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.
Health & Wellness: JJV Style
I will relate my experiences with the field of health & wellness, as a student of this field. I will attempt to share my feelings and thoughts, as well as lessons learned.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
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.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Meditation Exericise
Sunday, April 10, 2011
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.
Monday, April 4, 2011
List of HW420 Bloggers
I hope I was able to capture all of the bloggers from HW420. If I have missed your blog by mistake, please add in the comments section. Feel free to share.
Jose Vega
Journey On - Meditation Technique
I often meditate. However, my way to meditate usually deals around music. I tend to listen to music and get lost in my thoughts and then begin my meditation mode. My meditation usually turns into a conversation with god and the universe. However, I found it difficult to let go of my thoughts as I listen to the speaker in the audio track. Instead of trying to let go of everything, I kept focusing on his voice and his demands. I actually felt very distracted because his voice seemed very contrived and fake. I kept trying to tune him out and just focus on the background music. However, it was a bit difficult. Eventually, I was able to let go and just tuned him out altogether.
I am familiar with meditation and relaxation techniques, so I was able to eventually just relax. I understand this technique, but it has never really worked for me. This leads me to believe that it might be difficult for me to become a victim to the power of suggestion. The quickest method to meditate and to be able to recharge our batteries is the morning shower. When you are in the shower in the morning, before you finish and begin your day, take a minute a day to just focus on the water hitting your head. Don’t think on anything else, just feel the warmth of the water, and feel it running from the top of your head all the way to the bottom of your feet. Eventually, you can increase to two minutes and so on, until you can do this for five minutes. It is extremely important to take at least one minute of the day just for yourself. I consider this a gift to us.
Welcome
First and foremost, welcome to all readers. I hope you find my blog insightful, interesting and fun to read. Please feel free to comment and share your thoughts with me. For those of you going through the same process as me, then I hope I can shed some light on these subjects. For those of you thinking of pursuing this route, then I hope you can learn from my experience.
After all, life is a never ending classroom, with assignments and tests – let’s just remember that life will ONLY test us on things we have already learned. Therefore, when life gets rough, analyze the situation from an outsider’s perspective and find the answers within you – because you are programmed with the answers.
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