Final Thoughts

In Unit 3 I had to do a personal assessment of my psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being. I assessed myself as an 8 physically, 7 spiritually, and a 6-7 psychologically. I had a hard time assessing my spiritual well-being and physical well-being but an easy time assessing my physical well-being. I am still at that same place nearly 7 weeks later. I do find it a little easier to rate myself spiritually and psychologically than I did in unit 3. My score has remained nearly the same but has increased a point or two in all areas. My physical well-being is now an 8-9, psychologically I now rate myself an 8, and my spiritual well-being is now an 8-9. I am in the middle of 8 and 9 in the spiritual and psychological well-being and hope to continue to improve in these areas. But all in all I feel rather healthy and well-rounded mentally and physically. I have made progress towards all the goals I set for myself in unit 3. I have continued to exercise while adding some new exercises and activities. I have been eating better and healthier. My goal to improve my spiritual well-being was to begin attending church again. I have been doing this and have a church family that my daughter and I both feel extremely comfortable with. For psychological well-being I gave myself the goal of meditating daily and I have been doing just that. I do the subtle mind exercise every night before I go to sleep and have found it to be extremely beneficial. I have made great progress as I can now rate myself an extra point or two in all areas but continue to push forth in order to continue to grow. I have developed improved well-being. Before taking this class I thought that I was a little crazy due to my racing thoughts and analyzing of life. Then I was introduced to the subtle mind exercise in which you can diminish the senseless chatter from your mind allowing me to realize I am not alone in that area and there are things that can be done to calm my thoughts. I had a difficult time with some of the exercises. My mother was in the hospital for 7 weeks and it was an extremely stressful time for me. I suppose this class was meant for me to take at this time in my life for it was introduced at a time when I truly needed it. I plan to become a substance abuse counselor and the information that I have gained throughout this course will be very important to my profession. If I just treat my clients substance abuse problems and do not improve their well-being spiritually, psychologically, or physically then they may enter a relapse. To truly treat my clients I will have to assess their well-being as well in order to truly change their lives.

 

            There are many important reasons for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically. One of the most important aspects of any profession is having profound substance behind your words through firsthand experience. If a health and wellness professional wishes to assist others to human flourishing they should have a desire to reach human flourishing themselves. What begins as professional training will become more personal when the health and wellness professional incorporates integral health practices into their own life. The professional will then have firsthand experience of the feeling of alleviating suffering as they come to know that human flourishing is more than just an idea (Dacher, 2006). As an individual becomes interested in the idea of human flourishing a health and wellness professional who knows the true meaning and feeling of sustained integral health will be more apt and enthusiastic in moving them through the stages of change into the action stage where they implement the behavior. For a health and wellness professional to assist others to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically they should be a living model of such development allowing one to see what they wish to become.

            I score my health spiritually a 7. I have assessed my health in this domain by identifying the level of cognition in which I understand the self and true meaning of the soul. I feel if one radiates kindness and compassion those actions can become infectious to others. I am a spiritual person who finds more happiness from things that money cannot buy. I have always attended church and feel a connection with this part of my spirituality as well. Overall I feel that I am rather healthy spiritually but there is always room for improvement.

            I score my health physically an 8. I am 32 years of age and feel the healthiest that I have in my adult life. I began exercising and eating healthy approximately 3 years ago. Since then I have reached my ideal weight and have been able to maintain that weight for over a year now. I feel energized and alive. I love to be physically active and keep my blood flowing so to speak. I have assessed this domain by comparing and contrasting the levels of physical health I have been through in my adult life. I am physically healthy as I rate myself and 8 but I could eat a bit more healthy and enable better sleep patterns therefore I can still improve.

            I score my health psychologically a 6. I have rated this domain by analyzing my stressors and the effect they have on my mental health. I allow stressful situations to control me at times therefore I do not feel as healthy in this domain as I am in the others. I have always analyzed everything. What most people will see as a picture I see as much more by noticing the looks of happiness, impending doom, lighting, background etc. Or what one may see as a door I see everything that made that door. The thoughts in my mind seem to be awhirl at times therefore I only rate myself a 6.

            I have 2 goals physically for I feel they are of equal importance. The first goal is to eat healthier. I eat mostly healthy foods but at times I am guilty of not meeting my daily nutritional values. I need to eat more calories and fat for I minimized it for 2 years or more in order to lose weight and now that I have reached my ideal weight I should allow myself to eat more. I eat well but eat grilled chicken or fish with lots of vegetables and foods that do not contain a high calorie count. Then I will take spells where I eat junk food or unhealthy food as a means to cope with a stressful situation. Therefore I need to make eating healthy a priority as well as a goal. Also I do not sleep well. As my second goal I need to enable better sleep patterns. I lay in bed for hours sometimes unable to fall asleep. It seems at these times my mind will not shut down or calm enough to enter sleep. I have been practicing the subtle mind meditation at night before bed and it has truly helped me to enter sleep easier. I would like to continue to grow as I practice the subtle mind exercise and reap the benefits from doing so.

            A goal that I have psychologically is to improve my self-esteem. I am always looking outward rather than inward and seeing the beauty in everything other than myself. I need to take the time to also notice and view the beautiful things about who I am. I know that I am a good person I just forget about myself at times. Psychologically it would be very healthy for me to improve my self-esteem.

            A goal that I have spiritually is to connect to and understand the nature of my soul a bit more. I want to continue to practice meditation and to grow spiritually. I have been implementing the loving kindness and subtle mind exercises into my daily life. Yet I feel I need to make them more of an absolute priority for I allow myself to not do them at times. Usually those are the times that they would best benefit me. Such as, if I am feeling overwhelmed I will allow myself to skip a meditation due to not feeling energized enough to complete it. I want to become one with the nature of my soul with wishes of continuing to grow physically, spiritually and psychologically.

            Strategies that I have to foster growth physically are to pay special attention to my body, eating healthy, ensuring that I get enough sleep, and doing things that have a positive impact on my physical health. I need to eat the proper amount of nutrition. I will implement this by keeping a daily food journal in which I write down the nutritional facts of each meal or snack that I eat. I will tally the total at the end of the day allowing me to see if I need to increase or decrease in any area. Another exercise or practice that I can do to foster growth physically is to continue to practice the subtle mind exercise before I try to fall asleep. I am improving in the manner that I am able to complete this exercise. I feel as though I am becoming more and more in tune with how to alleviate needless thoughts from my mind allowing me to reach a peaceful state in which I can truly rest.

            A way that I can assess my progress or lack of progress in the next six months is to complete an assessment of my health spiritually, physically, and psychologically on a monthly basis. I can compare and contrast a written account of my findings each month in which I will be able to assess whether or not I am progressing. I will use a journal as the main strategy for assisting myself to maintain my long-term practices for health and wellness. I should continue to write in the journal and after one year assess my progress or lack of progress. This will allow me to ensure that I am still progressing and if I am regressing I will be aware of the fact allowing me to once again progress. Keeping up with the journal will be a wonderful and useful tool in assessing my progress or lack of progress. Also I can research and practice different meditation exercises allowing me to progress even more.

The two exercises that I enjoyed the most and determined to be the most beneficial are the loving kindness and subtle mind exercises. My absolute favorite would probably be the subtle mind exercise. I am a thinker as I am always analyzing every detail of my everyday life. When I look at anything, hear anything, etc. I usually see all the parts that went into creating it or all of the parts of the story/conversation that could be an influence in what I am hearing. I am aware of myself doing this now and have tried to calm some of the senseless chatter within my mind. I really liked that this exercise focused on the breathing aspect and eliminating the negativity or needless thoughts from my mind. I found the loving kindness exercise to be beneficial as well. The instructions state that the best way to do this exercise is to have a fixed gaze a few feet in front of you. Although I could not do the exercise as well with a fixed gaze I found it to be extremely beneficial even when I closed my eyes. I have done this exercise several times and I still have to close my eyes in order to reach that relaxed and peaceful state. I like to send out loving thoughts to others and that also helps me to see some of the qualities that I love about others reside within myself also. These were my favorite of the exercises we completed throughout this course and two that I will use in my personal life to foster mental fitness. I will continue to practice the subtle mind exercise at night before I go to bed. I have found this helps me to relax and to eliminate the senseless chatter so I can rest my mind in order to fall asleep. This helps me tremendously. I wake feeling refreshed and I can fall asleep easily. I usually have a hard time getting to sleep due to all the thoughts that keep me awake so this really helps me. I like to do the loving kindness exercise in the morning or afternoon. I have found it to benefit me more in the afternoon after I have endured part of the day. This is a great way to find loving kindness for myself as well as others.

Leanne

This week has been tough for me, once again. My mother is still in the hospital but I have begun to find inner peace with the whole situation. This week we were to envision our Aesclepius or wise person. I thought of my grandmother who is my mother’s mother. I know that my mother would not want me to suffer in the least bit and it was as though this exercise was meant to remind me of that. My grandmother was a warm, caring, positive, healthy (among many other qualities) individual. She was always healthy never really had any bad health problems but when her husband (my grandfather) passed away she followed just a few months after. I made it a point to meditate at least twice a day this entire week. I have been extremely busy but I realize that maybe this is crucial to my well-being right now. Everything happens for a reason is a common saying and maybe I was meant to be in this class for this reason. When I would meditate I would put on melodic nature tunes, like running water from a waterfall or waves crashing on the beach with light bird sounds in the background and the sounds of the wind blowing. I would then think of my grandmother and the feeling that her hands or touch always brought me. A feeling of warmth, comfort, safety, happiness, as though everything was as it should be. Then as I would meditate and concentrate on my breathing and thoughts I had a though come crashing down on me. My grandmother placed her hand over my heart and told me that if my mother was to go she would suffer no more, is she were to stay I would suffer no more. This made me think greatly about my present situation. If my mother stays and returns home she will still suffer as she has not felt well in 3 or more years. She has endured one bad health issue after another since her transplant in 2004. If I allow my mother to go and come to peace with the thought of her no longer being here physically then she would be released of any suffering but I would suffer from the loss of her. I would be selfish to want her to stay for she would suffer therefore if I become focused on the thought of her not suffering I am able to let her go. I have made peace with this and this week’s exercise assisted me to a new understanding. “One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” has a powerful meaning (Schlitz & Amorok, 2005). This means that to truly help, guide, see, experience, etc. something one must first experience it firsthand. If a person should be able to relate to a situation in order to assist another to an understanding of the situation. The text states that having a map of Hawaii is not the same as actually being there (Schlitz & Amorok, 2005). This applies to health and wellness professionals because they need to be able to relate to their clients or patients words before being able to truly offer words of wisdom.

Reference:

Schlitz, M., Amorok, T., & Micozzi, M. (2005). Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to

            Mind-Body Medicine. St.Louis, MI: Elsevier, Inc.

I had a bit of trouble with the exercise this week. I am unsure if this is due to my current situation or not. My mother has been in the hospital for over 4 weeks now and has not made any progress. She is not doing well mentally or physically which causes me a lot of distress. The universal loving kindness meditation exercise had a phrase that I was to repeat for 10 minutes. The phrase was a simple 4 sentences yet I could not seem to remember what I needed to say so I had to keep opening my eyes to read what it was I was supposed to say and repeat. The exercise stated to close your eyes for a minute or two as I rest into a natural ease of mind and body. I did this with ease but then when it came time to repeat the phrase for 10 minutes I could not remain in my natural ease of mind and body due to the fact that I kept having to shift my focus to re-read what I was supposed to say. I think the exercise is a wonderful tool to use and I plan to try this one again when I can concentrate a bit more. The integral assessment is a tool used to assist one to integral flourishing and to identify the areas in their lives that they need to pay attention to. There are four aspects in life that one should search to see which area needs the most attention including psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal, and worldly. I have chosen to focus upon the interpersonal flourishing aspect for I have discovered that my life is out of tune at the present time due to family and trying to do everything in order for my father to live the same lifestyle he did when my mother was at home. I have a 6 year old daughter and she consumes a lot of my time as well. I feel as though I need to find a balance between my needs, wants and my family’s needs or wants. This makes me feel selfish in a sense though so I know for a fact that this is the area that is of most importance to me right now. I can identify or ask myself the following questions to foster greater wellness in this area: which interpersonal line of development is most urgent for you to address, which will most benefit you in the long term, what level are you currently functioning from, and what level would you like to achieve. I can also implement the loving kindness exercise in which I send loving thoughts out to others which would possibly make me feel as though I was doing enough rather than not enough. I hope to achieve a healthy balance within this area as soon as possible for this has been an extremely difficult time for me.

The past few weeks have been really hard on me as my mother is in the hospital and not doing well. With that being said, I have had a bit of a hard time trying to calm my thoughts in order to truly relax. Last week we did the loving kindness exercise where you was to focus your energy and thoughts on external factors or people within your lives. I did that with ease as there are many people whom I love but it became difficult for me to imagine a stranger who I know nothing about and try to send them loving thoughts and kindness. I am nice to everyone but to truly do that I feel as though I need some sort of relation with the person. This week we were to do the subtle mind exercise. I feel as though this exercise focused more on the breathing aspect and calming your mind from all the senseless chatter. There was numerous times when I would notice my thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc. beginning to veer off track and distract me, but I did notice when I was doing this and was able to return my focus to my breathing. It was hard for me to visualize or think of the stillness created within because with my worries being so strong this week I was unable to truly return my focus. There is a huge connection to the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. If one practices a physical fitness routine yet they are not mentally healthy then they may allow their feelings of not wanting to exercise to overcome them causing them to not exercise. Plus being healthy within the mind will have many beneficial gains in terms of physical exercise. Spiritual wellness allows a person to realize their worth including external and internal factors. I know that when I am feeling down I can go for a hike or go fishing and it calms my mind. I can actually sit and have one thought at a time rather than a million thoughts running around clashing.

This week’s exercise was easy for me to complete and very beneficial as well. I have been having an extremely stress filled week and a half as my mother is in the hospital and I am trying to take care of everything, along with my priorities that need to be taken care of and I am exhausted. The exercise relaxed my mind and body. I had to close my eyes. I thought it was interesting how the first suggestion in the reading was to have your eyes open with a fixed gaze so many feet in front of you. But, to fully relax and concentrate I needed my eyes closed. Sending out loving thoughts to my loved ones was easy but there are not many things or people (if any) that I despise or dislike. I see beauty in anything. I have always stated that I will find the positive in any negative. Even when the situation is terrible, such as my mother and her health situation, I can still understand that it could be worse or at least they found out when they did for that may have prevented worse problems. To send her loving, healing thoughts made me feel extreme amounts of pleasure and happiness. I felt as though I was helping her and taking away any pains or troubles she was having at that time. It made me feel as though I was helping her to get better, I will be practicing this exercise a lot. I had a bit of troubles getting my mind to relax completely. I have so much going on right now and to truly relax it was hard for me to let go of my worries. I did the exercise several times yet never felt completely relaxed and if I was to do the exercise again while becoming completely relaxed (mentally and physically) then I can only imagine how beneficial the exercise would be. I have stated in other units that it is hard for me to listen to another individual speaking when I am trying to relax. Yes they speak in a soothing tone but it seems to break my concentration and when I am visualizing something it takes some time to get the picture only to have the picture vanish due to the speaker. My interpretation of what a mental workout is when a person gives their brain a thorough cleaning. Meaning when they take the time each day that is needed or preferable for them to allow their thoughts to flow in search of the negative in order to replace with a positive. The person will have to perform their mental workout on a regular basis just as one does an exercise routine on a regular basis. Also the time needed for one to reach a mental workout may be shorter or longer than what it takes another to reach that state and the time should be adjusted to one’s personal needs. An individual should relieve the negative emotions and thoughts within their minds.