Chopra studied medicine in India before emigrating to the United States in 1970 where he completed residencies in internal medicine and endocrinology. As a licensed physician, he became chief of staff at the New England Memorial Hospital (NEMH) in 1980. He met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1985 and became involved with the Transcendental Meditation movement (TM). He resigned from his position at NEMH shortly thereafter to establish the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center. 

Chopra gained a following in 1993 after his interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show regarding his books. He then left the TM movement to become the executive director of Sharp Health Care’s Center for Mind-Body Medicine and in 1996 he co-founded the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

Chopra believes that a person may attain “perfect health”, a condition “that is free from disease, that never feels pain”, and “that cannot age or die”. Seeing the human body as being undergirded by a “quantum mechanical body” composed not of matter but of energy and information, he believes that “human aging is fluid and changeable; it can speed up, slow down, stop for a time, and even reverse itself,” as determined by one’s state of mind.