of staff and reporters on the american presidency and the american dream. on the tv, c-span2, saturday night at 10:00 p.m. eastern on "after words". is the cofounder on his plan to reduce poverty and strengthen the middle class. at 7:20 p.m. sunday authors bruce, sam and joel talk about conservativism in the age of donald trump. american history tv c-span3 saturday at 8:00 p.m. eastern on lectures in history, sam houston state university professor on the 1864 civil war overland campaign. sunday 11 and eastern a new monument at arlington national cemetery dedicated to nominat he crewmembers killed during the vietnam war. watch this weekend on the c-span networks.

>> good evening everyone. thank you for joining us and welcome. we are trying to translate some of the high principles from the himalayan asia and delivered to you in the 21st century here in new york city. my name is tim and we present the serious and this one is called brainwave where we choose to interact with scientists and other folks of life to figure out how our brain works.

one of the central tenets of much of the art we display upstairs in our galleries which happens to be [inaudible] everything subject to change. how fitting then that the doctor has just wrote a book. times are changing and we need to that to them. fortunately we have the ability and the tools and plasticity to do so. as he does every book of his he's able to translate, said he is into words and language that we all can readily embrace and understand. he's a great translator of high principles into stuff that we can get and grasp onto and it's

like diver and star trek. he does that sort of stuff and he has a degree in theoretical physics. the combination is quite explicit, as you will find tonight. leonard, thank you for being it easier and celebrating your book with us. he's joined by his sometime buddy and sometimes rival and ideas, doctor chopra was no slouch in translating complex ideas of consciousness and well-being into how you can activate our understandings of existence. i think he's done more than anyone in our analyst year to help us understand these complex ideas that are actually simple. yet, we don't tend to understand

them until we experience them. with the chopra foundation they managed to create a space in which we can embrace them, live them and engage with them so that we not only intellectually get it but viscerally understand. he has translated [inaudible] which defy language into a contemporary understanding that we are slowly starting to embrace. doctor chopra, thank you so much for your meaningful contributions to understanding the important principles of adaptation, change in engageme engagement, understanding of community. so, this whole year at the ribbon or embracing this idea that the future is good and how do as the intersection of facial engagement, time, adaptation

meets where you will find that out tonight. with the help of doctor mlodinow and doctor chopra. welcome them to the stage. [applause] >> thank you. thank you for being here. what was mentioned also was leonard has worked with steven hawking on many books including grand design, a brief history of dying and of course is very well known books. today we are going to talk about

elastic thinking and a little later will talk about the healing itself. leonard, i really enjoyed reading your book and i'm still not done but -- >> but you read far enough so you have questions. >> yes, let's get right to the questions right away. [laughter] even though time does not exist -- [laughter] or a perception of it anyway or an experience of it. let's start with the questions and then we can go back and forth a little bit. would you tell us what you mean by elastic thinking? >> i talk about three ways that biological systems process information. the simplest was put away is scripted thinking or sometimes psychologist called it fixed

action patterns but it's not humans they just do it but all animals and even some bacteria do it. those are very reflective of ways of processing information and the data comes in whether it's a bacteria or chemicals or chemicals and it gets processed and in an automatic way in the same way every time an answer comes out. one example for instance mother goose sitting on a nest and if one of her eggs falls out to return out and bring it back in. it's as if it's a loving action of a loving mother but scientists have noticed that if they put up your clan next to the nest shall do the same thing or even a volleyball or still try to do. it really isn't any kind of thinking at all but it's a reflexive action and primitive animals live that way most all of their lives. evolution has provided that because they live in a non- changing routine environment and

the mother goose does often have a can next to her nest or volleyball so the fact that she does this unthinkingly hurt the species but they survive fine. for situations where there is change in the environment other changes are needed. human beings have a [inaudible] it's better than a fixation pattern that is logical or rational thought. we had the rules of logic to get from a to b to c and so on. that has gotten us far and so far society values and schools asked for it and employers try to find it and people and it's a very powerful way of thinking and -- >> it's built into our brain but we get practice with it and we become better and worse at it and that's a whole other discussion.

it's another standard way we think but also it applies to the situation where the methodology is set in the framework and the questions and the framework is fixed and we apply that to the framework and top a to b. when things change when we have new challenges and new situations that come up that are similar to have a twist those fail just like the mother goose with the beer can. for that we humans especially have this elastic thinking which is a thinking are not following the rules and making up the rules or breaking the rules or even the act of deciding that the rules need to be broken or they don't apply anymore.

is how we adapt to change how we get new ideas and come up with innovation. that is why he wrote the book because society today is changing faster than ever before. the change is exponential but it doesn't change quickly at the beginning but it means things double so if you have one sent in my double every year that's an exponential rise but only getting a sense the first year and 2 cents the next year. once you get to another part of the curve where you have a million dollars now you're getting somewhere. that is what has happened with society. changes gone to the point where as it continues to double at fixed intervals we have trouble coping with it and elastic thinking is the remedy. >> that is great and i wanted to go through the questions i had but based on what you said right now what is elastic thinking and how does it work with creativity? >> it's a larger from the

creativity and there's certain realm elastic thinking such as imagination, idea generation, and then there are certain aspects of elastic thinking that are important for problem-solving and not strictly speaking creativity. francis, being mindful of how you are thinking and figuring out how to identify the assumptions and how to determine whether there are the proper assumptions are not. >> but you do need elastic thinking for creativity? >> yes, but also i want to make clear that creativity needs elastic thinking but it needs a logical thinking because ideas without guidance are babbling and in order to create something that is useful and to have a creative product you need to have an analytical part of the brain guide the elastic part of the brain to form something

creative. >> i might want to come back to that "after words" -- >> you're in charge, that will be easy. [laughter] >> what are you talking about in this book about bottoms up thinking and top-down thinking? i don't think anyone in the audience knows the difference. >> well, top-down thinking is the kind of thinking where you have the thinking is guided by a ceo or calling the brain and executive function or someone is figure out something to do or a programmer and having that plant executed. it's the way that computers used operate in most computers still operate where a programmer forms an algorithm that the computer will execute to get the answer. bottom-up thinking is completely different and the bottom up thinking is what colonies do.

they consider the colony rather than individual and. the answer themselves have a simple rule that they go by which determine what they do whether they go forward, backward, left or right and there are those fixed action patterns and yet when you have a colony of thousands of ants that colony can create a sum of those parts that is much greater than the parts themselves. the whole is greater than the sum. ...

>> and competing at the same time with all the neurons to give us random ideas. so as they interact with each other that is to maximize the thinking how to take control of that. >> so if you have a problem and sit down and think very hard about it with the challenge mostly start with logical and analytical

thinking and quite often come into a barrier. i don't know how to write that chapter like with stephen hawking i really didn't know what i wanted to write and the analytical side wouldn't give me the answer but then you learn to relax and refocus your brain to let that cauldron of ideas to bubble up and it comes to you and you think about it were you told me yourself in the process you go to bed and in the morning the chapter is written. [laughter] >> early in my career with

those molecules of emotion and she wants said to me our bodies are the subconscious mind and at that time we were still looking at things like serotonin but now we know the microbiota is 99% of the genetic information in our body and even more important that microbiota genes are responsible for more than 90% of the serotonin that is produced in her body and because of the microbiota but also the networks looking at

the heart. but that bottoms up thinking could this. so it is body thinking in a way. >> and also detrimental to your logical thinking. your emotions are closely tied so everyone has heard the phrase we only use 10% of our brain that is a myth we use 100% but you have a good take

on this but probably very little of the potential that is there with our thinking. right? >> true it is definite myth maybe not to our optimal use and what is happening is our brains are idea machine with any topic or challenge a problem in your life to generate tons of ideas at the unconscious level and then you are nonfunctional because you drown in all the ideas that are coming and then your brain tries to filter out so that's

why you think about going to europe you don't think about swimming there if you take a plane you will not drive there but your mind is juggling ideas like that and your behavior to get those impulses of behavior that is censored at the unconscious level by these filters so that's good because it keeps inappropriate behaviors and ideas away but it could also suppress that is because the filters are working so that is what i mean

can't use all of msu learn to relax your brain to find those gems in mind. [inaudible] >> you could think of it that way but what you have that the editor of about you take out the content or what keeps back certain ideas. >> and what was brought out here as a playset champions eastern thought according to the traditions of the east of the condition of the mind?

whether through education or religion or economics so most of the ideas that we have, i think they are not original at all that they are recycled and collective and conditioned these days especially what is happening in the media whether fit is fake news or real news it does not matter. but we really 99% of humanity have any original thoughts at all or is it conditioned reflex to be triggered by people of circumstance into a

predictable outcome based on collective thinking. >> i don't think that is the sole manner that is also the way they act much more often than they realize to see the social interaction there is a psychologist with yale and harvard did an experiment a while back he gave the graduates didn't the copying machine and they had three different questions they could ask and she measured the success rate of each 11 is i have five copies to make can i get in front of you please? that was successful 50% of the

time that the second was i have five copies to make because i'm in a hurry that was successful 95% of the time so it sounds like they are listening to the person they are making a decision they are in a hurry i'm not comfortably but maybe they are like mother goose and they are conditioned to say no there is a reason it doesn't matter what the reason is just like mother goose does it scrutinize if it is an egg.

and then he would say i have papers to copy it is a joke but 93% success% success rate with that said you want to convince somebody even if you don't have a good reason but obviously to have scripted thinking i don't think when einstein invented general relatively with ordinary congressional. >> for people like him to frequently break through. >> and then you think because you are not just following it

you say why am i going there? or whatever you are asking even in your larger life and to be somewhat satisfied but not totally satisfied and as someone who can speak to that as a physicist writing for tv, computer games so i am the opposite are you sure? that is the way to everyone's life.

>> as it turns out i was writing my book but even more interesting. >> i'll tell tell you the correct story left she goes to pay with her credit card designs and then the clerk gives her the bill and takes to make sure that the same person signed it. but that is what she does with all bills and credit cards you don't have to do that. >> because i am interested in the biology he did the experiment the people in their 80s going into a nursing home and then a control group

somewhere else. but they were instructed to pretend they were in their 50s. they watched bees like alfred hitchcock -- hitchcock and then she left at the biological rating and in one week the biological markers had significantly changed. just because they were in the mood psychologically and actually behaving in a different era.

>> that is an important point in your mindset it is amazing how influential your mindset is. but one of the experiments i really like to give people these problems three words i crab or pine and sauce and find another word that goes with that. you could say . you could say : but there were two approaches one is rational thought and then find words that go with one of them and

if not throw that out a traditional computer could do that that was programmed in a traditional way the other way is where you think about the problem then you let it percolate and do something else and then you have an insight i forget the statistics half or one third get it within a minute or two. the answer in this case is apple. so most people fall that and the scientist can watch as they has that thinking leading to insight so how did you

solve that? it came to me. but the scientist actually could predict before the person even knew how they solved it how they were going to solve that they could tell even before they gave him the question will be used insight or elastic thinking? by looking at the mri you could see what parts of the brain were working with the mindset one way or the other. it is fascinating your mindset determines how you approach a problem. >> how many have heard of cognitive behavior? how many are familiar with the work? a few. so this elastic thinking has a

lot to do with breaking rigid patterns people have a lot of limiting beliefs to never be successful and the principle of cognitive therapy say you question whatever the belief that is holding you back that my husband doesn't like me or whatever. you write down the thought then ask yourself if it is true. yes or no. then you ask yourself again if that is true or not and by now you have held onto this rigid thinking all these years now you question it then you ask

yourself what does holding onto this thought due to me then you write the answer to what i be without it? and then you write the opposite in the more that you reflect on your thinking it starts to get a hold on you not just in your own personal life but often you don't even realize it that is what is so hard about it. >> some of these assumptions could go back to your childhood. >> if your family has told you this actually one good example

that riddles are difficult you make the hidden assumption you are not aware of. it isn't rocket science it is very simple. marge and mary had the same mother and father and born at the same time but they are not twins. how is that possible? don't say anything but think about it. same parents and board at the same they are not twins. they find that hard to understand you can't solve it using analytical but changing the way you picture the situation. when you hear they are on --

their names you picture a pair once you realize you made that assumption that happens. >> very interesting. [inaudible] [laughter] >> i am pausing for dramatic effect. [laughter] when i first started they kept talking about how people resist change how do we get over those versions of change but meanwhile people get bored

if it doesn't change and they want a new job not doing the same thing all the time. what change are they talking about? we are having a reorganization doing 25% more work for the same money so that is the change people resist. but if somebody called you into the office and said we had a reorganization they are too efficient do the same work for the last many would love that change. [laughter] some people don't like negative consequences but they don't resist change. as it turns out we have a gene

that controls impulse and it has to do with dopamine in the centers of your brain and scientists have found 100,000 years ago there was catastrophic climate change when modern humans were living in africa and it dwindled down to me be dozens of individuals and those who survived have an extra gene or a form of it and they were more exploratory they could find more resources to survive while the other humans died out there was a bottleneck changing the way people think and he started to

spread more around the world. it is all within us some people, i will go to a restaurant in the other dishes look crummy and i will do it anyway because i can't stand ordering the same thing even if it will be lousy. [laughter] i'm not saying it is always a good thing. [laughter] were going and exploring by the grizzly bears then they get eaten. [laughter] but to have the whole spectrum of people that everybody could find useful. and i have a test we could test yourself but if you want to increase.

>> so in contrast to further thinking? be that is a term that was coined and writing about the not see. and people sometimes have the lease one -- a belief but they don't even question where it comes from. they cannot see any other way of thinking. so people who believe one side or the other cannot help but think it is fill in the blank so that half is not just in politics with a lot of different fields but it is something you have to fight and i talk about the values of

diversity and talking to people who think differently or the opposite of you. it may not be pleasant but it is good for you see you should do it to sincerely try to understand or they are coming from for those that you could respect or love and to open your mind to that also we try to forget the times we are wrong but it broadens your thinking to make you realize this may not be the truth. >> it with that correct

perspective there is either no perspective and what is being said especially with problem-solving and he says if you take any problem and you get a lot of people together but they are from disparate disciplines it doesn't matter the problem i could try to treat in one of the problems is then you have a specialist that has very little elastic thinking because he knows and he or she cannot get out of the pigeonhole to look at it

any other way. but people who are a generalist and with the humanities of music and mathematics with disparate discipline you have to look at the problem and keep the whole process without criticism and then you incubate with a walk in the park and listen to music without collective intuition and somehow some

ideas to go through that nobody had thought. also moving in that era where now we do a lot of research of mindful awareness and how that affects expression et cetera. and from those disciplines. it is easy to get caught up and has a theoretical physicist and most that you see are done by groups of people because everybody

brings a different point of view. the more is greater than the sum. mike i'm making my own cognac right now. [laughter] and i talk about those intellectual ventures then to come up with those things and system to shoot mosquitoes out of the air.

but actually it is important africa malaria is a problem. to use the energy of lightbulbs to shoot down 30 mosquitoes per second. because all of those ideas behind it insects specialist in computers if they didn't bring those together. >> i have some questions we will have some time and i encourage you to look at the book but there is one question but i do want to ask you about

then perhaps we can move on to those ideas. but we have had a great time and have learned a lot from each other and how to meditate and the question is what the heck? >> so a few years ago scientists noticed the children of people with schizophrenia tend to have more original ideas and they

start to study that genetically there is a trade at one far and that could fall short of that with the propensity to have different and unusual and strange ideas and with those filters you can become detached from reality sometimes it do that on purpose or too far to the other side then you never have any new ideas. but really the best example of that is the subject of the book a beautiful mind, john nash was a mathematician/economist and

was on the borderline schizophrenia and in that state and never vast conspiracies and weird stuff but yet his ideas on the other side winning the nobel prize when he got out of that state when he was healthier somebody said how somebody so brilliant how these original ideas and also think aliens are talking to you? he said those ideas came from both places in my brain. and that was real. >> only went to hang out with

psychotics and geniuses. [laughter] so to have amazing insight and i encourage you to read it that the world is in crisis for all that is happening the rigid thinking with prejudice extension of species more in terrorism and mechanized debt need elastic thinking. >> thank you. do you have questions for me? >> i do. [laughter]

but we do want to get to the audience. >> but i would love to. >> the line between what is happening automatically what happened and voluntarily? >> to have a moment of positive and choice to make choices consciously. and then it means being aware and then witnessing that awareness with that sensory experience to be aware of it

as it is happening but also the choices you are making. >> i should back up and ask the same question you asked me. what is the healing self? >> i think actually we can do that question. [laughter] because that is the title of the book and that is the right question. [laughter] so the word healing etymology delete the word that is from the basis of the word he'll like healing and holy.

so we do not mean self-righteous morality but a way of thinking. so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts now here we are at the home of buddhism and from this perspective thought patterns of behavior in fact are no such things even though you think in terms of the healing self with a micro biome the nervous system and the endocrine system and the immune system with your mind and your emotions and

relationships with social interaction that is the wholeness of experience and what we do with science and biology look at the parts so then you look at the organs in the tissues to go deeper and deeper to molecular biology and genomes and then you keep going until you get to the part and it works with that mechanistic understanding. but with chronic illness, the majority like pneumonia or cancer or a disease you want

to look how to handle that with chronic illness we are learning that in 95% even the gene mutation that is linked to disease but only 5% of disease-related gene mutation is present that is somebody has the gene for breast cancer she had a preventative mastectomy because that would guarantee that disease so now there is hope you could have jean editing but with 95% disease related mediations

that have thought to cause these don't guarantee that so like with alzheimer's there are 20 genes associated but only three guarantee it. cancer there are hundreds of genes associated mutations but less than 5% guarantee and this is true of all illness. so what is the healing self? that is you who makes choices every day for your well-being. and if you are paying attention i remember when i was a resident i went to the restroom i heard my nurse say mr. smith please wake up so i

went up to her i have to give you your sleeping pill i know he is waking up i said please give him this week -- the sleeping pill. [laughter] but then i look at the situation i discovered 90% of the prescriptions in the hospital where pain and anxiety nausea insomnia and constipation. >> the big five. [laughter] good sleep and stress management and mindful awareness and that is the gift god gave to the world 2500 years ago to give the gift of mindful awareness which is a

complete awareness of body and what's happening inside your body to practice yoga they call the intro section these days are how you become aware of what is happening inside your body and meditation and movement without mind-body coordination. now we find out that it is

very interesting the word of a gas in the english word is vega bond but the tenth cranial nerve from the midbrain but includes everything even the tone of your voice if you are anxious it will be different than if you are relaxed and happy every mood influences the tone of your voice. can the finest measure if you are stressed or not. or sympathetic overdrive. somebody is even thinking of something so what we do with yoga and the breathing techniques influences that.

to go through the diaphragm and pierces the intestine influences the activity of the microbiota 99% of the genetic information from the gut to the brain. the brain and the gut speak to each other as if those autonomic nerves back to the brain so it is the power that normally is translated if you look at the original sanskrit you will see awareness. everything you do with the salutation or whatever has a seed of awareness and closing a particular autonomic nerve. movement is emotions stress or

anger or hostility depression or any form of emotion that separates so the buddha had four or five emotions which connects you with compassion empathy and joy you can look up the sanskrit words in no that with love and compassion and joy you will heal the physical body. so looking at what happened when nobody looks at these emotions how do they influence what is happening? so basically going back to leo stasis if you practice the

simple practices practicing nutrition i used to in my resident days people would come to me and say i change my diet and my arthritis went away and did not make sense to me but then i had no way to understand that but now we know when you food in your body first accesses your microbiologist the genetic information in your gut so now there is artificial intelligence that can look at a stool sample and tell you exactly which food are suitable for your microbiota in which causes inflammation. these techniques are relevant.

spinach is very healthy for me but other people's it is not if you don't have that enzyme to metabolize and you don't even know that. but now you cannot change the genes that your parents gave you. but not the range of gene but if you have 2 million between 20 million in your body that population depends on what you eat you can change your diet to find out your micro biome in a week you have a completely different genetic information from your microbial gene expression so

now that is a whole new understanding if your food is manufactured or processed with too much sugar or antibiotics or hormones pesticides, petroleum products or any other chemicals than the micro biome shows the bacteria of the earth and they are not used to this because 30% appears in urban society correlations are being made between chronic disease inflammation. so i mentioned in number five number six is very interesting on the ground or on the earth or on the beach what happens

when you walk barefoot on the earth the ions that come from the earth that neutralize what's in our bodies and inflammation goes down there are some recent papers on this also recently on gratitude the feeling of gratitude just write down at the end of the day when you are grateful for. >> gratitude exercise and grounding brings that down in your body our bodies respond to biological triggers in the circadian rhythms if you have jet lag that is a disruption of circadian rhythms your body

has rhythms we have seasonal rhythms and gravitational rhythms to be a part of the symphony this is a microcosm of that so when we walked on the ground now we are beginning to look at this you are restoring the circadian rhythms just by connecting with your and you are synchronizing or resetting but if the earth and the rhythms are connected to all the others you are linking to. and now medicine biology every cell in your body has a clock

some are independent of the others but it is part of natures rhythms so in summary that is a little bit of the healing self and to be involved spiritually to understand your true nature with consciousness and transcendence with the object split that is artificial you are the subject and the object but in the wholeness of the experience the whole is all there is. that is the healing self. >> because of the functions that you cannot identify so

now we and on the notes of agreement. [laughter] >> finally. [applause] to make gentlemen thank you so much we have been celebrating the ideas behind elastic and flexible thinking and now fittingly they have found consulates in their ideas around gratitude acceptable adaptation allows healing so with that in mind, i will invite you to ask questions and we have microphones and in the interest of minimizing stress to the rest of the audience please keep your

questions as to sing and to the point as possible. that will make us all grateful. [laughter] who would like to venture first? >> and there is a hand in the back be met can you give us some practical tips how to think more elastically? >> that is in my list of questions. [laughter] >> would you like to paraphrase everybody could hear it. >> can you tell us how we can think more elastically? >> there are a lot of things you can do we were just talking about basic is to increase your level of mindfulness and you know what

your approach is in the first place and you can use the same method along the lines of what deepak was talking about and learn to identify and question those assumptions we were just talking about gratitude so positive emotions tend to increase elastic thinking the negative emotion if there is a tiger in the room you get scared if you are angry you are focused on doing something about it if you are happy you are not focused on any action in particular budgets has to relieve and broaden your thinking with the focus of your brain learning to go a problem and kickback lay on the couch to let things

percolate if you are an employee and you are laying on the couch they may say you are not working but that could be the best part and where did that come from? i'm just giving you an idea some of the ideas that some people are evening people i just found out when your brain is exhausted the rational thinking part then that keeps ideas from coming to you so when you feel mentally soft and that can help you find a solution the space that you work in affects the way you think if it is very bright or noisy that tends to focus on what is happening the

brightness tends to take your mind away from the quiet thought that is open there are a lot of subtle things you could do to take control of the way you're thinking to change your mindset. >> if you have a baseline elastic or logical thinking so that predilection constant. >> the problem generally is they had one approach but there is a great story that deepak will appreciate they did an experiment on an experienced meditator and gave them the compound problem of

the three words i said and he did horribly. he couldn't get any of them right. and he was a little embarrassed for him he said he had enough i appreciate you volunteering and he said no let me get back to and try again. and after the little break he got them all right. so beforehand he was the least successful then he was the most that they have seen he had never seen someone switch from one to the other so he talked to him afterwards and said this person has this ability to have tremendous focus when he started with the

rational approach it wasn't working for him so if it isn't successful but they put the words in a certain way just like in the middle with the wrong assumption or picture that lead you away from the right answer but at the after the interruption he said he realized he needs to do the opposite to open his mind that the ideas come then they went like that. so he could recognize and control his approach to the problem and i think that was an important example. >> i apply the following process myself and i use just for the sake of convenience that the first step is any problem that i have i gather

information. and on the internet or on anything. . . . . >> incubation could be just letting go or it could be sleep and convey meditation or a walk in the park but the four step is in that information, by the way also, there's detachment from outcome and there is surrender to uncertainty because if you are certain about everything

then there is not elastic thinking anywhere so certainty is an interference with elasticity. surrender to uncertainty allows the proliferation of uncertainty in that information. and then there is this breakthrough that happens which is in sight and it's an aha moment like oh, and he recognize it because you feel very good about it and so i call that inspiration not motivation. it is to be in spirit and inspiration isn't mental experiences motivation so whatever information gathering and incubation and insight and inspiration, implementation.

do you try it out and whether it works or not and then integration you integrated with everything else, you know except incarnation, death and resurrection. this is very and creativity and elasticity which means that of all the old context and stories and the meaning and the relationships and how you interpreted them are gone and something new has emerged. that is elastic. >> that's very elastic. [laughter] >> i have a second question. i think one question a person is the first thing we can do so perhaps if we can get a microphone to the lady in the third row. who else would like to ask a question? this gentleman in the second to

last row a little back. >> what about somebody that has the elastic mind and if you have the question normally your mind is always in the same way of thinking and you have any experience with that? >> can mean many things but if you are clinically depressed to the extent that you have trouble functioning you're probably not going to have elastic thinking because your not really going to be actively approaching a problem thinking about it. if you have a lesser level it is not directly related but a question of motivation and energy and attacking something.

>> doctor chopra, as a doctor you have suggestions for bridging out? >> there so many reasons but recently have been looking at the literature and depression proceeds almost every chronic illness that an element of depression the precedent set. if you look deeper into that anxiety underlying the depression so underlined depression is anxiety is first and depression second. i mentioned earlier that 90% of your serotonin is being produced in the gut which we did not know. exercise, yoga, breathing, changing your diet, eliminates

many kind of depression but then there are serious types of psychosis that i'm not addressing right now. >> thank you for advice. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] a lot of physicists have elastic thinking that quantum mechanics does not have a role in the plane in light of recent discoveries what is your opinion as far as do you personally believe that now with the latest discoveries that quantum mechanics might be -- >> stewart is a good friend of mine and he's probably going to see this.

[laughter] and next week we have a conference coming up with the science of consciousness and my demons confront me about this stewart background is anesthesiology. when you give anesthesia, by the way, no one knows how anastasio works but it works and there are so many types of indices you that a lot of anesthetic that is where his [inaudible] comes from. i do not personally think that micro [inaudible] are they you could think of them as micro structures and i do feel this is something that i have to be careful because a physicist who talks about quantum mechanics all the time but if you look at

particles as having this dual nature then particles are in the realm of materiality and they have units of energy but rates of probability are the potential for that so i do see a connection between creativity and elastic thinking and the ability to settle into a state of being witches totally detached and allows the proliferation of probability waves or ideas and consciousness until they suddenly collapsed into insight but i'm using this metaphorically.

>> okay. i'm glad you said that. i love it. >> but okay on the other hand i also think and again i say this with trepidation that all science is a metaphor. >> i would also agree with that so again, we agree. given the conversation about the broader aspects of time we can only invite unless question. if you're not, we do have a reception upstairs and they have agreed to sign copies of the book that you have in the bag on your lap and hopefully you remove them in order to sign them and that will be upstairs in of course he invited you to a glass of wine upstairs as well. let's do for the final question and experiment in the spirit of

what has happened this evening. let's practice a little [inaudible] and elasticity. the last question should really come from someone who has never post a question in public before. [laughter] and so whoever would like to summon the courage and try something new this is your chance. >> well done, a round of applause. [applause] >> thank you. i was thinking about the environment and how that can be effective someone who lives in an urban area and we are exposed to food that is highly chemical

and refined or anything like that and start killing those bacteria's -- >> say that again. >> with healing or affecting our micro biomes in the way that it changes the mapping restored at some point? >> yes, you can change your micro [inaudible] by changing your diet within a few days. without going into artificial intelligence and ways of looking at it this is a great development and maximum diversity of plant -based foods is the best thing for you. maximum diversity of plant -based foods. it is the best thing and will change her micro [inaudible] >> a question, by the way. [applause] >> we will give you gentlemen

the last words and about healing elasticity is there any advice other than what you have offered already that we perhaps give us the resilience to deal with what is outside the doors? [laughter] >> well, one issue that we do not talk about much that is important and is related to that question is the idea of failure and of the fear of asking about question or having a stupid idea and this is one of the biggest poisons to elastic thinking and it must be free to have done, not just wrong, but dumb ideas to have good ideas.

you need those ideas to come from your unconscious and come into your mind and i think the relation of that and the fear of failure is relevant to what you said because the outside world is in a bit of turmoil with distressing events happening almost hourly these days. i think that we should liberate ourselves and fear of the whole thing collapsing and the hope that the organism of our country and world will write itself again. >> whatever is happening there is a manifestation of our collective consciousness. even though we tend to blame the politicians, the president, whoever they represent our collective psyche and i said to leonard many times that as we look at the world these days

it's insane to me and that if you don't agree with that then you declare your own insanity. [laughter] it is insane. we are risking our extinction with modern capacities and medieval mindset and the best thing we can do to change that out there is be the change you want to see. [applause] >> go outside and embrace a little bit of risk and also be grateful and extend gifts wherever you can just as we would like to do tonight, membership to the museum, thank you so much. thank you so much. [applause] >> this conversation will be on

our facebook page # brainwave and do spread it out and change the world. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> this weekend c-span cities were tissue to tyler, texas with the help of our cable partners we will explore the literary scene in history. saturday at 12:00 p.m. eastern on the tv author robert discusses his book about the life of former texas lieutenant governor and state senator. >> everything he did in the senate was in a problem-solving mode and how we fix this particular thing for texans and how do we make this better.

he did that without ideology and that without partisanship getting in the way and so that made him well and greatly loved in austin. he was hands down both parties was a person people can work with. >> on sunday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv we visit with bobby evans, former engineer for the tyler district texas department of transportation and the father of the adopt a highway program. >> 1984 i know we took a trip to south dakota with a highway meeting and i had to give a speech to a civic club and i challenged you to adopt a highway to get rid of litter. of course that was just a part of my speech and i didn't expect everyone to jump up and do anything but the more i thought about that i thought it might be something we can try. >> then we will visit the smith

county historical society to hear about the history of race at robert ely high school. >> the school board, all-white, decided to name the school robert ely high school which, you know, the white community with say this is to honor our past in history and tyler has a rich history connected to the confederacy but in the black community this is very much seen as a thumb in their eye and a gesture of defiance. >> watching c-span's cities were of tyler, texas, saturday at noon eastern on c-span2 put tv and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span3. working with our cable affiliates as we explore america