My Experience

Review your unit 3 personal assessment of your psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being. Reflect on these areas. How did you score yourself on a scale from 1 to 10 in unit 3? How do you score yourself now? Has the score changed? Why or why not? In unit 3, I scored myself as: Physical- 6 Spiritual-8 Psychological-8. Looking back now and having the knowledge we gained from the course, I think I may have to change them a bit. I still think my physical is about a 6 but would probably change the psychological to a 6 or 7 and the spiritual to a 5. While I thought I had a good grasp on the psychological and spiritual pieces after taking this class, I realized I still had a lot to learn and a lot of growth that I needed to work on. Thanks to this class, I feel I now have some tools that will help me achieve a higher level of psychological and spiritual growth.

Review the goals and activities you set for yourself in each area. Have you made progress toward the goals? Explain. Physical- I will continue to work on myself physically and while the overall goal is to achieve weight loss, I also want to be able to say I am fit and healthy. I don’t want to be skinny and I have no intentions of being a body builder or a swimsuit model someday. Psychological- I will continue to try and “train my brain” to focus more on the positive than the negative Spiritual- I am not a religious person and don’t necessarily look to a specific deity for prayer or guidance, I do believe in a higher power and I do think that faith and spirituality are important in human flourishing. My goal here is to give myself time to meditate, visualize and become one with something greater than myself. Since we just made the goals last week as part of the final project, I have not really made a lot of progress in those just yet but I am working on it and will continue to be a work in progress as I grow and develop. Have you implemented the activities you chose for your well-being in each of the three areas? Explain. I have made some additional changes to my diet and exercise to change it up a bit and get over a plateau I have been on for a while. I am finding it easier, but still not on auto pilot yet to replace negative thoughts with positive ones. I am still working on trying to find the time to meditate but have been able to do short little breathing or visualization exercises throughout the day even if for just a few minutes. Summarize your personal experience throughout this course. Have you developed improved well-being? What has been rewarding? What has been difficult? How will this experience improve your ability to assist others? I have really enjoyed this class and the interactions with both classmates and the professor. I learned a lot of really wonderful information and also learned a lot about myself. I this this whole class has been rewarding and wish it would have been a longer course. I think the difficult part was realizing things about myself and then knowing it was time to put these things into practice. I think this ability will help me assist others because I know what it’s like. When you have to tell someone something they need to change about themselves, it helps to know that you also made those changes, to know they work, they are effective, to know the positive and negative outcomes of those changes and who they affect.

Personal Application of the Psychological and Spiritual Aspects of Healing

I. Introduction: Why is it important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically? What areas do you need to develop to achieve the goals you have for yourself? I think it is really important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically because those are the areas in which we should not only have knowledge but also experience and personal growth. If we are going to work with patients or clients towards integral health, then we need to focus on all 3 areas, we can’t expect someone to just work on physical aspects and ignore the spiritual. Also, in order for us to be able to be effective, we need to do the same. We should have experiences in each area that we have worked on, learned about and achieved change from. During our course, we learned that health and wellness is not just about the body. We learned that there are 5 essential characteristics that are important for health and wellness, which include holistic, evolutionary, intentional, person-centered, and dynamic. These 5 characteristics all include aspects from the three areas, not just one. Within the first principle we go even deeper and acknowledge that the human experience includes 4 quadrants. The quadrants are psychospiritual, biological, worldly, and interpersonal. These quadrants also encompass aspects from the 3 areas and do not just focus on one individually. Personally, I need to work on all 3 areas. I have been working on my physical self for almost 2 years now but really just started to work on my psychological and spiritual self within the past 6 months or so. II. Assessment: How have you assessed your health in each domain? How do you score your wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically? When we first were asked to assess our health in each of the three domains, I scored myself as: Physical- 6 Spiritual-8 Psychological-8 Looking back now and having the knowledge we gained from the course, I think I may have to change those a bit. I still think my physical is about a 6 but would probably change the psychological to a 6 or 7 and the spiritual to a 5. While I thought I had a good grasp on the psychological and spiritual pieces after taking this class, I realized I still had a lot to learn and a lot of growth that I needed to work on. Thanks to this class, I feel I now have some tools that will help me achieve a higher level of psychological and spiritual growth. III. Goal development: List at least one goal you have for yourself in each area, Physical, Psychological (mental health) and Spiritual. I will continue to work on myself physically and while the overall goal is to achieve weight loss, I also want to be able to say I am fit and healthy. I don’t want to be skinny and I have no intentions of being a body builder or a swimsuit model someday. I learned that I had to make some lifestyle changes and that this would be long term. As far as mental health, I will continue to try and “train my brain” to focus more on the positive than the negative. I am typically a very optimistic person and always find something positive in any situation but there are times when my mind automatically goes to the worst possible scenarios when I am uncertain about something like the whereabouts of my child. I am not an avid believer in the adage “no news is good news.” I need to work on that. Lately I have been getting better and have been trying to force out the negative thoughts with positive ones, work on things like loving kindness the subtle mind. As far as spirituality, I am not a religious person and don’t necessarily look to a specific deity for prayer or guidance, I do believe in a higher power and I do think that faith and spirituality are important in human flourishing. My goal here is to give myself time to meditate, visualize and become one with something greater than myself. Above all, looking at the 3 aspects, my overall goal is to achieve, wholeness, happiness and health. In order to do that, I will have to work on all 3 areas and as I grow and change so will the things I work on. IV. Practices for personal health: What strategies can you implement to foster growth in each of the following domains; Physical, Psychological, and Spiritual. Provide at least two examples of exercises or practices in each domain. Explain how you will implement each example. I will continue to make changes to my lifestyle so that I can continue to change/improve my physical health. I have between 60-70 pounds I still want to lose so I will continue to watch my food intake and exercise. I will also continue to take care of my body by drinking lots of water and tea and taking vitamins. For psychological and spiritual growth, I will make sure to make time in my schedule for “Me” time and include things like meditation, massage, and yoga and aroma therapy. I will spend time working on Loving Kindness and The Subtle Mind to help me achieve both psychological and spiritual awareness. I will continue to work on focusing on positive over negative and when I start to have negative feelings, I will take a time out, focus on something positive and push out the negative. Today, before I spent the afternoon working on completing this assignment, I set aside time this morning for a massage and facial. I used aromatherapy during my massage and during both they used calming, soothing music. While I tried to spend the time relaxed and focused, sometimes I would catch my mind wandering to things that were causing me stress. When that happened, I tried to focus on something positive or would try and work on a visualization. I tried to imagine myself somewhere calming and happy. I started to think that during a massage or a facial would be a great time to practice things like meditation and visualization and thought it would be a great idea to have either a tape recording of a meditation or a visualization exercise playing while you were getting the massage or facial. I will keep regular monthly appointments for massages and facials to help foster growth in all 3 domains. V. Commitment: How will you assess your progress or lack of progress in the next six months? What strategies can you use to assist in maintaining your long-term practices for health and wellness? One thing I have been doing pretty diligently during my journey towards weight loss and making lifestyle changes has been tracking. Writing down what I eat, tracking my exercise, water intake, weight loss, measurements, etc. The blog for this course has really helped me as well and I think that I will continue to use mediums like that to track progress, share with others and hold myself accountable. Also,just as in weight loss or exercise, it’s important to have a person who is doing this with you. Having people around you who are experiencing what you are is very helpful. I hope that my classmates continue to post on the blogs and that we can each continue to offer encouragement, thoughts and ideas for each other. I will keep a journal where I will track my moods and thoughts and what stressors or triggers were present. I will continue to research new meditation and visualization apps, websites and YouTube channels. I will try and have a few that I use so that I don’t get bored or frustrated with doing the same one over and over. Another way I will assess my progress is the time I am able to devote to these practices and try and increase the time I am able to complete a full meditation or visualization piece. Right now, I am only able to really focus and commit to about 5-10 minutes and I would like to be able to train my body and mind to do a minimum of 30 minutes.

Optimal Well-being: Psychological, Spiritual and Physical Keys to Health and Thriving

Review the exercises and practice sessions you have completed in this course. (Loving Kindness, Subtle mind, Visualization, meditation etc.) Choose two practices that you have determined to be most beneficial. How can you implement these practices in your personal life to foster “mental fitness”? Provide specific examples.

I came across these 5 steps to wellness on a website called http://www.drrepole.com/DrJonRepole/Services-HealthSolutions/The100Diet-SpiritualNutrition/ THE 5 STEPS TO WELLNESS 1. Detoxification of both the Internal Body/Mind and the Outside Environment. This could be everything from chemical toxins, allergens, and parasites, our organs of elimination (liver, kidney, skin, lung, sinus, and colon), racing thoughts, to toxic relationships. 2. Nurturing our body/mind with the “New Paradigm Nutrients” - Sunshine, Clean Air, Clean Water, Plant Based Nutrition, Grounding, Spiritual/Cosmic Energy, Consciousness and Love. 3. Nurturing our body/mind with Movement, Rest, & Growth - Exercise, Restorative Sleep, and all Activities of Daily Living. 4. Nurturing ALL Relationships & identifying universal connectedness and unlimited abundance rather than competition, disconnectedness and separation • To your “Self” (beliefs, self-care, awareness, mindfulness, formulation of your dharma (purpose) and connection to your true source.) • To the “Macro World” (family, neighbors, community, culture, earth, environment, and cosmos) • To your “Inner Terrain” (the trillions of symbiotic micro-organisms that inhabit your body) 5. Formulating an Individualized Plan based on you Bio-Uniqueness and specialized functional medicine testing. • Personalized Diet, Personalized Exercise Program, Personalized Mind/Body program, etc. • Initial treatment of your Hormonal (Your Body’s Communication System – you are the person behind the thoughts) and Gastro-intestinal Systems (you are what you eat) After reviewing the exercises and practices from this course, I am not really sure I can say one is more beneficial than another. I have not had success with some as much as I did with others. I feel that they could all be beneficial and I plan to spend more time on each of them. I have learned that meditation works better for me first thing in the morning. I am experimenting with a YouTube channel called TheHonestGuys https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHonestGuys. This channel is full of different guided meditations and has amazing music and images to assist you through them. The voices are not bad on this one either as I know a lot of us have had mixed feelings about the people who have guided the ones in our exercises. They range anywhere from just a few minutes to a few hours so there is something for everyone I believe. There are also some really good YouTube channels specific to Loving Kindness Meditations so I want to spend some time checking those out and trying to find some that I can relate to and connect with so they can be effective and beneficial in my journey towards mental fitness and integral health. Here are a couple https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz7cpV7ERsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6nXEJpA3bQ These are both around minutes and I think that for me, I need them to be shorter for now. I definitely want to work on the subtle mind as well. I think this concept is vital to so many things. To be able to have a clear mind, unobscured by negativity, fear, and instead full of patience, peace and positive. I think this can help us achieve so much in life.

The Mind-Body-Spirit Paradigm

Describe your meditative practices for the week and discuss the experience. Explain how mindfulness or meditation has fostered an increase in your psychological or spiritual wellness. How can you continue to apply these practices in your life to foster greater health and wellness? I don't think I liked this one as much as the last one, I do like the female voice leading the exercise and still love the sound of the water and music in the background. I did like how it had me focus on a person however. I think it's easier to focus on something like that over some of the previous focal points from other exercises we have completed. I didn't like the guy who started and ended the practice however. I am still working on using mindfulness and meditation to help increase my psychological and spiritual wellness, but with each exercise we do, I do see myself actually benefiting from them now. I will continue to apply these practices by searching for other meditations that I find to be beneficial and mindful and make them a normal part of my "wellness routine." Describe the saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" (p.477). How does this apply to the health and wellness professional? Do you have an obligation to your clients to be developing your health psychologically, physically, and spiritually? Why or why not? How can you implement psychological and spiritual growth in your personal life? I think this saying is very appropriate and can very easily be applied to the health/wellness professional or anyone for that matter. As health and wellness professionals, it is important for us to know how to walk the walk/talk the talk. If we cannot achieve ourselves, what we are trying to help clients achieve, the point is lost. I would never try and tell someone how to fix a car, since I have never worked on one before. We need to be able to experience what the models we teach represent. Just because we have read books about it or spent a week talking about it, doesn't make us experts, we need to put in the time, the experiences, apply them to our own lives and get a deep understanding of them. We also have to know that not everyone is the same and may not react or respond to certain methods and treatments in the same manner. I know I need to work on both psychological and spiritual growth in my own life

Exercises for Mind-Body-Spirit Wellness and Healing

Practice the universal Loving Kindness (meditation) exercise on p. 93. Complete the Integral Assessment discussed in chapter 11 (p.115). Describe the exercise and assessment process. What did you discover about yourself? What area have you chosen to be a focus of growth and development? Why? What are some specific exercises or activities that you can implement to foster greater wellness in this area? The loving kindness exercise in theory is a good idea, but I don't think I need to repeat the phrases shown for 10 minutes in order for them to sink in and be fully effective and make me aware of my role in the process. It is important to think about and show compassion towards others and to be a part of the process to help others heal. I don't need to repeat something for 10 mintues in order to get that. I do agree that the phrases and repeating them over and over in my head is quite powerful and a wonderful message to convey in bith my mind and heart. For the integral assessment, the first step, having to acknowledge which part of my life is causing difficulty and suffering, was easy. Primarily it is my biological but I think that my interpersonal is actually the cause of it and it's accecting the biological parts. I think that as far as picking which part is ready for growth and development, I wouild of course say all but if I had to just pick one I would say interpersonal for this moment in time because of how it's affecting my biological self. I need to learn to love myself for who I really am, practive lovign kindness towards myself and others. I need to have a healthy relationship with myself before I can have one with others.

The Key Role of Thought in Wellness and Healing

1.Compare and contrast the Loving Kindness exercise and the Subtle mind exercise. Explain your experience, including the benefits, frustrations etc. 2.Discuss the connection of the spiritual wellness to mental and physical wellness. Explain how the connection is manifested in your personal life. I did this exercise right before bed, with no distractions and a cup of tea. I didn't like the guy at the beginning, but liked the female who led the exercise. I liked the ocean sounds when she wanted us to focus on something. The imagery she used was much better in this exercise I think. Her voice was calming, her suggestions didn't seem crazy or weird. I liked this one better than the Loving Kindness exercise. I am not sure I am able to come up with things to compare and contrast between the two, other than maybe some of the visualizations in this one were a little better and easier to imagine and "put myself into." I definitely think there is a link between spiritual wellness and mental and physical wellness. To me, spiritual means believing in a higher power, it may or may not be to just one all powerful Being. It means having faith, believing and knowing that there is more out there for you to trust and experience. Connecting spirituality to mental and physical wellness helps us keep a calm mind and a kind heart. When we have a loved one who is ill, we pray for them to get better, we ask for a higher power to intervene when and where medicine cannot. Some may view these things as miracles. Although it is highly unlikely that any of us will attain the levels of development described by the great mystics, we can gain a great deal by understanding the full spectrum of biological flourishing. When we are freed from the prison of an exclusively anatomical perspective, we attain the capacity to control aspects of our anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, microbiology and perhaps even our genetic structure, (Dacher, 2012, p 86).

Getting a Mental Workout

1. Describe your experience. Did you find it beneficial? Difficult? Why or why not? Would you recommend this to others? Why or why not? I liked the sounds of water in the background, I found it to be soothing and allow me to focus a little better on the task. The female voice made this one a little easier to get into than the previous one’s we have listened to. I found this one to be more beneficial than the others and would recommend it to others. I really liked this one. However, I need to pick a better time during the day and will try it again when I can really devote my full self and attention to the exercise. 2. What is the concept of "mental workout"? What does the research indicate are the proven benefits of a mental workout? How can you implement mental workouts to foster your psychological health? Just as an athlete or student trains or studies and works towards becoming an Olympian or a Doctor, we to have to engage in daily practice in order for us to evolve our psychospiritual life and access its capabilities and resources, even if for only an hour a day. If we cease to train, just like with athletes, there is a decrease in our abilities and conditioning. By using comtemplative practices such as loving kindness and the subtle mind, we can achieve this workout.

Time to make some changes

If I really had to sit down and think about where I would rate myself in the 3 areas of wellness, right now I would probably give myself the following scores.. Physical- 6 Spiritual-8 Psychological-8 Physical Wellbeing relates to the ability to understand what can make our body the most efficient and effective, as well as the ability to recognize and respect our own limitations. A high degree of Physical well-being is achieved through the development of physical strength, flexibility, endurance, and optimal nutrition while utilizing safety precautions such as medical self-care and appropriate use of the medical system. The improvement of physical wellbeing can enhance the other wellbeing components. Enhanced self-esteem, a sense of direction, and other psychological benefits are some gains from developing physical well-being. Eat. Sleep. Move. http://wellbeing.wsu.edu/physical/ Spiritual Wellbeing reminds us to step back from the details and think about the whole. Spiritual wellbeing can come from living in the present moment and practicing mindfulness or it may come from reflecting on our past. The point is, is spiritual wellbeing is about finding meaning and purpose in our life and our place in the greater universe. Spiritual wellbeing can have a dramatic impact on various aspects of our wellbeing, particularly with respect to finding overall peace, harmony, and happiness with our life and surroundings. Imbalance in spiritual well-being can affect our sense of purpose and meaning in the world, which carries emotional, physical, social, and possibly even financial implications. http://wellbeing.wsu.edu/spiritual/ Psychological well being encompasses things like self, acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. I rated myself the way I did based on the information above. With physical, I am in the process of making some life changes, and losing weight, this will take time. But I made the conscious effort to be aware that changes needed to be made so I am working on that. With spiritual and psychological I feel I am a little higher, but not a perfect 10. Had you asked me this question a year ago, my scores would have been much lower on all 3 areas and I am sure if you ask me again a year from now, I hope each one will be higher. I already have goals in place for physical wellness and that is to continue to eat right, be active and lose weight. I will increase my activity, be more mindful of w"hat I eat and make other health conscious decisions that affect or impact my overall health. I will try and do better with sleep also. For spiritual and psychological goals, I will strive to continue to learn how to reduce stress, take a step back, learn to see the forest for the trees, so to speak. I will work to improve my meditation skills and find my place and purpose in the universe. I will continue to be compassionate towards others, I will learn to accept myself before I can be accepting of others. For the relaxation exercise, I found much better than the one from last week, I liked the use of the colors and our own imagination, his voice is calming. I did it early in the morning, when I was alone and no distractions were present. I felt really relaxed when it was over but I still need to be able to focus on the time frame of these, I think they are a little long for "beginners."

Welcome and Reflection

Welcome to my blog. I love blogging and this will be my third one. I look forward to sharing this experience with all of you and hope that we can all learn from each other during this experience. As it is the month of March and the month in which I turn 40, it is easy for me to reflect. I look back on my life up until this point, think about the choices I have made, mistakes I have learned from and things I have put in motion to change my life for the better. WhenI was younger, 40 seemed so old. Now I am looking forward to being 40. I love that I have waited until now to make the changes in my life that have lead me here. Health and wellness if such a big part of my life now and I can't wait to share that with others. I had to start the journey for myself first and from there it developed into my going back to school, deciding to get involved with health and wellness inititives in my community and state, and deciding how to use the degree once I earn it. I am proud of myself and know that I have finally chosen the right path for me to follow because I was the one who chose it. It was not chosen for me, forced upon me or handed to me. I am working for this. I am earining it. As far as my experience with the Journey On relaxation exercise. I did not like it and could not really let myself focus on the purpose of the exercise. The guy creeped me out when he was telling me to get undressed and then talking about the science and biology of the experience. I don't want to hear all that. I want the guided imagery. The music was nice and the males voice was soothing and calming but I just couldn't get past his words..