Healing Quest with Deepak Chopra: Spirit and Healing

Deepak Chopra explains the mind-body-spirit interplay. In this segment, Deepak describes the effect of a deep spiritual experience. According to the ancient wisdon traditions of India, when you get in touch with your spirit, you experience love, intuition, and happiness. In physical terms, this means that your body produces serotonin and dopamine (the happy hormones), oxytocin, (the pleasure hormone), and opiates, which provide a feeling of intoxication and help regulate the immune system.

Serotonin and Spirituality

According to Psychology Today, serotonin, the brain chemical in charge of moderating mood, metabolism, and sexuality, has been linked to spiritual experiences.

Serotonin, the brain chemical crucial to mood and motivation, also shapes personality to make you susceptible to spiritual experiences. A team of Swedish researchers has found that the presence of a receptor that regulates general serotonin activity in the brain correlates with people's capacity for transcendence, the ability to apprehend phenomena that cannot be explained objectively. Scientists have long suspected that serotonin influences spirituality because drugs known to alter serotonin such as LSD also induce mystical experiences. But now they have proof from brain scans linking the capacity for spirituality with a major biological element. Read more