Dr. Sarah Jones is a board-certified family physician who’s embraced a holistic approach to health throughout her career.  As a teacher of Family Medicine at four different residency programs since graduating from residency in 1999, Dr. Jones has added to her “menu” of choices for the patients and communities she serves by gaining additional training in medical acupuncture, integrative medicine, and in 2020, board certification in Lifestyle Medicine.  

Dr. Jones maintains an active lifestyle, including hiking, skiing, and once upon a time, running marathons.  Upholding the 6 pillars of lifestyle medicine, Dr. Jones embraces a Whole Foods, plant forward diet for her family of 6 as well as for anyone who will listen J.  To this end, she has helped start an organic, edible meditation garden at a church located in a food desert in the northern California county where she resides.  She invites others to participate in this meaningful work, citing community and connection as the strongest pillar of health. 

Collaborating with likeminded colleagues, Dr. Jones was thrilled to launch a six-part “Lifestyle Medicine for Physicians” series for physician colleagues, entailing group discussions to better understand the evidence behind each of the lifestyle medicine pillars and gain insights from one another, in addition to addressing specific health needs of each group participant. 

Offering the perspective as a “recovering perfectionist”, Dr. Jones is thankful to embrace the growth and healing associated with confronting past trauma, the power of forgiveness, and the richness of finding joy in each day.  Moving from achievement and accomplishment to pursuing a meaningful life, she finds practicing gratitude, maintaining strong faith, and regularly connecting with nature, people, and her pandemic puppy as sustainable ways of promoting and ensuring wellness amidst life’s storms.

 

Fadel Zeidan, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology. He currently holds leadership positions in the UCSD T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion, UCSD Psychedelic Research Health Initiative, and the Mind and Life Institute. Fadel’s current research is focused on determining the psychological, physiological and neural mechanisms that mediate the relationship between self-regulatory practices and health. Specifically, Fadel’s work examines the mechanisms of action supporting mindfulness meditation on pain and well-being. To date, he and his team have demonstrated that mindfulness meditation is mechanistically distinct from and more effective than placebo, distraction, and relaxation.

His research is currently funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health to conduct placebo-controlled clinical trials to assess if and how mindfulness affects chronic pain. His research program has expanded to investigate the effect and mechanisms involved in the modulation of trauma and enhancements in compassion. His team is currently conducting studies to identify how mental training can cultivate behavioral and neural mechanisms supporting compassion and empathy in patients, law enforcement officers, and community dwellers. His work has also been featured in traditional media outreach (CNN; NPR; Time Magazine, CBS and others), Tedx, and recently personally presented his work to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama in Mongolia. Fadel was also awarded the National Institutes of Health Mitchell Max Award for Research Excellence and is the principal investigator on numerous NIH grants examining the effects of mental training on well-being.

Dr. Thomas Liu is a Professor of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and the Director of the UCSD Center for Functional MRI (fMRI).   He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, where he developed signal processing methods for detecting ultra-low frequency magnetic fields along earthquake faults. He then transitioned to fMRI research as a postdoctoral researcher at UCSD.  His research has spanned a broad range of fMRI-related research areas, including experimental design and analysis, innovative signal processing approaches, characterization and modeling of the fMRI signal, multimodal (fMRI, EEG, MEG) imaging of brain activity, and the development of advanced imaging methods and applications. In parallel to his professional career, he has developed a deep practice in the arts of aikido, tai chi, and meditation over the

course of the past several decades. His primary interest is in the exploration of the principles of mind-body integration.

I have worked in the health and wellness field (specifically, nutrition and fitness) for over 21 years and I have been a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist for 18 of those, though wellness has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. 

I completed my undergraduate degree at Colorado State University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Food Science and Human Nutrition. Before deciding to become a dietitian, I worked  as a nutritionist, group fitness instructor and personal trainer at a wellness center on the Omaha Reservation, serving the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska. 

From there, I moved to California and completed my post-graduate internship and clinical rotations through UC Berkeley, becoming a Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist.
I have worked in both hospital and outpatient settings, with sub-specialities in eating disorder treatment, diabetes care and education, and plant-based nutrition. I currently provide medical nutrition therapy for all stages of life, but my greatest passion is in the area of lifestyle medicine, with an emphasis on the power of plant-based nutrition. 

Witnessing the transformational power of a plant-based diet has forever changed how I educate on the topic of nutrition and its ability to improve, stabilize or potentially reverse chronic disease. I have helped people reverse prediabetes and hypertension, improve cardiovascular conditions, achieve weight management goals, improve and alleviate GI symptoms, eliminate or reduce the need for injectable insulin and oral meds with both type 1 and 2 diabetes, improve chronic pain, and so much more! I am eager to spread knowledge and tools to help others implement a more plant-predominant diet and experience the benefits for themselves.

Currently, I work for a healthcare provider and run my own private nutrition practice in my spare time. I reside in Northern California where I live with my husband, 3 children and our family dog. In addition to family time, exercise, and my faith, I really enjoy cooking and learning how to take recipes of various cuisines and adapt them to include more disease fighting plants!

Sat Bir Singh Khalsa, Ph.D. has been fully engaged in biomedical research on the efficacy of yoga and meditation practices in improving physical and psychological health since 2001. He has practiced a yoga lifestyle since 1972 and is a certified instructor in Kundalini Yoga.

He is the Director of Yoga Research for the Yoga Alliance, the Director of Research for the Kundalini Research Institute, a Research Associate at the Benson Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, a Research Affiliate of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He has conducted clinical research trials evaluating yoga interventions for insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic stress, and anxiety disorders and in both public school and occupational settings.

Dr. Khalsa works with the International Association of Yoga Therapists to promote research on yoga and yoga therapy as the chair of the scientific program committee for the annual Symposium on Yoga Research and as editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy.

He is medical editor of the Harvard Medical School Special Report “An Introduction to Yoga” and chief editor of the medical textbook The Principles and Practice of Yoga in Health Care.