(7 of 7)
Doctors who still practice healing may not have the luxury of avoiding the concrete and the humdrum. The melodrama of serious illness is a fact of their lives and those of their patients. Says Dr. Rita Kumar, a longtime acquaintance of Chopra's who incorporates mind/body medicine into her Western-style practice: "If physical symptoms are treated without caring for the mind and the soul, the body will die. I believe what we are thinking changes our body. But we must subject mind/ body/spirit medicine to the same standards as anything else. We must remember, and I hope Chopra still does, that this is only about healing."
--Reported by Sam Allis with Deepak Chopra, Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles and Victoria Rainert/New York