Unit 10--My thoughts..

While sitting here reading over the Unit 3 self-assessment I am completely floored at how down I was when I started this class.  I noticed that I scored a 5 in the physical well being category.  I would say that right now I am scoring a 7, which is not a great improvement, but considering how I felt at week 3, I may have been giving myself a higher score I did not deserve.  The goal that I created was to increase my physical exercise to 30-45 minutes 3 times a week, and I have not reached the goal completely but I am working on it.


The score for my spiritual well being in week 3 was a 6 and I agree that I am at a level 8 now, but again I think that I was being overly optimistic in week 3 in giving myself such a high score.  I understand now that I was no where close to a 6.  The goal that I created for myself was to meditate more to improve my spiritual well being.  Well I can say that I have meditated more and prayed more over the last 7 weeks than ever before in my life and I feel great. I have been able to make some major life changes that I would have never made before and changed my life for the best.

The score for my psychological well being was a 4 in week 3 and now is a 7.  I think that again I was being over optimistic in scoring myself in week 3, because I was no where close to a 4.  The goal that I created for myself was to make more personal time for myself.  I have truly done that, and have found myself just sitting in silence.  I enjoy silence, and a still mind now because of the subtle mind practice.

I can honestly say that I have implemented the activities that I planned for myself and added more, not only am I using the contemplative practices for myself, I am sharing them with others.  All of this goodness should be shared.

Over the course of the last 10 weeks, I have truly grown as a person with health in mind.  Before I thought that being healthy meant that I felt okay that day.  I will no longer accept okay as the best I can do.  I know that I can calm myself, and calm my body to the point that I actually feel wonderful.  I have also learned to listen to what my body needs, when it says rest, I rest.  When it says move, I move, and when it says pray, I stop and pray.  I guess you could say that I have actually started listening to myself, which I should have been doing all along.  All of it was difficult, but this process is something that I needed to go through to survive.  I will continue to work toward my integral health and will take as many people with me as I can.  I want others to know that we do not have to settle, we can direct our lives in the direction we need to go and be happy doing it.  This is our one and only life on this earth, will we continue to watch it pass us by or take control and live?
Dina

Unit 9 Project

        I.            Introduction:

It is very important for health & wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically prior to treating patients, because if we have not lived the life how can we give advice about it?  I would be very weary of a practitioner that only gave advice and never tried living the integral health process.  Psychologically, we need to be strong in our minds in order to deal with the challenges of life that come at us daily and to make the right decisions about life.  Our strength can be an encouragement for someone else who strives for the same strength.  Spiritually, we must know where our faith lies.  If we do not have beliefs, what are we living for exactly?  I know that I have a strong faith in God and I pray to him for my spiritual and physical healing, and I use the times when I am in meditation to pray and to listen to what I need to do.  A strong faith aids a strong mind.  Physically, a weak body cannot assist a strong mind, and strong spiritual being.  We need to be able to hold ourselves up and move daily to maintain our physical health.  We need these three aspects of our lives to be working together for our integral health.  I feel like I need to continue to work on my physical body, because I am not as strong physically as I feel I should be.  I realize that I am getting older and I will not be as active and strong as in my youth, but I can try to be as strong and active as possible.  I like being able to carry my own groceries into the house and not have to call my husband to help.

      II.            Assessment:

I can honestly say that when I first sat down to assess my health, I was basically focused on my physical health, because being concerned about my mental or spiritual health was not something I thought about.  Therefore, when I did the first assessment for the blog, I scored myself at where I thought I should be, not really knowing that how I scored myself was dependent on my thoughts and feelings at the time.  This was prior to me reaching a still place in my calm abiding mind.  Now that I can look at this question with some real thought, I would score my spiritual wellness an eight since I took this assessment several weeks ago.  The change has come in being able to calm my mind and have real inner peace.  My physical wellness has improved also up to an eight.  Since I began this journey, I have learned to listen to my body and rest when I need to rest.  I was so overworked before; there was little time to rest until I was completely exhausted.  This stress wore on my mental wellness too.  I was so stressed about my life, I was not living, and I was just passing through almost unaware.  I would score my psychological wellness a nine.  I am by no means close to ten, but much closer to being psychologically well.

    III.            Goal Development: 

Physically I plan to continue working toward coming off some of my medications as I get healthier.  I also plan to learn to swim over the next year so that I can add some non-weight bearing exercise to my routine and protect my joints while increasing my cardiovascular health.  Psychologically, I plan to continue to practice yoga and meditation for my mental workouts.  I realize that my body continues to crave inner peace and stillness, and being able to supply that relief has been a tremendous asset to my psychological wellbeing.  I also plan to continue praying and having faith in God that he will continue to bless me and help me to be a mentor for others that are on the same path to integral health and inner peace.

    IV.            Practices for personal health: 

Physical, one strategy that I can implement to help my physical health improve or grow is to be reasonable about what my expectations are.  I still want to exercise as I did before my mini-stroke, and I do not have the strength.  I will listen to my body and not push myself as hard as I did when I was 20, but at the same time, I will not give up trying to achieve a 45 minute a day cardio workout 3 x’s a week for life.

Psychological, I plan to continue to use meditation each day for a mental workout to strengthen my mind and reduce my stress levels.  I also feel that incorporating deep breathing into my daily routine while at work can help me to deal with stressful situations and challenges.  These two activities have already helped me over the last few weeks, and an ultimate goal is that I will always meditate and use deep breathing to calm myself and control my stress levels.        

          Spiritual, praying has always been my personal cry for help.  I will not cease to pray so that is truly one goal I have for myself over the remainder of my life for my spiritual wellbeing.  I also plan to use my contemplative practices to still my mind, and listen to what God has to say.  I always say that we pray to God for help, but we do not stop talking long enough to hear what he has to say.  I will use prayer and a still mind exercise to further my spiritual wellbeing.

      V.            Commitment:

I think that having experienced a still calm mind has opened my eyes to what my thought processes were when I was stressed out.  As I have stated several other times, now I crave to have that peace daily and meditate until I reach that level of calm.  I have found myself engaging in deep breathing before I realized that I was in trouble.  I want to be able to stand still and slide immediately into a still, aware state of mind, to be able to listen to my body and what it needs at the moment.  I would love to say that I will journal or continue to blog, but I know me, and I understand that I need to keep practicing each of the beneficial activities on a daily basis to get the full benefit.  If I do slack off and stop meditation, I am sure that soon I will realize that my mind if so full that I cannot think, and return to the practice.  I will say that I owe it to myself to be as healthy as possible, and if making life changes is what I need to do to be healthy, I will no longer be afraid of change.

Dina

Unit 8-What is working for me.

I sat here and really thought about which of the exercises really worked for me and which did not.  I can honestly say that they all have worked for me over the last 7 weeks, of course there were some that I had to do numerous times to get the full effect.  I would have to say that meditation has been the most beneficial exercise that I have practiced this term.  Through meditation I have been able to make some positive life changes and dramatically decrease my stress level.  On the days that I felt like I was going to explode, I was able to come to my laptop, listen to some music I saved in my favorites from YouTube, that the professor shared during seminar, and relax myself before I attempted to work on my mental workouts.  I did realize that I was so stressed and distracted that I needed a pre-exercise to the exercise that would strengthen my mind.  Now that I have had a taste of inner peace through meditation, I will not go back to the way I was.  I crave inner peace and seek it everyday, it is almost like my body knows when I need to chill and begins deep breathing without me, and when I finally catch on to what is happening I am well on my way to being calm.

The other exercise that I have found very beneficial to my mental fitness is the subtle mind practice discussed in the Dacher text and on the CD.  As I sit here typing this I have just finished listening to that particular practice for the day.  I have also found that not only can I calm my mind with the mental workout, but when I am reading the course material for this class I retain more information if my mind is still before I begin.  Again, this is a practice that I will continue to work on for my mind-body-spirit benefit and wellness.  When I get to work with clients in the future, I want to be able to describe to them the person I was before I was changed, how stressed, unhealthy, worried, hurried, and tired I was before I took control of my life. I will be that teacher that has walked the walk.
Dina

Dacher, E.  (2006).  Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications, Inc.

Meeting wisdom..

I had a difficult time with the exercise the firs time that I listened to it.  I tried to visualize the white light but it was a smoky gray color.  I could not understand why I was not able to  follow this exercise, so I got up and did something else.  When I was able to come back to the exercise the next day, I visualized my beloved Aunt Susie that died when I was 18 years old.  She was my role model growing up and taught me how to carry myself like a lady.  This time I could see the bright light but again it was not white, it was silver.  While I sat there in my peaceful mind I realized that the beam of light coming from her throat to mine was glowing brighter than the other beams, because she always told me that it is not what goes in that counts it is what you choose to say to others that effects them.  Since I have been meditating over the last few weeks, I have really gotten to know myself from a past, present and potential point of view.  I am able to be still and really listen to me, this is something I have not done in a very long time. I feel that this peaceful time in my life has really helped me get a better grasp on the things I need to do for my body to be whole. I honestly do not think that there will ever be a time that I will not seek inner peace and calm abiding in my day to day life.  I need it.

As stated in an earlier post on the discussion board, why would someone want to follow your direction if you had not walked it before.  What this means to me is a statement of truth about taking advice from others.  There  are often situations in our lives that we seek advice, but if the person we ask has no clue what we are going through it is wise for us to find someone who has been through the struggle too.  I think that in order for me to be a beneficial practicitoner of health & wellness, I must be able to relate to my patients and be able to express to them the changes I had to make and continue to make to heal myself.  I can continue with the new meditation/prayer schedule that I have set up for myself, and while in my still mind continue to listen to my body-spirit for instructions on what needs to be changed or adapted.  I owe it to myself to make my life better and if I can not start with myself, how can I help others?
Dina

Unit 6-Universal Loving Kindness & Assessment

Hmmm, how do I start?   As I practiced the universal loving kindness exercise, I found myself changing the words of the phrases to words that I would normally say and keep the same meaning.  I also started to pray to God during this exercise that he would continue to give me the strength to complete the tasks I was asking for help with.  I will say that stilling my mind is easier than trying to remember phrases to repeat, and it is much easier to pray from my heart for the same things.    I will practice this exercise or add it to my other exercises that I am trying to do each day, prayer for the world is beneficial to us all.

While reading over and completing the personal assessment, it became shocking clear to me that I need to work on interpersonal relationships with others.  I have been so caught up in work and school, that it became easy to brush off relationships that were important to me in the past.  With the death and funeral of my friend Nicky this week, I can clearly see again how important it is to tell people that you love them.  I realize that to fix my interpersonal relationships, I first need to fix myself.  I need to make a change in my life that opens up time for me to work on these relationships.  I also need to be more open to new experiences with my friends and loved ones.  I just need to stop saying no and go enjoy my wonderful family and friends.  In this situation, there is nothing in the practice and only in the doing.
Dina

The Subtle Mind...

Wow, where do I start.  I enjoyed this exercise so much that I am still very calm mentally.  I would say that in comparison to the Loving-Kindness exercise this exercise was so much more beneficial to my mental health.  There was no part of it that was hard to do, and I realized that following my breathing is something that I do all the time and it was very easy to calm my mental paths.  Even when I tried to wander off on random thoughts, I found myself sliding back into the still and calmness.  I wonder if anyone else noticed the colors that danced before their eyes while their minds were calm?  As I sat with my eyes closed and enjoyed the stillness, I could see shades of green, violet, blue and purple flashing before my eyes like beautiful lightning.  Even now sitting here writing this blog, I still feel like I am at peace, and calm in my mind and body.  I truly understand how being mentally calm, correlates to us being physically healthy.  Right now I can not describe how "well" I feel.  I will truly seek to feel this way everyday, and continue to grow in mental strength, and wellness.
Dina

Loving Kindness and a Mental Workout..

I have to admit that the first time I tried to complete this activity I was not in the right frame of mind to try to relax or take in someone else's suffering.  I literally had to get up and walk away from the computer and do something else.  I waited until the next day to listen to the exercise again, this time I was actually able to really take in what the speaker was saying and put the thoughts I was having through the mental process necessary for me to benefit from the actions.  I would recommend this exercise to others but do suggest that they reach a level of calm before trying to internalize others suffering.  That was the hardest part of the exercise and I actually felt a pressure in my chest on the in-breath, and a release on the out-breath.  I think that the more times I do this exercise it will become easier for me to accept others suffering and be able to genuinely send love, and wholeness to them, at least in my mind.  This mental repetition is what we read about called the mental workout.  That basically means that exercising our minds will increase our ability to actualize our feelings about ourselves and others.  I agree that the mental workout may be one of the most important workouts we do in our daily lives.  I am re-working my daily schedule to include more mental workout time through out the day, and I agree that starting with 5 minutes and working my way up to a hour each day is the right way improve my mental wellness and strength.
Dina