 we can live long, healthy, joyful and creative lives. The fourth topic is, according to Chopra, the most interesting. 'It is artificial intelligence and machine learning,' he says. 'There is no experience now that cannot be measured either through biometrics or monitoring the neural correlates of experience.' Chopra jingles){kind=link}
This autumn you have the opportunity to transform your entire self – mind and body – while eating really nice souvlaki and lounging in luxury on a beautiful beach in a part of Greece rich in history. Deepak Chopra, Oprah Winfrey’s favourite wellness guru, is hosting a retreat at a new hotel, the W Costa Navarino in the Peloponnese peninsula, where another wise man, King Nestor, once held sway.
But anyway, let’s talk about transcendence. New York-based Chopra, 76, has long been a pioneer of the intersections between medicine and meditation. He has written nearly 100 books and is a part-time professor at the medical school in the University of California. At the retreat he will be hosting meditations, participating in the daily yoga practices with his favourite yoga teacher, Sarah Finger, and giving lectures on three topics: the future of wellbeing, the path to love and the awakened life.
“I make a distinction between wellness and wellbeing”, Chopra says over Zoom from his hotel room at the Ned in London. “Wellness is things like blood pressure and heart rate and immune response, the usual things a doctor talks to you about. Wellbeing is a state of awareness where you experience the joyful energetic body, love and compassion in the heart, clear creative mind, and lightness of being – joy.”
According to Chopra, the future of wellbeing includes four topics, with microbiome, epigenetics and neuroplasticity being the first three. The basic tenet of Chopra’s approach seems to be that we are in control of the health of our mind and body, and with the right diet, exercise, mindfulness techniques etc (all of which will be explained further on the retreat) we can live long, healthy, joyful and creative lives. The fourth topic is, according to Chopra, the most interesting. “It is artificial intelligence and machine learning,” he says. “There is no experience now that cannot be measured either through biometrics or monitoring the neural correlates of experience.”
Chopra jingles with monitoring gizmos. He wears an Apple Watch, an Aura Ring and a ring of his own devising. “We haven’t given it a name yet, probably it will be called ‘Deep’ or ‘Deepak’. This takes everything that the other devices do, and if you are stressed or you have something going on, you can intervene in real time, through meditation or breathing, relaxation responses. Everything is measurable, but with this device we will be able to combine measurement with real-time intervention.”