unit 10

In unit 3 I rated myself a 6 in psychological wellness, 6 in physical wellness, and 6 in spiritual wellness.  Due to some personal and family issues I would say that I have slipped a bit.  I would score myself a 5 in each area.  Mainly because of lack of time to spend on each of them would I say that I have slipped.  I am back on track now and with the break from school I would say that I’m going to start advancing.  My goals are still there and I am going to work toward them now that some of the personal and family situations have become less.  Also with the week off of school I want to get to them and start.  Starting is the more difficult part, however, I just have to do it.

Throughout this course I enjoyed learning about the studies that have been done on meditation and prayer.  I have done many meditation exercises with my shaman group, so working on peace within and meditation is something that I try to do.  With school I have lacked in this area but it is a part of my life.  Rewarding is making it through this class and learning all of the studies, the difficult part was listening to the guy speak on the meditations and sometimes getting the work done.  I will be able to pass along the information of the studies and introduce some new meditations to people.  I did not really like these over others I have done but another person might like them, so they are just something to have in my bag of healing.

unit 9

I don't know how this is going to sound, but here is a part of my final project.

In looking at all of these areas for myself I have found that I am on a path to integral health and healing. There are areas that I struggle with more than others. There are times that I struggle with my spirituality and psychologically. In achieving success in these areas, along with keeping up with my physical, I should become a healthier person and can relax a little more than I do now.

For a personal assessment I used the chapter by Dasher on “Our Personal Assessment”(2006, p. 111). I started with some of the suggestions that he gave and wrote them down in my journal. From there I took some quiet time to reflect on each of the areas and to determine where I was.

At this time with so much going on I would rate my spiritual wellness as being a 5. I have not had a lot of time to do my meditation practices and I have not had a lot of time to spend talking with my guru. I was able to make it down for our weekly shaman class and after that class I felt much grounded. There has been a lot of energy shifting the past few weeks and this has taken a negative effect on my sleeping habits. I have enjoyed my dreams from this time and have learned a lot from them.

My goal for this area would be to get back to my normal routine of nightly meditations. I would also like to find more time during the week to seek out my fellow shamans and talk with them. I would also like to get back to a place where there is more intent behind what I am feeling and what my reactions and thoughts are to different situations.

For my nightly mediations I like to use a variation of the charka mediation. I start at my feet and feel what color they would be. I see that color and then thank my feet for the work that they have done that day. I do this as I work my way up my body. Seeing each part in a color and thanking each part for the work that it has done for me. I end with my head and by this time I have very relaxed and can only think of happy thoughts to put me to sleep.

While at work, if I encounter a stressful situation, I like to leave my office and find a quiet part of the building to be in. Here I can let my feelings go and work on calming myself down by doing some breathing exercises. I also work on a gratitude prayer and the combination of the two relaxes me enough where I am able to return to work fresh. At this point I am able to sometimes find solutions to the problem that I was not able to see before.

My physical wellness has also taken a back seat to some of the personal events going on in my life. I am going to rate myself at a five here also. I do keep up with my weekly personal training sessions; however my long distance running is not where it should be right now. I have only logged two, six mile runs for the month. If I want to turn in a personal best for my half marathon the first weekend in June, I should be running longer distances than I am now.

My goals for this area would be to increase my running distance and work in some more training sessions. I would also like to take some time to prepare some healthy meals for myself that I can freeze. This will allow me to take those to work instead of leaving the office to find a sandwich shop. Making my own food will also help with my mental state when worrying about financial situations.

For me to keep growing in my physical fitness area I need not let myself make excuses for the different situations that come up. There is always time in the day to fit in just ten minutes of walking. To help with my nutrition I would like to make a meal plan for the week. This will help to make sure that I get in a balanced meal for the daily activities that I will be doing to reach my running goals. To make sure that I keep on track with my running I will use the online tool by Garmin in combination with the running watch to help make sure that I am where I need to be.

My psychological or mental state right now is stressed. Here I am also going to rate myself a five. Work has been really busy and trying to finish up school, has taken a toll on my stress levels and mentality. I have found myself increasingly in a bad mood at work and have noticed that there are some people that make it worse than others.

By working on both my spiritual and physical health my mental health will also improve. One goal for me in this area is to keep up with my reading for classes. As I improve my knowledge, I will feel more relaxed talking to people about why I am going back to school and what I am going back to school for.

To keep up with my reading I will set aside time each night to read. I will leave the book next to my bed to remind me of my goals. The nightly mediations and the work meditations will also help with my stress level in this area.

To help me keep track of where I am in each area I will use a combination of my journal and a calendar. I like to use my journal during my meditations, so that any information that I might receive during that time can be written down and revisited if I need to. Putting a date and time next to each entry will help me keep track of when I am doing my mediations. Adding a date will also help me keep track of why I might be missing meditations of if I had missed them for an extended period of time.

I like to use a calendar and online programs for keeping track of my physical fitness. Marking on a calendar with an “X”for the days that I did workout will help me see over the course of the month how many times I went to the gym or ran outside. I use the online programs to keep track of how many miles I ran in a given time. This will help me reach my distance goals for each run.

I will also use journal writing to keep track of my mental wellness. Journal writing will help my write down everything that I am feeling that day. This will help relieve my stress and put it on paper where I can let it out. Meeting up with my friends every once in a while will also help with my mental stress. When I have support group that I can talk to, I am able to get everything out and forget about it.

After six months I would gather all of my journals and calendar and sit in my peaceful place. Here I would reevaluate where I am. Have I flourished in the last six months or have I fallen behind. I would take a look at my journals and calendar and figure out what happened in the last six months and try and relate them to what I had written down in the journals and calendar. Looking at these tools I should be able to see where in my life I needed a little extra help and why I might have fallen behind. I would make a new plan based on what I saw in my life, so when a similar situation came up I would be able to handle it in a more productive way so that I may learn from it and flourish

References:

Dacher, E. (2006). Integral health: the path to human flourishing. Laguna Beach: Basic Health Publications, Inc.

Unit 8

The two practices that I chose are the Loving Kindness and the Meeting Aesclepius meditations.  I found this two were the ones that I enjoyed the most.  In loving kindness I found that the connection of love is important to health and wellness.  Being able to connect to something greater through love and feeling love will help you flourish.  In meeting Aesclepius, I like the thought of sitting down with a guide in meditation and letting any information that I receive through the mediation be incorporated into my life.  I like how I got more insight into a situation or a clearer path as to where I should go.  I would use these as daily mediations.  Use loving kindness in the morning to get my thoughts in the right direction and in a happy place before starting the day.  If I can make myself smile right away in the morning there is a greater chance I will smile the rest of the day.  I would us meeting Aesclepius at night right before bed to check in with my guide and see if there was anything during that day that I can learn from and change.  Or, maybe I would be giving a different insight on a path to take in my tasks for the next day.

Unit 7

I really liked this meditative practice for this week.  I created my own person, who was a combination of a lot of wise and loving people that I know.  This week I should have done more meditating that I have.  I know it would have helped me get through this tough loss of a dear family member.  I did stick with my running and that helped.  I should have added the meditating to clam my mind so I could sleep better.  This is a meditation that I think I could use a lot.  I would look towards this person and guide and hope that they will give me useful information needed to guide me on the path that I am to be on.  I think you could create any kind of guide that you think you need and use this meditation for information.  Say you wanted to travel but didn't know where you wanted to go.  You could create a travel guide and ask that the perfect place be brought to you through a meditation or it could manifest in the next few days.

"One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself"(Schlitz, Amorok, & Micozzi, 2005, p. 447).
This is very true.  It is like trying to teach a child how to add and subtract if you didn't know how to add or subtract yourself.  If you do not have love in your heart for everyone and everything, how can you help a client get to a point of love in their life?   I think as health professionals we need to be learning and expanding our knowledge so that we can help others.  This weekend there is a mind and body expo at the convention center in Minneapolis that I would have loved to go to.  I do have a family funeral that I have to be at, but I will catch the next one.  I think there is so much that is changing and new studies that are being done that will teach us how to connect everything together.  If we do not stay with these studies the students coming up behind us will have all the new and we will be left behind learning from them.  We can start creating a network of people that we trust for information and expanding on what we are learning now.  Now is the time.

unit 6

            Once again I did like the universal loving-kindness exercise; however, I have an ethical issue with the last two lines.  I will only assist someone if they ask me personally for it.  I do not believe sending out my energy to help people that do not ask for help.  Everyone is on their own path and if I send my energy to someone that does not ask for help I am changing their path and/or lesson that they need to learn for themselves.  I will send positive energy out to a situation for the highest good.  And maybe it all has to do with intent but I still have an issue with it.     

            When I did the assessment process I already knew that areas that I needed to work on.  This process just gave me more definition in the area.  I believe with time these areas will grow.  I just have so much going on right now with a full time and part time job, and school.  I know there is more that I can do in these areas.  I do spend some time on them when breaks allow.  One activity I can do more of is meditation and waving my white flag sometimes to the universe.  Just knowing that I am on the right path for myself keeps me going to greater wellness.

Unit 5

In the loving kindness exercise we were asked to picture someone that we love and bring them into our thoughts.  You are asked to think of people and the love that you give and or receive from them.  In the subtle mind exercise we are asked to not think about anything.  We are to empty the mind.  In the mp3, I again did not like the man's or woman's voice.  I liked that there was less talking, but I found for myself that if I am to empty my mind I need complete quite.  The sound of the waves and music helped my mind to wander.  Once I went into a quiet room with no noise I was able to empty my mind better.  I have done this type of practice on my own before.  This is they type of meditation that I prefer.  When I go to this spot I feel like I get guidance from a higher power.  I use this information to tune into my body and I can feel my body change. Once I was able to see my place in the universe and realize that there are bigger things going on than just what is inside my small part, I was able to see and understand how my thoughts affected my mental state.  If I allowed myself to be negative then I could not think clearly on projects.  Once I also got to this negative point I also found myself skipping my running.  It was a domino effect for me.  If I can understand my spirit and turn the negative into something positive it changes the rest of my day.

Unit 4

I really enjoyed Practice 1: Loving-Kindness. That being said I did not care for the mp3 version. I followed the book and did this meditation on my own. The person that I created in the beginning was a combination of a few people that I hold near and dear to me. I guess for my own ethics I do not want to take a part of someone inside of me without their permission first. So I asked the ones that I envisioned and then used a combination of all of them. I like that you have to love yourself first and know how that feels to you. For me starting with loving yourself is the most important. If you cannot love yourself, how are you going to love another? There was one part of this meditation that I would change. I do not like taking in something negative, even if we were to take it in and let it dissolve. We are still taking in a negative. I would rather picture this person and envision them in white light and love them that way. Once again I would be careful with my ethics as I would be performing a healing on this person at this point. I would want to make sure that I have the person permission to help with their struggles. If I am just sending love out into the universe, I am okay with this mediation. Once I start trying to change or help someone then I would need their permission for the healing that I would be sending them.



The mental workout is a time set aside each day for us to practice getting to know ourselves and how we truly feel. I think there are a lot of people in our lives that like to tell us what we should do or how we should feel about a situation. If we can take ourselves out of the situation and sit with our self, I think we will come up with the correct answer to all of our question and issues. This mental workout is something that needs practice and time set aside each day for this to be helpful and for us to understand the difference between self-talk and the information from our true self. This practice shows that we will change our environment so we are not in the self-center of the universe and we can open our self to love and acceptance of others.

Unit 3

My physical well-being I would rate a 6.  I think there is always room for improvement and there are parts of my physical body that I would like to tone up, more than what they are.  My spiritual well-being I would also rate a 6.  There are days, nights, and weeks that I forget to take care of this part of my life.  I do know that my guides and angels are taking care of me and helping me to stay on path.  My psychological I would rate a 5.  Right now this is a stressful time.

My physical goal is to get in some more strength training.  Right now I work out with a trainer on day a week and the other days I run between 3-7 miles per day.  I usually have two days a week that I take off, and one of those is to work a 2nd job.
My spiritual goal is to spend some time with my guides and angels right before I go to bed.  I also like to do a body check in and thank each part of my body for the work it did that day.
My psychological goal is to try and not stress too much about the aspects of my life that I cannot control right now.  If I take everything one step at a time it will all work itself out.

My activites for achieving my goals right now would be to make sure that I spend some time each night doing my meditation before bed.  Doing this will also help my psychological.  My physical goal would be to watch more of what I am eating to make sure that I am balancing out my activities.

I do not know what it was about the meditation this week.  I just couldn't get it done fast enough.  The man's voice really bugged me this week.  I did like how he took us through the charka system.  To be honest I skipped through some of it and didn't listen to the whole thing.  It just took too long tonight at this time.  I'll do my meditation later.

Angie

The relaxation exercise was interesting.  Due to the time of night I was starting to relax.  The background music was nice, the guide had a soothing voice, and I was almost there until he started to describe what the blood functions my body was taking.  That took me right out of relaxation.  When I relax I do not want to think about my body functions.

Welcome!

This was a fun process to try out.  It will be interesting getting to know how this works and learning from everyone else.