INTERVIEW | DEEPAK CHOPRA

Deepak Chopra: ‘I don’t care what mainstream medicine thinks, they’re wrong’

The 76-year-old phenomenon who has just published his 93rd book was once ‘vilified’ for his views on the mind-body connection — now they are being taught at medical school, he tells Helen Rumbelow

Deepak Chopra and the medical establishment once abandoned each other; now he is a part-time professor at the medical school at the University of California, San Diego
Deepak Chopra and the medical establishment once abandoned each other; now he is a part-time professor at the medical school at the University of California, San Diego
DEEPAK CHOPRA FOR THE TIMES AND NADIRA PERSAUD/ARLKINGTON CREATIVES FOR GROOMING
Helen Rumbelow
The Times

The best advert for the phenomenon that is Deepak Chopra is Deepak Chopra.

This 76-year-old Indian-American has come straight off a red-eye from Boston to the London hotel where we meet, pattering fast up the stairs for our interview in which he by turns quotes, word-perfect, many lines of Shakespeare and calmly savages some of his more vocal scientist critics.

This is Chopra’s distinctive mystic/medical mash-up. He is both the multi-millionaire “guy from Oprah”, after his long association with the American chatshow superstar; and a physician. His latest and 93rd book, Living in the Light, is about the deeper philosophy behind yoga, and feels of a piece with someone who has guest-appeared on Meghan Markle’s podcast. But his last book was on brain health,