Above, watch family medicine and psychiatry Professor Paul Mills and co-founder of JIYO, a social wellbeing platform, Poonacha Machaiah on "The Future of Wellbeing" panel, moderated by Gina Murdock, with Deepak Chopra at the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.
During the Spotlight Health event in Aspen, CO, Deepak Chopra discussed practical ways to experience higher consciousness, transformation, and healing, as well as new social paradigms for interacting with communities.
The holistic health guru spoke to the audience about the Five Pillars of Wellbeing, which include sleep, stress management, movement, emotions, and nutrition. He also added, "There's also social wellbeing, community wellbeing, career wellbeing, financial wellbeing, and spiritual wellbeing; and they're all inseparably linked to each other." Different states of wellbeing correspond with, and affect, many facets of a person's health and prosperity.
"We know now from research that if you pay attention to those five things... you can actually correlate that with the future of a person, a community, a city, a country, and in fact the world. Your wellbeing correlates with things such as traffic accidents, hospital admissions, crime rate, social unrest, quality of leadership." All facets of life are directly linked in calculating a person's wellbeing. "So the healthier you are, the healthier communities and societies will be, and that's the only way we can ultimately create a more peaceful, just, sustainable, healthier, and happier world," said Chopra.
When reflecting on the current healthcare system, Chopra stated, "We don't have a healthcare system, we have a disease care system." Instead Chopra wishes to democratize wellbeing by making it easily available and free of charge. He detailed a plan that he and others want to implement to create a way for anyone to obtain complete health.
The method involves free personalized delivery of information through the use of innovative technology and social networking. "Give people the tools; give them not only information but give them information that's relevant to them. Personalize the content you're going to deliver through the internet, through the iPhones, through a social network to give them as much information that is relevant to them free of charge. Engage them in reward mechanisms. Connect them with other people who have the same goals so create a social network... help them socially engage to encourage each other."
Chopra also highlighted the current morality rate. Today, people are not dying from old age. Most people die from some form of an ailment such as heart disease, cancer, or from a stroke. But a person's lifespan can increase by 20 to 30 years through research and efforts to improve health and wellbeing. Chopra said that this would further contribute to the culture of society by enabling people to learn from the elders of society.
The use of technology and innovation can positively impact one's wellbeing, but Chopra said that it is ultimately man's decision if he will use technology to help life or hinder it. "Technology is unstoppable... We can't stop the train of technology; it's part of our evolution as the human species... Secondly technology is your servant; not your master. Technology is neutral. You decide what you do with technology... Technology is diabolical if you want to make it [so], but technology can also be healing. You are in charge, not technology."
Through personalization, socialization, and innovation, there is a hope that people's overall wellbeing can improve. But it is necessary that each person exercise caution and good judgment and pursue wellbeing actively and mindfully.
Katherine Grygo is a contributing writer to the Aspen Idea Blog at the Aspen Institute.