Creating Health
Return of the Rishi
Quantum Healing
Perfect Health
Unconditional Life
Ageless Body, Timeless Mind
Perfect Weight
Journey into Healing
Creating Affluence
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
The Return of Merlin
Restful Sleep
Perfect Digestion
The Way of the Wizard
Overcoming Addictions
Raid on the Inarticulate
The Path to Love
The Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents
The Love Poems of Rumi
(edited by Deepak Chopra; translated by Deepak Chopra and Fereydoun Kia)
Healing the Heart
Everyday Immortality
The Lords of the Light
On the Shores of Eternity
How to Know God
The Chopra Centre Herbal Handbook
Bell, Davis S. Curing Fatigue. Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale Press, 1993.
Frawley, Dr. David, and Lad, Dr. Vasant. The Yoga of Herbs. Twin Lakes, Wis.: Lotus Press, 1986.
Hoffman, Ronald. Tired All the Time. New York: Poseidon Press, 1993.
Kapoor, L. D. Handbook of Ayurveda Medicinal Plants. Boca Raton, Fl.: CRC Press, 1990.
Rosenbaum, Michael, and Susser, Murray. Solving the Problem of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Tacoma, Wash.: Life Sciences Press, 1992.
Deepak Chopra and The Chopra Center for Well Being in La Jolla, California, offer a wide range of seminars, products and educational programmes, worldwide. The Chopra Center offers revitalizing mind/body programmes, as well as day spa services. Guests can come to rejuvenate, expand knowledge or obtain a medical consultation.
For information on meditation classes, health and well-being courses, instructor certification programmes, or local classes in your area, contact The Chopra Center for Well Being, 7630 Fay Avenue, La Jolla, California, 92037, USA. By telephone: 001-888-424-6772, or 001-619-551-7788. For a virtual tour of the Center, visit the Internet website at www.chopra.com.
If you live in Europe and would like more information on workshops, lectures or other programmes about Dr. Deepak Chopra or to order any of his books, tapes or products, please contact: Contours, 44 Fordbridge Road, Ashford, Middlesex, TW15 2SJ (tel: +44 (0) 208 564 7033; fax: +44 (0) 208 897 3807; email: sales@infinite-contours.co.uk.
If you have enjoyed this book and would like the opportunity to explore higher realms of consciousness and have a more direct experience of divinity, you may do so interactively at Deepak Chopra’s new website, www.mypotential.com.
FATIGUE IS THE absence of physical, intellectual, and emotional energy, and chronic fatigue is a prolonged absence of this energy. As someone living in contemporary Western society, however, you probably have no need for a definition of fatigue. You’re likely to be quite familiar with the problem already. In fact, there’s an excellent chance that you’re living with chronic fatigue right now.
Despite the fact that fatigue is widespread in modern life, it really is a unique phenomenon when seen in the context of nature as a whole. After all, nature abounds with energy and purposeful activity. Birds awaken early, sing, tirelessly build their nests, and gather food for their young; squirrels bound up tree trunks and jump from branch to branch; and in spring, the grass and the flowers almost seem to leap from the earth with exuberance and vitality.
This astonishing energy is present not only in the biological world but in the physical universe as well. Waves crash against the shore; rivers rush toward the sea with incredible power; the wind howls, pushing everything before it; the earth spins on its axis and circles the sun at incredible speed; and the sun itself is continually producing unimaginable amounts of heat and light. Physicists tell us that the universe is nothing other than one dynamic, pulsating field of overwhelming energy.
It’s puzzling, isn’t it? With so much energy throughout nature, how can anyone possibly feel fatigued? Why is fatigue a daily experience for millions of people? Why, for many of them, is it the dominant experience of their lives?
The discrepancy between the prevalence of chronic fatigue in our society and the abundant energy in the natural world creates a troubling paradox. But it can also provide an important clue for finding the real answer to chronic fatigue. In this book you’ll learn many techniques for reestablishing the connection between yourself and nature; more specifically, you’ll learn how to uncover the natural sources of energy that are already within you.
Before going into the solutions, let’s look more closely at the problem of fatigue in our society and get some idea of its scope.
Fatigue is one of the most common complaints that people bring to doctors. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 24 percent of patients who were randomly surveyed in the waiting room of a general medical clinic complained of chronic fatigue. Women reported a higher rate of fatigue than men—28 percent were fatigued compared to 19 percent of men—but the incidence in men was still almost one in five.
While there’s no doubt that fatigue is a constant presence in the lives of millions of Americans, it is also one of the most elusive complaints for a physician to evaluate, and only rarely can a definitive cause be isolated. This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t have a medical checkup if you’re experiencing persistent, deep fatigue that has lasted for several weeks—there may be a clear-cut, easily treatable cause such as anemia, a thyroid problem, hepatitis, diabetes, mononucleosis, kidney problems, or another chronic health disorder. I recommend a physical exam to rule out these possible causes, but I also want to emphasize that for the overwhelming majority of people complaining of chronic fatigue, no specific physical cause can be discovered. Indeed, this may be the single most important finding in all the many studies that examined the problem.
For the purposes of this book, chronic fatigue means a noticeable lack of energy that has been present for one month or more. This is very different from acute fatigue, which is usually brought on by the demands of specific situations, such as cramming for an exam or rushing to meet a deadline at work. Acute fatigue generally disappears with the passage of time and some extra rest. People who are chronically fatigued continue to feel tired no matter how much rest they get. In fact, it is quite common for chronically fatigued people to feel tired immediately upon waking up in the morning, and even more tired after they get up and about. Clearly, sleep alone is not sufficient to solve the problem of chronic fatigue.
To sum up, then, we can define chronic fatigue as fatigue that has lasted for at least one month, that is present every day or almost every day, and that is not cured by sleep or rest.
Despite the widespread incidence of chronic fatigue throughout the population, the magnitude of its impact on normal life is probably underestimated by many people. Studies have shown that chronic fatigue can be every bit as debilitating as serious medical disorders such as untreated thyroid disease or a recent heart attack. This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that the overwhelming majority of people with chronic fatigue do not have a clear physical cause for their problem.
In the absence of such a cause, it has become clear that most chronic fatigue is strongly influenced by emotional and psychological factors. For example, studies have found that up to 80 percent of chronically fatigued people score higher than normal on psychological tests of depression or anxiety. This brings up a very important idea—the mind/body connection—which will be a central theme of this book. Your mind and your emotions can be major sources of energy or major wasters of it, and the choice is entirely yours. We will explore this concept in detail in the pages that follow.
Before going any further, however, it’s important to mention a subgroup of people who have an especially severe version of fatigue which has come to be known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. CFS is a specific disorder that was first recognized medically in the mid-1980s. Although there is currently no firm agreement among health care professionals regarding the cause of the problem, there is evidence that suggests viral infection and malfunction of the immune system may be involved.
Data from the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that true Chronic Fatigue Syndrome affects between 100,000 and 250,000 adults nationwide. These people experience a type of fatigue that is sufficiently intense and persistent to reduce normal daily activities by at least 50 percent for a minimum of six months, and it also includes specific physiological symptoms that distinguish CFS from a simple lack of energy. CFS patients often sleep twelve hours a day or more, yet they have great difficulty performing routine tasks, due to exhaustion. Individuals with the usual kind of chronic fatigue can generally manage to push themselves through their daily activities, but people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are truly disabled by their disorder. CFS also commonly includes physical symptoms such as low-grade fever, recurrent sore throat, painful lymph nodes, muscle aches or weakness, joint pains, and headaches. Sleep seems unrefreshing, and there may also be problems with concentration and short-term memory.
If you have symptoms that suggest Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, you should see a doctor for medical evaluation.
By now we recognize that chronic fatigue is a very common problem that can manifest itself as a moderately severe impediment to the enjoyment of life, or that can be genuinely devastating when it assumes the form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. But the solution to the problem is always the same: more energy.
Specifically, the remedy for chronic fatigue—and the basis for achieving a more fulfilling experience of life in general—lies in the ability to tap into the unlimited natural field of energy that surrounds us at every moment. Einstein revealed that every atom in the universe contains an enormous amount of power, and contemporary physics continues to demonstrate that everything in the universe comes into being through fluctuations in a unified field of energy and intelligence, which is the very foundation of nature. In other words, a single source of energy underlies everything, and it is from this source that all the phenomena of the universe are brought into existence. As human beings, we are simply localized concentrations of energy and intelligence in the universal field. The intelligence and energy that flows through our bodies is the same as that which governs the universe. We and everything around us are part of a continuum with nature.
All this becomes clear when we consider the atoms that compose the human body. Quantum physics has shown that the atoms themselves are not solid, irreducible objects. They are made up of subatomic particles—protons, neutrons, and electrons—which whirl around each other at lightning speeds. And within each atom the distances between these subatomic particles are proportionately as great as the distances between stars and galaxies. This means that the human body is proportionately as void as intergalactic space.
From a physicist’s point of view, even subatomic particles are not solid, tangible objects. Rather, they too are fluctuations of energy that have taken on a material form. Einstein said that matter is really nothing but energy cloaked in a different form, and the great physicists of the 1920s and 1930s confirmed that every physical particle is ultimately a form of energy vibration called a “wave function.” This revelation—that matter is actually a form of wave vibration—is called “wave-particle duality” in quantum physics.
These insights from the most advanced branches of modern science can provide us with an entirely new understanding of our bodies. Beyond its material form, the body is really a pulsating, dynamic field of energy. The individual particles that make up the body are energy vibrations within the larger, universal field. Underlying our material being there exists what might be called a “quantum mechanical body,” which is pure process, pure energy, and pure intelligence. Since the quantum mechanical body determines what the material body will be like, it is in the quantum mechanical body that we’ll find the origins of chronic fatigue, and also the keys for eliminating it.
While most of us (with the exception of quantum physicists) think of the body as something solid and physical, we also think of the mind as insubstantial, nonmaterial, ghostlike. As long as this perceived dichotomy remains, it will be difficult to understand how mind and body can possibly interact with each other. But now the relationship between them is precisely the focus of a new area of science known as mind/body medicine, which is offering exciting solutions to some of the most difficult and frustrating problems in contemporary health care.
Once you understand that the apparently material structure of the body is really nothing other than pure energy, it becomes clear that thought and matter are fundamentally alike. From the point of view of quantum physics, there is not much difference between fluctuations of thought arising within the unified field and the wave vibrations that give rise to the particles that make up the human body. In short, your thoughts are quantum events, subtle vibrations of the field, that have a profound influence on all the functions of your body.
Recent research at the National Institutes of Health has gained important insights into the relationship between the mind and the physical body. It has become clear that an entire category of chemicals, called neuropeptides, is produced by the brain every time a thought or feeling occurs. The type of neuropeptide produced corresponds to the quality of thought or feeling that has taken place. And most important, these neuropeptides are not confined to the brain or nervous system. Receptors to neuropeptides have been found throughout the digestive system, the heart, lungs, kidneys, and in the immune system as well. This indicates that neuropeptides have a powerful effect on all physiological processes, including energy production and immunity.
Once we begin to grasp the mind/body connection—that is, how thoughts and emotions affect the body—we can begin to understand the causes of chronic fatigue. We can understand why research has shown that chronic fatigue patients generally do not have specific physical problems, but tend to have higher than normal levels of depression and anxiety. This is a crucial point: it appears to be a deficit in the emotional and mental life of an individual that robs the body of energy and produces chronic fatigue. This energy drain is a function of the mind/body connection, and it is governed by chemicals produced in the brain.
At any moment, your perceived energy level is the product of a large number of variables, such as the quality of your food and digestion, the temperature of the air around you, your thoughts and emotions, and many more. But the level of basic vitality you experience in daily life is determined by the quality of your connection to the unified field of energy that surrounds you. This connection controls the infusion of energy and intelligence into all your bodily systems, and it governs how well your physiological processes are working at every moment.
With this quantum mechanical viewpoint as a foundation, I am going to offer some rules that can help you experience pure energy rather than chronic fatigue. We will call these rules Primary Energy Principles, or PEPs, and in each chapter of this book new ones will be introduced. As you read, I suggest that you keep a pen and paper handy in order to write down the PEPs as you encounter them. This will focus your attention and help you to commit the PEPs to memory.
The first one explains why learning these principles will be of great benefit to your health.
PEP 1. Knowledge has organizing power. Through the mind/body connection, knowledge affects the body and creates health.
Quite literally, knowledge can heal, and according to mind/body medicine, knowledge is the greatest healer of all. Therefore if you write down each of the PEPs and take them to heart, the effect can actually be like a medicinal prescription for your mind/body physiology. The neurochemicals that will become structured in your system will help to nourish, heal, and revitalize you in a very real and very profound way.
Here are four more PEPs:
PEP 2. Energy is natural to life. The fact that unlimited energy is always present and available in the unified field is the most basic truth of nature.
PEP 3. Energy flows naturally from the unified field to the mind/body system. Fatigue results from blocks or imbalances in this natural flow.
PEP 4. Blocks or imbalances in the mind/body system develop when harmony with nature has been disrupted.
PEP 5. A balanced mind/body system allows energy to flow easily from nature. Therefore the key to eliminating chronic fatigue and having abundant energy is balance.
Our first five PEPs contain important information about energy and fatigue, and they also serve to illuminate the relationship of any individual to the surrounding universe. PEP number 5, for example, refers to balance, which will be the key principle of this book. Balance is the goal of all the techniques you’ll be learning, and it’s a word that should be understood in a holistic way. Ideally, balance means complete integration of physical and spiritual components in every area of your experience.
In the chapters that follow, you’ll learn techniques for creating balance in four areas: your body, your mind, your behavior, and your environment.
knowledge has organizing power