"The most significant health benefits of meditation are stress reduction, better sleep, lower blood pressure, improved immunity, and the ability to stay centered in the midst of all the turmoil that's going on around you. Meditation helps you do less and accomplish more."

"If you were to ask me what was the most important experience of my life, I would say it was learning to meditate. Meditation has been the key to the creativity, success and happiness I have enjoyed in my own life and it continues to be the most powerful healing tool we offer here at the Chopra Center."

"Although, as I've said, meditation is a spiritual journey reconnecting us with our true essential nature, in the West it has come to be thought of as a technique for stress-management. We are constantly being bombarded with stress from work or family pressures, environmental conditions, poor diet and lifestyle choices and a variety of other distractions, therefore releasing stress is essential for a healthy life. Meditation takes us from activity into silence, giving our body a very deep level of rest. Rest is how the body heals itself, which it does by throwing off the stress, fatigue and the toxins accumulated during our life. Thus meditation serves a twofold purpose: it gives us direct experience of our Spirit and in the process dissolves the impurities which are preventing Spirit from shining forth in our lives."

As a young physician in the 1970's, I was attracted to meditation for two reasons, one personal, the other professional. The personal reason was the promise of inner growth, of reaching an expanded state of mental and spiritual development. The professional reason was the large body of research on meditation that established that this meditation was "real", that is, it produced tangible benefits.

Meditation is not forcing your mind to be quiet; it's finding the quiet that is already there. In fact, when you examine the background static of worry, resentment, wishful thinking, fantasy, unfulfilled hopes, and vague dreams in your head, it becomes clear that the internal dialogue going on inside is literally controlling us. Each of us is the victim of memory. That's how the Ayurvedic masters diagnosed it thousands of years ago.

Behind the screen of our internal dialogue, there is something entirely different: the silence of a mind that is not imprisoned by the past. That is the silence we want to bring into our awareness through meditation. Why is this important? Because silence is the birthplace of happiness. Silence is where we get out bursts of inspiration, our tender feelings of compassion and empathy, our sense of love. These are all delicate emotions and the chaotic roar of the internal dialogue easily drowns them out. But when you discover the silence in your mind, you no longer have to pay attention to all those random images that trigger worry, anger, and pain."

"The science of Yoga, in use for thousands of years in India, "unites the thinking mind with its source in pure awareness i.e., the quantum space, the silent, empty void that is the womb of all matter and energy that exists in the gap between thoughts; the unchanging background against which all mental activity takes place." Our minds are preoccupied with thoughts, wishes, dreams, fantasies, sensations and only Meditation "shows the mind its own origins in the quantum depths."

Dr Chopra claims that meditation lowers biological age. He writes, meditation is based on the silent repetition of a specific sanskrit word, or mantra, whose sound vibrations gradually lead the mind out of its normal thinking process and into the silence that underlies thought.

Time Magazine heralded Deepak Chopra as one of the 100 heroes and icons of the century, and credited him as the poet-prophet of alternative medicine. Entertainment Weekly described Deepak Chopra as q>Hollywood's man of the moment, one of publishing's best-selling and most prolific self-help authors. He is the author of more than 50 books and more than 100 audio, video and CD-Rom titles. He has been published on every continent and in dozens of languages. Over a dozen of his books have landed on the New York Times Best-seller list. Toastmaster International recognized him as one of the top five outstanding speakers in the world. Through his over two decades of work since leaving his medical practice, Deepak continues to revolutionize common wisdom about the crucial connection between body, mind, spirit, and healing. His mission ofbridging the technological miracles of the west with the wisdom of the eastremains his thrust and provides the basis for his recognition as one of India's historically greatest ambassadors to the west. Chopra has been a keynote speaker at several academic institutions including Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, Harvard Divinity School, Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Business School and Wharton.