Spirituality - The Chopra Foundation

Gratitude Journal May Enhance Health in Cardiac Patients: I Am Grateful for….

Published in the Huffington Post: Gratitude

“Effects of Gratitude Journaling on Heart Rate Variability and Inflammatory Biomarkers

in Asymptomatic Heart Failure Patients”

By Paul Mills, PhD, Kathleen Wilson MS, Meredith A. Pung PhD, Kelly Chinh BS, Brook Henry PhD, J. Christopher Wells BS, Alex Wood PhD, Shamini Jain PhD, Barry Greenberg MD, Alan Maisel MD, Ottar Lunde MD, Deepak Chopra MD, Laura Redwine PhD

Departments of Family Medicine and Public Health, Psychiatry, and Medicine, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA

Department of Behavioral Science, University of Stirling, Stirling Scotland

For the last decade or so, the field of behavioral cardiology has shifted its focus from being primarily on psychological traits such as hostility, stress, and depression to more positive psychological attributes such as gratitude, compassion, and empathy. In individuals with heart failure, gratitude has been identified as an important resource for alleviating the struggles associated with symptoms. In a recent cross-sectional study on over 180 asymptomatic heart failure patients, we reported that more gratitude was associated with less depression, better sleep, and less peripheral inflammation. In this new study, to be presented at the University of California, San Diego Institute for Public Health’s Annual Public Health Research Day (to be held April 9, 2015), we report on the results of a randomized clinical trial where patients were randomized to either 8-weeks of gratitude journaling plus their usual care or 8-weeks usual care alone. Journaling was used as a way to cultivate gratitude. We found that patients who journaled about gratitude had increased heart rate variability (a measure of reduced cardiac risk) as well as reduced circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers IL-6 and sTNFr1, which are associated with cardiovascular disease. Gratitude journaling is a low-cost and easily implementable intervention that may have significant beneficial effects to enhance health in cardiac patients.

Synchronicity, Evolution, and Your Genes (Part 1)

By Deepak Chopra, MD, and Jordan Flesher

Over the past decade, the hunt for genetic connections with behavior as intensified. For any experience, there must be a physical activity in the brain—otherwise, the experience has no basis. Using this irrefutable assumption, researchers have looked for the seat of anger, criminal behavior, gender identification, the sense of self, and many other aspects of human nature. This includes spirituality. Where is God in the brain? To many neuroscientists, that’s not only a valid question but the only one worth asking, insofar as spiritual experiences have any reality.

Now we are hearing about “God in the genes,” as genetics overtakes neuroscience for the top spot in explaining the roots of human experience. Where the brain operates only in the present, genetics peers deep into the past. A geneticist would want to know what evolutionary advantage early humans got from being spiritual—in the broadest sense of the word—that led to a better chance to survive. This whole line of inquiry, whether we’re taking about the brain or our genes, makes sense if you are a materialist. But it runs the danger of saying that spirituality is only about the physical side of the experience, as if music could never be discussed except by looking at pianos and radios, the physical side of delivering the musical experience.

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The Best Way to Get Rid of Evil

By Deepak Chopra, MD

The best way to get rid of evil is to change our ideas about it. The two concepts about evil that do nothing to end it are, first, the concept of cosmic evil embodied by Satan, and second, the concept of human evil as a permanent human inheritance, part of our nature.

If you Google the phrase “Americans believe in heaven,” you find that about 90 percent do, with 75 percent believing in hell and 70 percent in the devil. Those statistics remain fairly uniform from poll to poll; it’s strange that there’s a drop off between heaven and hell since the two go together in the mind. However, it seems possible that believing in the devil is a matter of having nothing better to put in his place. Evil so perplexes people that attributing it to a cosmic Prince of Darkness provides some explanation at least. It saves the trouble of taking responsibility for evil ourselves.
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The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure

You can preorder your copy now.

Why Spirituality Matters More than Ever

By Deepak Chopra, MD

In troubled times, when the world seems to be on fire, people think about God and the religion they were raised in–a source of solace and hope matters more in a crisis. I don’t find myself thinking about spirituality in those terms, however. Like a winter coat that’s put away in spring, for many people spirituality, in the sense of going to church or praying to God, gets put away when the crisis has passed.

Crises by their nature, come and go, but the deeper need for spirituality remains. This need is rooted deeper than solace and hope. It’s the need for wisdom. Wisdom is a word that’s open to cheap shots and automatic dismissal. It’s even alien to the kind of spirituality that’s about issues like self-esteem and love. Wisdom is much less personal and mysterious. It gets at the heart of why we exist and what our purpose is. Wisdom gives you a vision of possibilities that are found in consciousness, bridging all ages and circumstances. It gets at the heart of reality. Ultimately the search for reality is what binds a loose coalition of people who want to reach beyond organized religion and its perceived drawbacks.

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