The Path is coming to the end!

Hello everyone this is the final blog.

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 because having a healthy inner life develops a healthy outer life. When we develop our higher consciousness we benefit from it such as, it allows us understand our biology in a way science cannot, when we understand our mind/body it enhances our well being. Also, in order for them to be successful in their field, they have to have an understanding of spiritual, physical and psychological practices and how can they teach or help patients  to develop psychologically, spiritually and physically if the professional has not yet done so.

I would need to develop my psychological aspect. At times I let stress and pressure get to me. I would have to learn how to handle these in order for me to reach my goal. A good way to develop psychologically would be to take the time out of my day and meditate or even to yoga, not only does that relax me but it also will help me physically which in another aspect that I need to develop more, so I can stay healthy and reach my goals.

II Assessment:

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

I rate my physical well being as a 9. physically I am healthy, but I do need to start eating healthier, for my spiritual well-being I rate myself as an 7, I need some work on this area because I feel restless and I take life too seriously. I need to just stop enjoy the environment and be grateful for what I have. With my psychological well-being I rate is at an 8 because I do things to make me relax, such as yoga but I do not do it every day to help relax my mind, I often get frantic and stressed.

 

III Goal Development:

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

My goals for my physical health would be to eat healthier foods (getting more fruits and veggies and less snack food.) My goal for spiritual health is to do more silence prayers and find three different things everyday to be grateful for. For my psychologically wellness my goal would be to do yoga everyday and take that time to reflect on my day to relax my mind and body.

IV Practice 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.

Some activities or exercise that I can implement in my life to assist in moving toward each goal would be first to find someone such as a family member who will support me in my goals and help me reach them, because having support in my life will help. Another activity would be doing yoga, once you exercise your mind and body that is when I want to eat healthy and exercise such as running or walking.

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?

I will assess my progress or lack of progress in the next six months by keeping a journal of my goals and the activities I plan on doing to help me reach the goals. The strategies I can use to assist in maintaining my long-term practices for health and wellness is that I could make a calendar of the days I plan on doing these activities and at the end of every month I can re-evaluate my goals and see what I still need to work on or if I have accomplished my goals and make changes accordingly.

Two practice sessions

Hello, out of all the exercise I have done to achieve happiness, health, and wholeness, I would say one of my favorites is the visualization exercise. In these exercise I envisioned the things that make me happy which was my wedding day and the birth of my child. When I am relaxed I can recall those day in every detail, and it reminds me how lucky I am and it puts my mind in a calm place and I feel so happy. The other one I like is the subtle mind. With this we cultivate wisdom by taming and training our mind and accessing its deeper level. In this exercise we learn how to diminish our mental thoughts, feeling, and images. With regular practice we will be able to still our mind and achieve calm-abiding. I can implement these practices in my personal life to foster “mental fitness' by taking the time out of my day and finding a place where I will not be disturbed and practice these exercise. After that I will be able to think  clearly about my decisions and make sure I chose the best one for me. I will be able to have or at least try to have a stress free life with calming my mind on all the things that goes through it. Through these exercises I can share them not only with my family but also with my patients to help them achieve a sense of calm, happiness, healthy, and wholeness. Truly, there were a lot of the exercise that I likes, they all seem to help me relax and have a sense of calmness, they had brought me to place where  I can achieve deep understand and relaxation.
Amy Robertson

Aesclepian Healing

There are five characteristics of Aesclepian Healing that help us to fully understand the approach to health and healing; these five characteristics are holistic, evolutionary, intentional, person-centered, and dynamics. Aesclepian healing was known as an organic process that came from the amalgam traditions, myths, philosophy and early science. The approach to integral healing comes from the wisdom and science of the East and West approaches. During the Aesclepian exercise for class I chose to picture my grandmother, she had recently passed away. She was always there for me, always pushing me to do my best and when I needed her, she was there to talk to. Her wisdom about life experience had helped me get through some hard times. She inspired me to go back to school and get my degree. She told me my dreams will not come to me I will have to go seek them.  I imagine that she and I are sitting on a white cloud, surrounded by light and warmth. We were talking about my grandfather (her husband who died before I was born) and how happy she was to be with him once again. I felt like I was actually there and I felt her presence again, I felt calm and relaxed and for once I did not miss her. When I did the meditation it had fostered an increase in my psychological and spiritual wellness by taking the time to meditate and relax my mind and not to take it for granted, which has helped me come to peace with something that I was holding on to. I will continue to meditate and relax my mind each everyday for a greater health and well being.

The saying: "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself’ to me means you cannot lead the blind with the blind. Meaning how can you help someone down a spiritual path when you yourself have not gone down that way, and you cannot teach someone to be whole when you are not whole. This is important to health and wellness professional because we would not be able to help anyone if we do not know how to. We need to be successful and have the knowledge in our own field before we can start helping others down a successful path.

I feel that I do have an obligation to my clients to be developing my health psychologically, physically, and spiritually because as a Physical Therapist I will have patients that are suffering from pain or have an amputee. This may decrease their psychological, physical and spiritual health. I need to be whole in mind, body, and spirit in order to lead them to a path where they can feel whole again.  I can implement psychological growth in my life by meditating each and every day to feel one with the universe and help with my stress levels.

Universal Loving Kindness

I really liked the exercise Universal Loving Kindness meditation. When I repeated the phrase: ‘ May all individuals gain freedom from suffering, may all individuals find sustained health, happiness and wholeness, may I assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering, may I assist all individuals in finding health, happiness and wholeness.’  I felt uplifted and spiritually connected. I discovered that with this phrase I can let go of the anger and hope for those who have hurt me to gain health, happiness and wholeness. I felt calm and relaxed after doing this exercise. Now with the Integral Assessment I focused on my psychospiritual aspect. This is because I am going through a lot of different stress and I am starting to become sick from it. When I focus on my psychospiritual  I calm my mind with meditation and it will keep my mind healthy and therefore keep my body healthy. Some specific exercises or activities that you can implement to foster greater wellness in this area would be visual imagery where I can image a safe and a place in harmony to help my well being. 

 

Subtle Mind

Hello
I liked the subtle mind exercise much better than the love-kindness exercise. I found the subtle mind exercise allowed me to relax deeper and I was able to semi-control my thoughts. When it came to love-kindness it was  little hard for me to concentrate and follow the instructions, but with subtle mind I could because of how relaxed I felt. I felt that focusing on my breath when my mind drifted helped me to get back on my focal point. This will now benefit me when my mind wonders but I need to focus. When someone has spiritual wellness they are one with their believes and the higher power. They have a sense of well-being and wholeness, and when they have that they believe that the power of prayer can heal them. They are healthier mental, physically and emotionally. This is all manifested in my life, because I have a lot of gratitude in my life and my beliefs gives me the sense of health, happiness, and wholeness.

Hello again! When I had done the Loving Kindness exercise (Dacher, 2006) I felt relaxed and was able to image my daughter she is the one person who I feel so much love for (besides my husband). I could feel how much I love her when I open my heart to that feeling, nobody knows what love is until they have a child. I did find this exercise a little harder than the others, this is because each and every day I feel and am aware how much I love my daughter and husband. When I got to the part about visualizing someone suffering, for this I imagined my uncle who just found out that he has the same type of cancer that killed his dad (my grandpa), I felt in my heart deep sadness and fear. When I breathe out I sent wholeness, health and happiness to him, for this I felt like it helped my psychospiritual because it helped me ease my soul. For me this exercise was not beneficial for me, it was hard for me to focus on strangers (even enemies) and think of their suffering. When I did this I felt bad for those that are losing their house or jobs and do not know how they are going to provide for their families, but it was hard for me to send out peace wellness. It made me feel blessed for what I have in my life and it made me actually want to go out in my community and physically help them and put them at ease, I felt like I should be doing more. I would recommend this exercise to others because it does relax you and make you look beyond yourself and think about other people’s suffering. Mental workout is expanding our minds for health, happiness and wholeness, if we give ourselves a mental workout for one hour each day will help expand our consciousness and healing capacities. Using mental workouts has shown that it can transform the mind by reducing disturbing emotions that can cause anger, hatred, fear, worry, confusion and doubt. It also can improve positive emotions, which helps resist mental distress and physical disease, helps our healing capacities and promote well being (Dacher, 2006). How I can implement mental workouts to foster my psychological health is to do yoga which relaxes my body and spirit and I can use guided meditation which relaxed my mind. 

Dacher, E.S. (2006) Integral Health The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publication. Laguna Beach, CA.   

Evaluating my level of wellness

Hello,
I hope everyone had a good holiday! I was very bust seeing family, well I have found it difficult to evaluate my level of wellness; physically, psychologically, and spiritually. I really had to look deep inside myself to do this exercise. But, based on my reflections, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (ten being optimal well being), I rate my physical well being as a 9. physically I am healthy, but there is always need for improvement, such as eating healthier, for my spiritual well-being I rate myself as an 7, I need some work on this area because I feel restless at me at take life too seriously. I need to just stop enjoy the environment and be grateful for what I have.With my psychological well-being I rate is at an 8 because I do things to make me relax, such as yoga but I do not do it everyday to help relax my mind, I often get frantic and stressed.
My goals for my physical health would be to eat more healthier foods (getting more fruits and veggies and less snack food.) My goal for spiritual health do more silence prayers and find three different things everyday to be grateful for. For my psychologically wellness my goal would be to do yoga everyday and take that time to reflect on my day to relax my mind and body.
Some activities or exercise that I can implement in my life to assist in moving toward each goal would be first to find someone such as a family member who will support me in my goals and help me reach them, because having support in my life will help. Another activity would be doing yoga, once you exercise your mind and body that is when I want to eat healthy and exercise such as running or walking.
I love the The Crime of the Century exercise, this was the most relaxing exercise that I have done. His voice was soothing, which helped me relax. I believe that this benefit my psychologically wellness, this exercise helped me relax and let my stress go. I had found myself drifting off and imagine myself on the beach, and because I was so relaxed I could see and 'feel' the colors. What frustrated me, and I had found this on a lot of guided mediation is my breathing rhythms are different than how they try to guide you to breathe. I love this exersice and I recommened it .