Deepak Chopra - Career

Career

Chopra taught at the medical schools of Tufts University, Boston University and Harvard University. He became Chief of Staff at the New England Memorial Hospital in Stoneham, Massachusetts, later known as Boston Regional Medical Center, before establishing a private practice.

After reading about the Transcendental Meditation technique (TM), Chopra and his wife learned the practice in 1981, and two months later they went on to learn the advanced TM-Sidhi program. Sources also describe a 1981 meeting between Chopra and Ayurvedic physician Brihaspati Dev Triguna in Delhi, India, in which Triguna advised Chopra to learn the TM technique.

In 1985, Chopra met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who invited him to study Ayurveda. In that same year, Chopra left his position at the New England Memorial Hospital and became the founding president of the American Association of Ayurvedic Medicine, and was later named medical director of the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center for Stress Management and Behavioral Medicine. He was initially the sole stockholder of Maharishi Ayurveda Products International, but divested after three months. He has been called the TM movement's "poster boy" and "its leading Ayurvedic physician". In 1989, the Maharishi awarded him with the title "Dhanvantari (Lord of Immortality), the keeper of perfect health for the world".

In its May 22/29, 1991 issue, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article coauthored by Chopra, Hari M. Sharma, and Brihaspati Dev Triguna: "Letter from New Delhi: Maharishi Ayur-Veda: Modern Insights Into Ancient Medicine". JAMA editors claimed that Chopra and his co-authors, had financial interests in "Maharishi Vedic Medicine" products and services. In the August 14, 1991 edition of JAMA, the editors published a financial disclosure correction and followed up on October 2, 1991 with a six-page Medical News and Perspectives exposé. An article discussing this chain of events was authored by Andrew A. Skolnick in the Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers. A 1992 defamation lawsuit brought against the article's author and the editor of JAMA was dismissed in 1993. Media reports published four years later saying that there had been a monetary settlement of the case were later withdrawn as untrue.

By 1992, Chopra was serving on the National Institutes of Health ad hoc panel on alternative medicine. In 1993, Chopra became executive director of the Sharp Institute for Human Potential and Mind–Body Medicine with a $30,000 grant from the Office of Alternative Medicine in the National Institutes to study Ayurvedic medicine. Chopra's institute also maintained affiliation with Sharp Healthcare, in San Diego. That same year Chopra moved with his family to Southern California where he lives with his wife and near his two adult children, Gotham and Mallika.

Chopra left the Transcendental Meditation movement in January 1994. According to his own account, Chopra was accused by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of attempting to compete with the Maharishi's position as guru. Author Todd Carroll said Chopra left the TM organization when it “became too stressful” and was a “hindrance to his success”.

In 1995, Chopra was the recipient of the Toastmasters "International Top Five Outstanding Speakers" award. In 1997, Chopra was given the Golden Gavel Award by Toastmasters.

He was presented the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic awarded by the Pio Manzu International Scientific Committee. In the citation committee chairman and former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev referred to Chopra as "one of the most lucid and inspired philosophers of our time". Esquire magazine designated him as one of the "top ten motivational speakers in the country".

In 1996, Chopra parted company with the Sharp Institute. That same year, Chopra and neurologist David Simon founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, which incorporated Ayurveda in its regimen, and was located in La Jolla, California. The University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and American Medical Association have granted continuing medical education credits for some programs offered to physicians at the Chopra Center. In 2002, Chopra and Simon relocated the Chopra Center to the grounds of La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, California, continuing to offer mind-body wellness programs, medical consultations, and instruction in meditation, yoga, and Ayurveda.

Chopra and Simon also revived an ancient mantra-based meditation practice, traveling to India to study the origins of this technique, known as Primordial Sound Meditation. This form of meditation is now taught at the Chopra Center and by certified instructors who receive their training through Chopra Center University.

Since 2000 Chopra has sat as an advisor for the National Ayurvedic Medical Association.

In 2005 Chopra was made a Senior Scientist at The Gallup Organization. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Executive Programs at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

He is also a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, a regular contributor to The Washington Post's "On Faith" section and a prolific contributor to The Huffington Post.

Chopra is also a monthly contributor to The Times of India Speaking Tree.

In 2006, Chopra launched Virgin Comics LLC with his son Gotham Chopra and entrepreneur Richard Branson. The company's purpose is to "spread peace and awareness through comics and trading cards that display traditional Kabalistic characters and stories." Chopra was awarded the 2006 Ellis Island Medal of Honor by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations.

He was the recipient in 2009 of the Oceana Award. Also in 2009, Chopra established the Chopra Foundation with a mission to advance the cause of mind/body spiritual healing, education, and research through fundraising for selected projects. In 2010 the Chopra Foundation sponsored the first Sages and Scientists Symposium, attended by a number of scientists, social scientists and artists from around the world, with a second symposium hosted in February 2011. The third symposium is scheduled for March 2012 with seminars relating to Alzheimer's Disease and "Past Life Memories" amongst others.

In 2010, Chopra received the Cinequest Life of a Maverick Award for his collaborations with filmmakers Shekhar Kapur and his son, Gotham Chopra. The award goes to "inspirational individuals who touch the world of film while their greater lives exemplify the Maverick spirit."

Chopra is heavily featured in UniGlobe Entertainment's cancer docudrama titled 1 a Minute talking about mind, body, spirit and the mystery of life and death. The documentary is directed by actress Namrata Singh Gujral and also features cancer survivors Olivia Newton-John, Diahann Carroll, Melissa Etheridge, Mumtaz and Jaclyn Smith.

He received the 2010 Humanitarian Starlite Award "for his global force of human empowerment, well-being and for bringing light to the world." Chopra is the recipient of the 2010 GOI Peace Award.

A friend of Michael Jackson for 20 years, Chopra has criticized the "cult of drug-pushing doctors, with their co-dependent relationships with addicted celebrities", saying that he hoped Jackson's death, attributed to an overdose of a prescription drug, would be a call to action.

In September 2010, Chopra published a criticism of Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design.

In conjunction with Menas Kafatos and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Chopra published a paper in the Journal of Cosmology Vol. 14 April–May 2011, titled "How Consciousness Becomes the Physical Universe".

In June 2011, Chopra wrote an op-ed for the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics titled "Medicine’s Great Divide—The View from the Alternative Side".

In October 2011, Chopra wrote a critical review of Richard Dawkins' book The Magic of Reality in the Huffington Post.

In 2011 and 2012, Chopra partnered with Alexander Tsiaras, founder of TheVisualMD on an online program called "The 9 Visual Rules of Wellness".

In May of 2012 Chopra co-authored a paper entitled "The Zinc Dyshomeostasis Hypothesis of Alzheimer’s Disease" along with Travis J. A. Craddock, Jack A. Tuszynski, Noel Case, Lee E. Goldstein, Stuart R. Hameroff, and Rudolph E. Tanzi in the PLoS ONE Journal.

In September 2012, Chopra co-authored an article entitled "A Consciousness-Based Science", along with Menas Kafatos and Rudolph E. Tanzi, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

On October 5, 2012, Chopra's son Gotham released a new documentary film Decoding Deepak.

In October of 2012 Chopra co-authored a three part article entitled "From Quanta to Qualia: The Mystery of Reality" with Menas Kafatos and Rudolph E. Tanzi, published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

According to Business Week, one of Chopra's main messages is that by ridding oneself of negative emotions and developing intuition by listening to signals from the body, health can be improved. According to Chopra, slowing down or reversing the aging of the mind through his methods can increase one's lifespan up to the age of 120 years. As a result of his writings and lectures in this area, he is thought by some to be "one of the pre-eminent leaders of the mind-body-spirit movement".