Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul

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Fifteen years after his #1 New York Times bestseller, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra revisits "the forgotten miracle"–the body's infinite capacity for change and renewal. You cannot take advantage of this miracle, Chopra says, unless you are willing to completely reinvent your body, transforming it from a material object to a dynamic, flowing process. "Your physical body is a fiction," Chopra contends. Every cell is made up of two invisible ingredients: awareness and energy.

Using Chopra's ten steps to wholeness, you can harness those basic elements to change the distorted energy patterns that are the root cause of aging, infirmity, and disease.

Transformation can't stop with the body, however; it must involve the soul. The soul–seemingly invisible, aloof, and apart from the material world–actually creates the body. Only by going to the level of the soul will you access your full potential, bringing more intelligence, creativity, and awareness into every aspect of your life.

Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul delivers ten breakthroughs–five for the body, five for the soul–that lead to self-transformation. In clear, accessible terms, Chopra shows us how to commit ourselves to deeper awareness, focus on relationships instead of consumption, embrace every day as a new world, and transcend the obstacles that afflict body and mind.

Deepak Chopra has inspired millions with his profound teachings over the years. His bestselling books have explored the mind/body connection and the power of spirit. With his latest book, he invites you to experience with him the miracles that unfold when we connect the body directly to the awesome mysteries that give life meaning–directly to the soul. When you have completed this journey, after reinventing your body and resurrecting your soul, the ecstasy of true wholeness becomes possible for the very first time.

DEEPAK CHOPRA is the author of more than fifty books translated into over thirty-five languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers in both the fiction and nonfiction categories.



From the Hardcover edition.

FROM BREAKDOWN TO BREAKTHROUGH



For you and me, the body poses problems that will only grow worse. As children we loved our bodies and rarely thought about them. As we grew older, though, we soon fell out of love, and with good reason. Billions of dollars are spent to cure the body of its many ills and miseries. Billions more are thrown down the drain for cosmetics, whose purpose is to fool us into thinking we look better than we do. To be blunt, the human body is unsatisfactory and has been for a long time. It can't be trusted, since sickness often strikes without warning. It deteriorates over time and eventually dies. Let's attack this problem seriously. Instead of making do with the physical form you were given at birth, why not look for a breakthrough, a completely new way of approaching the body?

Breakthroughs occur when you start thinking about a problem in a fresh new way. The biggest breakthroughs occur when you start thinking in an unbounded way. Take your eyes away from what you see in the mirror. If you came from Mars and have never seen how the body ages and declines over time, you might believe it would work in just the opposite way. From a biological point of view, there's no reason why the body should be flawed. So start there. Having erased every outworn assumption from your mind, you are now free to entertain some breakthrough ideas that totally change the situation:

Your body is boundless. It is channeling the energy, creativity, and intelligence of the entire universe.

At this moment, the universe is listening through your ears, seeing through your eyes, experiencing through your brain.

Your purpose for being here is to allow the universe to evolve.

None of this is outlandish. The human body is already the universe's most advanced laboratory experiment. You and I are at the cutting edge of life. Our best chance for survival is to embrace that fact. Rapid evolution, faster than that for any other life-form on the planet, gave us our present state of ever-increasing health, longer lifespan, exploding creativity, and a vision of possibilities that science advances faster and faster. Our physical evolution ceased around 200,000 years ago. You don't possess liver, lungs, heart, or kidneys different from those of a cave dweller. Indeed, you share 60 percent of your genes with a banana, 90 percent with a mouse, and more than 99 percent with a chimpanzee. In other words, everything else that makes us human has depended on an evolution that is far more nonphysical than physical. We invented ourselves, and as we did so, we brought our bodies along for the ride.

How you invented yourself

You have been inventing your body from the day you were born, and the reason you don't see it that way is that the process comes so naturally. It's easy to take for granted, and that's the problem. The flaws you see in your body today aren't inherent. They aren't bad news delivered by your genes or mistakes made by Nature. Your choices each played a part in the body you created, either consciously or unconsciously.

Here's a list of physical changes that you have made and continue to make. It's a very basic list, all medically valid, and yet hardly any part of your body is excluded.

Every skill you learn creates a new neural network in your brain.

Every new thought creates a unique pattern of brain activity.

Any change in mood is conveyed via "messenger molecules" to every part of the body, altering the basic chemical activity of each cell.

Every time you exercise, you alter your skeleton and muscles.

Every bite of food you eat alters your daily metabolism, electrolyte balance, and proportion of fat to muscle.

Your sexual activity and the decision to reproduce affects your hormonal balance.

The stress level to which you subject yourself raises and lowers your immune system.

Every hour of total inactivit

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Excerpted from Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How to Create a New You by Deepak Chopra
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