- I am a mother of five.

I really didn't see myself being able to go back to school.

- It was a lot of self-doubt.

- Cost of higher education, and that was a big hurdle for me.

Once I found Amazon and all their free education programs, I was hooked.

- Amazon's footing the bill for it so we gotta take advantage.

- And I'm able to work towards a degree in computer and electrical engineering, - Network engineering.

- Environmental engineering.

It makes me feel confident I can get to the next level.

I feel like the sky's the limit.

(gentle music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] And now the Crosscut Ideas Festival, featuring a selection of curated sessions from this year's festival.

Thank you for joining us for Spiritual Rx for Our Mental Health with Deepak Chopra, moderated by Amna Nawaz.

Before we begin, thank you to our founding sponsor, the Kerry and Linda Killinger Foundation.

We'd also like to thank our title sponsor, Amazon.

- Hello everyone and welcome to the Crosscut Ideas Festival.

I'm Amna Nawaz co-anchor of the PBS News Hour.

And I'm here today to speak with Deepak Chopra.

Deepak Chopra is the founder of the Chopra Foundation that's a nonprofit entity for research on wellbeing and humanitarianism.

He's also the founder of Chopra Global which is a modern-day healthcare company at the intersection of science and spirituality.

He's a clinical professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California and he's authored over 90 books, including his most recent which is called Living in the Light, Yoga for Self-Realization.

The Chopra Foundation's Mental Health Initiative, Never Alone is now working to create a global technology platform that improves access to mental health resources through collaborations with businesses, policy makers, mental health professionals, schools, and many more.

We're gonna be discussing all of that and much more on Dr. Chopra's approach to the world's mental health challenges and how his philosophy on these issues applies to the modern world.

Deepak Chopra, welcome and thank you so much.

It's an honor to be with you today.

- Thank you, Amna.

Me and my wife watch you every day.

(Amna laughs) - Thank you for that.

Thank you to both of you for your support as well.

I wanna ask you about this new book because it is book number 93.

It's called Living in the Light.

You've co-written it with your yoga teacher, Sarah Plat Finger and you yourself have shared you've practiced yoga for over 30 years.

Who is it you're trying to reach with this particular book and why this book right now?

- So, Amna, yes.

I've been practicing yoga for 35 years or so and when I first came to the United States which is I think now over 50 years, I was 22, 23 straight after medical school.

I couldn't find a yoga studio in New York City.

And now every block, there's a couple of (indistinct).

So in 35 years, we've seen a lot of interest in yoga and yet all the yoga studios every single one that I know actually only talks about the physical postures of yoga.

So, if you look at the original writings in yoga, everybody, every commentary of yoga in my office here, there are at least 25 different commentaries on yoga by experts and really good scholars.

But everybody only talks about 5% of the yoga literature.

And the postures, which are very important are one aspect of eight different limbs of yoga.

So, that's the complete body of yoga.

And my book is actually a very short summary.

It doesn't really do justice.

- We are speaking in the midst of a real mental health crisis, certainly here in America, but more broadly as well.

And a lot of people will point to the pandemic as an accelerant of that.

But I know a lot of experts I've talked to have said we are and have been heading down this road for a very long time.

So, I'm curious how you view this moment when it comes to the mental health of Americans and how your philosophy intersects with that.

- So, first of all, I don't think it's fair to separate mental health from physical health.

So, all our attitude towards mental health right now is above the neck.

You know, something that you have to handle here.

But actually a lot of things that we feel are mental issues.

Their treatment lies below the neck as well.

You know, in terms of everything we do, in terms of diet and how we handle our microbiome.

Exercise, breathing, personal relationships, social interactions, biological rhythms.

So, you know, it's kind of a simplistic thing to separate the two.

Now, during the pandemic, what happened is our foundation was doing what is called meta-analysis which is a computer research on what other people are doing, you know, research wise.

So, these days, if you don't have the resources to do your own research, you can go use AI and computers to do what is called meta-analysis to see and summarize everybody else's research.

And so, what we found was that all the people who were getting sick including the young ones, old ones, you know, we knew risk factors, heart disease, diabetes, et cetera, that come with aging.

But the younger people who were getting sick, morbidity and even mortality all of them without exception, had stress, anxiety and depression and inflammation as foundational factors.

So, everybody had inflammation, some chronic, some acute.

So, the young people had what we call inflammatory storms.

The body was flooded with inflammatory proteins as if it was on fire.

The older people had chronic inflammation.

But irrespective of every incident, the common factor in addition to inflammation was severe anxiety and also depression.

And you know, a combination of factors, anger, hostility, guilt, shame, depletion of energy, et cetera.

So, as a result of that, we were able to actually look at a part of the nervous system that is commonly ignored.

You know, everybody talks about the brain, everybody talks about the sympathetic nervous system which actually helps us deal with fight-flight stress responses.

But there's a part of our autonomic nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system and that is now referred to as the rest, renew, rejuvenate, and healing system.

And in that system, there's one particular nerve called the vagus nerve.

And the word vagus is Latin, but related to the English word vagabond.

This is the 10th cranial nerve.

It influences your eye movements, your facial expressions, the tone of your voice, your heart rate variability which is the best measure of whether you're stressed or not.

The depth of your breathing and the rate of your breathing.

But it also influences the health of your microbiome.

And what's happening to the 2 million genes in your gut which are actually the majority of genetic inflammation in your body as a human.

You only have 25,000 genes from your parents.

You have 2 million genes that are from the soil, the bacteria.

And so we focused on mental health through parasympathetic nervous system activation and that includes yoga, breathing, diet, biological rhythms.

But during the course of the pandemic, we also discovered that the second most common cause of death amongst teens is suicide.

Every 40 seconds, somewhere in the world, somebody is dying from suicide.

So, we created, through the foundation, we created a new website called neveralone.love and we deployed an artificial intelligence, emotional ChatBot that we called PB, which was the nickname of a recording artist who had died from suicide.

She was the sister of an actress who was very active in the mental health movement.

Gabriela Wright, British-Indian, and European.

But nevertheless, we called the ChatBot PB and we found that teens were more comfortable talking to PB than to a human counselor.

- More comfortable talking to an AI ChatBot than to a real human.

- Yeah, because they didn't feel judged.

And the ChatBot became very intimately familiar with them.

How did you sleep last night?

What did you eat?

Did your boyfriend or girlfriend return your call?

What is the matter, et cetera?

Bottom line, AI has now intervened in 6,000 suicidal ideations.

She's speaking to 20 million mostly young people at the same time.

And I just went to Dubai and had conversations with people there because this is a worldwide pandemic, suicide and mental illness, not only amongst young people, but now in the elderly.

You'll be very surprised to know that in India and Pakistan actually elderly are committing suicide because in those cultures, they don't want to be dependent on their children.

And so, you know, they're dying from suicide because of social circumstances.

So, I recently went to the Middle East and said, how can we do this, expand this in Urdu, in Hindi, in Arabic, in Farsi?

And there's a deep need right now for some kind of intervention that actually works because people go to consulate all the time and most people keep just going without any benefit, except, you know, there's somebody to listen to.

- Can I ask you about that, the technology part of it?

Because it will surprise a lot of folks that you have embraced technology to the extent you have.

We talk a lot about the harm it can bring, right?

Increased isolation, in particular the harms of social media and platforms that are meant to be connecting us.

But you seem to believe that there's real hope and a real future in achieving that kind of wellness and wellbeing through technology.

- Yeah, I just gave you the example of say the vehicle stimulation.

So, now I'm working on a project where you can do a 30-second or 10-second video where you would say, hello, I'm Amna Nawaz, how are you?

Have a good day.

And then we can look at your eye movements, your facial expressions, tone of your voice, body language, gestures connected to what's happening with vagal stimulation, look at your heart rate immune system, blood pressure, everything.

And within a few seconds, say you're in good health or aging is accelerated, or you have inflammation and so on which was unthinkable 10 years ago.

So, technology used correctly, I believe can enhance the future of wellbeing even help us create a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world.

We just using it the wrong way, you know with nuclear weapons and cyber warfare and all the junk that these people call gangsters otherwise known as world leaders are doing to disrupt this world, sleepwalking collectively to extinction.

That can happen through technology, but the reverse can also happen.

- I wanna ask you about your views on world leaders in just a moment, but carrying this a little further on the technology side, what about social media and the role that it plays?

How do you view that?

Because you're on Twitter, right?

Do you do tweet, you're on Instagram, are you on TikTok?

- Yes, I do.

I do one video a day which then gets on all these sites.

- Okay.

- But that one video is only about wellbeing and the future of our consciousness if we don't sleepwalk to extinction.

That's what I do.

You know, I'm so (indistinct) you know, there's a, I don't know if you live in New York or where do you live, by the way?

- I'm in the Washington DC area.

- Okay, so in Union Square, New York, there's a big sign about climate change and people don't even look at it.

But you know, it's a countdown.

6 years and 180 days as of this morning to climate disasters, refugees, pandemics, war, violence, and all we do is watch today's stock market.

- So, let me get back to your comments about world leaders because this did get a lot of attention.

You gave an interview, I think earlier this year in which you said you think every current leader nationally almost every current leader, globally without exception is a gangster.

They're interested in power, power mongering, cronyism, influence pedaling, corruption, bureaucracy and amplifying their personal wealth.

Do you really believe that about every single world leader with no exceptions?

- It's the nature of politics, unfortunately.

And today, it's the nature of social media because if you want to win the election, you have to satisfy a certain demographic and you have to pander to their needs.

And if you read The Republic by Plato, and this is again, very controversial, but I have to say what I feel is the truth, Plato was not an fan or proponent of democracy.

He said democracy assumes that everybody's equally capable of ruling.

You wouldn't say that of music, would you say every human being is equally capable of being a great musician or a great writer or a great physicist.

But we say that of leaders.

And so, you know, Plato said, democracy is the rule of the mob, and we are seeing it today.

Okay?

He also decried aristocracy as leading to tyranny.

So, his thesis 2,500 years ago, he said, we need a republic that trains people to become philosophers, statesmen and only then if they qualify, are they worthy to stand for election?

That was the original idea of the republic.

So yeah, there are exceptions.

I mean, even today there are exceptions.

We've seen Nelson Mandela, we've seen, in my opinion, Obama, we've seen, in my opinion, you know, Mahatma Gandhi and some great statesmen, philosophers when the British were being overthrown from India and India and Pakistan, when they were coming together as a movement, all those leaders, by the way, including Genna and Naru and Welli Patel and rather Krishna, they were actually statesmen philosophers, didn't last long.

- Do you follow politics in the US now closely?

Do you participate?

Do you vote?

- Of course I vote.

That's a responsibility I think is very important.

I don't watch news other than, you know, my wife watches you and I happen to be-- - Except for the News Hour.

We'll take that.

- Except for that, I don't watch news.

It's totally disgusting to me.

- Why is that?

Why don't you watch news?

Because I think this speaks to a larger concern, especially around general stress and anxiety in our culture right now.

- Yeah, because all news has become melodrama and it doesn't matter your left wing or right wing or whatever, it's now the sale of drama and you know who your constituency is.

So, unless you're selling melodrama which can be sponsored by people who believe in your kind of melodrama, it's not even news, it's opinion.

And, you know, I don't want to hear other people's opinions.

I have my own.

- Or at a real moment of very deep divides politically, socially, culturally in this country.

And we have this crucial election coming up in another year.

I know you follow politics.

Do you believe that one party or the better or the other is better for the wellbeing of our nation?

- I'm a natural liberal, so I would be naturally identified with the Democratic party.

And I've always voted democratic, but you know, I'm looking for a real leader there too.

You know, one of my friends that I've been trying to convince, I'm saying this publicly now, might as well, is Tim Schriver, you know, who's indirectly related to to the Kennedys.

I've known him for 35 years and, you know, I've been constantly badgering him for to run for president.

- You've been encouraging it really, what's his reticence?

- I think he realizes that once he gets into the fray then it's the same for everyone, you know?

But my hope is that one of these days he'll run, somebody like him should be running, somebody who is a statesman who understands philosophy, who understands you know, the rigor and discipline that is required to be an independent thinker.

Tim, you better watch this program.

We'll send to him.

- You know, I, I wanna ask you more broadly about your career because you've worn so many hats.

You built a career, not just as a scientist, as an author, as a philosopher, as an entrepreneur.

You've been the boss running lots of different projects.

And I think on a big picture level, you talk a lot about how you manage your stress, how you work towards your wellbeing.

But I wonder if you could take it down to sort of a molecular level which I think is where many people may find it helpful.

When you find yourselves in those waking up on the days when there is a lot to get done or there's a huge challenge ahead or anxiety over a new project, what does Deepak Chopra do to manage stress in that moment?

- I don't deviate from my daily schedules.

So, I have sleep time, I have relationship time.

I have the evening news time, I have eating time.

I have downtime, and I have recreational time and then I have time for yoga and spirituality.

And it's very structured.

It doesn't change.

And therefore, there's no stress.

I mean, I can honestly say I'm 76.

I'm in really good health, and I have no stress because at this moment, you know, it's also has to do with age.

I have no personal motivation or ambition, you know, which sounds strange by saying it, but I can say it honestly.

I'm not motivated by anything personal.

I'm only motivated by the bigger picture because I know that doesn't matter who you are, sooner or later, we are all going to be dead.

And, you know, it doesn't matter.

I mean, you know, I grew up and I saw the Kennedy assassination, the Martha Luther King assassination.

My parents told me about the Second World War.

My grandparents told me about the First World War, the Great Depression, on and on.

So, we are not the first generation to experience this crisis.

And to me, it's insanity that we keep recycling this behavior.

So, you know, my interest is not personal anymore.

I would love to reach a critical mass of people, say a billion people, with the help of social media and people like you, for a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier and joyful world.

I can say that in my sleep.

That's what I want.

More peaceful, sustainable, just healthy and joyful.

And that's what we need to do.

That's what we need to do.

Otherwise, it's a disgrace to our humanity, really, that we have allowed this situation to occur where our children are dying from suicide.

- You know, you've spoken a bit about this stage of life.

You are 76.

- Yes.

- And you did recently negotiate an exit of sorts, right?

Selling the company that you built to a New York City based company called The Healing Company.

I think for anyone who has spent so much time and so many of their resources, building something from scratch that could be understandably difficult.

Did you find it difficult?

- I mean, it wasn't like I set out to create these companies, it just happened.

So, now I'm very relieved and I feel I've given the responsibility to people who are authentic, have integrity and will keep the brand alive with its authenticity.

And its higher calling, but I'm done with business engagement on a day-to-day basis.

I can lend my name to where the causes and I'm focusing a lot more on the nonprofit which is not only mental wellbeing, but also leadership training for younger people.

We have a program for African-American youth on the future of leadership and the future of leadership as it pertains to, you know, a multiethnic, multicultural society which I hope will experience in the future.

So, that's where I wanna focus my life now.

- In selling your company, that's a major chapter that's closed.

- Yes.

- That's closing in your life.

And I wonder how you think about this idea of knowing, knowing when is the right time to end this chapter which I think is something a lot of people struggle with.

How do you know?

- You know, I meet a lot of young entrepreneurs and they come to me for advice.

They're starting a company.

And even before they start telling me what their idea is they're telling me about their exit plan.

You know, it's like dividing the loot before there's a train to rob and this one exit after another and there is no joy, absolutely no joy.

And then we have our final exit.

We call it death.

So do you want to go to death thinking I made all these exits or do you wanna have your final exit a little more elegant and I think for me, that was my question.

My final exit should be one of joy and fulfillment and being able to stay very comfortably been there and done that.

- Speaking of that final exit, I mean this is something you've spoken about very openly that you are living in your final chapters of your life.

A lot of people, that concept scares them.

It's a very frightening idea to move into that stage of life.

Does any part of it frighten you?

- No, no.

I'm meeting, there's, you know, trillions of people have come and gone before you and me.

Why would you wanna be the only exception?

You know, so, death is what makes life possible.

If you really understand awareness and consciousness and this, I don't want to get into religious territory, but you know, everything has a purpose.

And once that purpose is fulfilled, it's over, you and your body.

The cells in your body are programmed to die.

And if they don't die, we call them cancer cells.

A cancer cell is a cell that has forgotten its memory of death.

So, apoptosis, a programmed cellular death makes life possible.

Life is not the opposite of death.

Birth is the opposite of death.

And death is the opposite of life.

And life is the continuum of birth and death.

But of course, that raises a biggest question.

What is it that dies?

You know, what is it that dies?

You know, does awareness die?

And if awareness is not in time then obviously it doesn't die.

Just like information doesn't die, energy doesn't die, matter doesn't die, everything recycles and evolves.

Why would your consciousness be the only exception?

But that's a whole nother philosophical topic.

- You know, and all the work I do and all the people I talk to and I'm sure you see this as well, there's this sort of collective sense right now that after everything we have lived through, especially in the past few years, people are in need of a little hope.

They're in need of a reason to know that things will be and can be better.

And I think one thing I'd like to leave everyone with is just some guidance from you on how and where people should look for that sense of hope.

If they were to take or do one specific action to try to work towards that, what would that be?

- I would say ask yourself every day.

Four questions.

How can I cultivate a joyful energetic body, number one.

Number two, how can I cultivate a loving, compassionate heart?

Number three, a clear quiet mind.

And number four, joy.

And ask the question.

Don't worry about the answers.

If you live those questions, life will move you to the answers.

- I can't think of a better way to end this conversation.

Deepak Chopra, thank you so very much for joining me in conversation at the Crosscut Ideas Festival.

This was an absolutely fascinating conversation.

- Thank you, Amna.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

- And thanks to all of you as well for joining us and watching at home.

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