Deepak Chopra’s global fame landed long before he does at Rakxa, as his published books, frequent television appearances, and congregational talks have often addressed alternative medicine, Eastern philosophies, and holistic care for a healthy life. No wonder his symposium, The Life & Soul Longevity Retreat At Rakxa With Dr Deepak Chopra, was a well-peopled affair as the Indian-American author and alternative-medicine advocate has been a prominent figure in the New Age movement since the 1970s. His gospel of approaching alternative medicine with the backing of his own scientific research has made him a globally recognised figure, with studious qualifications.
“I’m a medical doctor. I am trained in internal medicine, endocrinology, and neuroendocrinology, which is the study of brain chemistry,” explains Chopra, addressing his background in medical colleges and further education that propelled him New Delhi to New England Memorial Hospital in 1970. “So, a long time ago, when I was in training, I realised that there was a connection between emotions and biology through what we now know—I’ll call it neuropeptides—and that was my area of research. It got me into integrative medicine and to know even more about the exploration of body, mind, and spirit.”
Chopra has travelled the world as he stands on platforms addressing his fans (and critics) about what he’s learned empirically through observation and study. “I’m still a very traditional doctor. I teach at three medical schools and I still keep my license for internal medicine and endocrinology, so there is a big role for mainstream medicine. If you have pneumonia, you need an antibiotic. If you break your leg, you should see an orthopaedic surgeon, and so on.” But when it comes to chronic diseases, terminal illnesses, and even cancer, Chopra believes that “the treatments we use, pharmaceuticals, they only treat the symptoms; they don’t go to the underlying cause of the disease.”
While Western medicine tries to pause, placate, and cure a disease, Chopra’s inspection drills down to the root cause of ailments as he deems prevention is better than cure. “We now know that less than five per cent of disease-related gene mutations are fully penetrant, so that means about five per cent of genetic mutations get into the disease. […] 95 per cent is what is called epigenetic, which means the switches that turn genes on and off are related to how we experience life in our lifetime, so things like sleep, emotions, relationships, biological rhythms, diet, nutrition, and many other factors, including mind-body coordination, are much more effective in at least prevention of disease. So the future of well-being will include mainstream medicine, but it will also include what we call lifestyle medicine, and the nice thing is now we can measure every experience biologically. As we are having this conversation, genes here are being activated,” he says, referring to the Rakxa retreat.
As the service industry has looked into personalisation as a key element of luxury, Chopra asserts that medicine’s next frontier will include curated, individualised medicine. “With AI, what we are seeing is a future where medicine will be personalised, so there’s no unique treatment that works for everyone. For example, if you are a vegetarian, you think you’re going to get good health, but if you have oxalate deficiency, that [will] give you kidney stones, [so] even eating healthy foods, asparagus, or spinach is not going to fix you. So the future of well-being is very personalised, very predictive, very preventive.”
Although based in the US, Chopra had flown down to Thailand for an exclusive well-being retreat programme—coincidentally, the same event where celebrity attendee Kate Moss launched her new line of luxurious incense sticks, which served as the scent of the experience—and even he was taken aback by the response of the people and the verdant location, known as “the Green Lung” of Bangkok. “I had heard about Rakxa. I didn’t realize how comprehensive the treatments are here. And the more I learned about it, the more I thought this is the perfect place to actually practice all the things that I’m talking about. Rakxa is the ideal location to do this. I have been to Thailand many times and Rakxa is amazing. My retreat is focused on longevity and health span. It includes everything—how to reframe your body as a field of awareness, how to change your experience of time, how to reframe the meaning of ageing, but also how to maximise rest, sleep, and meditation.”
“I don’t think right now, even in integrative medicine, [that] there is an approach that combines everything in Western medicine and Eastern medicine,” opines Chopra as his step-by-step daily programme unfolds in front of an international gathering. “We start every morning with the sunrise meditation. We do some breathing techniques and then I take people to a deeper understanding of how to tune into their body—body scan—all through awareness. And then each day, we’ll take a few of the segments. But people are also getting diagnostic tests, [and] they’re getting biomarkers and biological age.”
While Aristotle enshrined happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself, and Socrates believed the key to happiness was self-knowledge, Chopra has his own pillars of well-being as indications of one’s bliss and joy: “Good sleep, stress management, diet, emotional resilience, and flexibility.”
Fame over time also means Chopra has become a reference point for several celebrities. While others have been curious about his studies, he has observed the rarefied air of global celebrity and power in close quarters. “Money, fame, and power makes people very insecure” is his decisive take on what fame does to people. So when celebrities come for help, what are they seeking? “You know, I deal with a lot of people who are very creative and creativity is really an interesting phenomenon because it requires you to be a bit of a non-conformist; it requires you to be comfortable with paradox, ambiguity, [and] contradiction. And some people think that’s wrong; how can I be so contradictory in my life, in my values? But in the absence of ambiguity and contradiction, there are no periods, there’s no creativity. You end up being a biological robot, an algorithm, and creative people are not like that—they’re very disruptive. But that also leads to a lot of emotional and mental and physical issues.”
In turn, Chopra himself has been stunned into silence by the famed and the fortuned, as he recalls, “I once got a call from the most famous actor in the world. My phone rang. I said, ‘Hello,’ and the voice on the other side said, ‘This is Marlon Brando.’ And so we met—and for the first half hour, he did nothing except look into my eyes, which was quite an experience! He just wanted to connect. And that was it.”
What happened next? “We had a nice Indian chicken curry,” he concludes with a smile.
Although proximity to fame has been a constant in his life for the past forty years, he assures that’s not where his passion and purpose lies. “I am obsessed with health and well-being. I’m also going to be 78 years old, but biologically, I feel half of that age. I practice two hours of yoga every day, an hour of meditation. I sleep for hours and I don’t take myself that seriously. I think that’s the most important. Daily practice is not to confuse yourself… with yourself.”
Chopra’s famed aphorisms pop up in conversation. “Maybe it has a lot to do with not taking anything seriously and being stressed. I think if you are stressed, then whatever you do—the best diet in the world, the best exercise in the world—stress will override that.” Avoiding stress is hard but not impossible, and it goes down to basics. “We have lost the ability to play. Children are born stress-free, but we bamboozle them with the hypnosis of social conditioning. Be playful, be childlike, and don’t think life is here only to work hard. Life is here for joy. If you don’t have joy, then what’s the point of life? You can all make as much money as you like and have the most success. But at the end of your life, if you didn’t have joy, then you wasted your life. For me, the only criterion for success is joy.”
And finally, what does luxury mean to this eminent well-being guru? “Luxury means the elegance of simplicity,” concludes Chopra. “It also means cultivating an environment where you always experience a joyful, energetic body and a loving, compassionate heart, a clear mind, and lightness of spirit, and all the environment that comes with it.”
