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.