Mindfulness guru Deepak Chopra on how to manage stress and find meaning during coronavirus – and the mediation challenge he started with Oprah

Deepak Chopra is a physician, educator and author of many books, including the recent Metahuman: Unleashing Your Infinite Potential. The Indian mindfulness icon launched the podcast series Now For Tomorrow and recently offered the 21-day meditation course he hosted with Oprah Winfrey free for those who logged on through his website by April 24.

We caught up with the New Age guru to find out how we could all be living a little more mindfully amid this unprecedented global meltdown.

Deepak, we are all very much alone together right now, in that we're separately experiencing a lot of the same difficulties. What is the main message that you're trying to bring to people right now through your podcast and through this meditation?

Well, the main message is that we can take this time to get in touch with our deeper self, create intimacy with ourselves and with each other. We can do that now through technology. You and I are having a very interesting one-to-one conversation. People are listening to us.

We can enhance our intimacy through acceptance, appreciation, affection and joy, and help each other manage stress, because there are three pandemics going on. One is the infection, the second is the financial crisis which is causing a lot of suffering, and the third is panic which is recycling as stress, which is weakening our immune system, increasing inflammation, actually.

All the evidence shows that those who get really sick are the ones who have inflammatory storms in their body, which is a result of stress. So managing stress right now, that's why the 21-day meditation offering with Oprah Winfrey, which is called Hope in Uncertain Times. And also the podcast, which is Now For Tomorrow, which means what can you do now – not today, now – to alleviate your stress so that you have a better tomorrow and even a better today. So that was the intention behind these efforts.

How do people recognise stress in them, and how do you deal with it if it feels like you're having a real physical reaction to the stress that you're feeling?

There's no stress without a physical reaction. If I asked you even to think of a stressful situation in the past, an argument with your significant other, or with your children, or when you lost your job, just the thought immediately makes your heart rate faster, increases your blood pressure, your platelets get sticky and there's inflammation. So anytime you're feeling physical distress in any form, behind that is stress, perception of threat. That's what stress means.

Stress is the psychological, emotional and perceptual feeling of threat interpretation. And immediately it changes your biology. It immediately compromise your immune system, but you can immediately correct it. So here's how you correct it immediately. Immediately. Forget all the details. I call this the stop formula, S-T-O-P. Anytime you feel stressed, obviously, you know that you're feeling stressed because your body doesn't feel good, right? So anytime you feel stress, STOP. That's the formula, S-T-O-P.