Deepak Chopra’s ‘Radical’ Approach to Beauty Literally Requires No Products
Most women across the world are on a constant, frenzied hunt for the next best beauty cure-all, hoping it will deliver miraculous results and prove to be the product to end all products. More often than not, they’re disappointed, and will continue to be so long as they remain a part of that rat race.
In their new book, Radical Beauty, the powerhouse duo of Deepak Chopra, a pioneer of mind-body medicine, and celebrity nutritionist Kimberly Snyder, urge women to think differently about beauty.
The book’s title calls for courage — courage to break away from the status quo and think of beauty not as an entity unto itself but as part of something bigger, deeper, as the ultimate expression of an individual’s connection to herself, to the elements and to the broader world. Radical Beauty, Chopra and Snyder say, isn’t determined by external products or media images: It is every woman’s birthright, to be fostered internally and externally.
That may sound esoteric, but Chopra and Snyder have combined their expertise in integrative medicine and nutrition and produced an easy-to-follow guide that breaks down the concept of Radical Beauty into six pillars: Internal Nourishment (dietary choices that strengthen vital organs to promote good skin and hair), External Nourishment (effective ingredients to apply on the skin and practices derived from Ayurveda that rejuvenate and reduce stress), Peak Beauty Sleep (enabling proper blood flow to the skin), Primal Beauty (living in tune with the rhythms of nature), Beautiful Movement (exercises that promote natural grace and tone), and Spiritual Beauty (fostering inner peace to increase external beauty).
Chopra and Snyder spoke exclusively to Yahoo Beauty about how these six pillars — when used together — can unlock every woman’s highest beauty potential.
A new thought process
“Think of it like wearing dirty socks or dirty underwear — no one knows that except you, but you don’t feel good,” Chopra says. “It’s the same with beauty: If your inner being isn’t comfortable, then your face will show it. Your outer appearance reflects the comfort you have with yourself on the inside — your mind, your emotions, your intellect, and ultimately, your facial expressions reflect your relationship with your soul.”
Banish the stress forever
“There is so much stress and suffering around beauty,” says Snyder, “around the feeling of lack — of never looking thin enough or pretty enough. That chronic fear is as aging as eating junk food.” Thinking of beauty as an expression of a complete lifestyle that is nourished from the inside as well as the outside will eliminate the stress, Snyder says, and free up energy for other pursuits, professional and personal.
Six pillars of beauty
Internal nourishment, external nourishment, peak beauty sleep, primal beauty, beautiful movement, and spiritual beauty — they are the foundation of a healthy, holistic lifestyle that culminates in the highest expression of personal beauty. “Think of them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” Chopra says. “It doesn’t matter which end you start on; you eventually end up with the whole thing.”
No need either to embrace all six pillars at once. In fact, both Snyder and Chopra say, ease into them slowly to figure out a personal cadence that works. “Go with what speaks to you best,” Snyder says. “Maybe it’s something more tangible, like your diet, and then you can move on to the more subtle pillars, like spiritual beauty. Ultimately, these six pillars work together to establish a vital connection to yourself, which is the prime source of beauty.”
Personal experience
Snyder, like so many of us, battled her beauty demons for years. “At one point in time, I had gained a lot of weight, I had acne, I tried every diet — high protein, low carb, you name it,” she says. “It wasn’t until I started learning about nutrition, focusing on my digestion and understanding how it connects to my skin that things changed for me.”
Snyder has also traveled extensively — in Africa and Asia, and she lived in India for three years. “Everywhere around the world, women are using amazing natural products on their skin, and they’re not counting carbs or loading up on protein. They eat whole foods, lots of vegetables and beneficial spices. All this gave me a new perspective on beauty.”
Wisdom meets science
“I have been a monk in northern Thailand, where I was barefoot and went begging for my food and became totally anonymous,” Chopra says. “I have studied with yogic masters in the Himalayas, and I spent 14 years with Hindu gurus.” But as much as his personal experiences have informed his approach to life and to health, Chopra is a medical doctor and he is focused on connecting wisdom and tradition to science.
This year, for example, the Chopra Center collaborated with Harvard University; the University of California, San Francisco; Mount Sinai Hospital, among others, to study the effects of a whole-systems approach on the mind-body physiology. The study compared inflammation and cell aging, metabolomics, genomics, and changes in the microbiome between participants in an Ayurvedic immersion program versus a control group. And a 2013 study conducted by the Chopra Center with the University of California, San Francisco, and University of California, San Diego, showed that meditation and yoga can promote anti-aging processes. Our results showed that within one week of a meditation retreat, the level of the anti-aging enzyme telomerase went up by 17-fold over baseline,” Chopra says, “so we now know that our biological age doesn’t have to correspond to our chronological age. I certainly don’t feel my chronological age.”
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