Ten Steps to Reverse Aging

Grow Younger, Live Longer
by Deepak Chopra, M.D.

In Grow Younger, Live Longer, Deepak Chopra, a pioneer in mind/body medicine, applies his decades of research and knowledge to actually reverse the aging process. This simple and practical step-by-step program designed by Dr. Chopra and his associate, David Simon, M.D., shows how it is essential to renew all dimensions of the self — the body, mind, and spirit — in order to feel and look younger.

The ten-step program detailed in this book will immediately improve your sense of well-being, and the three Daily Actions accompanying each step will help you thoroughly integrate the age reversal process into your life. Learn how to maintain a youthful mind, cultivate flexibility, strengthen your immune system, nourish your body, and much more. As you begin to reverse your biological age, you will find yourself tapping into your inner reservoirs of unlimited energy, creativity, and vitality.

Chapter 1

You have been living inside a prison that has no visible walls — the confines of your self derive entirely from the habits and conditioning of your mind. If you are committed to growing younger, you must escape this prison of conditioning. You are not to blame for living within unnecessary limitations. If a rope is tied around the leg of a baby elephant and attached to a stake in the ground, it learns that it can only move within very narrow limits. Years later, as a powerful adult, it still remains within narrow confines when its leg is staked, even though it has the strength to uproot an entire tree. It has been conditioned to accept the limitations imposed upon it.

In a similar way, most people think and act within the narrow limitations of what they have been taught during childhood, without questioning the basic assumptions that structure their worldview. To live a healthier, richer, more creative life you need to recognize that most of what you hold to be true derives from habits of thought. We are born into a prevailing conversation about the world. As soon as we are capable of speaking, we engage in this conversation, reinforcing with our own thoughts and actions the patterns of thinking and behavior that surround us. This is unmistakably true in regards to how we view the body and its aging.

Until recently, few have questioned the assumption that aging is irreversible, and therefore, for generation after generation, people have reinforced the habitual thinking that growing older meant a progressive decline in mental and physical capacity. It is now time to change our habits of thinking and behaving and alter our experience of the body and the aging process.

The Quantum Possibilities

Drawing upon the wisdom traditions of the East, the dramatic new discoveries of modern quantum physics, and our own personal and professional experience, we invite you to change the way you think about and experience the world and your body. Despite how radical some of these ideas may at first appear, we encourage you to try out the practical approaches we offer and experience for yourself how this program can revitalize your body and mind.

From the perspective of quantum physics, reality is a mysterious, magical place. While on the physical plane of everyday life, time and space predominate and entropy, decay, and aging are the normal course of events, these are not features of quantum reality. The quantum realm is the fountainhead of pure potentiality, giving rise to the raw material of your body, your mind, and the physical universe. The quantum realm is the womb of creation, the invisible world where the visible is designed and assembled. We can summarize the key principles of quantum physics in five main points:

1. In the quantum realm there are no fixed objects, only possibilities.

2. In the quantum realm, everything is interwoven and inseparably one.

3. Quantum leaps are a feature of the quantum realm. A quantum leap is the ability to move from one location in space or time to another without having to go through any place or time in between.

4. One of the laws of the quantum realm is the Uncertainty Principle, which states that an event is a particle (matter) and a wave (energy) simultaneously. Your intention determines whether you see a particle or a wave.

5. In the quantum realm, an observer is needed to create an event. Before a subatomic particle is observed, it exists only as a virtual particle; all events are virtual events until the moment they are observed.

Your own body/mind system is also an expression of the same quantum field that underlies everything in the universe. Therefore, you can apply these quantum principles to the way you look at your body and aging. Rephrased in terms of your biology, they would be:

1. You are not merely the physical body that you identify with out of habit. Your essential state is a field of infinite possibilities.

2. Your body is inseparably one with the whole universe. When you are perfectly healthy or whole, you feel expanded. You become constricted only when you have discomfort or dis-ease. This comes from a feeling of separation.

3. You are capable of taking quantum leaps in perception and interpretation. With these quantum leaps you can alter not only the experience of the physical body but its very structure. Your physical body is capable of taking a quantum leap from one biological age to another without having to go through all the intervening ages in between.

4. Your body is simultaneously material (particlelike) and non-material (wavelike). You can choose to experience your body as physical or as a network of energy, transformation, and intelligence.

5. Before you decide which biological age you choose to experience, you are all possible biological ages. It's up to you to decide what age you want to be.

If you choose to see yourself as a physical entity, separate from everything else, you discard the chance to reverse the aging process. If you are able to look at yourself as a field of possibilities, intimately interrelated to everything else, wonderful new opportunities emerge. We encourage you to use these thoughts to trigger a paradigm shift in your awareness. With this shift you can gain a completely different understanding of the body/mind system you inhabit, the world you perceive, and the essence of your being.

Viewing your body from the perspective of quantum physics opens up new modes of understanding and experiencing the body and its aging.

The practical essence of this new understanding is that human beings can reverse their aging.

In the Language of Spirit

Knowledge traditions seek to understand and explain the workings of the cosmos. The perspective of quantum physics offers a fascinating way to view life, the body, and aging. The perennial wisdom traditions of the East offer equally amazing insights into the nature of reality. As explorers of both modern science and the ancient knowledge traditions, we are enthused and inspired by the closer and closer alignment between these different perspectives on life. According to Ayurveda, the ancient healing tradition of India, aging is an illusion because your true self is neither your body nor your mind. Your essential nature, who you really are, is the domain of ever-present witnessing awareness that is beyond your physical and mental layers. This field of consciousness gives rise to both the thoughts in your mind and the molecules in your body. Tapping into this realm of awareness where time and space have no meaning is the basis of emotional and physical renewal.

Accessing this field of pure potentiality has spiritual as well as physical consequences. Knowing your essential self as a nonlocal being, inextricably interrelated to everything else in the cosmos, awakens greater creativity, meaning, and purpose in life. Although the most profound way to improve health and reverse aging is ultimately a spiritual one, not everyone is immediately ready to accept this approach. One person may want to lose weight, another may need help to stop smoking, while a third may be seeking a more fulfilling love relationship. Each of these needs is important in its own right, but taking a spiritual approach opens the door to the evolution of consciousness, which can make all these things possible, and many more.

Copyright © 2001 by Deepak Chopra, M.D., and David Simon, M.D.. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Deepak Chopra is one of the world's bestselling spiritual authors and the founder of the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, California. If you would like to become part of a global community of conscious peace makers, please visit www.chopra.com and click under "News from Deepak."