April: It's Spring!

Spring has sprung!  Spring is a time that many of us feel inspired to make healthier choices for our physical and mental health.  The smell of fresh air, access to fresh vegetables, and more hours of sunlight provide us with more ways to improve our well-being.  What are some of your favorite spring time changes?  For instance, do you take more walks? Visit the Farmer’s markets?  Share with us your spring time wellness tools.

Reflections

Sorry everyone, but, during Unit 3 I was on vacation in the Dominican Republic.  Before I left for vacation, I had full intention of completing all of my assignments and I had a set plan in place to do so.  However, once I got there, I realized just how bad I needed a vacation and a break from all work, including school.  So, in lieu of that, I made the decision not to complete the Unit 3 personal assessment blog and forfeit the points. 

But, reflecting back, while on vacation, I noticed areas in my life that were not complete.  If I had to guess, at that time, I would assess my psychological domain as a 4, my spiritual domain as a 1 and my physical domain as a 7.  I was under a lot of stress, had automatic reactions, negative thoughts and emotions, and had some lifestyle behaviors affecting me physically that needed to be changed.  Since then, I have noticed a growth in each of these areas.  From the practices learned in this course, I have less negative thoughts and emotions (especially about others); I respond intentionally to situations, versus being emotionally hi-jacked; and I am becoming more physically fit and healthy each day.

The activities that I have found to be the most helpful in implementing this change were the meditative practices Loving-Kindness and Subtle-Mind.  Practicing these each day, I noticed my awareness of myself and surroundings to increase.  As I started to feel better about myself, I started to take care of myself better.  I started eating more fruits and vegetables, less processed foods, and increased my exercise routine from 3 days a week to 5 days a week.  Although, I am getting healthier in all of the areas of my life, the most rewarding process through this experience has been not feeling stressed.  I am more at peace and don’t let the little things bother me any longer.  It is such a great feeling to say “we will find a way to get through this” versus fretting over issues each day.  I now live life one day at a time and try to make the most of each day.  I believe that the more I live life this way and practice integral health, the more it will spread to those around me.

Thanks everyone for a great class and all of your informative and inspirational discussions.  I wish everyone the best of luck in all that you do.

Integral Self-Assessment

Introduction     

It is becoming widely known and accepted that our mind, body, and spirit should be treated as a whole versus its interdependent parts.  As Dacher (2006) quotes “the mind is the body, the body is the mind” (p. 18).  The condition of one aspect of us reflects the condition of another – so they should be treated as a whole cause one affects the other.  To fully understand this connection and provide adequate integral services, it is important that we not only embrace this concept as professionals of health and wellness; but also develop it ourselves.  As we work towards human flourishing and develop our own selves psychologically, spiritually and physically, we can speak from experience as we help other individuals through the same process.  Without this experience we cannot fully grasp the challenges and struggles one may face or be able to explain different techniques necessary to move them towards integral health. 

In looking at my own life, I noticed that I am not balanced in all areas.  I need to further develop psychologically and spiritually in order to achieve the goals that I have for myself.  In this paper, I will discuss how I have assessed my health in each domain, goals that I have made for myself in each area, strategies for fostering growth in each of the domains, and how I will commit and assess progress in the future. 

Assessment

To assess my health in each domain, I used a scale from 1 to 10.  1 referring to as needing the most development and 10 referring to as needing the least development.  My goal is to have all domains in the range of 7 to 10.  Currently, I rank myself psychologically at 6 needing a little work; spiritually as a 3 needing the most work; and physically as an 8 being in the range I find acceptable. 

Goal Development

                Although I think that my physical domain is in an acceptable range, it is not perfect and can be further improved.  To further develop this area of my life, I want to ensure that I do not run the risk of developing high blood pressure again.  My psychological domain is okay and needs some working on to reach a level between 7 and 10.  To further develop this area of my life, I want to work on not letting my emotions take control of me.  I call this emotional hijacking and there are certain experiences that cause me to have an automatic and uncontrolled response versus me thinking and responding with intention.  Lastly, my spirituality domain is something I need to develop the most.  My goal for this area is to look at spirituality more broadly and define what it means for me and not solely based on what I was taught growing up.  I have lost touched with spirituality and have been feeling a strong need to build that area of my life back up. 

Practices for Personal Health

                To foster growth physically and work towards warding off high blood pressure, without medication, for good, I will feed my body more foods from the earth and less processed foods.  To implement this plan, I will pre-portion fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds into little baggies that I can grab and go each day and eat from.  In addition to being more cautious about the foods that I put into my body, I am going to amp up my workout routine.  Although I work with a personal trainer, I seem to only go to the gym on those days or just 1 additional day.  I am going to foster my growth physically by getting in a regular routine of exercising of at least 5 days a week.  To help implement these plans, I am going to develop backup exercise routines that I can do at home in case I cannot make it to the gym.

                To foster growth psychologically, I am going to practice the two meditation exercises that I learned in this course.  The first meditation exercise I will practice is the loving-kindness exercise.  This will help me think less of myself and help to harbor negative emotions about others that generate feelings of hate and anger.  In addition to the loving-kindness exercise, I will practice the subtle mind meditation.  This will help me to become more aware of my thoughts.  Once aware, I can control and make intentional choices versus having automatic responses.  I will implement these meditations each day, starting with the loving-kindness meditation in the morning and ending with the subtle-mind exercise in the evening.

                I feel that I am really closed-minded when it comes to spirituality.  To foster growth in this area, I want to read different books on spirituality.  To implement this process, I will search and buy books on various topics including Buddhism, connecting with nature, and the art of praying to broaden my scope of spirituality.  In addition to reading more about spirituality, I would like to practice other types of meditations that help me connect to my inner spirit.  I will look on-line for practices on this type of meditation.  If I am not successful on my own, I plan to implement this goal by visiting a nearby meditation center.

Commitment

                To gauge whether, I am lacking or progressing as I further develop my physical domain, I will use how I look and feel to determine if I need to make changes to my goal and implementation plan.  If I truly do eat more foods from the earth and exercise more, I will lose a noticeable amount of body fat in six months.  In addition to how I look and feel, I will also take measurements of my blood pressure readings.  If my blood pressure readings are normal for a week, I will feel that I am progressing in my goal of warding off blood pressure, without medication, for good.  To assess how I am progressing psychologically, I will monitor how often I am emotionally hijacked in a period of a week.  Now that I am more aware of the issue, I can note when it happens throughout the day.  I need to monitor now how often it happens so I can have a baseline to compare to in six months.  To assess how I am progressing spiritually, I will gauge how open I am to the idea of spirituality.  If I find that I am still wishy-washy about the entire topic, then I will consider it a lack of progress and develop a new plan to foster this area of my life. 

                To assist in maintaining long-term practice for health and wellness, I will consistently remind myself that this is not an overnight process.  It takes time and small steps to develop the skills to flourish in each domain. In addition to my friendly reminder, I will journal my experience through this process.  This will help me to identify what works and what does not work; what areas that I need to change and what I can leave as is.  Lastly, as I begin to develop further in each of the domains, to share this with others so they too can experience the wonderfulness of health, happiness, and wholeness.  Inspiring others will inspire me to continue along with this journey.

Reference

Dacher, E. S. (2006). Integral health: The path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach: Basic

Health Publications Inc.

Meditations That I Find Helpful

The two practices that have been the most beneficial to me have been the Loving-Kindness exercise and the Wisdom Visualization exercise.  Loving-kindness comes easy for me.  I always try to listen and understand what people are going through versus guessing and passing judgment.  What I love most about the loving-kindness meditation is that I can breathe in others struggles and concerns and breathe out to them health, happiness, and wholeness.  I have even been working on extending loving-kindness to the one person that I do not like.  Since doing this, I have less negative thoughts about them and have reached a point where I am ready to extend forgiveness to them.   Which feels really good!

I think I like the visualization exercise because I am a very visual person with an active imagination.  I find that using visualization techniques keeps me more focused while doing the exercise.  I have been trying to incorporate visualization in the other meditation practices that I have been doing and I feel that I am getting better and better at meditating each day.  Like they say practice makes perfect.  I am finding that the more that I practice these meditations; the less my mind is wandering to other thoughts and feelings. 

Both of these exercises help to foster “mental fitness” in my life as they both make me more aware of myself and the world around me.  With this awareness, I can reduce the amount of negative thoughts and emotions that try to disrupt my life and replace them with intentional, healthy, and positive thoughts.

Meeting Aesclepius

The meditative practice this week was transforming.  It was the first time that I focused through the entire meditative practice without getting distracted.  I could actually visualize the light emanating from the person who I see as wise onto myself.  When asked to transfer his wisdom onto me, we both turned into monks and bowed are heads.  At that moment, I felt a since of completion and that I was ready to begin the journey on my own. 

Practicing these contemplative practices each week towards integral health has helped me to foster a sense of awareness, developed my attention, and has reshaped my perceptions on the world around me.  I feel more at peace and relaxed on a daily basis – even at times when I should not.  I will continue to do these meditative practices each night before going to bed.  I find this to be the best time for me to practice meditation because it relaxes me enough that I fall right asleep when finished. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The saying “one cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” (p. 477) means to me that if a person has not experienced what they are teaching, then they don’t know all the intricacies about that experience to help someone else out through the process.  For example, if I were a smoker trying to quit, I would want someone who has successfully quit to coach me through the process versus someone who has never smoked before.  The person who has never smoked before does not know the difficulties of the addition and how hard it is to quit – only the person who has experienced this process would.  So, if we are going to help people develop their integral health and work towards human flourishing, we have to go through the process of developing our own integral health first.  When we do, we can assist them when they are struggling to focus during the contemplative practices by giving them the information and tools that helped us through that same problem.

Loving Kindness & Integral Assessment

Whenever I do meditation exercises, I like to do them in a quiet place with my eyes closed.  However, the universal Loving Kindness exercise required reading lines.  I tried to memorize them, but found that it took away from my meditative practice because I was constantly checking to see if I got the words right.  So, to effectively practice this exercise, I recorded the lines and played them on repeat for 10 minutes.  I found it much easier to focus and extend my loving-kindness to others beyond those that are close to me.  After completing the exercise, I was filled with a sense of peace and happiness.  I felt more compassionate for those who are suffering.  And, I found that I started thinking less about my issues and more about what others might be suffering from.  

In doing the integral assessment, I found my focus to shift back to myself and my needs.  As I did the assessment, I started to really think about the areas in my life that are out of balance.  What I discovered is that I need to focus more on my emotional life.  Although I am becoming aware of how I instantly react to experiences versus respond, this area of my life is the most out of balance then other areas.  In some instances, my emotions are taking control – and it is time that I took that control back.  A specific exercise that I found to be helpful in developing a greater wellness in this area is the subtle mind meditative practice.  I do this exercise each day now and I found that I am responding more to emotional experiences versus reacting to them.  For example, my cat does things in the morning to irritate me so that I will get up (which is becoming increasing earlier each day) and give him his daily dose of wet food.  His newest trick to get me out of bed in the morning is to one-by-one knock things off my night stand.  And, I know he is doing it on purpose, because after each item he knocks off, he looks at me to see how I will react.  It is kind of funny to me now, but in the past I would yell at him instinctively.  This morning however, after already knocking off three items, he decided to push a stack of bills that I had on the floor.  Right after he did it, he looked right at me, I looked at the floor covered in paper work, I looked back at the cat and laughed.  Before, I would have been furious, but I am learning to step back, analyze my emotion, and find ways to constructively release that emotion in ways that I control and decide. Because I think it is helping, I will continue to do the subtle mind exercise every day until I feel this area of my life is complete. 

Subtle Mind

I actually like the Subtle mind exercise better than the Loving Kindness exercise.  With the Subtle mind exercise, I found that my mind did not wander as it did with the Loving Kindness exercise.  I think the reason for this is because it had me focusing on my breathing.  When my mind started to wander, I would just take my focus back to my breathing.  What I learned doing this exercise is that I can slow my mind from all my busy thoughts, which is a nice change of pace.  I found both exercises to be relaxing and they both brought me a sense of peace.  What I thought was different about them is that the Loving Kindness exercise had us focus on others while the Subtle mind exercise had us focus inward on ourselves. 

Both of these exercises are beneficial to my spiritual, mental, and physical wellness.  Although they are separate parts of my being, they are interrelated to each other.  In doing these exercises, I have noticed my spirit becoming healthier.  This is making me a much happier person mentally, which is helping me to continue feeding my body right and getting the proper amount of physical fitness.  When my spirit is not doing well, negative feelings and emotions tend to run high, which causes me to be down and then I stop caring about my physical wellness.  It is imperative to acknowledge the connection between mind, body, and spirit because the one affects the other.