Fostering Growth and Health Spiritually, Physically, and Psychologically in My Personal Life

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?

It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically so that they can provide the best care possible and meet the expectations of their patients (aka the “healee”).  If a health and wellness professional is not fully developed in any one of these areas, I believe that they cannot fully understand their own needs, forget about the needs of their patients’.  I agree with Dacher on many points including integrating these principles into our own life (as healers).  “This means that we must be willing to explore the inner aspects of our own life through psychological development and contemplative practice.” (Dacher, 2006, p. 167).  Once a health and wellness professional has developed their own mind, body, and spiritual connection, I believe they’re ready to guide their patients towards integral health, happiness, and wholeness.

In order to fulfill the goals that I’ve set for myself, I feel that I still need to work on all aspects of my health and wellness.  Out of all of these areas, I feel most comfortable with my physical wellness and see it being pretty solid.  The only goals that I have are nutrition related.  I would like to continue to eat healthy, whole foods but also begin to slowly eliminate processed foods.  With the changes already made to my diet, I have already reaped some of the benefits including increased energy!  Spiritually speaking, I have yet to make a strong mind-body connection.  I’ve had success practicing the loving-kindness practice in times where stress and anxiety were building but I think I need to focus more on clearing my mind and exploring the subtle mind practice more frequently.  I believe that once my mind-body connection begins to strengthen that I will be in a better position not only spiritually, but psychologically.  

II. Assessment:

How have you assessed your health in each domain? How do you score your wellness spiritually, physically, and psychologically?

Prior to this class, I separated my physical health from my mental health.  I didn’t understand what integral health meant until I began to read Dacher’s book.  Through Dacher’s explanation of the integral map and our five guiding principles (holistic, evolutionary, intentional, person-centered, and dynamic), I’ve learned that in order to achieve human flourishing, that each area of our health needs to be focused on.  To focus on each area of our health, I think a good assessment needs to be done.  When I assess my own health, I allow myself at least fifteen minutes (minimum) to lay down in silence.  During this time, I reflect on each area of my health.  To do this, I visualize the thoughts that make me happy, the ones that don’t make me happy, and which ones I want to change.  Depending on which area I decide to work on, I then decide what practice I’d like to utilize.  I’ve found that the loving-kindness and visualization practices have been the most successful so I’ve practiced these more than mediation and the subtle mind exercise.

As a final assessment for this Unit, I score myself an 8 on my physical wellness because I exercise for at least thirty minutes a day, five times a week however, I still need to fine tune my eating habits.  I have come a long way and have cut out a lot of unnecessary junk food but still want to work on eliminating overly-processed foods and replace them with whole, natural foods as much as possible.  I give myself a 7 on my psychological wellness because I’m pretty stable and feel like I’m surrounded by good people who genuinely care about me.  The reason why this score isn’t higher is because I still have some trust issues due to past experiences.  I find that as I grow more individually, that I continue to feel more and more confident.  I give myself a 5 on my spiritual wellness because I still don’t go to church and have been lacking in this area the most.  Even though I haven’t advanced much in this area, I have begun to look into the different types of religion.  I’ve begun this by researching and reading online articles.  Once I’m ready, I plan on going to the local bookstore to buy some new books.

III. Goal development:

List at least one goal you have for yourself in each area, Physical, Psychological (mental health) and Spiritual.

Physical health goal: to eliminate as much processed and artificial food/beverages as possible.  Last weekend I went out and bought myself a book called “The Clean Eating Diet Recharged” by Tosca Reno.  I’ve read about half of this book already I’m that hooked!  So far, I have incorporated some of her concepts including eliminating wasted calories from beverages.  I’ve cut out all soda, fruit juice, and sweetened teas.  I’ve been drinking no less than 12 glasses of water a day and although it may sound cliché, I already feel better.

Psychological health goal: to keep a journal (or blog) to reflect on my feelings when I start feeling insecure.  I will admit I was a little hesitant about the whole internet blog idea but I really enjoyed the blog for our class!  I will make my new blog private however, I think it’ll be a great outlet for me.  I feel that writing down my insecurities will help me get over them.  I tend to re-visit thoughts in my head over and over again.  Writing them down and then re-reading them again, I think could help me “see” myself from the outside rather than from the inside.

Spiritual health goal: to pick a religion and begin practicing that faith.  I was baptized as a baby but I’m still pretty clueless about religion in general.  I’ve started some research already and think I have an idea of where I’d like to go.  The next step would be to buy some more books and maybe even go to church.  I think being somewhat spontaneous about it might work better for me.  

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 believe in order to fully develop that mind-body connection (human flourishing), we need to have the ability to self-cultivate as well as implement strategies to foster growth in all areas of our health.  To foster my physical wellness, I will continue to exercise for thirty minutes at least five times a day; keep a food log to track my calorie intake; give myself time to make a meal plan for the week to ensure I’m making whole, natural foods; and continue with current preventative measures such as taking a multi-vitamin.  To foster my psychological wellness, I will practice meditation more often.  To do this, I will start with small time increments and then work my way up to larger times when I feel more comfortable.  Additionally, I want to begin writing in a personal blog.  I want to be able to write something daily even if it’s a sentence.  I think writing will become one of my biggest outlets.  To foster my spiritual wellness, I will continue to practice the loving-kindness exercise.  I may try to make this a more frequent ritual and practice it either first thing in the morning or right before bed.  Additionally, I’m going to begin reading books about religion.  If I’m still unsure about which religion I’d like to participate in, I’m going to read inspiration stories in order to help cultivate my spiritual wellness.

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?

Hopefully, my future assessment within the next six months will be about my success and not failure.  I will be looking forward to see if my “ratings” have improved or not and at this time I’d also like to re-assess my goals to align with my life at that particular time.  I have a lot of changes coming up in the near future (all good) so it’ll be exciting for me to re-visit these experiences not only in this blog but the personal blog that I plan on starting.

In order to maintain my long-term practices for health and wellness I’m going to look into volunteering my time to help others.  I’m not sure how I can do this quite yet, but I receive newsletters from my son’s school all the time so I’m sure I can find something in there.  I think it would be great to be a chaperone or a volunteer for an event at his school.  I also am going to surround myself with positive people and try to keep the negative ones out of my life.  I don’t like shutting anyone out but there are a few people in my life right now that I know for sure won’t change who they are and will continue to bring others down with them.  I’d rather keep positive, like-minded people around me including my family.  

I wish everyone the best of luck in all their future endeavors!  This was an enjoyable class for sure! :-)

~Jen

Re-visiting Loving-kindness and Visualization

Although I've learned a lot about myself through various practices including: subtle mind, loving-kindness, meditation, and visualization, I feel that the loving-kindness and visualization practices were most beneficial for me.  One reason why I feel this way is because I have a lot going on in my head.  I found it easier to visualize on a place, object, or person than to clear my mind of all the mindless chatter.  I found myself being distracted by noises when I practiced the subtle mind practice, but not as much with the loving-kindness or visualization practices. 

Implementing these practices into my personal life will be very simple.  I am going to dedicate time out of my schedule to practice both the loving-kindness and visualization practices.  This may not be everyday but I'd like to practice between fifteen to thirty minutes a few times a week. 

There are also going to be times where utilizing these exercises will be needed on the spot.  One example is when I find myself struggling.  Since there has been a lot going on in my personal life, if I feel I needed some time to re-group, I will stop what I'm doing and make time for me.  Another time I will utilize these practices is when those who are close to me are struggling.  During these times I will take time out of my schedule to practice the loving-kindness practice.  This has already helped me once before.  During the same week we were taught the loving-kindness exercise, my husband was seeking guidance from me.  At first I felt sort of helpless, I didn't know what to say to him.  I ended up practicing the loving-kindness exercise and immediately felt better.  I was able to focus on his feelings, his hurt, and take it in.  At the same time, I was releasing love to him and creating an open heart.  I felt so much better after that exercise and was able to talk to him about it.  Because of this, I would definitely continue to use this and the visualization practices as needed.

~Jen

The Subtle Mind Practice

After having success with the loving-kindness exercise, I was pretty disappointed with the subtle mind practice.  As a quick recap, the loving-kindness exercise seemed to fit perfectly into my life as there have been some struggles, some are still currently active.  However, when I practiced the subtle mind exercise, I felt like there were too many distractions/thoughts in my mind.  I tried the exercise a few times, both times I felt pretty relaxed but perhaps it was the time of day that messed it up for me (the end of the night).  I think I will try this exercise again when I first wake up, as the book noted that before you fully awake there should be silence.  Personally, even though I'm winding down at night before bed, I always go to bed with racing thoughts, some about my day and others about things that stress me out.  With that being said, I won't let this discourage me.  I will continue to try to calm my mind as I would eventually like to obtain a clear and open mind.

In truly believe that there is a connection between your spiritual wellness and your mental and physical wellness.  Like I mentioned above, it was difficult for me to practice the subtle mind exercise.  I realize that my spiritual wellness is off at the moment and in order for me to feel better, physically and mentally, this has to be fixed.  Because I haven't been able to still my mind, I feel exhausted all the time.  I feel like I'm constantly working, there are constant thoughts going in and out of my mind, etc.  At night, I cannot calm down enough to go to bed at a reasonable time.  I always go to bed late, which causes me to feel just as tired the next morning when I wake up.  Excessive tiredness has also taken a toll on my body, as some mornings I feel like someone ran me over with a Mack truck.  These are all just reasons for me to work on improving my spiritual health.


~Jen

Loving-Kindness Exercise

My experience with this exercise was very intense.  This may or may not sound weird but I feel like I was drawn to this class for a reason.  In the past year or so, my family has been through a lot of different emotions.  Some of these emotions have led to huge amounts of stress not only in my life but my husband's life also.  More recently, my husband has been dealing with his own personal issues, including the purpose of life (e.g. what's his role?).  Anyway, while I practiced the loving-kindness exercise, I was taking deep breaths and imagining, physically trying to take away the pain and suffering my husband was feeling.  Over and over again I kept these thoughts, it was very emotional and intense.  I felt strong, that I could be strong for him in this time of need, and it gave me pleasure to feel this way.  

I would definitely recommend this practice to others.  I think not enough people get the chance to sit still for a few moments and meditate.  This is a gift that you can give to yourself; just give yourself 5 minutes out of your day to sit back and relax....it's very empowering.

A "mental workout" is basically done through different types of meditation techniques. The concept is essentially to "workout" your mind since it's been discovered that you can not only train your mind, but push it's limits.  Working your mind strengthens your mental capabilities and connects your mind, body, and spirit.  Some of the proven capabilities that have come from this concept include an overall reduction of stress.  Individuals who meditate can work and build on their relaxation techniques, which can take the edge off and reduce stress.  Psychologically, reducing stress is great for you.  This will boost your mood, give you physical energy, and even prevent illnesses (both acute and chronic).  Many people are unaware but your mind is limitless!

~Jen

Self-reflection

Rating myself is sort of challenging because I find myself to be my biggest critic, but here goes nothing!  

As far as my physical well-being goes, I would rate myself a 6.  I gave myself this rating because I'm not in my best shape of my life but I'm also not in the worse shape either.  All throughout my childhood into my late teen's, I was very active and into sports so weight was never an issue.  After giving birth to my son at the age of 20, I gave up on my physical health including my weight.  About 3 years ago, I decided to make a change because I wasn't happy anymore. I've since lost about 20 pounds but it's still a working progress.  My ultimate goal is to lose about 10-15 more pounds; this ultimately depends on how I feel 10 pounds lighter.  If I'm not content with being 10 pounds lighter, I will continue to lose weight until "I" feel healthy; not the way others perceive me.  There are two ways for me to achieve this ultimate goal: healthy "clean" eating and exercise.  I have the exercise part down but need to work on choosing healthier foods for myself and I also need to stop overeating!

Spiritually, I would rate myself a 4 and that's thinking positively!  I rated myself a 4 because I think I need major improvement in this area.  Growing up, even though I was baptized, my family was not involved in the church (with the exception of my grandmother).  Although I do believe in God, I do not follow any specific religion.  This is something I'd like to change and make one of my goals.  My ultimate goal will be to study different religions to find the one that suits me best and then to follow it as part of my optimal wellness.  To do this, I will probably start small and research the fundamentals of a few different types of religions to narrow my search down.

Psychologically speaking, I would rate myself a 7.  I've come a long way and feel I've grown the most in this area, especially in the past 2 years.  In these past 2 years, I've learned a lot about myself and my "true" feelings, not feelings that have been drilled into my head by family and close friends (and my ex-boyfriend).  I feel that there are areas that I need to fix (or heal), insecurities that have formed over the years from bad relationships, etc. One goal that I'd like to set for myself in part of healing my psychological well-being is to further explore myself, including learning to love myself completely.  This includes flaws and all.  I gotta learn to leave behind the things I cannot change and embrace all the good things I've learned and will continue to learn about myself.  I strongly believe that the more I've learned about myself, the stronger I've felt, psychologically speaking.


After completing the Crime of the Century exercise, I felt completely relaxed.  At first, I couldn't quite get into it because the visual kept changing and my slight a.d.d. was kicking in.  I tried hard to focus on the sounds; the music and the calm monotone of the man's voice.  When I was able to pay attention to my breathing and the noise, the background images became more hypnotic than distracting.  I thought overall this was an interesting exercise.


~Jen

Relaxation and my past week

Hello everyone!  My name is Jen and this is my first blog ever, so bear with me! :-)

There are two things I'd like to reflect on for this week's blog: relaxation, and this past week.

First things, first.  Relaxation...what does that mean to me?  Well, as far as this past week goes, relaxation was watching the NFL playoff game Saturday night from the comfort of my own home.  This was literally the only time I had a chance to sit down, relax, and not think about anything besides what was going on during the game.  You see, most of the time when I watch football, I tend to zone out - my husband could attest to this as we've held conversations during football games and sometimes I completely stop mid-sentence and then completely forget what we just talked about, LOL.  When football season ends, I'm definitely going to have to find a new outlet! :-)

The second thing that I'd like to reflect on is this past week.  As I sit here, only one word could possibly describe this past week for me and that is hectic!  <Which by the way is quite humorous because hectic is the opposite of relaxing!>  Anyways, although my life seems to be pretty crazy right now, this past week felt the worst.  I sometimes sit back and think to myself, how do women juggle all these responsibilities on a daily basis??  It can be physically and mentally draining to be a wife, mother, full-time employee, and student.  I seriously amaze myself sometimes when I'm able to pull it off, but this past week I feel like I have failed in one (maybe two or three) of these categories.  I'm not feeling well on top of it all, so I know this doesn't not make things any easier on me.  At the end of the day, I realize I can only do so much.  I have to prioritize things, of course keeping the important things first.  If I cannot complete everything in one day, I have to leave it as that and not feel guilty about it.  I cannot continue to beat myself up about it because it will only make me feel worse.  Besides, sitting here dwelling on things I cannot fix will not help me get through my day, at least not successfully.

Until next week ~Jen