Grounded

This week has been seven days that a new sprout has become part of my life. This sprout name is Jesmuel, I have custody of him until March of 2012. He was one of my prayers to the heavens, how lucky I feel to have him next to me and my partner. This has been certainly a special week were I was being visited by a CPS caseworker and the only prayer that I could come up with was my Lord please ground me, my partner and the baby so everything can go smoothly. To my surprise the baby and everyone else were doing good but one of my dogs the one who never over react started barking uncontrollably. I was becoming anxious with his barking and asking myself what the heck is wrong with you? When the answer came to me into my own mind "I thought you wanted the baby to be grounded, the anxiety and impatience had to go somewhere."

Final blog - at least final assigned blog - more to come later.

I have assessed my health within each of the domains and ranked myself on a scale of 1-10. At the spiritual level, I score between 8 through 10, depending on the day and how much emphasis I have to put in. I consider spirituality to be like a see saw, which goes up and down depending on how I feel throughout the day. The great thing about spirituality is that I have many tools at my disposal that help me on the days I feel my spiritual score low. Some of these tools are meditation, exercise and friends. I just open myself constantly and these tools help me to recharge myself.

Physically, I will score myself at 6, because I let myself go for many years and it took me this long to realize the importance of maintaining myself physically. I acknowledge that with that score, I have to work real hard and keep working on myself physically. If I procrastinate on working out, I will find myself in the same situation as before, overweight and unhealthy.

Once I get these two domains on check, my psychological level will be a 10. I first need to work on my physical and spiritual domains, otherwise I will easily fall to a 3 in my psychological score and that can be a number that can be disastrous to my whole being.

My original goal for myself on the spiritual level was to meditate at least 30 minutes a day every morning, because this will help me set myself up for what the day has in stored for me. I have been able to maintain this pattern and discovered that forcing to do this every morning, kept me in a calm and relaxed state of mind throughout the day. Physically, my goal has been to walk for 30 minutes during my two coffee breaks and 40 minutes using the exercise equipment I have at home before going to work. I have also continued on these patterns and noticed my self-esteem has increased. With the progress I have made in these two levels, I feel that my psychological self has been in check. Therefore, my goal for the psychological level continues to be to make sure to keep my other two perspectives healthy, so I can continue on a healthy path.

I definitely have implemented these activities in all three areas. Without realizing it, I have force myself into a routine. I believe that is the importance of getting into a routine; if I don’t do it, I miss it and I have to do it. I believe I have grown psychologically, spiritually and especially physically by pursuing these activities, because I understand their importance in my wellbeing.

Throughout this course, I have improved my well-being because I kept forcing myself to get into a routine of doing exercise, and meditation on a daily basis. The difficult part is convincing my body that I have to do these exercises; my way out of this situation is by doing them early in the mornings when I am still half asleep. I found that if I leave it for the evening, I don’t have much energy to do my exercises. At least in the morning I am half asleep, therefore I don’t even feel the time pass me by. The other good thing of exercising and meditating during the mornings is that I tend to carry this strength with me during the whole day. I find this has helped me to help others because my mind, body and spirit are grounded and I can focus better in helping others.

Unit 9 - Final Project

Final Project: Apply Concepts Learned Regarding Holistic/Integral Health

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?

The idea of being healthy psychologically, spiritually and physically are at the core of health and wellness and practitioners need to follow their teachings, otherwise, they could be considered hypocrites. I believe that professionals should develop psychologically, spiritually, and physically because they are responsible to teach those same ideas to their patients. The whole concept brings happiness and wholeness to an individual and if this is not achieved by a practitioner first, how will practitioners be able to help patients achieve wholeness and happiness.

For the most part, traditional medicine dictates that if a person is stressed and/or depressed, the first thing that comes out of a practitioner’s mouth is to prescribe pills. Those who are integrated in health and wellness should set a good example. Otherwise, many people will continue to be attached to pharmaceuticals as answers to their existing health issues.

From the physical perspective, there are a lot of areas that I need to develop to fully achieve these goals. This is a process I need to work on constantly and not forget the importance of these teachings. From the spiritual and psychological perspectives, I have done a lot of progress. However, these are life-long processes that will help me maintain myself grounded and teach others in their health and wellness development.

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

I have assessed my health within each of the domains and ranked myself on a scale of 1-10. At the spiritual level, I score between 8 through 10, depending on the day and how much emphasis I have to put in. I consider spirituality to be like a see saw, which goes up and down depending on how I feel throughout the day. The great thing about spirituality is that I have many tools at my disposal that help me on the days I feel my spiritual score low. Some of these tools are meditation, exercise and friends. I just open myself constantly and these tools help me to recharge myself.

Physically, I will score myself at 6, because I let myself go for many years and it took me this long to realize the importance of maintaining myself physically. I acknowledge that with that score, I have to work real hard and keep working on myself physically. If I procrastinate on working out, I will find myself in the same situation as before, overweight and unhealthy.

Once I get these two domains on check, my psychological level will be a 10. I first need to work on my physical and spiritual domains, otherwise I will easily fall to a 3 in my psychological score and that can be a number that can be disastrous to my whole being.

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

My goal for myself on the spiritual level is to meditate at least 30 minutes a day every morning. This will help me set myself up for what the day has in stored for me. I discovered that forcing to do this every morning allowed me to keep meditating during the whole day. Physically, my goal is to walk for 30 minutes during my two coffee breaks and 40 minutes using the exercise equipment I have at home before going to work. This discipline increases my self-esteem and makes me look forward to the wonderful things waiting for me during the day. With those two things in check, I feel that my psychological self will be in check. Therefore, my goal for the psychological level is to make sure that I keep my other two perspectives healthy, so I can be totally healthy.

 IV. 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.

The strategies that I will implement to improve my spiritual domain is to meditate everyday for at least 15 minutes. My preferred meditation method is the practice of love and kindness, since I feel that many are in need of love, especially those going through hard times such as death of a loved one or horrible illnesses. If I am able to do this from the deepest part of my heart, I feel a sense of helping the world and those around me. I may not be able to help physically, but spiritually I am able to do something for them.

My physical strategy is to exercise at least four times a day. Exercising will help increase my self esteem. In addition, I know I am doing something to better my body inside and out. Exercises like walking, jogging or weights are some of the means for me to accomplish this part of my life.

In order to work on my psychological domain, I will need to commit to working on my other two domains. This in turn will help me to increase my self esteem and I will feel better. Therefore, my psychological domain will easily fall into place.

 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?

My progress will consist of doing these things in a strict disciplinary way on a daily basis. If I do not get to do it for whatever reason, I have to make sure to pick up the next day right where I left off. I must learn that I cannot dwell on the past, but keep doing it without letting go, because it is my livelihood that is in jeopardy. It is my own self esteem that I have to work on and tap on when necessary. It is bad to depend on other people who may start with you, but may not finish with you. This is why it is important to learn to tap on your own self esteem to progress in life.

I will need to follow a strict schedule. In addition, I will keep a diary to make sure that I am recording the necessary information, such as blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, etc. These methods will continue to motivate me to keep moving forward with my efforts.

Loving Kindness & Subtle Mind

The two practice sessions I have chosen are loving kindness and subtle mind. These exercises have shown me different ways to approach myself and others in my life in a very earthy and grounded way.

In the loving kindness exercise the phrases: all individuals, well, good health, happiness and wholeness are very important to follow into mental fitness. I have learned and tried to practice these words with myself, because I have spent time thinking on others and not myself. I understand that for me to help someone else, I first have to help myself by becoming healthy, happy and whole. In order to achieve this goal, I know I have to ground myself, exercise, eat healthy, and respect life and everything that surrounds me.

The subtle mind exercise focuses on breathing practices to tame and stabilize the mind. The last time I tried it, sadly it did not work for me because I was focusing too much on my grade on the quiz. I also realized that I need to continue to practice my breathing exercises learnt, because I need to focus on something else besides the world full of pain, war, sadness and anger. For me, these are my stepping steps to foster mental fitness.

One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself

During my meditation practice of “Meeting Asciepius,” I envisioned my pastor who passed away several years ago. During his life time I consider him to be a special man. He was filled with love and did not have a problem on expressing this feeling towards others. I was most impressed with the way he behaved in public, he would grab you on the street and give a huge hug and a kiss on the cheek, it did not bother him whether you were a woman or a man. As a Pentecostal pastor, he would grab other people from different religions and embrace them the same way. That for me was an eye opening experience when I was young, that was something that I never saw from other religious leaders. As I mentioned he passed away many years ago, and even though I do not follow any church services anymore, the person that came to my mind during the meditation of someone to envision was him. I would hope that I will follow in his loving way that he left imprinted in me as a young man, and to carry this with myself and others as I go along the path of life, because we all need to express ourselves with love and compassion more especially towards each other.

The saying "One cannot lead another where one has not gone himself,” is an important quote because for someone to lead in integral health lifestyle, one must follow it to the letter. We as human beings are very weak and filled with imperfections and this is why it is important that a person who decides to teach others be an example of living life to the discipline that he/she follows. I constantly teach many of my customers to live by taking care of themselves. For example, they need to be open and be aware of the things that they eat otherwise they will face health complications. They need to take care of their skin while working out in the elements and be aware of the possible things that may affect them while working in agriculture. I, as a person who is also exposed to these elements, have to carry with the products I tell them to use. I have to make sure I check my body for ticks or insect bites, put lotion to protect my skin from the sun or the cold weather. Those are things that I have to remind myself to teach, but at the same time remind myself to practice what I teach. These are the first steps to integral health, the moment that we begin to take care of our main vessel, we can start to become aware that there are other things we must learn to care for and those are the mind and later the spirit.

Loving Kindness & Integral Assessment

The universal loving kindness meditation is a meditation exercise that I enjoyed doing the most. The meditation exercise begins with closing your eyes for a few minutes and easing into the natural rhythm of your mind and body. After you are able to connect your mind and body, you must repeat four different phrases for 10 minutes. The phrases deal with wishing “all individuals” well, good health, happiness and wholeness, by allowing the person meditating to become the tool that helps them achieve these goals.

Painting by Alex Grey

I do not know why, but I feel much empowered when I am able to see another person in my mind and be present with him/her. As Dacher indicates, this feeling makes me feel as one with another person. This is the opportunity that I have to connect with someone other than me, especially when people are going through so many things in life. For example, I remember those mothers and fathers who may have lost a child, those husbands or wives who have lost their significant other, those children who are now orphans.  I even ask for those who have no one next to them and feel alone, sad and desperate. I feel those experiences are a healing process for me and make me grow spiritually; and that is a good thing because as Dacher mentions, this is the final leap to personal development.

The integral assessment process helps me to identify urgent areas of distress. This process deals with closing your eyes for a few minutes and easing into the natural rhythm of your mind and body. Through meditation, you learn to calm your mind and begin to analyze the roots of the problems that are causing distress in your system, whether they are psychospiritual, biological, interpersonal or worldly. We learn to focus from healing to the integral development growth process, in order to continue to evolve.

This process allows me to resolve my problems and get the necessary tools available to me to pass through those difficult moments.  For example, this process allows me to surpass the situations that my body goes through and its changes and the relationships that I have with the world and those close to me. The area that I always seem to go back to is my personality and my temperament and how I can better handle it.

One of the things that I have been practicing with my partner is when we have a heated discussion he says I tend to scream. Therefore, I have told him to let me know that I am screaming with a hand gesture so I could lower down my voice, since I may not realize that I am screaming. This is the part of myself no one sees except me, my partner and my family. If I am able to understand myself better and trust these assessments to help me, it will guide me how to complete myself.

Reference:

Dacher, E.S. (2006) Integral Health: The Path to Human Flourishing. Basic Health Publications.

Image by Alex Grey.

Subtle Mind Practice Unit 5

Hi everyone,
My experience with this meditation was very different from the last one Love and Kindness. I realize that it was much easier for me to think and focus on someone else than on me. In love and kindness meditation I felt that I thrived in sending my love and taking in any pain that another person was going through. In this meditation if I were succesfully connected with myself for two minutes it was alot. I think the thing that was going through my head the most was the outcome of my last quizz, which surprise me since I was very confident that I was going to do better than I did. This meditation focused on breathing practice to tame and stabilize my mind, sadly it did not work that well but as everything else in life practice makes perfect hopefully next time I may be able to have more control over my thoughts and frustrations.

Loving kindness

During the meditation of Loving Kindness Practice I learned something new. The new thing that I learned was that I was able to picture a loved one who was suffering and take in there suffering, according to the practice and make their suffering dissolve with my breath as I exhale. That experience made me feel useful, since every time that I hear about this loved one and their suffering I become frustrated and powerless, with this new meditation practice makes me part of intervention that this person needs.

The mental workout for me is a way to train the mind on focusing on certain things and forcing it through meditation to be exercised. Sometimes, we tend to forget the mind, as well as our bodies, need to exercise frequently. Therefore, we need to continue to challenge our mind, and quiet the chattering in our minds, and allow them to move beyond their day-to-day routines and experience new things. Some of the benefits, according to the research, are that you are better able to focus, and better connect with the universe and everyone in it.

 

Meditation Exericise

I followed the meditation exercise this morning. I was surprise how fast those 20 minutes went by, I remember opening my eyes at the begining and the exercise was a minute and fifty seconds runing and than I opened my eyes it was nineteen minutes later. I have practiced this type of exercise before using colors to assert myself, specially when I felt nervous and insecure.

Self-Reflection

As far as I can remember as a child, I was a very resentful and angry kid. It took me many years to learn how to control my anger and eliminate my resentfulness. I come from a small village in Puerto Rico, where everybody socializes with everybody whether they are related or not. As a teenager, I learned that I had to make decisions in how I was approaching people and for what purpose, whether I was visiting them to gossip or whether I was visiting them because I missed them and I wanted to spend time with them. That impulse of always being resentful for things I could not control and were not going my way, was the hardest emotion that I needed to control. I needed to learn how to express myself when things were not going my way, especially with the people involved. I needed to learn to explain how I felt, while controlling my emotions. This created in me social skills that I did not have in the past. I used to get angry with people easily and did not want them in my life any longer.

Eventually, I would feel horrible for my behavior, and would begin to question myself. I would ask myself, “why did I pull away without expressing my feelings?” These feelings might have been easily resolved if I had just faced the person and questioned her or him. This personal growth brought in me more happiness and stability. This also brought security in my mind, and strength. When the mind is sick, it sickens the body, and when the body is sick everything seems to spiral out of control and the happiness that many seek little by little disappears.

My medical history is fine for the most part. I was recently diagnosed as a diabetic, so I changed my diet and exercise patterns to avoid taking pills for this disease. I recently did a stress and cardiovascular test and the results were normal. My blood pressure and vital signs are considered normal and no major illnesses or side effects affect my body. When exercising, injuries are an important factor since I am overweight and I had a car accident, which affected my back. I have to look at how much I can force my body to do, since I can hurt my feet and my knees, which carry a great part of my body weight. I also visit a chiropractor twice a month to maintain my lower back pains to a minimum.

I motivate myself to walk every day between 15 to 20 minutes twice a day. This level of physical activity may not be enough, but it is a start. This activity was set in place since I started to study health and wellness. The studying of health and wellness has been a motivational tool for me to use as a technique. My major motivation is that I will go to my accurate weight size for my height and feel more comfortable around people. Eventually I will start jogging a mile every day as I used to do.

Some of the things that I am trying to change from my habits are to smoke less, do more exercise and eat as healthy as possible. Those are the recommendations that I try to live by. I have reviewed and answered several tests dealing with stress, eating habits and exercise, and according to them I scored low which means I need to improve in those areas (Howley & Franks, 2007).

Those are the areas in my life that I have to be concerned about and try to improve the score. I am not the type of person who joins a gym or hires a personal trainer to guide me. Luckily, I researched and followed advice from a personal trainer on the internet and I learned a lot. In the article “The Effects of Exercise on Food Intake and Body Fatness,” I learned a lot about how exercise reduces body fat. Exercise can influence my energy and can reduce body fat. Also, the courses I have taken pursuing my health and wellness degree, the advice from my professors and classmates have allowed me to improve my wellbeing (Elder & Roberts, 2007).

I think one of the things I need to do is to keep walking during my coffee breaks and overcome any obstacles that I may encounter that might discourage me. Some of these deterrents are the little free time that I may encounter while working and the severe weather that I might face. One of the solutions that I propose for myself is to prepare myself for the weather, and to make sure I stop working when it is time for my coffee break so I can go and do my exercises. Another factor that I have to consider to achieve my goal in maintaining healthy is to minimize or stop smoking completely.

References

Elder, S.J. & Roberts, S.B. (2007) The Effects of Exercise on Food Intake and Body Fatness: A Summary of Published Studies. Nutrition Reviews, Vol. 65 Issue 1, p1-19.

Howley, E.T. & Franks, B.D. (2007) Fitness Professional’s Handbook, Fifth Edition: Exercise and Older Adults.

Howley, E.T. & Franks, B.D. (2007) Fitness Professional’s Handbook, Fifth Edition: Health Appraisal.