My Final Project (Enjoy and Thank you All for Your Encouragement)

Health and wellness professionals should continually be developing the important areas of life.  Some of the best teachers are the ones who have experience themselves.  Professionals that deepen their development psychologically, spiritually and physically are the best guides as they have overcome many of the obstacles that their clients face while trying to achieve integral health.  For my personal health I could use a little work on each area.  Psychologically I am struggling with depression, separation anxiety, and adjustment disorder.  For these issues I am dependent on medication, I hope to achieve integral health and not be on my medication anymore.  Throughout this course I have grown the most in my spiritual health which is helping me psychologically.  My physical health is improving the less I let myself become stressed.  I am making more time for me physically and mentally and in turn my spiritual health is still flourishing.  I am just trying to maintain a balanced growth in all three.

            Since our blog post back in unit three, I would say each domain of my integral health has improved greatly.  The more I become closer to God the less stress I feel.  The more I workout the less depressed and stressed I fell.  In turn when I am flourishing spiritually and physically; it spills over to my psychological health.  I have some goals that I would like to accomplish in each area.  Physically I would like to achieve my weight loss and nutrition goals.  The more time I take to care for my body the better I perform at work, home and school.  Psychologically my goal is to work on the physical and spiritual areas to relieve my psychological issues.  I’m also going to practice meditative, contemplative and visualization practices to turn to during times of anxiety, depression and stress.  My ultimate goal is to be off of my medication for good.  Spiritually I would like to maintain and grow my relationships within my church, family and friends.

            In order to foster growth in each domain I plan to work on specific things.  Physically I plan to continue improving my current workout schedule of training for a marathon with cardio, strength training and yoga/pilates.  Also, use knowledge from my sport nutrition class to meet my weight and performance goals.  Psychologically I plan to maintain meditating 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night.  My aspirations are to work up to 30 minutes at each meditation session.  Find contemplative and visualization practices to continue my mental workouts; dedicate two sessions a week for this.  Spiritually I plan to continue current Bible studies, but add daily devotionals for me, my husband and our family as a whole.  I will also strive to become more involved within my church; our church is in need of someone for military outreach ministries.  I plan to become involved or lead the military outreach ministry with my husband since we are both veterans and can relate well with active duty members. 

            In hopes of achieving integral health I will implement monthly assessments at first and shorten the period to weekly after two months.  Once I have been completing weekly assessments for three months I will strive to accomplish daily assessments.  The need to increase assessments is due to the ever changing maturity in my integral growth.  The practice of self assessing daily is ideal as you should always be aware of what areas you are weakening in.  This is the key to maintaining and growing in my integral health.  Possibly in six months I may sit down and complete this project again.  Comparing this assessment to one in six months will show me how much I’ve grown and what areas I am still lacking in.  I will never be perfect in all these areas but my goal is to be stable enough as to not hurt my integral health.

Unit 8

I have found meditation and visualization to be the most beneficial practices that I have learned throughout this course.  The meditation practices help clear my mind and boost my mood.  The visualization practices help me feel appreciative and more loving towards the things I do have instead of dwelling on my faults or misfortunes.  Whether the visualization practice has me seeing negative or positive things I always end the session feeling blessed to have those experiences to look back on or forward to. 
I know that I will use meditation and visualization practices to strengthen my mental fitness.  I have benefited from them so much already and I'm only at a novice level.  I can only imagine how I will feel when I practice daily and become an expert.  I plan on seeking out guided visualization practices and meditative practices like the ones we have experienced throughout this course.  I have already committed 10minutes every morning and evening to meditation.  Once I find some more practices I wanted to expand to 30 minutes twice a day.  Once I achieve that I will assess what the next step will be for my mental fitness, but for now I'll just focus on my current goals.

Unit 7 Practice

This week I haven't made much time for meditating and I can feel that it affects my integral health when I don't.  I have, however, been using different thought processes at different times in my life that I have learned and it is letting me cope a lot better than normal with such things as stress, depression and motivation.  This weeks meditative practice was really enjoyable.  I pictured my grandma who died when I was 15 years old.  The picture became so vivid, I almost felt like she was actually sitting across from me.  It was a nice "visit".  I am making more room in my life for meditating and contemplative practices.  I am going to make a committment to myself this week to meditate for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night, starting tonight.  I'll reflect on the benefits next week.
I agree a lot with the quote, "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself."  I don't think that in order to help a drug addict you have to have been one, but if you are giving them tools that you don't use yourself it would be kind of like empty teachings.  The whole reason I wanted to earn a degree in Nutrition Science was because I was having trouble knowing what to eat to be healthy.  I started reading every fad diet book and found some to be really inspirational for various reasons.  I then started sharing the information with my family and friends and realized I loved doing so.  I have read and still read all the latest diets and act like a fellow dieter myself.  I find that researching diets is fun and will help me better understand when my clients come to me with the latest diets in the media.  So, I do believe it is more beneficial to seek help from someone who has been there or someone who knows the proper way and practices it on how to not go there.  If that makes sense.  I believe that developing my integral health will come with time and lots of practice, and I am willing to take as much time as I need.  I now understand and know the benefits that contempaltive and meditative practices can have on your health.  I want to make sure that this becomes a part of my life, because it will make me a better person inside and out.

Unit 6 Assignment

The assessment and exercise process is something that is different for everyone.  Each individual will have specific integral needs that they are lacking.  Some may need to work on biological issues while others need to focus on psychospiritual aspects.  It is a good idea to practice a self assessment as often as possible to address the areas of integral health that you should be working on for overall well being. 
When I do a self assessment I discover that there are some aspects of integral health that I need to work on.  These are biological and psychospiritual; I am not taking care of my body and I am blocking God out whenever I become stress.  I am stressed a lot lately because of my course load, work, family and responsibilities.  It is easier for me to shut down and ignore my responsibilities but it ends up hurting my integral health by shutting out important aspects of well being. 
I think I need to remember to pray and ask God for mental clarity.  I need to make my health a priority even when I feel like I have no time for myself.  I need to make time for my health, well being and spiritual guidance.  I can achieve these things by meditating daily and making myself a priority on my list of things to do. 

Unit 5 Post

The subtle mind and loving kindness exercises are quite contrasting in the technique but comparable in their goals.  The techniques used in both practices were different in the fact that loving kindness wanted you to focus on others and subtle mind wanted you to focus on breathing.  Loving kindness made your compassion for others and yourself grow, while subtle mind made you focus on calm and stillness of the mind.  Either way both exercises expand your mind-body health to higher but different levels.  They are both mental workouts.
Spiritual and mental and physical wellness are closely associated with one another.  Having a good spiritual wellness, let one realize that there is more to their life than their own being.  It helps you expand your mind and let go of your troubles and I would say deal with stress more healthfully.  Stress is caused by unforseen obstacles, when you don't blow these obstacles out proportions your physical and mental wellbeing are not harmed.  Your physical and mental wellbeing are important in utilizing mental workouts and using physical workouts to calm your mind.  These are all intertwined and dependant on one another.

Loving Kindness exercise

The loving kindness exercise was surprisingly difficult for me.  I couldn't get my mind to stop racing, but that could be because my husband just told me he wants to move to California.  I have so much going on in my life already that I don't even want to think about moving!  But, I tried my hardest to calm my mind and focus on the exercise and can see how it can really help you.  I think that if I tried it again later that it would make me appreciate my loved ones and see them as a calming source rather than turmoil : ) 
I would definitely recommend this exercise to others as it never hurts to try relaxation techniques. 
Mental workouts are like physical workouts.  You dedicate a predetermined amount of time for meditation and things like the loving kindness exercises.  The more you physically workout the stronger you become and the more benefits you see.  The more mental workouts you complete the more expanded your mind becomes and the easier it is for you to meditate and relax for longer periods of time. This practice will help individuals develop their psychological well being and contemplative practices. Right now I think that the first relaxation technique is the most beneficial to me, so, once I can move on from that I will be more mentally prepared to take on the loving kindness exercise.  I would like to dedicate 10-15min. in the morning to mental workouts through meditation and another 10-15min. before bed.  I believe the morning sessions will help prepare my mind for the day and the night time sessions will help calm my mind from the day's events. 

Unit 3 Blog Assignment

I would rate my physical well being at a 7 because I'm unhappy with the way I am training and my current body image; I think I need to be more lean and want to gain strength.  Some goals that I have are to lose weight so I can train easier and with less injuries.  I think if I keep going to my physical therapy appointments I can fix my back so I can train better and lose weight.
My spiritual well being would have to be at an 8 because I am very in tune with my beliefs and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and God all around almost all of the time.  I feel very connected with what I believe and pray to God for constant counsel and guidance.  My husband and I pray together almost every day and with our girls.  We are very involved in our church community and feel a sense of clarity that we are where we are supposed to be in our spiritual journey together.  Some goals I have in my spiritual well being would be to seek guidance from the Pastor more often.  Ask for assurance and try to trust in God's word.
My psychological well being is very up and down but usually stays at a 6.  I am mostly frustrated with my issue with mind-body disconnect.  I know that my actions are sabotaging me to get to my goals sometimes, yet I don't listen to my common sense thoughts.  I purposefully disregard my thoughts and skip a work out or eat something unhealthy.  I have lack of will power to stay focused on my goals.  My goals in my psychological well being would be to trust in myself and stop sabotaging my goals with negative thoughts.  I think if I don't focus on my failures and accept that things may not always get done as planned then maybe I won't be so hard on myself when I slip up. 
The Crime of the Century relaxation technique was okay.  I didn't enjoy it as much as last weeks, but could see how doing it a couple of times would probably help me get into it more.  I'm not a color person the technique last week where you were visualizing the flow of you blood was a lot easier than visualizing beams of light shining out of me.  I will try it again, but still like the first one better.