M.J. Rose

Four questions for Deepak Chopra

Caille Millner, Chronicle Staff Writer

Deepak Chopra is one busy spiritualist, physician, alternative medicine guru, author, motivational speaker, philosopher, radio host and celebrity. Somehow, Chopra also finds time to write a weekly column for The Chronicle’s SFGate.

Chopra keeps a furious pace of world travel for his appearances, but he says he always looks forward to going home to San Diego. He’s written scores of books, including his latest, “Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul: How to Create a New You” (304 pages, Harmony), which he was promoting in San Francisco recently. After his morning routine of working out and meditating, Chopra sat down with us and talked about the state of things.

Q: With so many people out of jobs and facing a less certain future, what is your advice for living well in these changing times?

A: De-clutter your life. Give away things to Goodwill or to people in need. When you buy something, give away something. When you buy a new pair of shoes, give a pair to somebody who needs them. Focus on relationships, not consumption. Take part in the “gift economy” – giving away things to help others.

(For the complete article, please click here to visit SFGate.)

Logging ’caused Nazca collapse’ (BBC)
By Jody Bourton
Earth News reporter

Created by a sophisticated society that crossed the line?

The ancient Nazca people of Peru are famous for the lines they drew in the desert depicting strange animal forms.

A further mystery is what happened to this once great civilisation, which suddenly vanished 1,500 years ago.

Now a team of archaeologists have found the demise of the Nazca society was linked in part to the fate of a tree.

Analysing plant remains they reveal how the destruction of forests containing the huarango tree crossed a tipping point, causing ecological collapse.

For the rest from the BBC, click here.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to go back in time and observe the most ancient humans? If any of you have any past life memories of being alive before recorded history or even before the development of language, we would LOVE to hear your stories!

Scientists Rough Out Humanity´s 50,000-Year-Old Story (nytimes.com)

From what had seemed like irreversible oblivion, archaeologists and population geneticists believe they are on the verge of retrieving a record of human history stretching back almost 50,000 years.

The record, built on a synthesis of archaeological and genetic data, would be a bare bones kind of history without individual names or deeds. But it could create a chronicle of events, however sketchy, between the dawn of the human species at least 50,000 years ago and the beginning of recorded history in 3,500 B.C. The events would be the dated migrations of people from one region to another, linked with the archaeological cultures and perhaps with development of the world’s major language groups.

The new element in this synthesis is the increasing power of geneticists to look back in time and trace the history of past populations from analysis of the DNA of people alive today…

For the complete article, click here.