WOMEN'S FORUM, AKMG ANNUAL CONVENTION

Swasthya at AKMG

On the afternoon of Saturday, August 8, nearly 40 physicians and their families gathered in a quiet room at the American Association of Kerala Medical Graduates convention in Jersey City. For one hour, the invitation was simple: slow down, breathe, and listen to what the body may have been trying to say. We called the workshop Swasthya, a Sanskrit word often understood as being established in oneself. Its subtitle, A Journey Through Breath, Presence, and Reconnection, became both our intention and our guide.

The session brought together Dr. Shaija Kutty, pediatric gastroenterologist at Johns Hopkins and Director of the GIFT Program; Dr. Bansari Gujar, a rheumatologist practicing integrative rheumatology in Maryland; and Dr. Neena Thomas-Eapen, Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Kentucky. We were joined by Dr. Priya Duggal, a naturopathic doctor and Compassionate Inquiry practitioner trained in the approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté. The hour unfolded gently. We began with breath: 4-7-8 breathing and Bhramari. From there came a clinical reframing of stress, sleep, and inflammation, not as separate problems, but as parts of an ongoing conversation within the body. A somatic reflection on the wounded healer and the idea of the semi-permeable membrane invited participants to notice where stress, responsibility, and emotion were settling in their own bodies. A heart-centered meditation followed. We closed by asking each person to carry one small practice forward.

Each facilitator offered a tool. Together, those tools became a simple digital resource participants could scan into their phones and take with them beyond the room. What made the hour especially meaningful was where it happened. AKMG is more than a professional organization. For many physicians of Indian origin, it is also a place of belonging, memory, friendship, and shared experience. It is a community accustomed to carrying enormous responsibility, often while saying very little about the weight of carrying it. To bring this work into that space, and to speak not only to physicians but also to the spouses, children, and families who sustain them, felt deeply meaningful.

Among those who joined us was Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, immediate past president of the American Medical Association. He stayed for the full session and reflected afterward on how unusual and meaningful it was to encounter, within a medical convention, a space devoted not to another litany of problems but to introspection, stress, and the inner life of physicians. His words affirmed something we had hoped the session might convey: caring for those who care for others is not peripheral to medicine. It is part of medicine.

We left the room grateful: for the people who entered it with openness, for the community that made space for this conversation, and for the opportunity to create an hour of stillness, reflection, and reconnection.

We came together to offer a few simple tools. In the end, the hour gave something back to all of us.

With gratitude, The Swasthya facilitators Drs. Shaija Kutty, Bansari Gujar, Neena Thomas-Eapen, and Priya Duggal.