If there's one word that defines our times, certainly in the last month or two, I think it has to be "fear". Some of the most interesting and thoughtful people I've spoken to recently have raised just that point- and I, reluctantly, have to agree. Fear manifests itself as anger, impatience, intolerance and, of course, the "biggie" of our time - stress. Just spare a moment to think of all the things we're all collectively stressing ourselves about - climate change, terrorism, unhealthy diets, the cost of living, kids' manners and morals, rampant road rage, working longer and harder, our time-poor days and restless nights. I'll stop there and let you take a long relaxing breath!

Into such a stress-fuelled maelstrom, the latest book by that wonder healer and communicator Deepak Chopra drops like manna from heaven. It's called Power, Freedom and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness and like many others I've no doubt, I found myself gravitating towards it and its promise of healing wisdom. Of course, when we consider that grace is the effortless flow of existence that allows events to occur with synchronicity as if ordained, it's only natural that Chopra should have written this book at this time. The world needs it - and he knew we needed it months before that need really became blindingly apparent!

Another reason I felt drawn to this modest little book (the cover and the only illustration repeated throughout is taken from the Bhagavad Gita and is of a dove soaring into the heavens), is that it encompasses two of our last three monthly themes, Freedom and now, of course, Grace. Such a coincidence is humbling and I admit to a double take when I first pulled it from its brown paper packaging. Obviously, this was a book I had to read!

Deepak Chopra describes the work as "the essence of all my talks over the last 20 years. It is the distillation of almost everything I have taught up to now." Indeed, for anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the at-times baffling concepts of raising consciousness and the workings of the body-mind, Chopra, a physician before he found his calling in the field of holistic health, is an informed and wonderfully eloquent source.

His underlying premise here is to examine the eternal and troubling questions of our existence - "Who am I? " "What do I want?" "Where do I go when I die? " and "What is the key to lasting happiness?" His exploration of these and other questions like them is a powerful synergy of truth understood in the ancient philosophy of Vedanta (based on humanity's oldest texts, the Vedas and Upanishads) and the sharpest of cutting edge findings of modern science. His approach is three fold - to address The Problem of "Not knowing who we are", followed by The Prescription, "Remembering who we are" and, finally, providing accessible solutions in the section called The Practice, "Experiencing who we are". It's here that Chopra addresses the three qualities of the title - Power, Freedom and Grace - and suggests practical ways we can attain each of them. He shares with us his vast experience as a physician and holistic healer that points to happiness as "the goal of all other goals". Vedanta's wisdom, though, is that happiness for a reason is, in fact, just another form of misery because that reason can be snatched away from us at any time. It's only when our happiness arises naturally and effortlessly from our connection with all of creation that it is real and enduring. As Chopra puts it so beautifully: "There can be no more important task in our life than to get in touch with our own inner self, the source of all Being. The deepest self within each of us is the Self of the whole universe, and it's also the source of all healing and transformation."

This whole concept of the human body as a sensory illusion, that each of us, in fact, is not the finite being we think ourselves to be, warts and all, is surely one of the most exciting yet baffling ideas we've been presented with since movies like What the Bleep and Down the Rabbit Hole introduced words like "quantum physics" and "vibrational fields" into our everyday usage. Again, Chopra comes to our rescue: "You may think you are the body that your senses can locate in space and time, but the body is a field of invisible vibrations that has no boundaries in space and time." While we grapple with the loss of our physicality, the good bits and the bad, (probably a few too many of the latter these days), this persuasive and compassionate healer encourages us to go deeper. Armed with this new awareness, says Chopra, we aren't limited to just this body with just these thoughts and feelings. Each of us is a "field of all possibilities" and what unfolds before us is a "world of the infinite, unbounded, and free". Well, maybe letting go the long-nurtured image of self in the mirror each morning isn't quite so scary after all!

Deepak Chopra's learning permeates this book effortlessly and always in some illuminating way. Dare I say with the ease of grace? We learn, for example, that the physical body we may be expressing our identity as today isn't the same one we had six weeks ago! And I'm not talking instant decrepitude! Radioactive isotopes show that, through the process of respiration, the body replaces 98 per cent of all its atoms in less than one year. We gain a new stomach lining every five days, a new skin every month, a new liver every six weeks! "Even our DNA, the genetic material that holds memories of billions of years of evolution, wasn't the same six weeks ago." Chopra asks with justification: "So you think you are your physical body, which body are you talking about?"

The high priest of holistic health is, as we've come to expect from him, a mine of information on how our body-mind functions - and the importance of being in synch, as much as we are able in this citified world, with the eternal rhythms of nature. Even something as simple as spending time near the sea or anywhere in nature is profoundly healing, because we are aligning our jangled biorhythms with those of the cosmos. It makes that annual break by the sea not so much a luxury as an absolute necessity!

One section I found particularly helpful and fully intend to put into practise is where Chopra urges, "Listen to Your Body's Wisdom" as a way of experiencing and practising grace. Science, he tells us, has shown that all the cells of our body are holograms of the universe, meaning that all the knowledge of the universe is encoded within the structure of each cell. Little bit by little bit it does become easier to accept as truth that each of us is the universe and the universe is us - we are one and the same; that phrase again, "The deepest self within each of us is the Self of the whole universe." If we can resist that deeply engrained temptation to make decisions based on intellect and rationality and, instead, "listen to our body's wisdom", we're well on the way to developing our intuition. When our body's response to a situation or impending decision is calm and relaxed, our intuition is telling us to proceed, says Chopra. It's then that we are most at ease with the flow of life all around us and it's then that life does seem to drop those unexpected treasures into our lap. Its opposite - and the truth of so much daily life if we let ourselves be caught up in it - is where we ignore our body's wisdom and we're constantly thrown off balance. In other words we're stressed!

Deepak Chopra discusses the concept of entrainment where the vibrations of our body (and we are "ultimately just vibration") fall into a rhythmic relationship with the vibrations that exist, unseen and unknown, all around us - the universe, in other words. Communicator that he is, Chopra understands the value of an everyday example when the concept may seem too ephemeral. We learn that entrainment was first described by a physicist who noted that the pendulums of five clocks, which he started swinging at different times, after some hours all started to swing synchronously to the same rhythm. The experiment has been repeated many times - and the result is always constant. Entrainment keeps a baby's heartbeat in synch with the mother's, during pregnancy and even after birth as long as they're reasonably close. Women living together will find their menstrual cycles will start to coincide- at least peace will reign for three weeks out of four!

Chopra offers us practical, yet very alluring, ways to honour our body's wisdom - by repeating as we breathe out a vowel sound, any vowel, which sets up a vibration that allows all our body's cells to entrain with one another; through beautiful music that secretes endorphins and healing neuropeptides; through surrounding ourselves with natural scenes and aromas that bring harmony to the body-mind.

As a follower of the wisdom of Ayurveda, I have taken on board Deepak Chopra's simple, but I suspect, profound advice on bringing daily activities into synch with the body's metabolic phases. Between six and ten, both in the morning and the evening, is when our body is at its lowest metabolic rate, ideal for meditation in the early part followed by exercise in the middle of this phase- especially if you want to lose weight! Eat your biggest meal in the middle of the day when metabolism is firing along and after lunch, between two and six, is a good time to be active, both physically and mentally. Maybe the biggest challenge in a modern life, at least in an Australian summer, is to eat dinner (a lighter meal of course) around 6pm and preferably before sunset. But if we do and manage to get to bed by 10.30pm, great sleep and sweet dreams await us. To my mind, the quality that really infuses this lovely little book is compassion - Deepak Chopra brings his great knowledge and understanding of the fears and foibles that we all share to explain some of those ineffable mysteries and guide us gently towards better health, and yes, happiness, too. In a nice touch that reaches out "downunder", he dedicates Power Freedom and Grace to "my friend Leon Nacson" of Hay House.

Power, Freedom and Grace: Living from the Source of Lasting Happiness by Deepak Chopra is published by Amber-Allen Publishing. RRP $22.95

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