Photo: Papalove Productions

Deepak Chopra and Alex Tsiaras Paint a Portrait of Consciousness in the Body.

When mind-body wellness expert Deepak Chopra teamed up with Alex Tsiaras, president and CEO of the Anatomical Travelogue, it was their love of the human body that brought them together. Chopra’s reverent reflections that “there are 100 trillion cells in the body, more than all the stars in the galaxy” and that our “biological rhythms are the symphony of the whole universe” give words to the wondrous imaging of human biology captured by Tsiaras’ scientifically-factual 3D pictures and animated footage.

Tsiaras’ scientific visualizations are available on his internet site: The Visual MD. Launched in 2009, The Visual MD offers a wide range of health-care stories on subjects like “What is a Stroke?” the “Heart Attack and Angina,” “Chronic Kidney Disease,” and “Women and Cardiovascular Health.” Tsiaras’ video “From Conception to Birth: a Life Unfolds,” which he delivered in his TEDMED conference talk, provides an astonishing visual story of life. His simulations of the body for such purposes as diagnostics, research, surgery, and art have earned Tsiaras the distinction of an adjunct professorship at Yale, funding from NASA, museum exhibitions, and 150 magazine cover pages.

This week Chopra and Tsiaras took center stage and presented their collaborative investigation of consciousness in the body through an initiative called the “9 Visual Rules of Wellness.” At Deepak Homebase, Chopra’s East-Coast forum at the ABC Carpet & Home design store in Manhattan, Chopra recalled how he first charged Tsiaras with the mammoth task of illustrating consciousness in the body. Chopra and Tsiaras define their “9 Visual Rules of Wellness” global project as a health message that will reach people through inspiration. The nine rules reflect the nine months it takes to create a marvelous human life and outline options to maximize vitality. They are as follows:

Photo: Tammy

Rule 1 Baseline Your Health

Rule 2 Define Your Wellness Mission

Rule 3 Develop & Maintain Nutritional Balance

Rule 4 Get Aerobic & Anaerobic Exercise

Rule 5 Never Smoke

Rule 6 Take a Moderate Approach

Rule 7 Make Sleep a Priority

Rule 8 Manage your Stress

Rule 9 Embrace Joy

Estimated to release in early 2012 and currently profiled on TheVisualMD, Tsiaras describes this wellness narrative as giving “soul to data.” With a goal to inspire audiences to make positive lifestyle modulations, Chopra and Tsiaras are rejecting fear-based health advisories in favor of a new vocabulary for our body’s natural intelligence.

Chopra recalled how his Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama encouraged scientists to not solely investigate biological states of imbalance and disease, but also to incorporate factors like equanimity and happiness. The visualization of the effects of stress on the immune system, cerebral cortex, and nerve cells (rule eight) or alternatively of the response of a baby’s brain to its mother’s gaze (rule nine) demonstrate a science of consciousness where depressive and joyous states have an equally quantifiable biological impact.

Oh, yes, we may have been wowed when Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto proposed a correlation between concentrated thoughts and the clustering of frozen water crystals, but we now have major (bleeping) motivation to not emote-o negative states as Chopra and Tsiaras map the biology of consciousness in the human body. It’s no longer “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” but rather how do we put into practice the insight that consciousness will manifest in matter, most personally in the vessels of our individual bodies and in the DNA we pass along to our children. Chopra and Tsiaras’ “9 Visual Rules of Wellness” inspire us to make aware lifestyle choices and cultivate love, happiness, and compassion as agents in the inner workings and core substances of our bodies. The unveiling of the completed project in 2012 gives us all something to look forward to!