Unit 9

1. 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?

I feel that it is important for health and wellness professionals to develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically so that they can know how to help their own clients and understand the things they may be going through. The professional needs to know how to show their client how to also do these things so that they can balance their lives as well. A professional who has a well-developed psychological, spiritual, and physical wellness will be able to help the client to see what they are lacking in as well. I think that I could use improvement in all areas since I feel that people can always continue to improve their lives.

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

I have scored each of my areas on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being bad and 10 being great. I feel that my spiritual health is at a 5 because I have started to go to church regularly and I do pray on a regular basis. I feel I could improve this area by becoming even more involved in the church. I gave my physical health a 4 because I need to achieve a healthy weight and start to exercise more often. I can also use to make better choices when it comes to eating. I feel if I start to go walking three days a week and work my way up to jogging that I will be able to lose some weight. I know if I can eat three low fat meals/ well balanced meals with two healthy snacks that I can achieve my goal of becoming healthier. For my psychological health I feel it is at a 5 because I have started to meditate more since I started this class and my stress level is not as bad. I feel if I continue to meditate and maybe take some yoga classes that my psychological health will increase.

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

Physical Goal- Lose 35 pounds in the next 4 months.

Spiritual Goal- Start to go to Sunday school along with regular church services on a regular basis.

Psychological Goal- To meditate 3 days a week and go to yoga once a week.

4. 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.

In order to lose weight and achieve my physical goal I am going to go walking three days a week and start to work up to jogging. I am also going to make sure I am eating well balanced meals that are within my calorie range so I can lose weight. In order to achieve my psychological goal I am going to start to do mind exercises, meditation, and yoga. I will be sure to do my mind exercises and meditation three times a week and does yoga once a week.  I feel this will help me to be able to focus on things clearer and to be able to lessen my stress level. Spiritually I want to start to attend Sunday school classes as well as regular services on a regular basis and I would like to start to attend extra classes they have so that I can become more involved in my church. I will start by seeing what classes are available that I would be interested in and I will make sure I go to them as well as Sunday school and church.

5. 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 by keeping a daily journal so that I can take one day at a time and try to see things that may influence my days. I think this will help me to see when I have good days and bad. Keeping a journal is a great way to see how much progress you have made or what you need to change in your day to day life to achieve the goal you have set for yourself. I think by joining a website that gears towards healthy eating and having people to chat with will also help me to see that I am not in this alone and that there are people out there that will help and support me.

Reference:

Dacher, E.(2006). Integral Health, The Path to Human Flourishing.

Unit 8

After sitting down and looking at all the different practice sessions we have done the two I feel were the most beneficial were the “Love and Kindness” and the “Meditation” practices.  I feel the “Love and Kindness”  exercise helps someone to focus on others and being caring and treating people with kindness and love.  Meditation is a great way for people to clear their minds and focus on themselves on anything going on in their lives. These would both be great exercises to have clients practice so that they could be more in touch with themselves and others. This will show them that they are important as well as friends and family. I personally think by doing these practices on a regular basis I will learn to love myself and others more.

Unit 7- Meeting Asciepius

When listening to track 4 on our cd I felt it helped me to ease my mind and muscles and let stress go once I got my mind to stop wondering. The breaks in between the practice were too long for me and my mind would start to wonder. These exercises have helped me a lot to stay focused and to clear my thoughts so that I do not have everything racing.
One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself” I feel so torn when I hear this saying. I know it is hard to give advice or life experiences when you try to help someone eat better and exercise when you may or may not do it yourself. It is hard to listen to someone who does not eat right and exercise and is overweight, but for someone who does do these things and is still overweight because of a disease or medical condition it is not fair not to listen to them. Someone who may have a disease that makes it hard for them to exercise may know what to do to work each muscle group and to get your heart rate up but they may not be able to do it themselves because it causes them too much pain. I feel it is hard to judge someone by the cover and it is important to listen to what they are saying and see if it makes sense.

Universal Love and Kindness Exercise/ Integral Assessment

 Love and Kindness Exercise
The universal Love and Kindness exercise had us relax and empty our minds and focus on this saying:
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 to find sustained health, happiness, and wholeness.
We repeated this saying for 10 minutes. I feel that this made me focus on others and trying to help them and showed me that helping others is important to help myself grow and to help others know that people really do care about them.

Integral Assessment
When doing the Integral Assessment we had to close our eyes and focus on our psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal, or worldly and see what aspects of my life need to be focused on. I choose interpersonal to focus on since I do not have very many close friends because I have a hard time trusting people and often do not find the time to go out and make new friends since I work full time, am a full time student, and I have children. I feel it is important to have friends and people to talk with and rely on and I am going to try to make more time to get out and meet new people.

Mental Fitness Power Point

http://portal.sliderocket.com/BFOMH/Angela-Vanorsdale_Hw420_Unit-5-Project

Mind Exercises

Well compared to last week this exercise was a lot easier. The sound of the waves was very relaxing to me but the sound of the ladies voice was not. I think the most frustrating part of this exercise for me was her voice. Once I got past that and focused on what I was suppose to be doing I found this exercise to be very relaxing. I think the more we focus on negative thoughts the more we worry and wish things would change. If we focus on positive thoughts we are happier and feel more secure in the choices we are making and we don't regret them!

Love and Kindness and Mental Exerices

After doing the Subtle-mind practice and the Loving-Kindness exercises I found that only doing them once helped for the time being, but if I would add these into my daily life that I would feel less stress and become more focused. Both of these practiced focused on deep breathing and rhythmic breathing to help to connect body and mind together. There were some differences between the two exercises such as Loving-Kindness wants you to focus and think about loved ones, people in the world, and oneself, and the Subtle-Mind exercise wants all thoughts that enter the mind to be acknowledged and them forgotten so that one can go back to focusing on breathing. I think that both of these exercises were relaxing and helped me to focus on taking things in small amounts instead of trying to focus on everything at the same time and overwhelming myself.

            The concept of mental workout means to make you mind think quickly and focus on things it is not use t doing. It is important to make our minds work so that they are always learning things and focusing. This will help to improve our everyday lives and hopefully help as we get older to keep our minds in shape and remember things. I think it would be important for clients to do mental workouts and I would encourage them to do them for about 10 minutes every day to help them to improve their minds.