Sunset Reset – Meditation with Dr. Nirali Dubal
Retired pediatrician-turned-life coach Dr. Nirali Dubal collaborated with Le Well and a group of Master of Biomedical Sciences students to create a workshop on mindful meditation. Held on the west end of the sixth floor of Trent Semans Center for Health Education just before sunset, the workshop offered a variety of strategies designed to teach about – and then practice – parasympathetic activation. Rather than letting the “fight/flight/freeze” drives of the sympathetic nervous system overtake our bodies, Dr. Dubal recommended common-sense practices to promote “rest and digest.”
Dr. Dubal encouraged students, faculty and staff to “observe without judgment.” She first led the group through a quick example of “Zentangle,” a meditative doodling practice she says has been instrumental in her own self-regulation and for which tutorials can be found online. She then led a 17-minute guided meditation with body scan, followed by a debrief.
Practical, relatable, and instantly applicable, Dr. Dubal’s lessons centered on the science of stress; the importance of a two-minute nervous system reset; mindfulness as attention training; self-compassion as a stress buffer; and creativity for emotional processing.
Dr. Dubal recommended these practices in busy clinical and educational settings:
- Doorknob pause: Take a moment to refocus, take a deep cleansing breath, and focus your thoughts before embarking on the next (patient visit, test, Anki set, etc.).
- Stethoscope pause: When getting ready to examine a patient, take a moment to close your eyes, be fully present in the moment, and breathe deeply.
- Inhale<exhale: Any time your exhalation is longer than your inhalation, you are activating your parasympathetic nervous system. Try breathing in for 4 and breathing out for 8 counts.
She shared an important lesson she had learned, which is that “Thoughts are all real, but it doesn’t mean they are all true. Just like the salivary glands produce saliva, the brain produces thoughts. They are real, but they may not all be true.”
