seen to appear and disappear with the changing of person alities. The
literature on multiple personalit ies includes patients who can instantly alter
their pattern of brain waves on an EEG or transform the color of their eyes
from blue to brown. One woma n had three separate menstrual periods each
month, corresponding to her three separate personalities. Timmy is particularly amazing because one of his personalities, and only
one, is allergic to orange juice and breaks out in hives if he drinks it. Health
writer Daniel Goleman reported in the New York Times, “The hives will
occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears
while the juice is still being digested. What is more, if Timmy comes back
while the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease
immediately , and the water -filled blisters will begin to subside.”This is a perfec t example of how signals from the quantum mechanical
body can cause instantaneous changes in the physical body . What is
remarkable here is that allergies are not known to come and go at the whim
of the mind. How  could they? The white cells of the immune system, coated
with antibodies  that cause the allergic reaction, wait passively for the
contact of an antigen. When contact occurs, a series of chemical reactions is
triggered automatically . Yet, in Timmy’ s case, it appea rs that as the molecules of orange juice
approach his white cells, a decision is made whether to react or not. This
implies that the cell itself is intelligent. Moreover , its intelligence is
contained at a level deeper than its molecules, for the antibody and the
orange juice meet end to end with very ordinary atoms of carbon, hydrogen,
and oxygen. To say that mole cules can make decisions defies current physical science
—it is as if sugar sometimes feels like being sweet and sometimes not. But
it is not only the remarkable intensity of Timmy’ s case that stuns us. Once
we absorb the fact that he is choosing to be allergic—for how else could he
turn his hives off and on?—then we confront the possibility that we are
choosing our own diseases, too. We are not aware of this choice, because it
takes place at a level below our everyday thoughts. But if we have such
ability , we should be able to control it. THE BODY  IS A RIVER
We all tend to see our bodie s as “frozen sculptures”—solid, fixed,
material objects—when in truth they are more like rivers, constantly
changing, flowing patterns of intelligence. The Greek philosopher
Heraclitus decla red, “You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh
waters are ever flowing in.” The same is true of the body . If you “pinch an
inch” around your waist, the fat you are squeezing between your fingers is
not the same as it was last month. Your adipose tissues (fat cells) fill up
with fat and empty out constantly , so that all of it is exchanged every three
weeks. You acquire a new stom ach lining every five days (the innermostlayer of stomach cells is excha nged in a matter of minutes as you digest
food). Your skin is new every five weeks. Your skeleton, seemin gly so solid
and rigid, is entirely new every  three months. In all, the flow of oxygen,
carbon, hydroge n, and nitrogen is so rapid that you could be renewed in a
matter of weeks ; it is only the heavier atoms of iron, magnesium, copper ,
and so on that slow down the process. You appear to be the same outwardly ,
yet you are like a building whose bricks are constantly being replaced by
new ones. Every year, fully 98 percent of the total number of atoms in your
body are replaced—this has been confirmed by radioisotope studies at the
Oak Ridge laboratories in California. This constant stream of change is
controlled at the quantum level of the mind body system, and yet medicine
has not taken advantage of this fact—it is still waiting to take the quantum
leap. To change the printout of the body, you must learn to rewrite the software
of the mind. In the following chapters, I would like to lead you on a journey
of self-exploration. I will show you how Ayurveda can put you in better
control of your health from this quantum level that is the next frontier of
medicine. The approach is divided into three parts, corresponding to the
three divisions of this book. PART I: A PLACE CALLED PERFECT  HEAL TH
First we discuss the possibility of perfect health, then on to practical
matters. Ayurve da teaches that every person has been given a unique
blueprint by nature; this is called his prakruti , or body type. By taking the
simple test in chapter 2, you will discover which of the ten basic  body types
applies to you. This is the most important step toward reaching a higher
state of health, because your prakruti tells you how nature intends you to
live. According to Ayurveda, your body knows what is good and bad for it;
nature has built the correct instincts into you from birth. Once you begin to
notice and obey these innate tendencies, you will find that your physiology
is capab le of achieving balance  on its own, with minimal effort on your
part.As we go on to explore, extremely small imbalances in your system sow
the seeds of future illness, while preserving balance can ensure an ideal
state of health. The strong and weak points of each body type are laid out,
enabling you to choose your own specific approach to disease prevention. The sickness you should seek to avoid is the one that you are most prone to,
and that is indicated by your prakruti. PART II: THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL  HUMAN BODY
In this section we delve deeper into the quantum level inside ourselves,
exploring how the mind directs the body toward sickness and health. Thousands of years before modern medicine discovered the mind body
connection, the sages of Ayurveda had mastered it—they developed an
“inner technolo gy” that operates from the most profound levels of our
awareness. The secret of perfect health lies with the practice of these
techniques. We discuss the role of meditation in removing the obstacles to
health; we explore how the quantum mechanical human body can be
exploited to change the physical body far more powerfully than can any
drug, diet, or exercise. In this section we range widely through many subjects, from addictions
to cancer to removal of physical and mental toxins—all the areas of
medicine that are treated at the Chopra Center for Well Being. By seeing
yourself through  the eyes of an Ayurvedic doctor and reading case studies
of people who have gone through our programs, you will better understand
why “quantum healing” represents a major advance in our approach to mind
and body . PART III: LIVING IN TUNE WITH NA TURE
After presenting  the grand design of Ayurveda, I end with the practical
advice I have gleaned over the past fifteen years. The ideal of perfect health
depends upon perfect balance. Everything you eat, say, think, do, see, and
feel affects your overall state of balance. It would seem impossible tocontrol all these different influences at once. Yet, by following specific
body-type diets,  exercises, and daily and seasonal routines, you can correct
the vast majority of imbalances now present in your physiology and prevent
those that might lie in the future. THE REENCHANTMENT  OF NATURE
It is fascinating to see how perfect health dovetails into a broader
intellectual movement that is rocking the foundations of science. Ilya
Prigogine, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in 1977 and a pioneer in this
movement, calls it “the reenchantment of nature”—the realization that
nature is not a machine but a wondrous environment whose hidden
possibilities are barely guessed at today . Nature is like a radio  band with
infinite stations; the reality you are now experiencing is only one station on
the band, completely convincing as long as you stay tuned to it, but
masking the other choices that lie on either side. At the turn of the century , psychologist William James hinted at the
mechanism that allows us to turn the dial: “One of the greatest discoveries
of my generation ,” he wrote, “was that human beings can alter their lives by
altering their attitudes of mind.” This was a very farseeing remark, aimed
more at the future than at James’ s time. In his day it was undisputed that
nature unfolded mechanically , the result of inflexible laws operating
without regard for human beings. Now it appears that human beings
actually may count for a lot—pe rhaps nature is giving us only the reality we
expect and believe in. Certainly we have spent many centuries believing in disease and dying. This says much more about our relation to life than it does abou t life itself. Life is immense ly flexible, and the forces that cause it to endure  are at least
as strong as those that cause it to decay . If you plant a bristlecone pine on a
downtown lot in a polluted city, it may live for fifty years; planted in the
country , its life span may incre ase to two or three hundred years; on the
windswept ridges of the Rocky Mountains, it might survive more than two
thousand years. Which life span is its natural one? It depends entirely on thesituation. Some forces are always working to preserve the bristlecone’ s life,
others to oppose it. In that dynamic balance lies the tree’s destiny . Both a
relatively short life and an immensely long one are natural, depending on
the environment. A laboratory mouse will typically live fewer than two years raised in a
cage on a normal diet. If you lower its body temperature and feed it a
minimal amount of calories (while still preserving the vitamins, minerals,
protein, and so on that it needs), the mouse’ s life span can be extended
twice or even three times as long. On the other hand, if you expo se the same
mouse to abnormal stress, such as tossing it every day in front of a cat that
is kept just out of reach, the mouse will very likely die in a matter of weeks. In every  case, the mouse’ s intern al organs will have aged to the same degree
—the worn-out heart, liver, and kidneys will be uniformly “old,” even
though the oldest mouse lived perhaps fifty times longer than the youngest. As the balance of forces change, life changes. In the case of human
beings, environment can be chosen and controlled, which gives our own life
spans enormous flexibility . When we speak of perfect health, we are
proposing that the dynamic balance of life can be tipped to our advantage. No one has lived forever , but you can add 50 years to an average, modern
life span of 70 years and reach the longest life span on record  (121 years,
credited to an offshore Japanese islander). In the Roman Empir e, adult life
expectancy was 28 years; by the year 2020 it may rise to 90 years for a
healthy American, male or female. That represents a great deal of flexibility . If you look at the smallest unit of life—the cell—the discrepancy
between a long and a short life is even more pronounced. Fetch a pail of
water from the edge of a pond. When you put a drop under a microscope, it
will be teeming with one-celled plants and animals—paramecia, amoebae,
algae, and so on. Each amoeba  may have a life span of only two or three
weeks. But because amoebae multiply by division, the gene tic material
inside each amoeba is as old as the mother cell it came from, which makes
it four weeks old instead of two. The mother cell descended from its own
mother , so you would have to say that part of the amoeba you are looking at
is three times as old as you thought, part of it four times as old, until youcome to the conclusion that, in part, this single amoeba from your local
pond is as old as all the amoe bae that have ever lived, perha ps a billion
years. The actual atom s and molecules inside the amoeba have not inhabited it
for that long. They come and go constantly , in a swirl of oxygen , hydrogen,
carbon, and nitrogen. Neverth eless, the amoeba retains its shape and
identity generation after generat ion. Some living force holds it together , and
as long as the amoeba’ s DNA  is not destroyed, this cell will house its
portion of life forever . Your body, composed of between 50 and 100 trillion cells, is
inconceivably more complex than an amoeba, but you are hous ing life that
is just as old and just as young at the same time. To speak accurately about
the human life span, you must refer to the many life spans represented
inside one body . A typical cell in the lining of your stomach lives only a few
days and a typical skin cell only two weeks; a red blood cell lives longer—
two or three months. Very long- lived cells can be found in the liver, where
they take several years to replace themselves; heart and brain cells
apparently last a lifetime without reproducing. The amazing thing is that the exact same DNA  controls all these life
spans, from the very shortest to the very longest. Skin cells and brain cells
are genetically identical; they are descended from the moment of
conception, when half of your father ’s DNA  fused with half of your
mother ’s to form the unique strand of DNA  that became you. Through a
process we are just beginning to understand, your DNA  was able to create
all kinds of specialized cells—brain, skin, heart, liver, and so on—each with
its own allotted life span. You cannot tell which life will be long or short
just by looking at the cell: the neurons in your brain, many of which last a
lifetime, are all but identical to the olfactory cells in your nose,  which give
you your sense of smell, yet olfactory cells are replaced every four weeks. Like the amoeb a, each human cell is made of atoms that literally fly
through it—it takes only a few thousandths of a second to excha nge oxygen
and carbon dioxide in your lungs; sodium and potassium ions are pumpedin and out of brain cells three hundred times per second. Your heart muscle
extracts oxygen  out of the blood’ s hemoglobin so quickly that in a few
seconds the blood feeding the heart via the coronary arteries, which is
bright red in color , exits almost black. But this endless swirl of activity doesn’ t dissolve your shape or identity ,
any more than it does the amoeba’ s. Your DNA  has been distinctly
humanlike for several million years; the primeval DNA  it is descended from
is as old as life itself, dating back almost 2 billion years. You are
exceedingly permanent at the genetic level, although the material of your
body comes and goes. LIFE FREE FROM IMPERFECTIONS
If life can be so flexible and dynamic, the wonder is that we do not last
longer . And we would, if we knew how to handle the balance of forces that
are at work in and around us. The ancient sages of Ayurveda were bold
enough to ask the ultimate question: Must we become sick and grow old at
all? Their answer was no. If the forces inside us are kept in harm ony and in
balance with the surrounding environment, we can be immune to illness. Perfect balance makes perfect health possible. In Ayurveda we rely on the basic principle that any disorder can be
prevented as long as balance is maintained, not just in the body , but in the
mind and spirit as well. The Ayurvedic sages teach that there is an impulse
in all of us to grow and progress. This impulse governs our overall balance
automatically; it can be seen at work in every cell, but particularly in the
brain, which simultaneously balances body temperature, metabolic rate,
growth, hunger and thirst, sleep, blood chemistry , respiration, and numerous
other functions. Their coordination must be incredibly precise for health to
be main tained (the hypothalamu s, a tiny region of the forebrain no bigger
than a fingertip, coordinates dozens of the body’ s automatic functions,
earning it the nickname “the brain’ s brain”).But the real source of balance goes deeper still, to the quant um level. Here our basic impulse to grow and progress can be tapped through special
techniques that we will explore. This is a vital and yet largely unknown area
to most people, which is why they frequently find themselves  helpless in
the face of illness and aging. When the forces acting against life gain the
upper hand, the body has no choice but to deteriorate over time. On the other hand, if we learn to live in balance from the deepest level,
our inner growth has no foreseeable limits. Dozens of books expound the
value of inner growth, but they miss the key ingredient that Ayurveda
emphasizes: Growth is automatic; it is in nature’ s plan, built into our very
cells. It is only a question of following the silent river of intelligence to its
source. That is the final secret of perfect health. If we could allow the mind
to expan d and to explore higher realities, the body would follow . Wouldn’ t
that be enough to save it from disease and old age? We can only speculate how far evolution will take us, but there are
dramatic instances where the mind refused to believe in disease and the
body suddenly followed. Not long ago I saw a Swiss patient named Andreas
Schmitt who had been diagnosed with a fatal cancer . A year and a half
earlier he noticed a sore spot on his back that bothered him whenever he
leaned back in his chair . Exploring with his fingers, he detected a swollen area about the size of a
dime. His wife said it looked like an enlar ged dark mole; angling with his
wife’ s hand mirror , Andreas caught a glimpse of a purplish-brown growth
located squarely between his shoulder blades. Events moved quickly and grimly after that. An oncologist in Geneva
took a biopsy , which revealed the presence of melanoma, the most virulent
and fastest-spreading form of skin cancer . Within a day Andreas was
operated on. The surgeons removed the growth and explored the lymph
nodes under the right armpit. Fourteen suspected nodes were removed; four
of them  turned out to have melanoma cells inside. Now that the original
melanoma was gone, the next step was to radiate the sites on his back andshoulder to catch any stray cancer cells that might remain. Andreas, a well-
educated man in his early fifties, refused the radiation. “My logic,” he told me later, “was just to wait and see. The tumor was
gone; I had suffered considerable trauma from the surgery, and inside I
wasn’ t sure that I felt strong enough to submit to more treatme nts. If I had
time to recover at home and build up my confidence, wouldn’ t I be better
off?”
This decision disturbed his oncologist, who said that if Andreas
discontinued treatment, his melanoma would almost surely be back in six
months. “And with radiation it won’ t?” Andreas asked. “The chances will be smaller ,” his doctor said. “And how much longer can I expect to live after that?” Andreas asked. His doctor was forced into an uneasy guess. Untreated, metastatic
melanoma patie nts may live only a few months; treated to the maximum,
their life expectancy stretches out, sometimes by a few years, sometimes
not. After five years, the number of long-term survivors is under 10 percent. Within ten years, virtually no one is left alive. “So if I am not going to survive in the long run,” Andreas said, “why go
through the agony just to please some doctor?”
His life moved ahead for the next six months, until a swollen lymph node
appeared, this time under his left armpit. Tests revealed it to be the return of
melanoma, as predicted. At this point, no realistic medical hope remained. When Andreas came to Ameri ca for help, I first introduced him to the
concept of the quantum mech anical body . “Before a cancer can exist
physically , it must be triggered at a deeper level. Rather than talking about
the breakdown of DNA ’s self-repair mechanism or the action of
carcinogens, Ayurveda says that illness results from distortions in the
patterns of quantum vibrations that hold the body intact.“You can learn to take your awareness to that subtle level of yourself—in
fact, what we call thoughts and emotions are just expressions of these
quantum fluctua tions. Awarenes s has the capacity to heal, and it seems to be
instrumental in causing sudden cures even in the most advanc ed cases of
incurable disease.”
All so-called incurable illnesses have instances of unexplained cures. One of the peculiarities of melanoma is that it is more subject to self-cure
than many much less deadly forms of cancer . These “spontaneous
remissions” are comparatively rare, happening far less than 1 percent of the
time, but they can apparently result in full, lasting recoveries. “If one person has cured himself of melanoma,” I pointed out, “then we
know it is possib le. What triggers it? Some new discovery that you have to
make inside yourself. Right now, you stand as good a chance of making this
discovery as anyone.”
Despite the odds against him, Andreas took this advice seriously . He
learned several Ayurvedic approaches to activate his healing forces and
underwent purification treatments to remove impurities from his body (this
approach is explained in chapte rs 6 and 7). Our focus was improving his
immediate quali ty of life. He returned to Switzerland and four months later
he reported jubilantly that his swollen lymph node had subsided . X rays and
blood tests revealed no trace of melanoma in his body . Although Swiss
oncologists had not expected him to live more than three months after the
recurrence of his cancer , Andreas is leading a normal life several years later . The most striking aspect of this case is that the patient’ s mind invited his
body to accept a new reality , and it did, oblivious of the fact that what was
happening was “impossible.” How can we explain such extraordinary
events? A study of four hundre d cancer cases that went into spontaneous
remission revealed cures that had little in common. Some people drank
grape juice or swallowed massive doses of vitamin C; others prayed, took
herbal remedies, or simply cheered themselves on. These very diverse
patients did have one thing in common, though. At a certain point in their
disease, they suddenly knew , with complete certainty , that they were goingto get better , as if the disease  were merely a mirage, and the patient
suddenly passed beyond it into a space where fear and despair and all
sickness were nonexistent. They entered the place called perfect health. OceanofPDF .comCHAPTER 2
DISCOVERING YOUR BODY  TYPE
It’s a clear October day in downtown Boston (or New York, or Chicago),
and the lunch crowd is on its way back to work. Some people are dressed in
hats, scarves, and gloves, anticipating winter; others, wearing short-sleeved
shirts, seem to think it’s still summer . Running bare-chested in shorts, a
jogger jumps the green light at the curb, heading for the park. He stands out
in vivid contrast to an older woman waiting for her bus bundled in a full-
length coat with a fur collar . At a casual glance, you would think these
people lived in different climates. Actually , they are expressing the
differences nature has created inside themselves. Despite the fact that many people had a typical lunch of sandwich,
French fries, and coffee, the food is sitting heavily in some stomachs,
tossing nervousl y in others, and passing unnoticed in most of the rest. In
some bodies, hearts are beating faster because the sidewalk feels too
crowded; others  are pouring out excess gastric acid or experienc ing a rise in
blood pressure. It takes all types to make a world—but has medicine really
noticed what types there are? In conventional  medicine we pay much more attention to differences
among diseases than among people. If a patient complains of a twinge of
arthritis in his hands, a physician realizes that this common complaint may
be linked to over a hundred diseases, all of which lead to sore, stiff,
inflamed, painfu l joints. It is known that some people inherit the tendency
to beco me arthritic, but a bewildering number of things also seem to
contribute—hormonal changes, physical and mental stress, diet, lack of
exercise, and so on. Ayurveda points out that diseases differ mainly because people are so
different. Although biology does acknowledge that all of us were born with“biochemical individuality ,” this has few practical implications in the
doctor ’s office. Biochemical individuality means that no one is average. At
any given moment, your cells and tissues do not contain an average level of
oxygen, carbon dioxide, iron, insulin, or vitamin C. Instead, they contain a
precise amount unique to that moment, to the physical condit ion of your
body , and to the state of your thoughts and emotions. Your body is a three-
dimensional composite of millions of tiny differences, and by learning
about them you can make dramatic improvements in your health. At this
level, perfect health is a very specific biological phenomenon. THE FIRST  STEP—KNOWING YOUR BODY  TYPE
Everywhere you look, your body is doing something unique with every
molecule of air, water , and food you take in, guided by its innate tendencies. You have the choice to follow these tendencies or modify them, but to
recklessly oppos e them is unnat ural. In Ayurveda, living in tune with nature
—easily , comfortably , and without strain—means respecting your
uniqueness. The first question an Ayurvedic doctor asks is not, “What disease does
my patient have?” but, “Who is my patient?” By “who” he does not mean
your name but how you are constituted. He looks for the telltale traits that
disclose your body type, also known as your prakruti . This Sanskrit term
means “nature”—it is your basic nature he wants to uncover before he turns
to your complaints and symptoms. The Ayurvedic body type is like a blueprint outlining the innate
tendencies that have been built into your system. A glass of whole milk
contains 120 calories, no matte r who drinks it, but one person uses those
calories mainly to store fat, while another converts most of it into energy. A
child’ s body extracts lots of calcium to build new bone tissue, while an
older person passes the same calcium out through his kidneys (and may
convert it into a painful kidney stone if his body can no longer deal
efficiently with calcium).By knowing your body type, an Ayurvedic doctor can tell which diet,
physical activities, and medical therapies should help you and which might
do no good or even cause harm. A pizza with extra cheese can be potentially
lethal to someone with advan ced artery disease, for example—the fat
ingested could be the last straw that ruptures one of the depo sits of fatty
plaque blocking a blood vessel to the heart. Massive heart attacks have
resulted from the tiniest of these ruptures. Yet the same pizza would be
relatively harmle ss to the rest of us; high fat is even desirable for those who
cannot gain weight on normal diets. Knowing who you are—your prakruti
—is an invaluable clue to what you should eat. There are three important reaso ns why knowing your body type is the
first step toward perfect health:
1. The seeds of disease are sown early. It would be hard to find a heart
patient in his forties who had not shown some suspicious signs in his
twenties. A pathologist examinin g the arteries of a deceased 20-year -old can
see premature streaks of fat that are liable to create a future heart attack. Even 10-year -olds will already  be prone either to allergies or to chronic
overweight, high cholesterol, or peptic ulcers. But at this age, when
incipient disease  is easiest to treat and prevent, symptoms are often difficult
to read. By understanding body types and their specific strengths and
weaknesses, you can begin to take preventive steps when they do the most
good, long before overt illness appears. 2. Body types make prevention more specific. Nobody is prone to every
disease, yet most of us try to prevent as many as we can—cancer , heart
attacks, osteoporosis, and so on—moving uncertainly from one medical
scare to the next. If you try to prevent every disease without knowing your
particular predis position, you are stabbing in the dark. Why do 60 million
American adults  go around with untreated high blood pressure? At least part
of the reason is that there is not enough personal connection being made
between prevent ion and the individual who needs it. Heart attacks, cancer ,
and diabetes happen to specific people, one by one. It only makes sense that
prevention must proceed on the same basis.3. Body types make treatment more accurate once a disease  appears. Generalized treatment—prescribing Valium to everyone who is anxious or
antacids to everyone who has an ulcer—is a hit-or -miss affair; it assumes
that a given disease is the same in all people. But as we have seen, this is
not true. According to Ayurved a, three people may feel anxious at three
different levels of stress. Their ulcers may result from three different diets,
job pressures, or difficulties at home. In effect, they are suffering from three
different disease s, all of which happen to travel under the same name. This
is true for peop le who chain-smoke, compulsively overeat, or suffer from
allergies and asthma. In all these cases, the Ayurvedic body type is
remarkably accurate, as you will see, because it can pinpoint what is
happening inside each individual. Finally , knowing  your body type is essential to understanding yourself. When you find out what is actually going on inside, you will no longer be
bound by society’ s notions of what you should be doing, saying, thinking,
and feeling. One of the delight s of learning about Ayurveda is its insight
into little things you probably dismiss as idiosyncrasies. On TV everybody
is urged to drink  a glass of orange juice in the morning, but some people get
heartburn or an upset stomach from it. This is not abnormal; it is a sign that
they fall into a specific body type for which the acid quality of orange juice
is not ideal. A person whose nerves are jangled by a cup of weak coffee is by nature
different from someone who downs three cups of black espresso without
feeling a thing. When you react to a cup of coffee, a cold draft, criticism
from your boss, a love note, or rainy weather , your body type is sending
you a signal. It is a very personal signal that you alone can tune in to. If you
start to listen to all these signals that are sent to you day by day, minute by
minute, you will notice that they affect your moods, behavior , perceptions,
tastes, talents, attraction to other people, and much more. The phrase “body type” is only a hint at what prakruti means—it is really
your world, the personal reality you generate from the creative core inside. More accurately , we might call your prakruti your “psycho-physiological
constitutional type,” a phrase that includes both mind (psyche) and body(physiology). I am avoiding this phrase for the sake of brevity , but it is
worth remembe ring that your physical body type has a ment al aspect as
well. THE BODY’S SWITCHING ST ATION
Where do body types come from? Everyone has essentially the same
kinds of cells and organs, even though genetics may dictate that you were
born with blue eyes instead of brown. And despite huge variations from one
personality to the next, we also share the same range of emotions. To find
the deeper origin of body types, Ayurveda looks at the meeting point
between mind and body . Clearly the two do meet. Every time there is an
event in the mind, there is a corresponding event in the body . If a child is
afraid of the dark, his fear takes physical shape in the form of adrenaline
shooting through his bloodstream. Ayurveda says that this
interconnectedness is accomplished at a place sandwiched between mind
and body, where  thought turns into matter; it is occupied by three operating
principles called doshas . The doshas are unique and extremely important, because they allow the
mind’ s dialogue with the body . All your hopes, fears, dreams, and wishes,
along with the faintest wisps of emotion and desire, have left their marks on
your physiology—these mental events constantly shape the body as they
“talk” to it. For most of us, the messages are not as life-supporting as they
should be. At some point in our adult lives, the marks of stress and age
begin to prevail over those of growth and expansion. If your mind is
capable of love and creativity while your body wears out year by year, the
doshas need attention. According to Ayurveda, the reason the downward drag of entropy
overcomes the upward pull of evolution lies here: Imbalance in the doshas
is the first sign that mind and body are not perfectly coordina ted. This is
why a poet as brilliant as Keats dies at 26 of tuberculosis and a musical
genius on the order of Mozart dies of kidney disease when he is only 35. The mind’ s genius was not coupled to the body . On the other hand,restoring the doshas opens up the possibility of a mind body system that is
always balanced, always healthy , always evolving. The three doshas are called Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. Although they
regulate thousands of separate functions in the mind body system , they have
three basic functions:
Vata dosha contr ols movement. Pitta dosha contr ols metabolism. Kapha dosha contr ols structur e.
 
Every cell in your body has to contain all three of these principles. To
remain alive, your body has to have Vata, or motion, which allows it to
breathe, circulate blood, pass food through the digestive tract, and send
nerve impulses to and from the brain. It has to have Pitta, or metabolism,
which processes food, air, and water throughout the entire system. It has to
have Kapha, or structure, to hold the cells together and form muscle, fat,
bone, and sinew . Nature needs all three to build a human body . In the following chapter we will delve deeper into the dosh as. First,
though, we must determine your body type, which will give you a much
more personal interest in the doshas. Just as there are three dosh as, there are
three basic types of human constitution in the Ayurvedic system, depending
upon which of the doshas is dominant. If a doctor examines you and says,
“You are a Vata type,” he means that Vata characteristics are the most
prominent in you; you would be said to have a Vata prakruti. The importance of knowing that you are a Vata type—or a Pitta or a
Kapha—is that it sharply focuses your diet, exercise, daily routine, and
other measures for preventing disease. A Vata person lives in a Vata-colored
world down to the smallest detail. By eating food that he knows will
balance Vata, he can exert a tremendous balancing influence everywhere. This will become obvious to you as soon as you complete the quiz on the
following pages. Please remem ber, however , that all three doshas are
present in everyone, and all three need to be kept in balance. Theknowledge of body type that you will gain is your key to total balance; it
provides the all-important ingredient for change—yourself as nature made
you. AYUR VEDA  MIND BODY  TYPE TEST
The following quiz is divided into three sections. For the first 20
questions, which  apply to Vata dosha, read each statement and mark, from 1
to 6, how well it applies to you. 1 = Doesn’ t apply to me
3 = Applies to me somewhat (or some of the time)
6 = Applies to me very much (or nearly all of the time)
 
At the end of the section, write down your total Vata score. For example,
if you mark a 6 for the first question, a 3 for the second, and a 2 for the
third, your total up to that point would be 6 + 3 + 2 = 11. Total the entire
section in this way, and you arrive at your final score. Proceed to the 20
questions for Pitta and those for Kapha. When you are finished, you will have three separate scores. Comparing
these will determine your body type. For fairly objective physical traits, your choice will usually be obvious. For mental traits and behavior , which are more subjective, you should
answer according to how you have felt and acted most of your life, or at
least for the past few years.DETERMINING YOUR BODY  TYPE
Although there are only three doshas, Ayurveda combines them in ten
possible ways to arrive at ten dif ferent body types. SINGLE-DOSHA  TYPES:
Vata
Pitta
Kapha
 
If one dosha is much higher than the others, you are a single-do sha type. Most indicative is a score wher e the primary dosha is twice as high as the
second (for example, Vata–90, Pitta–45, Kapha–35), but smaller margins
also count. A true single-dosha  type displays the traits of Vata, Pitta, or
Kapha very prominently . Your next highest dosha will still show some
influence in your natural tendencies but to a much lesser degree. TWO-DOSHA  TYPES:Vata-Pitta or Pitta-V ata
Pitta-Kapha or Kapha-Pitta
Kapha-V ata or V ata-Kapha
 
If no dosha is extremely domina nt, you are a two-dosha type.
Perfect_Health_-_The_Complete_Mind_Body_Guide_by_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        OceanofPDF. comTable of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
PART I - A PLACE CALLED PERFECT  HEAL TH
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 - INVIT ATION TO A HIGHER REALITY
PROMISE OF A NEW  MEDICINE—A YUR VEDA
THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL  HUMAN BODY
THE BODY  IS A RIVER
THE REENCHANTMENT  OF NA TURE
LIFE FREE FROM IMPERFECTIONS
CHAPTER 2 - DISCOVERING YOUR BODY  TYPE
THE FIRST  STEP—KNOWING YOUR BODY  TYPE
THE BODY’S SWITCHING ST ATION
DETERMINING YOUR BODY  TYPE
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BODY  TYPES
CHAPTER 3 - THE THREE DOSHAS— MAKERS OF REALITY
LEARNING TO “SEE” THE DOSHAS
BALANCE IS DYNAMIC—THE 25 GUNAS
THE FIVE ELEMENTSGETTING DOWN TO DET AILS—THE SUBDOSHAS
THE SUBDOSHAS—A  MORE PRECISE GUIDE
CHAPTER 4 - A BLUEPRINT  FROM NA TURE
RESPECT  YOUR BODY  TYPE
AS NA TURE MADE YOU
THE SUBTLE SOURCE OF DISEASE
HOW  THE DOSHAS GET  UNBALANCED
CHAPTER 5 - REST ORING THE BALANCE
A HUNDRED THERMOST ATS
SIX ST AGES OF DISEASE
HOW  TO BALANCE YOUR DOSHAS
PART II - THE QUANTUM MECHANICAL  HUMAN BODY
CHAPTER 6 - QUANTUM MEDICINE FOR A QUANTUM BODY
EXPLORING THE INNER WORLD
QUANTUM MEDICINE
THE POWER OF AWARENESS
CHAPTER 7 - OPENING THE CHANNELS OF HEALING
PANCHAKARMA—PURIFICA TION OF THE BODY
MEDIT ATION—A  TECHNIQUE FOR “GOING BEYOND”
HEALING SOUNDS—NA TURE’S FINEST  VIBRA TIONS
MARMA  THERAPY—STIMULA TING THE POINTS WHERE MIND AND BODY  MEET
AROMA THERAPY—BALANCE THROUGH THE SENSE OF SMELL
MUSIC THERAPY—MELODIES TO BALANCE NA TURECHAPTER 8 - FREEDOM FROM ADDICTIONS
ROOTED IN MEMOR Y
A HANDS-OFF CURE
ADDICTION AND THE DOSHAS
GIVING UP  CIGARETTES
CURING AN ADDICTION AT HOME
CHAPTER 9 - AGING IS A MIST AKE
AGING VERSUS HEALING
RASA YANAS—HERBS FOR LONGEVITY
QUIZ: HOW  WELL  AM I AGING. PART II - LIVING IN TUNE WITH NA TURE
CHAPTER 10 - THE IMPULSE TO EVOL VE
MAKING RIGHT  CHOICES
HOW  TO INCREASE SA TTVA
CHAPTER 1 1 - DAIL Y ROUTINE—RIDING NA TURE’S WAVES
ONE DA Y IN PERFECT  RHYTHM
DINACHAR YA: THE DAIL Y ROUTINE
CHAPTER 12 - DIET—EA TING FOR PERFECT  BALANCE
BODY -TYPE DIETS
THE SIX TASTES
AGNI—THE DIGESTIVE FIRE
A BLISSFUL  DIETCHAPTER 13 - EXERCISE—THE MYTH OF “NO P AIN, NO GAIN”
SUCCESS WITHOUT  PAIN
THREE-DOSHA  EXERCISES
HOW  TO PERFORM THE SUN SALUTE
CHAPTER 14 - SEASONAL  ROUTINE— BALANCING THE WHOLE
YEAR
DOSHAS AND THEIR SEASONS
FOLLOWING A SEASONAL  ROUTINE
Epilogue - FLOWERS IN A QUANTUM FIELD
Appendix A - SOURCES FOR AYURVEDA
Appendix B - GLOSSAR Y
Bibliography
Also by Deepak Chopra
Copyright Page
OceanofPDF. com 
To Shankara
and the
Shankaracharya Tradition of Masters
for Preserving the knowledge of
The Wisdom of Life. OceanofPDF. comAcknowledgments
I wish to of fer my heartfelt thanks:
To my family, for their deep love and support, which is the basis for
everything I do. To David Simon, my friend and colleague, for his support in the updating
of this book and the greater vision we share. To a superb agent—and valued  friend—L ynn Franklin, for her belief in
this project. To Huntley Dent, a close friend whose keen literary judgment helped me
bring the original text to completed form. To my editor, Peter Guzzardi, who insists on perfection and bringing out
the best I can of fer. And to the dedicated family of doctors, nurses, teachers, and support staff
of the Chopra Center for Well Being who are committed to living the ideals
of perfect health every day in their lives.
The book "Perfect Health" presents a new approach to medicine and health, which is based on the principles of Ayurveda and the concept of the quantum mechanical human body.
What is the main focus of the book "Perfect Health"?
Ayurveda aims to guide people in maintaining a balanced and healthy state by understanding and respecting their unique body type, and then applying specific techniques to maintain balance and prevent disease.
What is the main idea behind Ayurveda?
The author believes that disease is not an inevitable part of life, and that it is possible to prevent and cure illnesses by understanding and working with the quantum mechanical body.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of disease?
The author's approach is based on the idea that the body is a quantum mechanical entity that can be influenced by the mind, whereas conventional medicine focuses on treating symptoms and does not take into account the individual's unique characteristics.
What is the main difference between the author's approach and conventional medicine?
The purpose of Ayurveda is to provide a personalized approach to health and wellness by identifying and respecting an individual's unique body type, and then using this information to guide lifestyle choices and prevent disease.
What is the purpose of the Ayurvedic system?