Final Blog

Hello,

After a long term and a few blogs later we arrive at my final blog for this class. After reviewing my previous scores of psychological, physical, and spiritual well-being, I scored my self with a 8,7,8 respectively. At this time, my scores remain the same. I feel that they haven't decreased or increased since the last rating, and there has not been enough significant change to change my scores. I have been on track to improve my physical goals and have made a more conscious effort to improve my psychological and spiritual goals. The actions that I need to take for each goal will take time, and I don't expect for change to happen overnight.

My experience with this class was difficult. I thought this class had a heavy workload, and also made me try different exercises that I am not used to. By doing so I was able to expose some of my strength and some of my weaknesses. I will continue to strive to better myself physically, psychologically, and spiritually to obtain optimal health.

Integral Health Plan

1.                  It is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically to be able to maintain health and wellness in multiple aspects of life. Many times health and wellness is only observed and focused on the physical domains of the body and appearance. We must focus on the mind, body, and spirit to achieve optimum health. If one of these areas are lacking it may negatively affect the other area. I personally like to strengthen my psychological and spiritual self. I have many goals in terms of physical fitness and personal development, and I feel I can achieve those goals by focusing on areas in my psychological self and spirit. I can strength my mind and spirit by consciously focusing on areas I want to improve and practice them every day.

2.                  After doing many of the exercises in this class and assignments in other health classes I have seen my strengths and weaknesses in the areas of physical, psychological, and spiritual. Physical tests have consisted of body fat, heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, VO2 max, strength, speed, and many others. I have tested high in many of the physical testing areas. Being able to assess the psychological and the spirit are a little harder than assessing the physical. Assessing these areas requires more of a personal assessment and after doing some of the meditation and spiritual exercises in this class I can see that my spiritual aspect of my life could use some strengthening. I will continue to practice to exercise my mind and spiritual mind.

3.                  In terms of goals in my physical, psychological, and spiritual areas of my life. I have goals in each area that can be short term or long-term development. My physical goal is in regards to strength. I am an avid crossfit athlete, and I want to become more competitive, so one of my goals is to become stronger in my Olympic lifts in particular my back squat and deadlift. I want back squat 300 plus pounds and be able to deadlift 400 plus pounds. When talking about a psychological goal, I want to strength my positive attitude and increase my focus and intensity. These areas take a conscious effort and will require practice and dedication. This would be a long-term goal as it can never be too strong. My spiritual goal is to maintain my religion and pray when I or someone else needs help.

4.                  The strategies I could use to achieve my physical goals could include increasing the frequency of my exercise and or increase the intensity of workouts. To achieve my psychological goals will have to include making a conscious effort of when I would like to utilize the ideals. To strength my spiritual health I can go to church more often, and pray more often when I need to.

5.                  In order to assess the areas of physical, psychological, and spiritual in the next 6 months I could do another personal assessment of physical areas, psychological mind, and spiritual mind. I can ask myself if the goals I established have been completed, and if they haven’t been completed I could assess what stage of progress I am in. I will need to answer once again how to get closer to my goals once the time comes. A could strategy to use to be able to achieve my goals would be to write them down, and make little reminders on what I need to do to achieve those goals. Also, I can make smaller goals to actually achieve the bigger goals. This will make the task easier and also will be able to make measurable progress.

Unit 8

The two practices I found most beneficial would be the subtle mind exercise and the visualization exercise. I found the subtle mind exercise as the most relaxing and the visualization exercise helped on focusing the mind. These practices could be used in my personal life to foster "mental fitness." There are times when I feel stressed out or overwhelmed during the week, and if I use one of these practices for a couple minutes at a time during the week, then I can re-align my focus and be able to go about my day stress free or worry free. Like I said in earlier post I don't particularly like to meditate on a regular basis, but there is a time and place for everything, and it is a learning process for me.

Meeting Aesclepius

The exercise this week was more of a visualization technique, and we had to picture a figure and transform them into a couple different characters. I particularly didn't like the exercise because I don't think that I have that much of a creative mind. I understand that the exercise was to increase my psychological and spiritual wellness, but this particular exercise wasn't that beneficial for me. I liked the exercises that were focused on relaxing the mind. I will continue to practice the techniques in the exercise, so I can foster greater health and wellness.

The saying, "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself" means to me, when you haven't experienced a certain situation that you can't tell someone how it will feel. For example, if you have never experienced having someone close to you die, then you can't tell someone who has lost a loved one how they are going to feel. You can sympathize with that person, and everyone will interpret things differently. As a health and wellness professional it is important to understand many situations and be able to accept the reactions and emotions of others.

Universal Loving Kindness

The universal loving kindness exercise was quick and easy. It is kind of like a mantra that you chant to keep a positive attitude and get in the right mind set. I particularly don't like the specific wordage of the exercise, but I get the point, and know where it's headed. I personally, would have used my own phrases for that type of exercise. Nevertheless I feel more positive after doing it.

The integral assessment was a good exercise because this was where we can analyze our personal lives, and make changes to improve in a area where we feel weak with. The area I wanted to focus on was interpersonal because I want to be more involved with my friends and family. Lately, I have become more detached to the people I am close to, and I think I could work on becoming a better person by staying in touch more. Also, I felt I needed to meet new people, so I should become more social when the situation arises.

Subtle Mind

The subtle mind exercise was similar to the loving-kindness exercise. I felt more relaxed during the exercise. During the subtle mind exercise I felt it was more of a positive experience versus the loving-kindness exercise where it suggested you think of something negative in your life and try to replace it with positive thoughts. My only issue with these exercises is the same thing every week. We are supposed to listen and try to relax to these exercises, but when I do them all I want to do is hurry up and finish my blog, so I can get more things done. I suppose I should be more receptive to these exercises and do them at the end of the day or write my blog at a later time then the exercise, but I guess it will take some practice and some conscious effort.

The connection between spiritual wellness, mental wellness, and physical wellness is all needed to have a healthy mind and body. Each area must be kept healthy or other areas may be sacrificed. For example, your physical health may be good, but lets say you are really stress one week so your mental capacity may become week, in turn that will affect your physical body and you may eventually get sick. Personally, I try to focus on keeping all areas of spiritual wellness, mental wellness, and physical wellness strong, so I can be as healthy as I can be.

Loving Kindness

1. The experience of doing the loving-kindness exercise went pretty well this week. I only did it for five minutes to give it a try. I am normally an even keel person, and really don't stress about too many things, so many times I feel I really don't need to practice an exercises such as loving-kindness. I can see how many people would benefit from doing this exercise. I would recommend this exercise to friends and family that don't easily relieve stress and tension.

2. The mental workout is the idea that we can't reach a more complete wholeness and happiness without practicing it mentally.  Similarly to physical training, when we stop practicing we will see a drop off in conditioning. It takes an effort to think clearly and remove negative thoughts from your mind and replace them with more positive thinking. The goal is not necessarily rest and relaxation, but more a progressive development of an expanded consciousness and healing capacities.