By Deepak Chopra and Annie B. Bond

Within You

Imagine that your nervous system is hardware, and all the chemical changes that occur in your body are the software. The software, or program changes according to your thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and desires. But there is a programmer. Who is the programmer? The programmer is the inner self, the silent witness, the ever-present awareness that witnesses everything. And when you get in touch with the silent witness, this gives you the ability to rewrite the program.

The silent witness is the one part of you that doesn’t change. If you find the part of you that doesn’t change then you’ll be able to cause transformation in the part of you that does change. …You can spontaneously cause transformation in your body.

Adapted from Power, Freedom, Grace, by Deepak Chopra (Amber-Allen Publishing, 2006).

Around You

Carefully choosing what enters and leaves the kitchen is, in every sense, to steward the health of the household and, in turn, the planet. All of us bring food, packaging, cleaning products, building materials, appliances, and more into our home. Many of us also pour toxic cleaning products down drains, put packaging in landfills and incinerators, throw broken refrigerators into dumps–the list goes on. All of us has an impact on the environment and our health. By monitoring the products brought into our homes, using them wisely, and disposing of them responsibly, we can, in the words of Wendell Berry, “make ourselves responsibly at home in the world.”

Adapted from True Food, by Annie B. Bond et al, (National Geographic, 2010).

Deepak Chopra is a world-renowned authority in the field of mind-body healing, a best-selling author, most recently of War of the Worldviews with Leonard Mlodinow, and the founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Annie B. Bond is a best-selling author, green living expert, and editor-in-chief of TheWellnessWire. com and TerraSpheres.com.